Month: October 2006
Shame and Iraq
Excellent article from Salon’s Gary Kamiya about American responsibility for Iraq as it is now: http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2006/10/31/shame/
Brakes, Speed Limits and Climate Change
I notice it more on the bike than I do in the car – some people seem never to get off their brakes, judging by their brake lights. Every downhill stretch, every corner, the brakes go on. Doesn’t bother me much, but I wonder why they do it, and I also worry about it a…
Anti-intellectualism
Interesting comment from ‘englishvoodoo’ on the William Gibson Board: Funny how the illiterate kids always call those who can spell and punctuate “nerds”. I guess that’s because they come from a society where intelligence is a thing to look down on, and of course, the intelligent kids would never stoop to calling the illiterate ones…
Life and the Cost of Living
A year or a bit more ago I applied for a job at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland and was shortlisted for it. We looked at houses to rent in the area, at the climate and a whole bunch of other factors, and also at jobs in Australia, and I ended up withdrawing my…
A little gloom, a lotta doom – and some hope
From Salon, a look at the strong possibility that climate change is getting a lot worse a lot faster than we expected… as well as at some of the possible solutions: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/10/24/catastrophe/
Undead Theories 2: Undeaderer
We had a little bit of a ‘book launch’ in our School yesterday, with each of the profs who has published a book this year showing off the book and saying a few words about it. We were each assigned 5 min to talk about our book, and I think I was the only one…
Making the Links
Helping Cassie with her homework this morning. She made a (very cute, with painted foam balls and fuzzy pipecleaners) model of a butanoic acid atom for science at school, and had to do a little report about its properties, comparing them to the properties of butane. Butanoic acid is a liquid at room temperature and…
No Sequel to ‘Khe Sanh’
I’m sure most Americans don’t even know, and most Australians (except the vets) have forgotten too, but Australia followed America into another misbegotten imperialist adventure turned disaster nearly 40 years ago… Vietnam. The great song from the great Aussie band Cold Chisel talks about the experience of some of the vets: I left my heart…
Happy Birthday
This blog is 2 years old today. Here’s the first post, from October 18, 2004. For complicated reasons to do with setting up the blog, which I can’t actually remember right now, that post was numbered as post 6. And here’s the one year anniversary post from last year. This is post number 658. Given…
Debates in Education
Chatting with Sue’s nephew (and my friend) Craig yesterday at a birthday party, and he was talking about how English teachers are using ‘contemporary texts’ from newspapers and other sources, including web-based, unpublished sources, in their classes, and how that is leading to reduced ability to read and write in English on the part of…
Hacker Haiku
A new poetic form I’ve been playing with a bit. The first one I wrote both illustrates and explains the form: One Then two Four syllables And the next line needs at least eight Themes and topics can be various, but things cyber are welcome Rather than get impossible Reduce power Back to Zero The…
Kim Jong Il, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Sanity
It’s tempting – very tempting – to treat those who are opposing us as though they are insane and completely unpredictable. Their motivations are painted either as psychoses or as some form of near-psychotic fundamentalist mania. And it’s true that Kim in particular does some very bizarre things by anyone’s standards. The recent nuclear weapon…
Passing on passing it on
As I was riding to work this morning the words of an old Christian song from my youth were running through my head: That’s how it is with God’s love; Once you’ve experienced it, you want to sing It’s fresh like spring, you want to pass it on. I dunno – I just don’t find…
The Sensible Centre
Australia’s Education Minister, Julie Bishop, in a speech late last week, talked about how (she claimed) school curricula around Australia have been ‘hijacked’ by leftist ideologues in state education departments. She said Australia should have a nationally mandated curriculum, designed by a panel of educators from the ‘sensible centre’, appointed by the federal government. This…
The Institutionalised Inefficiencies of Competition
It happened in Canada too, but it seems to be much more prevalent in Australia, or at least at UQ1. What I’m talking about is the process of applying for competitive funding. I’ve been doing a lot of research grant applications lately, and that’s kind of something I expect – the public pays for university…
Unblocking
The unfinished ‘stereotypes’ post has kinda been holding me up from posting anything new. Will go back and finish that off now, then post a couple from the past few days, so please read back a bit… Then regular service should be resumed.
The Return Of ‘The Nuggery’
When my friend Paul stopped blogging a while ago, I think I may have said something along the lines of ‘you’ll be back’. So his e-mail to me today said: “Dave, I hate it when you’re right. I was hit with a fresh wave of inspiration for blogging, so the Nuggery is back up and…
Celebrities I (apparently) look like
I got this from the fact that Lorne did his and linked it. You can do yours by clicking on mine. I think Suzie will be pleased to know she’s married to a guy who looks like Jude Law. 😉 Edit: D’oh, Jude is not one of the Top Eight. Oh well, Jensen Ackles, maybe.…
Sermons
My younger brother Paul preached the sermon at church yesterday, and did a fantastic job. He used an anology from mathematics about how ellipses have two focal points and circles have one to make some sophisticated points about balance in life and in faith. He used a lot of scripture as well as some Ellen…