Sticky
man with professional camera filming outdoors

I want to make a confession first up, which is that I hate the word blog and all its extensions – blogging, blogger, blogged and blogs. Short for ‘web log’ apparently, blog, is an ugly word let’s face it. It sounds to me like a colloquial term fit for acts of defecation. Thus, the art of blogging is akin to a ballerina farting loudly throughout a performance of the Nutcracker Suite. OK got that off my chest. I wonder who came up with the term in the first place? I Googled it and according to a Wikipedia entry ‘weblog’ was so named by one Jom Barger in 1997 and one Peter Merholz reduced the two words to ‘blog’ in 1999 via a phrase posted on his blog. Now you know.Continue Reading

The coronavirus crisis has revealed the true state of what it is like to live in the USA, especially for those on the economic fringe of this large nation. The terrifying rates of death in New York during the COVID-19 global pandemic strikes at the heart of the great American dream. Watching this unfold from a vantage point outside of the US it is startling to see. You cannot help but feel that the land of the free does not look out for its citizens in the way many other western nations do for their denizens. American Pie: The rotten slice revealed to the world.Continue Reading

Robert Sudha Hamilton

Big question and the answer to this changes regularly. Right now, I am immersing myself in cosmology, biology and particle physics via Brian Cox and John Gribbin. I love to feel my mind being expanded by the ideas and knowledge within a book being shared with the reader. Recently, I have enjoyed Yuval Noah Harari, and Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu – I think that every Australian should read Dark Emu. Continue Reading

Wowsers and control freaks are crawling out from behind the couch like never before, during this coronavirus global pandemic. The idea of being able to censor and limit the behaviour of human beings en masse appeals to certain sections of our society. The latest hobby horse is the reported increase in alcohol sales in Australia during this COVID-19 crisis. The ABC reported that health advocates are urging the government to crack down on alcohol sales. So called experts are bobbing up like bath toys in a full tub with suggested policies for limiting the sales of alcohol across the board. Brandishing the risk to vulnerable members of the community from alcohol fuelled domestic violence, these talking heads want strict controls on the quantity of booze sold to individual customers during this crisis. These wowsers’ warnings wave a wet blanket over alcohol sales during the crisis and we should all beware.Continue Reading