Category Archive: LIFE
Bottling the Acid
"Wait till you hear what THIS says.." (artist: G. Cades circle)
(3 ways to cope with “flaming” online) The ‘interweb thingey’ has turned us all into publishers. Unfortunately, much material published on the world wide web desperately needs decent editing. Furthermore, the relative anonymity of social media platforms can attract the kind of thuggish commentary more suited to the Stanford Prison Experiment. For example, let’s say a website offering goods or services has a list of Google Reviews. People like ‘social proof’ so these reviews are read as a priority, and if enough positive feedback is on display, it may lead to a decision to click-and-buy. But what if you get a no-star…
Continue Reading →Hello and Absolve all Black & Tans
"Have a nice day, Ireland!"(Portrait by Peter Lely)
Happy St Patrick’s Day! If Pátraic was so hot though, why does Ireland still have to put up with Sinn Féin? Anyway, top of the morning to Paddys everywhere, and we hope not to have been too inflammatory by passing-on the best wishes of well known hibernophile, Oliver Cromwell. The more polite Irish tend to refer to Oliver as a “Special Occasion.”* [*euphemism with apologies to the late Elisabeth Wynhausen.]
Continue Reading →Gandhi’s Tax Revolt
No fries with this salt
On this day in 1930, Mahatma Gandhi started his long march to Dandi on the sea to collect some salt for himself. This seemingly innocuous act was illegal at the time – the salt tax in India brought in lots of cash in olden times for the East India Company and now for the English King. A hundred thousand Indians joined Gandhi along the 400 kilometre walk. On arrival, Gandhi stooped and gathered some grains of salt, a gesture that would lead to his arrest, and presage the doom of the British Raj. It seems the Tommys had forgotten the reaction that stems from…
Continue Reading →Unconscious Bias
On this International Women’s Day, we notice the return of calls for the elimination of unconscious bias in the legal profession. This got a lot of airplay back in the 1990s, especially regarding alleged gender bias in the Judiciary. (Apparently, there were a number of ‘beer man’s judges’ about). Recently, the President of the Law Council of Australia, Fiona McLeod SC, issued a press release announcing “a national first, a customised unconscious bias training program aimed specifically at the legal profession…Human beings are hardwired to notice personal characteristics and to prefer those with attributes or experiences similar to their own, without…
Continue Reading →Our Smoking Ruin
"Wasteland with Elephant" (image by Topangahomeboy)
South Australia – a Looper’s Paradise If you’re unlucky enough to live in (or almost as bad, be passing through) Australia’s benighted State, the coalmine canary of the Commonwealth, cheer yourself up by logging-on that superb website, SA Great [http://www.sagreat.com.au/]. You’ll be treated to a hard-to-navigate map and several invitations to submit an event, a business, a restaurant, a job, or a coupon (but not a complaint, not an idea). Adelaide closes down for a couple of months every year to host a stock car race (that ‘climaxes’ today), a pallid homage to the Formula-1 Grand Prix that we used to hold (annoyingly)…
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