You can call it Macho Drowning. Pigheaded Drowning. I know Better Drowning. Don’t tell me What to Do Drowning. I Am Stronger than the Rules Drowning. Or just Plain Dumb Drowning. OK, it is not as exotic as a Taipan bite or being bitten by a Red Back Spider while on the toilet (I have…
653 total views, 56 views today
There is a general acceptance that cartoons can indeed be literature although one would need to be selective about which cartoons were selected for the library shelves. As ten years olds, or thereabouts we used to devour Commando Comics. One of our friends had a father who absolutely prohibited “this rubbish” from his house –…
720 total views, 67 views today
The news that David Hicks is out of prison (released from Adelaide (Australia) prison this morning) has barely rated a mention here. “David who?”, you may well ask. Otherwise known as Detainee 002. Or perhaps more infamously, the only person to have been convicted by the US as part of the the post September 11…
661 total views, 58 views today
Having spent a few weeks in Baghdad this year means I am a bit like a reformed smoker – paying close attention to as many related issues as I can and probably driving people crazy with my newfound interest in the place. But it does mean that occasionally you find articles which provide interesting and…
670 total views, 55 views today
I must have been asleep to have missed this one. A novel published in 2003 that is 350,000 words off the pen of first time novelist Gregory David Roberts. I found it while shopping for Christmas gifts for others. I often buy books at random, if only to expand my reading horizons. 653 total views, 54 views…
653 total views, 54 views today
“If you want a good neighbor, you have to have a place for everybody. It’s best not to mix too much.” Nadav Garmi, Rakafet One of the lesser known but interesting facts about the composition of Israel’s armies during their so called wars of liberation and independence (and defence) was the Arab component which made…
720 total views, 61 views today
Australia has a new Prime Minister who appears to have the convictions of a practising Christian. What difference does that make you might wonder? Hard to say at this point. Previously we have had Prime Ministers and ministers who have been ambiguous about their faith – you can never pin them down as to what…
661 total views, 59 views today
We all want to claim that title for our home towns but on a day like today, when Sydney is at its humid, sunny, sparkling best, it is hard to not want to say that we live in a pretty neat part of the scrub. 653 total views, 56 views today
653 total views, 56 views today
Painting in oils is something I don’t do enough of but it is one of those activities which is brilliantly eccentric (especially if you land up in a collective of wanna-be’s in an evening class (a “brush of artists”?)) and something that eats up the hours in a flash. Therapeutic in a word. 657 total views,…
657 total views, 54 views today
When I first started really paying attention to the Russian navy (I think it was a P3C Orion flight that did it) the Russians had been poking around in this part of the world for years. Sending their subs out into the Pacific and holidaying in Vietnam at Cam Ranh Bay with their warships for…
659 total views, 54 views today