Well, well. It seems the Powers-that-be covered up the fact that covid-19 originated in a Wuhan laboratory. Early in the pandemic (2020) scientists wrote a much-cited article called the Proximal Origins paper. It argued that the virus arose naturally. Not everybody was convinced. Scientists who had closely examined the virus stated: “We consider the evidence…
George Orwell’s book, ‘1984‘, a dystopian science fiction novel published in 1949, has often been cited when discussing issues such as privacy in our twenty-first century society. In the latest move towards Orwellian reality, we have the Communications Legislation Amendment (Combating Misinformation and Disinformation) Bill 2023. The legislation’s stated purpose is to protect Australians from…
I have always been a reader. As a child I was good at it, and I loved it. I loved Enid Blyton. Noddy and Big Ears, the Secret Seven, the Famous Five. I read the adventures of Rupert Bear and Blinky Bill and I still love Winnie the Pooh. I never read Roald Dahl, though. …
Summer was absent without leave at the beginning of December. We landed at Hervey Bay airport into drizzle and (for us) cold temperatures. For me, jeans were still the order of the day. But that changed, weather being what it is, and soon we had sunny skies and soaring temperatures. Not long after that the…
Everyone has an opinion on the events at the Capitol building in Washington on 6th January.
Fair Play Two matters have struck a chord with me this week. The first is the cricket. The vice-captain of the Australian cricket team coached a bowler to roughen one side of the ball using sand paper, and the captain condoned it. It’s called ball-tampering and has happened in cricket over the years. This article…
Recently there has been some consternation amongst my writer friends. It seems that Barnes and Noble has decided to take what it perceives as the moral high ground and not only ban erotic novels that do not meet its ‘decency’ standards, it deletes the accounts of offending authors. See article in Publisher’s Weekly. To quote,…
Censorship The very word conjures up visions of Big Brother, of somebody leaning over your shoulder, ready to snatch the latest book or movie or song or whatever out of your hands. The mind turns to dictatorships or communism or any other form of totalitarian state and I, for one, shudder. That interpretation is far…