Australia is a unique place. It’s the only place on Earth that is at the same time a country, a continent, and an island. And that last property has helped to make it a haven for monotremes, marsupials, and other weird critters. Europeans ‘discovered’ the Great South Land several times over the centuries, usually by…
One of the most disgraceful things anyone can do in life is teach small children to hate. Adolf Hitler and his henchmen understood this well. That’s why they created the Hitler Youth. So what do we make of the pro-Palestinian (sounds much nicer than ‘anti-Israeli’) protest at the University of Sydney? ‘In a clip from…
It has been a busy week. We in Australia are lucky, living as we do in a stable, safe country. But that’s starting to change. As the world edges closer to war as Iran attacks Israel, here in Australia our comfortable lives, already disturbed by the rise of antisemitism and the rising prevalence of youth…
Parts of North America experienced a total solar eclipse the other day. You’re forgiven if you didn’t know about it, since it didn’t affect most of the rest of the world. But it was HUGE in the US. Facebook was full of people offering free or cheap eclipse glasses so people could look safely at…
I have to admit that it’s convenient to be able to pay bills online. No standing in queues at counters, no having to post paper cheques (remember them?). But as more and more of our lives are lived in the cloud, companies have had to take more and more actions to prevent the wrong people…
It’s that time of year again – spring in the northern hemisphere, when new growth pokes its head above the thawing ground and little lambies frolic in green pastures. We in the southern hemisphere, where it’s autumn, join Christians in the northern hemisphere to celebrate Easter, commemorating the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However,…
This post might be a bit… sciencey for some of you, but I told everybody that I’m a space nut, so you’ve been warned. I became interested in astronomy and cosmology at a time when the Big Bang theory was not completely accepted as the true origin of the universe. Yes, I’m that old 😊….
Like many Australians, we signed up to Qantas’s frequent flyer program years ago and we acquire quite a few points when we go OS. I imagine everybody knows frequent flyer points are pretty well useless for getting anything flying related out of an airline, though I think I scored an upgrade once, many years ago….
A couple of years ago the EU came up with a privacy requirement on websites. Now, I’m an Australian, so at first I thought it didn’t impact me. But the web, as we know, doesn’t take much notice of borders, even if the governments do (China, Russia, North Korea etc). I had to implement the…