Adventures in Spice

I’ve always enjoyed spicy food. As a child, it was a fun challenge: could you eat a slice of your dad’s pizza covered in hot salami, fresh chillies and chilli flakes/seeds? Or poisoning yourself and your friends with Warheads to see who could handle the heat. I haven’t grown out of this. I recently found […]

Bebopbebopalushebop

Well that was far harder than it needed to be. Joe, our business neighbour who deals in clearance goods, gives me a few defective drone to see if I can resurrect any of them. I get out the instructions. Step one, as is always the case with electronics, charge your batteries. I plug them in […]

Revelation

Today provided the most astonishing revelation I would’ve never thought possible. I am currently sitting here shaking my head and muttering ‘wow’ to myself, interspersed with the odd breathy chuckle. About a year ago, I noticed one of the girls in the office typing out a sequence of numbers into an Excell spreadsheet for some […]

A Brief World Cup Final Preview

The World Cup final is upon us. A gruelling four year journey for many nations around the globe is now down to two. On one side is France. The pre-tournament favourites have lived up to the hype taking all before them on the path to what appears certain glory. Standing in their way are the […]

Pumpkins and Peanuts

Those who criticise the certifiable are often scolded for going after the low-hanging fruit. Whilst often valid, especially when criticising an extreme opponent rather than when holding one’s own side accountable, this tendency to dismiss criticism overlooks just how commonplace said fruit can be. When destructive idiocy lies uncriticised in the mainstream it can only […]

Bugs!

My cockroach problem began following some renovations. My old rotten timber window frames were nearing the end of their life and had to be upgraded to aluminium. The builder managed to partially destroy my home in the process. Removing one of the frames revealed a bird nesting site under my eaves. The bird and several […]

Urban Hiking

One of the problems with hiking is finding suitable and convenient locations to keep active and maintain or build fitness between our more serious adventures. Australia is fortunate in that we have large expanses of land. Even for the majority of us who reside in the cities or the surrounding suburbs, finding a local park […]

EJ Whitten Legends Game

Every year when the E.J. Whitten Legends game rolls around, I can’t help but think the concept misses a serious opportunity to fill a void left in the competition since it nationalised. State of Origin is dead and cannot be revived at the elite level: the stakes are too high for the clubs and the […]

Neglected Rules of Civilised Discourse: Dog Whistling

The main problem with dog whistling is its entire concept. Claims to have perceived a dog whistle are simply an excuse for ideologues to get outraged, end conversations, indulge in ‘shaming’ culture, and revel in their own falsely assumed moral superiority, and to do so over absolutely nothing. If pressed, the indignant can’t point to […]

What People Are Getting Wrong About The #GoogleMemo

What people are getting wrong about the #GoogleMemo (Read the memo here: Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber) Or rather, how badly they are understating it. The common, and entirely obvious, observation has been that the reaction by Google and much of the press confirms the concerns of the author, James Damore: a difference of opinion is […]