Bird flu – it doesn’t have the apocalyptic sound of SARS or AIDS or any of the other acronyms that made you wonder if this is what Nostradamus was on about, but it might just be the disease that makes us face the new realities of the 21st century. SARS was beaten by unprecedented cooperation […]

I live near the Swan River where each Australia Day there is a ‘sky-show’ of fireworks at night. It is mostly an advertising stunt by various Perth media, but it regularly attracts some 300,000 plus people on the night. Nothing else approaches this kind of crowd in Perth. I missed the show as usual, so […]

It looks increasingly likely that Senator John Kerry will win the Democrat nomination for President of the US. Senator Joseph Lieberman and General Wesley Clark will test their chances in New Hampshire, and Senator John Edwards is still around the mark. Congressman Dick Gephardt is out, and the other Democrat candidates already look dead in […]

PC stands for political correctness, but in the culture wars now hotting up in the western world, and particularly in the US and Australia, it is taking on a much wider meaning. Increasingly it means, or signifies, anything that does not support the ever-narrowing views of leaders like George Bush and John Howard. A brief […]

For years now the pundits have been predicting the end of office work and a migration of work to the suburbs. The advent of high-capacity computers and the Internet has supposedly made it possible for information workers to work at home now, so-called teleworkers. Well, this trend has been slow to develop for various reasons. […]

Muslim women the world over are marching in protest against the decision of the French Government to ban the wearing of the hijab in schools. Why aren’t Christians marching as well? The French government decision doesn’t just ban Muslim headscarves, but Christian symbols such as cross and crucifix as well. It equates suppression of the […]

After a brilliant start, the current one day cricket series is heading south (or is it north in the southern hemisphere?). Zimbabwe have been crushed in the last three games, putting up as much of a fight as my local grade team would (South Perth). Of course, this Zimbabwean side was hit hard by the […]

M S Lawson What madness drives us to have holidays? Why was I dragged away from my computer games and made to sit in the sun on a beach and be semi-drowned in the surf? As for theme park rides, why is it considered fun to wait around for perhaps more than half an hour […]

I’ve been reading about the transformation of the US military under pressure from ‘digitisation’, and what impresses me most about this discussion is the way actual military participants (as opposed to civilian commentators) continue to stress morale as the key factor in military success or failure. In military terms morale is often based on group […]

Merri Rose dominates today’s media coverage, as she was always going to do. The question is – who gets the advantage from this? Peter Beattie has been trying to use it for expectations management. The ABC says “he [Beattie] is still concerned that the resignation of Tourism Minister Merri Rose will be very damaging to […]