What embitters the world is not excess of criticism, but an absence of self-criticism.

Marching the convicts out by the dog line at Eaglehawk Neck.

Some day there will be no war

Trench in the backyard. Waiting for the Hun. April 2011.

I think that everybody should have a trench in the backyard. You never know when somebody might invade.

September, 1918, Amy Lowell

This afternoon was the colour of water falling through sunlight;
The trees glittered with the tumbling of leaves;
The sidewalks shone like alleys of dropped maple leaves,
And the houses ran along them laughing out of square, open windows.
Under a tree in the park,
Two little boys, lying flat on their faces,
Were carefully gathering red berries
To put in a pasteboard box.
Some day there will be no war,
Then I shall take out this afternoon
And turn it in my fingers,
And remark the sweet taste of it upon my palate,
And note the crisp variety of its flights of leaves.
To-day I can only gather it
And put it into my lunch-box,
For I have time for nothing
But the endeavour to balance myself
Upon a broken world.

This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

Another shot of those glorious eyelashes…

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.

Cliff at one end of Clifton Beach. Clifton Beach. March 2011.

A busy week this week means that I've only got through the one book (still a few pages left on the current). But what a book!

Оди́н день Ива́на Дени́совича.

[Ahem]

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's classic description of life in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s, describing a single day of an ordinary prisoner, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov. Seemingly as much known for its actual publication (a significant event in Soviet literary history), it's also a cracking read.

Essentially an exploration of authoritative oppression and camp survival, Solzhenitsyn used his first-hand experience in the Soviet Gulag, having been imprisoned from 1945 to 1953 for criticising Joseph Stalin.

Oddly enough, for the subject matter One Day in the Life... is actually an uplifting read. I'd very much recommend it to anyone.

In time we hate that which we often fear.

Indeed they will.

War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.

Looking south down Campbell Street, Hobart. April 2011.

Too busy to type!

I'm off to lecture people far more important than myself...

In any great organisation it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.

Henry, even your shadow is handsome!

How do you do it?!?

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

Dude looks like a cabbage. Sandy Bay, April 2011.

I’ve not idea what this plant is, but I think I like it.

I was going to write a poem today about Tasmania, but I couldn’t find a good enough rhyme for “deindustrialisation”.

I was also going to look into Buddhism, but all that cycling of suffering, death and rebirth gets me down.

It’s been raining for four days and I am starting to get sick of it.

For a long time, I went to bed early.

Just checking the usual twenty five text from Eastern European supermodels.

What would be a road hazard anywhere else, in the Third World is probably the road.

Continuing the search of the dunes. Calverts Beach, South Arm Peninsula. February 2011.

I like the lines on the dunes from this angle. The good thing about Calverts Beach is that it doesn't get a lot of traffic. Just Hen, Ez, Jen and I and the odd whale watcher or twitcher trampling the grains.

I'm wondering how people go on those beaches you see that has large pebbles and rocks, rather than nice, neat and warm between the toes..

And yet to every bad there is a worse.

Still looking...

There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.

Entrance to aged care. St Johns Park, New Town. April 2011.

Slight case of nerves today. I've a very special mission, and much depends on it.

No, it doesn't involve comments M.I.A. Roddy's birthday...

An intelligent hell would be better than a stupid paradise.

I hope that I don't get my name added on some list somewhere...

All government is an ugly necessity.

All in all it’s just another… something or other. A brick wall. New Town Road, New Town. April 2011.

Crikey Moses, it’s Sunday again, and I’m stuck for another Sunday Top Five. As such, I turn to the trusty old CIA world fact book for advice…

First up, the TOP Five Countries Expenditure As A Percentage Of Gross Domestic Product (Where GDP Is Calculated On An Exchange Rate Basis, That Is, Not In Terms Of Purchasing Power Parity)!

5. Iraq: 8.55%
   
   
4. Jordan: 8.60%
   
   
3. Qatar: 10.00%
   
   
2. Saudi Arabia: 10.05%
   
   
1. Oman: 11.40%