We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Hen and Jen search for treasure. Little Howrah Beach. March 2012.

The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (as well as a refuge for many, many sad and lonely people.) The following are some things that I've had a look at in the last week. I call this: a Compendium of Click-throughs for Monday Morning..

Let's start with one that gets me fired up. On the topic of the current trend of middle class entitlement here in Australia, it is no very clear that current funding policies of Australian schools aggravate the widening social gap in achievement. Grants to non-government schools encourage social selectivity and policies promoting 'choice' lead parents with cultural and financial advantage to pool their resources in schools of choice, both public and private. The key point is of course, that the winners of our education system are the best off and the losers are the worst off, and that dynamic is self-reinforcing and unlikely to change without systematic restructure.

What we have now is Orwell in reverse: the state, rather than elevate war to perpetuate itself, obscures war to perpetuate itself...

So I read that Vegemite is being undermined by globalisation. I dunno, I reckon that we're keeping Vegemite in business around our joint...br>

A warning to all ladies: your breasts are trying to kill you!

In other news to frustrate and annoy women: there has been a fall in the number of women in Australian parliaments. In a helpful response to an article by Dr Carole on the halving of the number of women on the government benches in the new parliament, she received this from a senior advisor to a Queensland Liberal National Party Senator, “Get a life… Blokes dominate most areas of human endeavour because Nature equipped them with something called testosterone… that women who can’t cut it cover their inadequacies by complaining of bias, and that fewer and fewer people are listening.”

This article is well worth four minutes of your time. It talks about the links between homophobia and suppressed desire…

Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Teachers...

Comments

Kris McCracken said…

I am covered in bruises.

18 May 2012 at 13:36

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

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