This will hurt me...

Pipe and brick. Skills Tasmania HQ, the corner of Bathurst and Campbell Street. September 2013. As you know, the Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (and RSS feeds.) 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... What Happy People Do Differently. Smaller animals perceive time as if it is passing in slow motion. How Poverty Taxes the Brain : “The condition of poverty imposed a mental burden akin to losing 13 IQ points, or comparable to the cognitive difference that’s been observed between chronic alcoholics and normal adults”. The reasons for preserving biodiversity are becoming more widely understood... "George MacKerron and Susana Mourato from University College London and the London School of Economics recently looked at the relationship between happiness and nature. They found that people are happier in all outdoor env...

Medical School. Corner of Campbell and Bathurst Streets, Hobart. September 2013. We're hitting the road early, so no list today!

I don't walk this way any more. The corner of Davey and Murray Streets, Hobart. July 2013. We're off chasing Great White Sharks today. Fingers crossed that we all make it back in one piece! I, Too , Langston Hughes I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother. They send me to eat in the kitchen When company comes, But I laugh, And eat well, And grow strong. Tomorrow, I'll be at the table When company comes. Nobody'll dare Say to me, "Eat in the kitchen," Then. Besides, They'll see how beautiful I am And be ashamed-- I, too, am America.

Hobart in the Winter. 10 Murray as seen from the Waterfront. August 2013. Theme Thursday ? CHILLS? A hyperborean hope? Getting a gelid groove? It's Hobart in Winter. What do you think?

Winter in Hobart. Mount Wellington, as seen from Davey Street, Hobart. July 2013. Baby, it's COLD outside! The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow , William Blake A little black thing among the snow, Crying "weep! 'weep!" in notes of woe! "Where are thy father and mother? say?" "They are both gone up to the church to pray. Because I was happy upon the heath, And smil'd among the winter's snow, They clothed me in the clothes of death, And taught me to sing the notes of woe. And because I am happy and dance and sing, They think they have done me no injury, And are gone to praise God and his Priest and King, Who make up a heaven of our misery."

Two icons: 10 Murray and Mount Wellington, as seen from the waterfront. June 2013. Wordless Wednesday.

The corner of Davey and Murray Street. Hobart CBD. April 2013. This list was inspired by a recent foray into learning more about the Münster Rebellion (and its subsequent suppression). Yes, today's Sunday Top Five records Five Of The More Unsavoury Episodes In Human History! The German Peasants' War (1524-5) : the rich slaughter the poor. A lot. Khmer Rouge rule of Cambodia (1975-9) : a small elite faction slaughter the elite, the rich, the poor, and pretty much everyone in between. The 228 Massacre (1947): in which corrupt, wealthy interlopers kill everybody that they don't like. The Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries (1950-2): the self-appointed representatives of the poor kill the rich. And the middle classes. And the poor. The Great Purge : Stalin decides to kill everybody that he doesn't like the look off (and quite a few of his friends too).

Decline and fall. Davey Street, Hobart CBD. August 2012. Wordless Wednesday.

Some artists have been busy here. To the back and side of the Centrepoint Arcade, off Murray Street, Hobart CBD. May 2012. The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (as well as a lot of pop up ads.) 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.. A rant on why it is not a bad thing to place a ban those big buckets of fizzy drinks Lenin used to say that the fundamental law of revolution is that for a revolution to take place, it is not enough for the exploited and oppressed masses to realise the impossibility of living in the old way, and demand change. For a revolution to take place, it is essential that the exploiters should not be able to live and rule in the old way. Former Chief Economist of the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, explores the 1 per cent’s problem, whereas the widening financial divide cripples the U.S. economy, even ...

The grand old dame remains... for now. 10 Murray Street, Hobart. May 2012. The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (as well as naughty people doing naughty things.) 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.. Why countries fail... This picture is worth four million bucks... really?!?! Contingency, Foreshadowing, and Real-Time Tweeting... The problem with politics today...

Corners of buildings. Collins Street, as seen from Wellington Plaze, Hobart. April 2012. Two great reads this week from two exceptional authors. First up is a sequel that I never knew existed, Sweet Thursday by John Steinbeck. Following on from Cannery Row , it is set in the years following World War II. We reunite with those characters who made it through the war. There is a little more plot and less vignette in this one, and ultimately it amounts to a love story of sorts. Love, duty, happiness and loneliness are the central themes here and the story progresses at great speed to a satisfying conclusion. Although I enjoyed the book very much, and would strongly recommend reading it in companion to Cannery Row , I can't help but feel that it was somewhat slighter in tone. But maybe that was just the more upbeat ending! Highly recommended. Second up is Julian Barnes' prize-winning The Sense of an Ending . A tightly focused novel that relies heavily on a single narrative voice, i...

Wise words. State Library of Tasmania, Murray Street, Hobart. February 2012. Two contemporary European novels this week, one Norwegian and one French. Professor Andersen’s Night by Dag Solstad is an odd little existentialist novel that explores the breakdown of the titular literary academic. The once radical Professor Andersen is now divorced, middle-aged and alone. Moreover, the distinguished Ibsen scholar believes that he has witnessed a murder on Christmas Eve which sparks a crises of self and purpose. Despite the centrality of the murder and the vivid Oslo (and Trondheim) setting, this one is most definitely not a slice of Nordic noir. Long, rambling sentences of interior monologue follow the contortions of an academic mind defying rational intentions. The book is a little bit of a grind, as the central character is designed to be unlikable. The Professor’s crisis stems from the subtle realisation (and fear) of the pointlessness of his career. Indeed, underneath it all his whole e...

Things happen here. Macquarie Street, Hobart. November 2011. Another day, another [two] birthday parties... Meeting in a Lift , Vladimir Holan We stepped into the lift. The two of us, alone We looked at each other and that was all. Two lives, a moment, fullness, bliss. At the fifth floor she got out and I went on up knowing I would never see her again, that it was a meeting once and for all, that if I followed her I would be like a dead man in her tracks and that if she came back to me it would only be from the other world.

The bus won't be far away now. Hobart GPO, Elizabeth Street. October 2011. Just the one book finished this week, although that was enough to push me past my nominated 85 book challenge at the beginning of the year (more on that later). This week it was Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child . Billed as a "contemporary gothic horror", it centres on the unravelling of a serene family-life upon the arrival of their fifth child. I'm not sure about this book. I think that I can grasp the key themes: modern society's drift from its more brutal past, the notion of a maternal bond, the authoritarian character and the thin veneer of civility. I'm just not convinced of the characters. I'm not sure how I'm to feel about the characters, and hope that the sympathy I felt for the 'monster' at the centre of the piece is a fair result. Nonetheless, it is a decent read and can be recommended. I'd avoid it if you're expecting a baby any time soon though...

The Monopoly Man's brother-in-law? Criterion Street, Hobart. September 2011. There is one thing – over and above the ‘art’ – that I want to know about this: what on Earth happened to the wall on the right there? I’m going to have to head up to Criterion Street one of these days and seek out an answer.

What's going on? Criterion Street, Hobart. August 2011. Sunday Top Five day and I think today I'll recap My Top Five Poems That I Have Featured On This Here Blog! i like my body when it is with your , e.e. cummings After Making Love We Hear Footsteps , Galway Kinnell Not Waving but Drowning , Stevie Smith Small Frogs Killed On The Highway , James Wright PLEA FOR A HISTORY OF WORKING-CLASS LEEDS , by Barry Tebb

Temperance & General Mutual Life Assurance Society building, the corner of Murray and Collins Streets, Hobart. June 2011. So loud . So very, very LOUD... [The bread has become moldy] , Charles Reznikoff The bread has become mouldy and the dates blown down by the wind; the iron has slipped from the helve. The wool was to by dyed red but the dyer dyed it black. The dead woman has forgotten her comb and tube of eye-paint; the dead cobbler has forgotten his knife, the dead butcher his chopper, and the dead carpenter his adze. A goat can be driven off with a shout. But where is the man to shout? The bricks pile up, the laths are trimmed, and the beams are ready. Where is the builder? To be buried in a linen shroud or in a matting of reeds— but where are the dead of the Flood and where the dead of Nebuchadnezzar?

A grey old morning. (Just off) the corner of Macquarie and Elizabeth Streets, Hobart. December 2010. Christmas comes but once a year…? Thank Christ for that. There are a few things about Christmas that I don’t mind: giving presents, a few days off, some quality time in the kitchen, a cauldron of chocolate mousse. Regrettably, these are vastly outweighed by the things I loathe: tinsel , phony goodwill, the remorseless desire for material goods, the prevalence of fat guys in red suits with Rangifer tarandus sprinkled with snow despite the unmistakable fact that we here at the arse end of the world are in the middle of summer and you have as much likelihood of spotting a Thylacinus cynocephalus making love with a Raphus cucullatus to the tune of Mental as Anything’s Berserk Warriors than that hackneyed old scene. It’s about time that us here in the Antipodes start seizing the initiative and make up our own bunch of nonsense set of traditions to ram down the throats of everyone until...

The Faculty of Health Science, Hobart. October 2010. Busy little bee today. I'll have bee very quick: I finished The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels by Tristram Hunt. It was wonderful.

The morning sun on the corner of Liverpool and Elizabeth Streets. Hobart CBD, September 2010. Inspired by regular commenter "Me", and an afternoon spend wading through the Bowie catalogue, today's Sunday Top Five seems a relatively straightforward one: Pick My Top Five Bowie Albums ! Low [1977] Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) [1980] Station to Station [1976] The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars [1972] Hunky Dory [1971] Looking upon my list, I can't help but suggest that it appears I enjoy Bowie's seventies output the best. My apologies to to you Tin Machine aficionados out there, most of whom live in Norway, I believe...