This will hurt me...

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has a branch located about a three minute walk up the road from my work. This Marine and Atmospheric Research branch obviously has a reasonably high turnover of computer equipment, because at least once a month, a new skip appears filled to the brim with old computers, monitors, televisions and all manner of cords, wires, motherboards and who knows what else. I finally got over my shyness (and fear of being thought a terrorist/perpetrator of industrial espionage) to creep into the facility and take a few photos yesterday. Don't worry though, I didn't need to evade vicious guard dogs, scale razor wire or even jump a fence. I did, however, cross a road and walk through a car park. Yes, I managed to look both ways too. Now I know that there are some keen photographers here, so I would like to know what is the riskiest photograph that you've ever taken? Rampaging wallabies? Birthing wives? Hungry childr...

For some reason, Henry has taken to speaking with the accent best described as "elderly Russian woman". It's not totally evident in this video, but I am compiling documentary evidence for the prosecution.

I am not sure whether it is just too much Le Carré action lately or not enough sleep, but this dude here strikes me as a Tasmanian version of George Smiley . Whether or not he is running agents - or conducting interference on oppositional agents - I cannot be certain. One thing I can be certain is that this fellow would not be driven to evacuate a bus upon the appearance of a solitary (however odious) peanut . Like the smiley face stamps on kiddies intended to stop evil paedophiles from getting their rocks off, rules about taking photographs in public spaces (stop with the paedophilia already), we have indeed entered a bizarre, unpleasant era of hyper-irrationality. Won’t somebody think of the children!?!?

With apologies to any dreadlocked hippie anarchists that I know...

I have a question for you to consider this morning. Do you think that it is possible for a two year old to stagger the timing of his poos to maximise their impact? I am convinced that Henry is doing so, and what’s more, I suspect that he is engaging in some kind of nefarious activity designed to increase both the concentration and odour of what is dangerously developing into weapons-grade faeces. Advanced satellite imaging suggests that there may be some kind of involvement from North Korea. Or Syria. Or Libya. Or perhaps the neighbour’s cat. Whatever. We’re considering counter strikes as we speak. Ezra, bless him, is still working on a naïve level – typical of babies and despotic tin pot dictators – that more is inexorably better. The little fellow lacks the sophistication of Henry’s innovative and enhanced brand of asymmetrical warfare . Now, while this technique is thoroughly unsuited to poo-related conflict, it is proving wholly successful on the sleep front. Ezra has now taken to ...

Now, I have spoken at length previously on my distaste for extremists, so I shall not reopen that wound for all to see (and bore you in the process). That said, I could pass over the image of the menacing black and yellow Sea Shepherd anarchist AKTION patrol boat parked just across the road from work this morning. Now – and apologies in advance to all the Sea Shepherds reading out there – every member of that distinguished organisation that I have happened across has turned out to be of a frame of mind that I described in that earlier post. This tendency to drift into preposterous polarities, mutually exclusive ideas, deterministic dialectics (always hidden, excluding the individual doing the ranting, of course), all of which operate not just separate from , but in opposition to , each other. This is great fun when you happen to be in the public policy game and are looking to get a little harmony happening on an issue. They remind me of yet another presentation that I saw the othe...

I am deadly serious when I tell you that today's comic is an accurate representation of the final presentation I witnessed at the recent international conference in Sydney a couple of weeks ago. Moreover, it reflects a number of presentations I have seen over the years, but hopefully none that I have delivered myself.