This will hurt me...

Detritus. Marion Bay, Tasmania's East Coast. July 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... Henry drives the boat. Ezra drives the boat. How the gin and tonic became the British Empire’s secret weapon. Why do people still fly the Confederate flag? Goodbye Ossi: The Demise of Eastern German Identity. The Man Who Invented Modern Probability. Winners of the Red Bull Illume Photo Contest 2013. On Decadence. Defining the Masses: How do we speak objectively about something of which we’re a part? By documenting everything. Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much.

Kicking sand in my face. Marion Bay. July 2013. Wordless Wednesday.

Cat's tails? Gellibrand Point, South Arm Peninsula. June 2013 . Sunday Top Five ? Okay. The Five Best Things About Our Car Smash Yesterday! 1. Nobody got hurt. 2. A fantastic lesson regarding the importance of car seats and restraints (where nobody got hurt). 3. The bloke that smashed into the back of us (and completely wrecked the car) took full responsibility. This *should* ease the whole insurance song and dance. 4. Henry, Ezra and I riding in back of a police care. 5. Finding a pumpkin in the back of said police car.

All of us. The living room, Geilston Bay. July 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... Re-examining ‘the Elephant Man’ : Nadja Durbach questions the extent to which Joseph Merrick, known as the Elephant Man, was exploited during his time in a Victorian ‘freakshow’, and asks if it wasn’t perhaps the medical establishment, often seen as his saviour, who really took advantage of Merrick and his condition. The industrial age is over, so why are we still punching in? Rethinking Work . Drowning mercy: why we fear the boats. Soviet-era erotic alphabet book from 1931. 5 Things Men Will Never Understand About Consoling a Woman . While the natural sciences have evolved – new fields, discoveries, methods – the social sciences have stagnated, answe...

Ezra from the perspective of a crab: underwater .

A wave hits the photographer. Fossil Cove (a.k.a Soldiers Point), Tinderbox. May 2013. Wordless Wednesday.

Crab #1. Little Howrah Beach. March 2013. Theme Thursday again. GREENERY. Hmmmmmmmmm. Ummmmm. Give me a second. Crab #2. Little Howrah Beach. March 2013. (tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick) Crab #3. Little Howrah Beach. March 2013. Yeah. Sorry. I've got nothing this week. How about I post this up now and promise to add a drabble this afternoon on the topic?

Anoplognathus at rest. Opossum Bay Beach, South Arm Peninsula. January 2013. Wordless Wednesday. Anoplognathus up close. Opossum Bay Beach, South Arm Peninsula. January 2013.

Sea weed. Denison Beach, near Bicheno, Tasmania's East Coast. January 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... Interesting fusion when an NBA player merges Marxism and a critique of modern mental illness . The sky. Cheating in sport is as old as sport itself. Tasmania on the bumpy road to economic sustainability. Describing shark encounters as 'attacks' is misleading and outdated, researchers say . Did dinosaurs love their children? If emotions are something special to humans, how and when did they develop?

Yes Henry, robots are destroying Tokyo...

An erosional feature in a flat sedimentary rock formation. Bellerive, December 2012. Entering Germany: 1944-1949 , Tony Vaccaro: A G.I. took his camera with him into Germany and photographed five months of war and five years of occupational peace. Stark photos and keenly observed text. Stunning. A . Wartime Lies , Louis Begley: An austere recount of a childhood spent by a Jewish boy during the Nazi occupation. A measured, deliberately cold tone throughout results in an emotionally flat narrative that is out of kilter with the content. I really enjoyed this (as much as you can 'enjoy' a Holocaust memoir. The key point around the costs of physically surviving to the psyche of a child is profound. A- . Poo: A Natural History of the Unmentionable , Nicola Davies: C'mon! Everything you ever wanted to know about faeces! Fascinating. A . Conference-Ville , Frank Moorhouse: A slice of life among the Australian academic and political amidst the turmoil of the Whitlam dis...

Achene. Front yard, Marieville Esplanade, Sandy Bay. September 2012. Three books this week, well, two plays and one Regency romance (written in 1944) to be precise... The Caretaker , Harold Pinter: A play in three acts, largely a psychological study of lonliness, power, allegiance, innocence and corruption. Set in a dingy room with a cast no larger than two brothers and a tramp, this is quite a claustrophobic treat. B+ . An Inspector Calls , J.B. Priestley: Another three-act drama, this time set in 1912. A wealthy middle-class family receives a visit by a mysterious fellow calling himself Inspector Goole, who interrogates the family about the suicide of a young working-class woman. Essentially a scathing critique of the hypocrisies of Edwardian society and a premonition of the inevitable Socialist future. Striking. B+ . Friday's Child , Georgette Heyer: Incredibly silly romance featuring a cast of oddball characters and improbable set pieces. Although some of the tone jars...

Phallogocentrism. Davey Street, Hobart. May 2012. A poem... Detail of My Sort of Light , Ander Monson Now I know that everything is a body, so even the snow and the sand and the blood rivered down in the snow, and snowed on again so it's buried is a body. All things are bodies in photos— detail of the left side of a breast and the arm's pit—detail of the sled slumbered under by the storm's leavings. Detail of my sort of so-early half-lit eyelid light that bodies are near to invisible and touch is no longer the sole way of knowing, and outline is all that there is. Detail of your body as it does its morning leaving thing. Detail of what light there is on your skin. Detail of land- scape of let me in please and coffee, warm when the weather's action on this body is less than ideal. Landscape with pear. Landscape with weather and part of a breast in the frame.

Grass. Geilston Bay. July 2012. This Sunday, my top five is one of a more personal nature. Yes, My Top Five Pertinent Numbers That Occur In My RSS Feeds! From my 219 Google Reader RSS subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 3,238 items and clicked 716 items. Since November 2008 I have read a total of 84,289 items. And, would you believe it, not ONE LOL cat amongst them!

Henry's feet. Long Beach, Sandy Bay. August 2012. This week I'm introducing a new rating system AND limiting myself to one sentence. Vlad , by Carlos Fuentes: Dracula comes to Mexico City. Slight, but quite well done. B- Life and Fate by Vasily Grossman: The great Soviet novel. Immense. A+ They're a Weird Mob by Nino Culotta (John O'Grady): Aged well. Remains very funny. B

FP 1.6. East Derwent Highway, Lindisfarne. June 2012. Sunday Top Five? As I am in a slightly misanthropic mood today, how about My Top Five Things That Used To Be Better Than They Are Now ? Music. It just was. Young people. They also had better hair. Memories. They were closer back then. Manners. My God they were! Football. Blokes used to get stretchered off because of concussion. Now it's torn ankle ligaments.

A fence near a bridge. The Intercity Cycleway, near Tasman Bridge. January 2012. The Internet is a wonderful place filled with the rich and varied treasures of the world holds (as well as some dodgy politics.) 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 wonderful collection of London’s top brutalist buildings … A discussion of one of the World’s most respected (but oft preposterous) awards, the Nobel Peace Prize … How might one go about raising a baby using science ? Personally, I think that it is more of an art form… I love an eviscerating art review . Even better, it’s about one of my pet loathes: the odious Damien Hirst! The answer to the question that we all have been asking: How the Chicken Conquered the World! On matters most fowl… Portraits of chickens dressed like Napoleon, Einstein and other historical figures… On the importance of questions… Given their sign...

Day of the Triffids? Quayle Street, the Battery Point/ Sandy Bay border. February 2012. A blue sky? It's been a few days since we saw one of those... Full Moon and Little Frieda , Ted Hughes A cool small evening shrunk to a dog bark and the clank of a bucket - And you listening. A spider's web, tense for the dew's touch. A pail lifted, still and brimming - mirror To tempt a first star to a tremor. Cows are going home in the lane there, looping the hedges with their warm wreaths of breath - A dark river of blood, many boulders, Balancing unspilled milk. 'Moon!' you cry suddenly, 'Moon! Moon!' The moon has stepped back like an artist gazing amazed at a work That points at him amazed.

The view of Goat bluff from down low on Calverts Beach. Calverts Beach, South Arm Peninsula. January 2012. A fine start to the year with three books already done and dusted. First up The Eye , which is Vladimir Nabokov’s shortest novel. Set amongst the Russian émigré comunity in 1920s Berlin, it focuses on the enigmatic Russian Smurov. The action commences after the attempted (perhaps successful) suicide of the narrator. After this (potentially imaginary) death, his "eye" observes a group of Russian émigrés as he tries to ascertain their opinions of the mysterious character Smurov. Largely about ‘identity’ – our own perceptions of self and the social construction of our identity both for and by others – Smurov exists as a hero, fraud, nobleman, crook, "sexual adventurer" and spy in the eyes of himself and others. The central narrator gathers these observations in the attempt to construct a coherent portrait of Smurov. While the ‘twist’ alluded to in the author’s p...

Grumplestiltskin. Little Howrah Beach, Howrah. November 2011. This bird is grumpy now that she has found herself featuring on a Watery Wednesday post rather than her preferred option of Avian August , Silver Gull Saturday or indeed Larus Novaehollandiae dies Lūnae Foul look or not though, she tasted lovely .