This will hurt me...

Triffids blooming. Arthurs Circus, Battery Point. August 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... In our work-ethic-as-self-worth culture, we ignore the importance of laziness to a life well-lived… Public urinal users face fine for poor aim. It’s a bad time for psychology, a field rife with fraud, bogus maths and murky concepts. Happiness research, for example… Go on, get reading! "In 1998 men in the Health Care and Social Assistance category were being paid only 21 percent more than women. But that gap now stands at 48 percent - the worst figure for any industry in Australia ." Should we judge people of past eras for moral failings? On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.

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.

Baby Pandani. Lake Dobson, Mount Field National Park. April 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... National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest 2013 (Part 2) . Mr. Balls! Did you know that less time separates us from Tyrannosaurus rex then separated T. rex from Stegosaurus? Click to read more on Dinosaur Time... How typeface influences the way we read and think. Brilliant photo essay on World Refugee Day 2013. The World’s Population Mapped by Latitude and Longitude. Why We Should Rethink the Eight-Hour Workday. Can Women's Magazines Do Serious Journalism? Some people don't think so... Have you seen Russell Brand on MSNBC yet? 19 Mind-Blowing Details You Missed in Famous Works of Art .

Cacti. Royal Botanical Gardens, Hobart. February 2013. Wordless Wednesday.

Be careful! Royal Botanical Gardens, Hobart. January 2013. The Violin of Auschwitz , Maria Àngels Anglada: An engaging story, but a little too much telling and not enough showing. Even through Auschwitz is ingrained into the popular memory, there is a distinct lack of place. D . Arrival and Departure , Arthur Koestler: The third novel of a loosely-related trilogy that explores the conflict between morality and expediency and the ruptures that this conflict brings in the context of one's own nature and ideological standpoint. If you can suppress the urge to toss it aside through some extremely dubious thoughts on sexual consent and seduction, it's a great exploration of a tricky subject. B+ .

Ferns. Waverley Flora Park, Bellerive. December 2012. Sunday Top Five ? Okay, My Top Five Reasons For Not Doing A Top Five Today! I don't feel like it. I REALLY don't feel like it. Whining children are annoying me. I have washing to hang out. I don't feel like it.

Leaves. East Derwent Highway, Lidisfarne. July 2012. Another Q and A, another stolen from Sunday Stealing, another The Too Tired to Think Meme, Part 2 . 26. What type of errands do you like running? Errands that get me out and about in the sunshine. 27. Have you ever eaten snow? Only the white snow. 28. What colour are your bedsheets? At the moment they are dark blue. 29. What’s your favourite flower? I do like a nice pansy. Grevillea banksii is also very nice. 30. Do you do ballet? I admire their strength and skill. It does bore me a bit though. 31. Do you listen to classical music? Occasionally I do. I was terribly excited to visit the house where Vivaldi wrote The Four Seasons . 32. What is the first TV Theme song that pops in your head? The Banana Splits . 33. Do you watch Sponge Bob? Yes I do. 34. What temperature is it outside right now? Very cold. Around the 5° Celsius mark. 35. Do people consider you smart? Smart people do. 36. How many pierci...

A little something in another something. Quayle Street, Sandy Bay. January 2012. I had the privilege of taking the full group of kids out for their warm up jog at Auskick training yesterday afternoon/ evening. I consider my rigorous training methods a success, given that I had a good fifteen or so 5 and 6 year old kids reduced to wheezing lumps prostrate on the turf afterwards! Henry, of course, was spritely and smiling, having had the good fortune to have undergone a brutal, systematic, Soviet-style training regime since he was six weeks old. If only he could kick... Sad Steps , Philip Larkin Groping back to bed after a piss I part thick curtains, and am startled by The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness. Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky. There's something laughable about this, The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart (Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs ...

Things grow in the unlikeliest of places. Outside of St Cuthberts Primary School, Lindisfarne. May 2012. By golly, Theme Thursday already. Where has the time gone? I would suggest Port Douglas or somewhere where the weather is warmer, the ocean a little kinder and if you really want to quit your job, sleeping under the stars might not be so unpleasant! Nevertheless, we are not here to talk about time or how much any of us might utterly loathe their employment circumstances at the moment, we are here to talk about something at the very heart of Theme Thursday: COMMUNITY. You see, as Brian has so eloquently reminded us, Theme Thursday is really about more than a theme or single blog post, it really is about COMMUNITY. It is a varied COMMUNITY, to be sure, and one that covers the entire globe. Unlike earlier manifestations of the form, which were inevitably local and shaped and constrained by innumerable barriers – distance, landscape, history, kinship, language – the online worl...

Grows anywhere. St Cuthberts Primary School, Lindisfarne. May 2012. Sunday Top Five? How about these Top Five Words That We Need To Start Using In English! Backpfeifengesicht , from the German, meaning a face badly in need of a fist . Bakku-shan , from the Japanese, meaning a beautiful girl… as long as she’s being viewed from behind . L’esprit de l’escalier , from the French, which is generally translated as “staircase wit,” referring to the act of thinking of a clever comeback too far after the moment . Nunchi , from the Korean, meaning the subtle art of listening and gauging another’s mood. In the West, nunchi is about knowing what to say or do, or what not to say or do, in a given situation . A socially awkward individual can be described as ‘ nunchi eoptta ’, which means 'absent of nunchi'. Tatemae and Honne , again from the Japanese, which refer to what you pretend to believe and what you actually believe , respectively.

Nymphéas (avec mes excuses à Monet). Royal Botanical Gardens, Hobart. April 2012. Today's Sunday Top Five is a new one for me, but probably replicated fourteen thousand times on teh Internets. Yes, it is My Top Five 'Secret' Health And Lifestyle Tips To Reaching My Ideal Weight! Back story, Jen had been complaining for a while that it was hard finding the time to do regular exercise with two small kids always hanging about (well, exercise beyond chasing and punishing two small kids that are always hanging about). So, last Christmas, Santa, his elves, Henry, Ezra and I determined that a Wii Fit package might go some way to filling the gap. On Christmas morning, Jen's little eyes lit up when she saw the balance board and realised that we had all gone some way to making her dreams of an international modelling career come true. If you're not familiar with the Wii Fit, it gets you to plug in your relevant details (name, age, height et cetera , and then measures you...

The succulent's edge. Quayle Street, Sandy Bay. January 2012. This Blinding Absence of Light by the Moroccan writer Tahar Ben Jelloun is a very dark book, in more ways than one. Its narrative is essentially a reconstruction based on the testimonies of the former inmatse at Tazmamart, a Moroccan secret prison for political prisoners that operated with the harshest of conditions. A hole in the middle of the desert, Tazmamart was a place where prisoners were give us subsistence level of food and water to keep them a live, but deprived them of every aspect of life, including that of light. Thus, we the reader are primarily left with the voice of a solitary prisoner, a voice all the more powerful for being draped in darkness. As one might expect, there is a starkness to the crystalline, pared-down prose. The author certainly rises to the challenge of maintaining interest in such a limited environment and utter hopelessness facing those characters held here. Thus we are treated t...

Ezra scoots in amongst the vegetation.

Trust me, it looks nicer when the vines have leaves. Duke Street, Sandy Bay. July 2011. In the interests of getting some words down for a post today, I have borrowed these NINE Questionable Questions from this bloke here . Thanks, this bloke! History has taught me that the trick to getting the most fruitful responses is to zip through them like a rabbit escaping the clutches of a vengeful gardener with Cheers to all of us thieves! 1. If your lover betrayed you, what will your reaction be? Et tu, Jennifer? 2.If you can have a dream to come true, what would it be? To stay asleep a little bit longer. 3. What is the one thing most hated by you? Just one? Hmmmmmmmmmm. Inequity. 4. What would you do with a billion dollars? Relax. 5. Could you fall in love with your best friend? Too late! 6. What do you expect of your loved one? Understanding. 7. How would you see yourself in ten years time? Satisfied. 8. What’s your fear? Being found out. 9. What’s the first thing you do when you wake up? C...

Some kind of plant. Duke Street, Sandy Bay. July 2011. Sunday already which means time for another Sunday Top Five. Hmmmmmm, Alright, today I can offer you the Top Five Record Albums That I Believe That I Have Listened To In Their Entirety From Start To Finish The Most Times! Perhaps betraying the different ways that we listen to music in the past decade, all bar one appeared pre-MP3 era (and even then I was still a CD holdout in 2001)... Achtung Baby , U2 Automatic for the People , R.E.M. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot , Wilco Fuzzy , Grant Lee Buffalo The Queen is Dead , The Smiths Now, I need to know from you what particular album has had the highest rotation in your life?

Go-to-sleep-forever-berries? Geilston Bay, April 2011. Today, a poll... Which is the greater achievement?

This seaweed appears to be waving hello. Bellerive Beach, December 2010. Why? Why not. Why not indeed! Because. Because why? Just because. Just because I said so. Why? Because! Why not? Because. Because why? Why because? ? ? ? ! ! !

WATCH OUT HENRY! PHALLOGOCENTRISM!!!