I’m a journalism student, and I’m sick of being asked to respond to the notion of a ‘brand’. I even had Fairfax present a curriculum as part of my course which spent a week on “brand building”. I find this insufferable, and I’d like to see how other current practitioners and other students feel about this notion. Obviously, change is inevitable, but to what extent are journalists performers, too?

The underpinnings of our civilisation are based on an untenable premise.

Most thinking persons will say that humanity is in crisis. We have a modern obsession with looking to the future for answers to solve this crisis. If we accept the view that we are not very evolved from the ape man then I think its fair to argue that what is inhibiting our ability to problem solve our state of crisis is simply data overload. I think the answers lay behind us in the rich history of the last five thousand years. This we can mine for answers but the future is never accessible to us.

The ‘against’ arguments just don’t make sense: they don’t want gays to have children? Guess what, we’re doing that anyway. The bible is against it? Sure, and pretty much everything else. It will ruin marriage for straight people? Pretty sure that’s already been done. The ‘for’ argument is simple, equal rights and parties are good for mental health! (Plus we’re all bored of talking about it)

What we should be doing for our future is important.

How far should religion
be separated from
our daily lives?

Songwriters are lionised as geniuses, but hardly anyone buys or reads poetry. I don’t get it!

Genuine problem that needs solving/debate/discussion.

The NDIS is one enormous quango (QUasi-Autonomous National Government Organisation). My gut feeling is that three or four fold the amount of money given to people with a disability through their NDIS funding package has gone on the salaries and infrastructure of those setting up the system and those administering it. In my opinion, just one of the many downfalls of the system introduced.

To quote the late great Christopher Hitchens in introducing his autobiography, Hitch-22, “The most intense wars are civil wars, just as the most vivid and rending personal conflicts are internal ones, and what I hope to do now is give some idea of what it is like to fight on two fronts at once, to try and keep opposing ideas alive in the same mind, even occasionally to show two faces at the same time.” From the personal to the political, and the intersection of the two, why do we find it so difficult to keep opposing ideas alive in the same mind?

22 years of riding trains, not once have I stopped there. It only saves 5 minutes to skip it. Why does nearly every train skip it?