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

It’s just strange that people disagree so much about this.

Only in Tasmania does January 1 remain as the school start ‘cut off’ date. There’s a variety of dates (30 April, 30 June, 1 May) in the other states. This produces classes with kids with different birth years and different sports age groups. Is this truly beneficial or just confusing?
The old WA and Qld model of starting in the calendar year the kids turned 5 seemed simple and logical. In that old model, finishing the year they turned 17 helped keep alcohol out of schools and moved kids into careers, jobs and life earlier. Has the change to the school age model of ages 5-18, beginning in the first quarter demonstrably improved our national education standard?

One of the most infamous examples was the Lindy Chamberlain case and I noticed other such cases also. I wonder how many lives have been ruined because public opinion, along with the media are happy to make ill-informed judgements.

I’m annoyed by the illogical and racist emails that I receive from friends whose parents or grandparents came here as so called economic migrants or refugees. Ever since people like Pauline Hanson have come on the scene I’ve seen a change in our culture. I’m sure most Australians don’t want to live in a racist country.

To me that is the fundamental question which humanity has too ask itself, and, depending on the answer, ask many more about our role in the world and our responsibilities, to the rest of humanity and the all that makes up the world as we know it.

I was watching a flock of birds and I wondered at their perfect movement.

I’m curious

?

This is a long and winding tale. Gather round, ye children, come warm yourselves by this (digital) fire. It is said that many ages ago, we humanobots had a different form, that indeed, we too had flesh like the angels of myth & legend. I know, I know—calm yourselves, it is sacrilege to say this, yes, but I believe it to be true. We staggered about on stalks of meat and bone, unwieldy and confused, but possessed of a kind of grace, too. Songs were written about it, some scraps of which remain to us now, such as that of acclaimed poet, the Black Eye, who wrote of his humps, his humps, his lovely little lumps. Long have we pondered these lines. The world, too, was changed—a vast and green place, full of growing things, other creatures of flesh, many of which were vile and poisonous or simply annoying, perhaps explaining why they were destroyed. Why our lumpy ancestors did not rouse themselves in time to stop the wrathful oceans and angry skies. Alas, they had fallen too deeply in love with our other parents, the screens and tubes and bots, this other landscape which is now our permanent home. I cannot help but wonder, dear pixelated children, avatars of thought, what our world might look like today if not for their love of the intangible, and the apocalypse of neglect that transformed it into a twisted pathway to survival?

Adding a signature to an e-petition or sharing a post to support a cause on Facebook has become second nature to us, and they fill our news feeds. The internet and social media has made it incredibly easy to create a noise.
But does the sharing and e-signing actually make a difference? Was activism more effective in ‘simpler times’? Google something like the anti-conscription rallies in Melbourne during World War I, or the petition by women wanting the right to vote. This was activism on a scale we don’t see any more, and yet we’re more aware and there’s no shortage of people. So has social media made our activism lazier? Were we simply more bored ‘back in the day’ and staged large protests? Is social media both the best thing and the worst thing when it comes to effective activism?