[caption id="attachment_34256" align="alignright" width="505"] Source: Sortition in the History of Democracy , Slide 41.[/caption] Cross-posted from The Mandarin : Our world has been optimised to within an inch of its life. Usually from the top down. With the economic, social...

Continue reading →

[caption id="attachment_31194" align="alignleft" width="640"] Artist's incorrect impression, from the film "Minority Report". In the real future, these autonomous cars would be travelling much closer together, and there would be more of them.[/caption] This month's print and o...

Continue reading →

I am a big fan of the GOT books and series, loving Season 7 and salivating at Season 8 to come. Great escapism and fantastic acting and camerawork. Part of what I love about GOT is how it far more ruthlessly than, say, Lord of the Rings, describes blind ambition, lust, treache...

Continue reading →

Continued from Part One . The ABC and Children’s Programming - The Highs, Lows and Power-plays Part one here and part two here . The promise of the early years When ABC television first aired, on November 5, 1956, children’s programs presented a dilemma. There was no Australia...

Continue reading →

Many readers will have heard of Patricia Edgar who was a giant force in Australian cultural life from the 1970s. She more than anyone else was responsible for lifting the tone of children's TV in Australia. In any event I was talking to her recently about the current woes of c...

Continue reading →

[caption id="attachment_31109" align="alignleft" width="708"] Hat tip: Richard Halcomb[/caption] Barnaby Joyce is in the news a bit right now . Coincidentally, I wrote an assessment of his abilities in a column for The CEO Magazine way back on 31 July, before the section 44 sc...

Continue reading →

"Research has shown that cultures with greater gender equity have larger sex differences when it comes to job preferences, because in these societies, people are free to choose their occupations based on what they enjoy." A month ago, a Google employee wrote a memo about his t...

Continue reading →

[caption id="attachment_31072" align="alignleft" width="640"] Smurfing, sans cuckoos ...[/caption] There's a weird sort of dissonance in today's Australian Financial Review. On the front page, CBA CEO Ian Narev argues that CBA culture is "strong". Meanwhile, a detailed Neil Ch...

Continue reading →