Reading

Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 04:55
Our human species is drifting rapidly towards extinction, and there is not yet in place, a process to prevent it. Three very recent books, two by Australian authors, point to the desperate situation in which humanity now finds itself. The three books are “How to Fix a Broken Planet by Canberra science writer, Julian Cribb, Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 04:54
Australia’s leading financial media platform, the Australian Financial Review, raised the red flag about the future of Timor-Leste this month, with International Editor Professor James Curran’s article, Timor-Leste on brink of failure. Curran sensibly said that Chinese influence in Timor-Leste may be a concern in Canberra, but the big problem is that the small nation Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 04:53
Led on by crusading Reserve Bank governors, the nation’s economists are determined to protect us from the scourge of inflation, no matter the cost in jobs lost. But there’s a black hole in their thinking about the causes of inflation, only some of which must be stamped on. Others can be ignored. Meanwhile, here’s another Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 04:53
Education Minister Jason Clare’s important review of education seems to have lost the plot. Secondary schoolers have been told for years that their aim should be university entrance. That approach has distorted the focus of secondary schooling toward achieving a high score in HSC while the technical side has been downgraded in both funding and Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 04:52
The alleged branding of the Star of David on the face of a Palestinian man by Israeli police has left many around the world aghast at the barbaric cruelty and violence of such an act. It has been reported in numerous media outlets yet is, so far, glaringly left out of others. This kind of Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 04:50
Amid continuous news that the Ukrainian counteroffensive which began in June is not going as hoped, The New York Times has published an article titled “Troop Deaths and Injuries in Ukraine War Near 500,000, U.S. Officials Say.” Reporting that Ukrainian efforts to retake Russia-occupied territory have been “bogged down in dense Russian minefields under constant Continue reading »
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 03:30

A quick note because I have to get out the door and go to work… gah.

I recently removed the restrictions on my robots.txt file.


This site has been denying access to most bots for the past year:

# Welcome to Tregeagle
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User-agent: archive.org_bot
Allow: /

User-agent: ia_archiver …
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 03:30

A quick note because I have to get out the door and go to work… gah.

I recently removed the restrictions on my robots.txt file.


This site has been denying access to most bots for the past year:

# Welcome to Tregeagle
######################

User-agent: archive.org_bot
Allow: /

User-agent: ia_archiver …
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 03:30
The great Alexandra Petri on the debate last night. If you said, “Would you like to watch Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Doug Burgum, Mike Pence, Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie talk to each other for two hours? FYI, the place where they’ll do so is hotter than Beelzebub’s armpit!,” I would have said, “No, thank you.” But if you said, “The alternative is watching Donald Trump talk to Tucker Carlson on the website formerly known as Twitter,” I would say, “I can’t wait to hear what Ron, Vivek, Nikki, Tim, Doug, Mike, Asa and Chris have to say!” Wednesday night’s debate on Fox News raised all kinds of questions. Like: “Why is this happening?” and “Where is Donald Trump?” and “Is it technically a primary debate or more of a secondary debate given the levels where these people are polling?” Here is approximately how it went. Bret Baier: Hello. We have brought a bell just because we enjoy the sound of a bell.
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 00:30
This one’s been off my radar The insurrectionist-in-chief plans to proudly turn himself in today for booking in Atlanta. Donald Trump, the ever-blustery showman and former president, has scheduled the media circus in primetime for maximum television ratings. Receiving less coverage is the multi-state plot to access voting software included in Fulton County District Attorney Fanu Willis’ indictment. Ben Clements and Susan Greenhalgh take up the story for Slate. “There have been multiple accounts of Trump supporters unlawfully accessing voting systems to copy proprietary vote-recording and vote-counting software in Michigan, Colorado, and Pennsylvania. These reports spurred criminal investigations in their respective states, but until Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed charges last week, none of these probes had tied the crimes back to Trump’s coordinated, multipronged plot to stay in power,” the pair explain. Willis includes the software heist in her racketeering indictment.
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 00:00
These days, the debate about the balance of private and public investment in the Global South has been settled in favour of private capital. Privately owned mobile and internet networks, potable water and sewerage, utilities companies, mobile payment systems, financial infrastructure, hospitals and clinics all operate alongside, and increasingly replace, decaying public services.
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 00:00
Pollen is difficult to dislodge, burrowing down into the weave of fabric and insinuating itself into crevices. Inside our noses are delicate curled plates of bone known as the nasal turbinates, each covered in sticky soft mucosal tissue. Each time we draw breath, dust in the air is trapped here. As a result, the turbinates of a corpse contain a record of a person’s last breaths. 
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 00:00
Early Works shows Alice Notley feeling her way past the dominant aesthetics of her period – she was a key figure in the downtown New York poetry scene before moving to Paris in 1992 – and discovering a distinct, feminist voice. The poems insist that a woman of honour should be prepared to die for ‘the right to frivolity’. Notley is ‘a girl Samson in a pink/prom dress’, ready to pull down the temples of the avant-garde.
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 00:00
Macaulay seems to have belonged to what revisionist historians now refer to as the Christian Enlightenment, a movement that stood apart from the more familiar Enlightenment of sceptical or deistic philosophes. The term ‘enlightened’ is used approvingly in Macaulay’s writings, but her radicalism – so daringly evident in political questions – did not extend to matters of religious belief.
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 00:00
In Exciting Times, Naoise Dolan’s first book, the choice presented to bisexual women – surrender to the world’s expectations and get with a man, or follow your desires and risk forfeiting power and ‘normality’ – is the central moral issue. There is never any real doubt that the protagonist, Ava, will eventually choose to ignore the world’s expectations. In The Happy Couple there’s more suspense, and more confusion.
Created
Fri, 25/08/2023 - 00:00
The sheer force of the memories exacted an impressive precision and solidity in Coleman’s expression. And she must have felt the electricity of her novel, as she was writing it, in both directions: channelling the truth of an extraordinary experience, and at the same time satisfying a radical modernist aesthetic, turning the sane world upside down and making out of her ‘madness’ a new literature.