Reading

Created
Sun, 26/09/2021 - 12:58
On 29 July 2021, the BBC announced that Chris Chibnall would be stepping down from his role as showrunner for Doctor Who and Jodie Whittaker would also be leaving her role as the Thirteenth Doctor. For the remainder of 2021 fans can look forward to a six part event serial. In 2022 this will be followed by three specials, the third and final special being a feature length adventure to farewell Jodie Whittaker, leading into the Doctor’s regeneration. With 2023 being the 60th anniversary of Doctor Who, many fans were speculating as to what the future was likely to hold…… Continue reading
Created
Thu, 23/09/2021 - 09:15
Hi again. Sorry I’ve been so…absent…lately, but I’ve had a number of ideas I’d like to share with you in the next few weeks. The first involves psychedelics, whose benefits have long remained mysterious. We are finally getting a glimpse of how psychedelics work to improve mental health. And it’s fascinating. So consider this a […]
Created
Tue, 21/09/2021 - 22:57
Roger Christopher Stevens’ LOCKDOWN: THE DOCTOR WHO FANS’ SURVIVAL GUIDE, is set to screen as part of this year’s Sydney Science Fiction Festival virtual event from November 4. The UK production from Reeltime Pictures as part of their CultTV series was created during the 2020 Covid19 out break. A call went out to fans of Doctor Who to film personal videos of how they were coping with domestic lockdown for months on end. Shot on mobile phones, laptops, tablets and video cameras, the finished work is an inspiring tale of the indomitable human spirit, wrapped in unique stories that are… Continue reading
Created
Tue, 21/09/2021 - 15:05
On this day exactly 45 years ago, on 21 September 1976, the Sydney University Science Fiction Association (SUSFA) screened the Peter Cushing movie Doctor Who and the Daleks at the uni. At the event Antony Howe launched the first issue of Zerinza, being the first dedicated Doctor Who fanzine published in Australia. The event also saw the formation of the Australasian Doctor Who Fan Club (ADWFC), now known as the Doctor Who Club of Australia (DWCA). Which of course means – Happy 45th Birthday DWCA!! Continue reading
Created
Mon, 20/09/2021 - 22:56
EDUCATION WEEK September 22, 2021 The Case Against Classroom Management… a Quarter-Century Later By Alfie Kohn I often urge noneducators to ponder the versatility and resilience that have been asked of teachers during the pandemic. Just think about all that’s required to sustain relationships with, let alone educate, dozens of students who have been reduced to so many squares on ... Read More
Created
Sun, 19/09/2021 - 20:23

If, like us, you're a fan of CCGs - particularly Pokemon, then why not take a minute to check out the awesome products for sale over at our friends at Titan Cards www.titancards.co.uk

They have an awesome selection of Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Cardfight!! Vanguard, Digimon CG, Flesh & Blood TCG and more! They even sell card sleeves, dice, coins and binders, so you can keep your collection safe and secure. 

Created
Thu, 16/09/2021 - 02:42

(back of a quirky literary novel voice): Sometimes, things are not what they seem. An architecture critic disappears for three months to follow bike racing around Europe, rife with questions of becoming and desire. A real estate agent uploads a listing to an aggregator, knowing that it will be a difficult sell but thinking not much of it, for, like Tolstoy’s unhappy families, all houses are difficult to sell in their own way. A house is built in 1980 in Staten Island and would have thrived as an anonymous bastion of tastelessness had the internet not been invented. But the internet had been invented. All of these things are brought together here, through truly unlikely circumstances.

Let’s not bother with the formalities this time.

None of you will buy this house.

Created
Wed, 15/09/2021 - 15:43

Last year COVID-19 seemed simple. It was horrific, but the arguments about what to do were fairly straightforward.

On one side were people rightly horrified by its rapid spread who wanted us to stay at home and stay away from school and work and socialising in order to save lives.

On the other side were people concerned about the costs of those measures — to jobs, to education, to freedom, to mental health, and to other lives (because if we used too much of our health system fighting COVID-19, other lives might fall through the cracks).

And through it all came a kind of consensus.

Created
Tue, 14/09/2021 - 12:56
After eight extensive posts about the Ontario electricity sector, I am expanding my geographic coverage to look at the electricity sectors in selected OECD countries. My focus will be on the historical and relative performance of each country’s sector with respect to decarbonization and prices. As in the case of Ontario, whole volumes could and have been written about each [...]
Created
Mon, 13/09/2021 - 04:00

The great question of America’s twenty-year war in Afghanistan was not whether the Afghans were fit for democracy. It was whether democratic values were strong enough in the US to be projected onto a traumatized society seven thousand miles away. Those values include the accountability of the people in power, the consistent and universal application […]

The post The Lie of Nation Building appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

Created
Thu, 09/09/2021 - 20:09
Next week, the 2nd International European MMT conference will take place online. We start on Monday, Sep 13, with keynote speeches by Warren Mosler, Alla Semenova, Randall Wray and Zdravka Todorova. Tuesday we’ll have panels on unions and demand policy, inequality, Green New Deal and the political economy of fiscal policy. On Wednesday, we will […]
Created
Thu, 09/09/2021 - 12:42
These issues are yet again the problem of our age. Their seeming trajectory towards resolution post WWII, with widespread prosperity and a rising middle class, has been undone. What undid them points to the underlying problem: Immediate causes include the spectacular increase in financialization and unearned rents, the lack of and lack of enforcement of progressive taxes, both in turn largely due to a shift in the public's understanding of these issues. What caused this shift in public understanding is the age old problem—power and the lack thereof.
Created
Thu, 09/09/2021 - 10:35

This food timeline started as a way to explore the revolution in Australian food that has occurred during the baby-boomers’ lifetime, but has since expanded to include more about the previous decades (and century) as well. Also included are overseas events and trends that had an impact here. The entries are brief, but there are lots of links if you want more information.

Created
Wed, 08/09/2021 - 15:39

After a misstep, it’s about to become illegal to import e-cigarettes without a prescription, which means that, for most Australians, it’ll become all but impossible to vape from October 1.

The misstep tells us a lot about how the Australian government works behind the scenes — most of it good.

Mid last year, Health Minister Greg Hunt announced plans to ban the import of nicotine-containing e-cigarettes and refills without a doctor’s prescription. Border force would be checking parcels.

To Hunt, the decision made sense. It was already illegal to buy and sell such products without a prescription in every Australian state and territory, and it was illegal to possess them without a prescription in every state but South Australia.

All Hunt was doing was closing a (very wide) loophole.

Created
Mon, 06/09/2021 - 22:25
Pivot to blockchain

Last week I was pleased to attend a Crypto-commons Gathering with a crowd of people who believe that cryptocurrencies have a role to play in bending the arc of the future towards justice, peace and prosperity.

This was the most blockchain-centric event I've been to, and I was only invited because the economics students who organised it were fans of the late David Graeber and wanted to expose their crypto colleagues to the credit theory of money. This I was able to do, with some success I think.

Created
Fri, 03/09/2021 - 01:30

To the Editors: Fintan O’Toole in his review of Louis Menand’s The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War [NYR, July 22] makes some remarks that cannot go unchallenged, well quite a few, but the most offensive to me concern Robert Penn Warren, whom he lumps with Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, and […]

The post A Younger Robert Penn Warren appeared first on The New York Review of Books.