Given that I am land-locked and have not seen waves or the ocean for some 10+ weeks, that there were amazing waves at my local, and that I was sent some amazing pictures of a special place right near where I live (under threat from the lifestyle we acquiesce to on a daily basis), my mind has lingered on many aspects of this place. One of these is surfing, what it is, what it means to me, and it base nature. It clearly means a lot to me, given my current longing to immerse my body in the ocean and both ride float in the rise and fall of the waves as well as dance with some of them… Whilst it is…

The Australian government has recently rammed through more draconian legislation. This comes as no surprise – even though in contrasts with the apparently ‘minimal government’ philosophy… oh but that only applies to social services and (negative) regulation of the market. What has pissed me off to no end is the critical response, published in a mainstream Sydney paper, of the authors: one a distinguished academic. Whilst deploring the legislations implementation, Professor George Williams (director) and David Hume (an intern at the Gilbert + Tobin Centre of Public Law, UNSW) do little more tha…

The term xenophobia received mainstream media attention following the election of Pauline Hanson to the Australian Federal Parliament. Comments in her maiden speech including that Australia was/is ‘in danger of being swamped by Asians’ led to her being asked on a tabloid current affairs program if she was xenophobic. Whilst the ‘please explain’ response resonated with many disaffected with tabloid journalism, out-of-touch elected representatives and the liberal elite, the notion of xenophobia as widespread, even hegemonic is something that has hit me pretty hard in the last week. The context o…

Over the last three days I have attended (I pretty much abstained from participating) a three‐day open source content management system (OSCMS) conference at UBC Robson Square (again giving the feds a heads up!). Some of the discussions here – not the content, rather the communicative methods – have stimulated many thoughts on my part completely outside of the focus of the conference. There are many parallels with my thoughts after reading many posts on a forum I frequent. The cross‐over and very similar experiences have prompted me to share my thoughts… These thoughts…

#othering #vegan