Every Monday morning I struggle to make sense of running a small business. It’s not just that weekends are always too short to properly re-charge. It’s mapping out the week ahead and seeing how busy it’ll be. Again. How there’s things I’d like to change — but where’s the time? We’re already flat out working for clients the way we do now, and there’s no time left to implement the changes.
Dawkins on why there’s no God
I finally understood evolution when I read Richard Dawkins‘ books The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene. But flak he’s faced for his latest book, The God Delusion — probably for telling people their cherished gods are just a delusion — intrigued me.
If you want to skip the book, try this magazine-length version from the man himself, “Why There Almost Certainly Is No God“. It begins:
America, founded in secularism as a beacon of eighteenth century enlightenment, is becoming the victim of religious politics, a circumstance that would have horrified the Founding Fathers. The political ascendancy today values embryonic cells over adult people. It obsesses about gay marriage, ahead of genuinely important issues that actually make a difference to the world. It gains crucial electoral support from a religious constituency whose grip on reality is so tenuous that they expect to be ‘raptured’ up to heaven, leaving their clothes as empty as their minds. More extreme specimens actually long for a world war, which they identify as the ‘Armageddon’ that is to presage the Second Coming.
Dunno that I’d be bothered reading all 592 comments though.
Bottom (in three parts)
For some reason, people’s… um, private parts have popped up in my blog reading this week. Young’uns and folk of delicate dispositions should read no further. And especially don’t read the last item.
Stick Guns
Six minutes of (anti-?)war. Superb, despite the shite MySpace video compression. Thanks, Richard.
See it in its original context, and read about its creator, Dave Tucker.
[Update 8 January 2008: The copy of Stick Guns on YouTube is better quality.]
“Whitewash”: journalist-speak for “I’m lazy”
OK, own up. Who started calling Australia’s 5-0 cricket victory over England an Ashes “whitewash”? And why couldn’t anyone, anywhere, come up with another description?
Continue reading ““Whitewash”: journalist-speak for “I’m lazy””
My village really is home
When Clover Moore, Sydney’s time-share Lord Mayor and state MP, started talking about “a city of villages”, I thought she was giving it a tug. (No anatomical pedantry, thanks.) But now it’s the city’s official slogan, and a few relaxed Sundays have persuaded me she’s got it right — at least for the inner and inner-west villages which have some historical reality.
This photo ain’t art. But last night’s view from the front bar of the Warren View Hotel really does say “This is my village”.
From the art nouveau shell of the old post office on the left — apparently used by the mission of Our Lady of the Snows to help the local homeless — and past the over-priced pharmacy to The Sly Fox Hotel, and then on the other side with its medical centre, pharmacy and greengrocer no-one goes to, this is our Victorian village.
Sure, the Golden Barley Hotel is technically in Enmore too, and it’s only just down the hill a bit. They’re nice people and all — but it just feels like it’s in the next village, Marrickville.
But just was is it that creates this sense of “my village”…?