So I’m walking the dog in unfamiliar territory – Brisbane bayside suburbs. I have my little black plastic dog doo bag tucked into the hip pocket of my jeans, as one should. But it seems many people in this particular suburb don’t give a shit about dog shit, if you’ll pardon my Flemish. If you’d taken a plastic supermarket bag and a trowel on this walk and could be bothered, you’d end up with a…
So I’ve just been to the dentist for a clean and descale. It’s a must-do, twice-yearly chore. As I walk back to the car I’m looking for suitably long grass to spit out the remains of the fluoride wash. As I near 70, I’m hearing dental horror stories from my peers. Most of these anecdotes involve four-figure quotes for implants, bridges or crowns. I still have most of my own teeth and a couple of…
“If you’ve got money in your pocket and a switch on the wall, we’ll keep your dirty lights on.” So goes a song by American alt-country singers Darryl Scott and Tim O’Brien about coal mining and power generation. Their album Memories and Moments includes a version of John Prine’s Paradise, which remains the definitive song about the downsides of coal mining. That seemed a noteworthy way to introduce the potentially dry topic of energy, be…
In case you were curious, the word blog in Farsi looks like this – وبلاگ. Iranians who didn’t like the way things were going in their country started وبلاگ’ing (blogging) like crazy after the 2000 crackdown on Iranian media. Iranians who interact with the internet are by definition risk-takers. As recently as late 2016, five Iranians were sentenced to prison terms for writing and posting images on fashion blogs. The content was decreed to ‘encourage…