A recently published summary of the HILDA survey got a fair bit of press – the AFR and the SMH both did front page stories on Wednesday, and both picked completely different angles. So I had to go back to the source, to see what interesting nuggets I could pickContinue Reading
Lazy blogging, but I found this very interesting meme from Under the Ponderosa. I had to add an extra categorisation – for books which I own, but haven’t got around to reading, because there is an embarrassingly large number of those. Bold the ones you’ve read. Italicize the ones youContinue Reading
I haven’t bothered commenting on the AWB royal commission before, mainly because it seemed too depressing. Once again, a government has done the wrong thing and brazened it out because the voters don’t really care about the technicalities, and they have enough “I didn’t know stuff” to hide behind. TheContinue Reading
At cake this afternoon a colleague was telling me this long involved story about his family, which ended with his six year old son telling his mother she was a hero and giving her three cheers for cooking tacos. So my colleague ended by telling me that all I hadContinue Reading
This week’s book review is The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in historyby John M Barry. The book is the story of the “Spanish Flu” – in 1918 and 1919 (depending on where you were in the world) a deadly influenza swept the world, killing between 50Continue Reading
I went to a lunchtime presentation today from one of last year’s AFR Boss Young Executives of the Year, Jane Adams. She is a COO at a recruitment consultant, and is part-time – works three days a week (which was not part of the criteria for the award). She talkedContinue Reading
C has come home from school lately telling me about our local history: “We are white people. The white people came in ships from far away, and the aborigines who were here before moved to where Ayer’s Rock which is in the middle of Australia”. His story is a veryContinue Reading
This week’s book review is Westpac: the Bank that Broke the Bank, by Edna Carew. Westpac started out as the Bank of New South Wales, Australia’s first bank in the early 1800s. By the 1980s, it had become Westpac, Australia’s biggest bank, with global aspirations, and a dominant position inContinue Reading
I’ve managed people older than me for most of my working life. They’ve mostly been only a little bit older than me, or else I’ve known them for long enough that I’ve forgotten that they’re older than me by the time I manage them. I’ve realised lately that I feelContinue Reading
I don’t think I’m nearly this intellectual (or this depressed) via Pavlov’s Cat : You’re Prufrock and Other Observations! by T.S. Eliot Though you are very short and often overshadowed, your voice is poetic and lyrical. Dark and brooding, you see the world as a hopeless effort of people tryingContinue Reading