This week’s book review is The Paradox of Choice : Why More Is Less – How the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction by Barry Schwartz. This book’s main thesis is that too much choice is detrimental to our lives – it makes us unhappy, not to mention takingContinue Reading
We have our main computer, with a permanent internet connection, in our main family room. It’s been that way since 1997. So when our computer crashed last week, we realised just how dependent on it we had become, even with three other computers in the house. We needed it toContinue Reading
Nicholas Gruen in Club Troppo has devoted his weekly column to the housework issue – why do women do more than men? I blogged about this when he first posted, and this new column is far more nuanced, and well written. One thing he does do is find some researchContinue Reading
The grandly named Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate met this week in Sydney. For the un-initiated, this is either (a) a sensible approach to fixing the problem of climate change without those stupid Europeans and greenies hanging around; or (b) Australia and the US putting a desperate spinContinue Reading
This week’s book review is Children of the Lucky Country: How Australian society has turned its back on children and why children matter by Fiona Stanley, Sue Richardson and Margot Prior. Fiona Stanley was the Australian of the Year in 2003, and made children the topic of the platform sheContinue Reading
My four year old has recently become obsessed with the Titanic. It’s got me wondering what it is about this story that has kept the world’s interest for so long. It was a dramatic shipwreck, but there have been others. Although at the time it was the largest loss ofContinue Reading
I’ve been comparing notes with fellow under five parents about Christmas presents – how much is too much? And what should you do about grandparents who must give their children huge presents? My parents and parents-in-law are pretty good. They make a big effort to give our kids something theyContinue Reading
I’ve been watching the 7-up series. I’m up to 28-up so far. The premise of the original, supposed to be one-off 7-up was comparing 14 7 year olds, mostly from the extremes (exclusive private school, working class east end school) of British society, and interviewing them to show how stratifiedContinue Reading
Nicholas Gruen in Club Troppo has a New Year’s post on gender relations, which took me aback a bit. Not so much the post, but the comments. You have to read the whole post to get the flavour. My summary (which may be overly pointing out the parts that tookContinue Reading
When I moved to this area (an innercity area in Sydney), as one half of a DINK couple, I shuddered at anything that approached community. When the annual street party happened, we used to go out for the day and hope that it was finished by the time we cameContinue Reading