Rubrica

   At 11.00pm Eastern Australian Summer Time, the polls will open in the eastern states of the USA for what may be the most significant mid-term elections in decades. As a general rule, outside America only political junkies and American expats would take any notice of mid-term elections. Most of the world may not even have heard of mid-term elections and judging from the fact that the average voter turnout for mid-terms is less than 50%, it’s a fair bet that a lot of Americans don’t know about them either. This year, however, it’s different. This year the world waits with bated breath to see whether Americans will hand control of their legislative chambers to the opposition in a bid to curb presidential excesses.  The governing Republican party, which holds both the Congress and the Senate, has effectively operated as a rubber stamp for Trump's decisions, regardless of how ill-advised, expensive or downright dangerous. The second Trump administration has...

   I admit straight up that I know very little about data centres except that they’re big and they gobble up natural resources. Whole forests are being flattened to make way for them and they use water at the rate of about 416 million litres a year (according to AI) – not as much as a nuclear power plant, but still a huge amount.  The problem, of course, is that we need the data and we're now so locked in to the techno future that there's no turning back. I remember vividly the first time I saw a mobile phone. It was in the late 80s, at the Colmslie Pub in Brisbane where I was winding down on a Friday afternoon with a bunch of colleagues. While we were there a guy walked into the bar carrying what looked like a car battery with a telephone handset attached into which he was talking. We all stopped, mid-conversation, and stared.  What a wanker!! Photo at left is from the National Archives from 1989 . This was a late 80s mobile phone. My first mobile pho...

Thanks to the intervention of the malignant orange turd, when the Belgian soccer team took to the field in their World Cup match against the USA, they had virtually 100% global support. "Today we are all Belgian", was a popular comment across the social media platforms. The whole unfortunate episode, however, raises some interesting points about political intervention in sport and when it is, and importantly, is not, appropriate. To recap: in the USA's match against Bosnia and Herzegovina two days earlier, US striker, Folarin Balogun, received a one-match suspension after stomping dangerously on the ankle of BH defender Tarik Muharemovic. The referee deemed Balogun's action to be "dangerous foul play" and issued the red card. Cartoon credit: Guy Venables The suspension made Balogun, considered to be the best player in the American line-up, ineligible to play in the final 16 match against Belgium.  Enter, uninvited, Donald Trump. A phone call was made to FIFA...

Jollof rice - not mine. I ate it before thinking to take a pic. I just cooked (and ate) jollof rice. It was delicious and I have added the recipe to my culinary repertoire. Jollof rice is a traditional Nigerian dish made with basmati rice, tomato, chili and a range of spices and it is mentioned repeatedly in Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche's latest novel,  Dream Count .  This is not the first time I've read a book that mentions a certain dish and I've looked up the recipe and cooked it. I'm culinarily* curious, I enjoy good food and I also read widely, so it's inevitable that dishes I've never heard of, or never tasted, will be mentioned every now and then and I'll think, hmm, must try that.  Why do I do this? Yes, culinary curiosity has a lot to do with it - I like trying new things - but it's also got a lot to do with the role of food in connecting people and cultures. Indian writers, in particular, use food in their work to symbolise social structure and cult...

This morning's Sydney Morning Herald website featured six separate articles about Pauline Hanson. It's impossible these days to pick up a newspaper or open an online news site without seeing articles, many of them from renowned and respected political journalists and commentators, analysing and discussing Hanson's every utterance and speculating on how many seats One Nation will gain in the next election. Last year's burqua stunt that resulted in her suspension The commercial mainstream media loves Pauline. They fawn over her. She's a walking headline. The right-wing Murdochracy, of course, is championing her cause, but the others also know that she is a novelty who will sell papers. The old media adage, "if it bleeds, it leads", can be applied metaphorically to political reporting. She's loud, makes outrageous and controversial statements, engages in political stunts that no one in their right mind would touch, is openly corrupt and doesn't care w...

After two car accidents in this district within a couple of weeks, both of which resulted in people losing their lives, one local friend posted that despite a profusion of warning signs, camera surveillance and more and more road rules, these fatal accidents keep happening. Perhaps, she noted, authorities should be looking at the current rules and why they're not working, rather than imposing more laws. Fair call. And it got me wondering about signs.     Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald (19 June 2026), journo Jo Stubbings took aim at the ludicrous number and nature of warning signs, including one at a lake warning of water (no, really!). She notes that warning signs, telling us what we can, can't and shouldn't do, are most prevalent anywhere that is owned or managed by a local council. There's a couple of things going on here.  The first is that local councils are shit scared of litigation - and with good reason. If a person is injured on council-owned property,...