Archive for October, 2007
Real life
Turn off your MP3 Player and your phone. Take off your sunglasses. Close your computer. Remove any unnecessary coats and hats - you won’t get cold or sunburnt in the space of a few minutes. Now walk out into the garden or the street. There’s nothing you have to do right this moment.
Feel the air [...]
Morality in the moment
Cerridwen posted a seed today called Ethics of the in between which forced me to set some order to a whole mess of thinking I’ve been doing over a period of several years, about the difference between what you might call theoretical and practical ethics. So go read the seed. It’s got some ideas which [...]
Tasmanian proposal for Human Rights Legislation
In 2006 the Tasmanian Government invited the Law Reform Institute of Tasmania to investigate how human rights could be best enshrined in law in Tasmania. I wrote about that here, and made a submission to the LRI’s inquiry as detailed here.
Well they have laboured mightily and produced… something pretty reasonable, actually. Called A Charter of [...]
Free press and censorship in Murdoch’s world
Burke said there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. It is not a figure of speech, or a witty saying; it is a literal fact,–very momentous to us in these times. Literature is our Parliament too. Printing, which comes [...]
Authenticity
I love the word authentic. When you walk into an Outback Steakhouse its meaning hits you right in the face.
Genuineness: Why is an actual canvas painted by Van Gogh worth so much more than a perfect reproduction? Why is a piece of paper worth something because it’s signed by Albert Einstein? After all it was [...]
Terror in Burma (roundup)
The streets of Burma are quiet at the moment. Only a few days ago SLORC’s soldiers were firing into the crowd, and hundreds of people were killed. The army surrounded monastaries, preventing monks joining the protests. Four thousand monks have been arrested and 15 monastaries in Rangoon “cleared”, their inhabitants trucked north after being held [...]
