Month: December 2014

IT WAS was not even Page 1. On 24 September 1961, The Sydney Morning Herald reported on an inside page in just 250 words the ghastly murder-suicide of Mrs Mary Robinson and her four children. She stood atop the 35-metre cliff at Woolshed Falls near Beechworth in Victoria, swept two children in each arm and the five of them fell to their deaths – Mary 32, Lynette 10, Trevor 7, Graeme 4, and Dianna 3. Continue reading “Australian way of death has changed”

WELL, was it an act of terrorism, or wasn’t it? Was Man Haron Monis a terrorist? Or as Brian’s mother in Monty Python’s Life of Brian said: “He’s not a messiah. He’s just a naughty boy.” That is being brutally irreverent, but Brian’s Mum had a point. We need to see through religious delusion. Continue reading “Religious tolerance important because religion is intolerant”

YES, price signals are a well-known economic phenomenon. You put up the price and demand falls. People are discouraged. This government has imposed, in the words of Prime Minister Tony Abbott this week, a price signal on visiting the doctor. It also wants to impose a price signal on university degrees through higher fees. Continue reading “Price signals work, but in a dumb way”

SEVERAL months ago, I watched a BBC program do a thorough expose on the diet industry.

It exposed charlatans around the world, especially the US, raking in millions by selling books, potions and foods. It also gave numerous examples of dieting failures — people who had taken off weight very quickly only to find that mung beans and grapefruit lose their charm after a while, or that after a time the longing for plate of pasta puts an end to the “no-carb” diet. Continue reading “No food for thought here”