The sports media has a fascination with concussions. Not only is there a huge volume of stories about the issue, but there’s also an urgency to the tone of the reporting. The heightened coverage has served…
Mention the word “logistics” and most people would probably think of trucks or the shipping of freight at a mundane best. A more textbook definition might be that logistics is the managed movement of resources…
The Edinburgh Festival Fringe has, over the years, developed a reputation as a hotbed for alternative, edgy, and controversial performance. Graham Main’s Blood Orange is no exception. The play is a seething…
“Lying is a bad thing – this is what mentors, parents and teachers tell us. But there is no society without lies.” So says theoretical physicist Rafael Barrio, and when he and his colleague Kimmo Kaski…
You have probably felt the power of music to lift you out of yourself. Perhaps you were in a magnificent cathedral, listening to a choral mass. Maybe you were at a music festival where the music made you…
The stereotype that popular kids don’t get bullied has been busted by a new study that found becoming more popular at school can actually increase a student’s risk of being bullied. The study, published…
Anthony Fisher, a lecturer at Nottingham University, has become the latest casualty of unwise social media use after causing outrage with Facebook posts about his students and their intellectual ability…
The news that the cultural theorist Stuart Hall has died aged 82 will produce much mourning and remembrance across the world. One of Britain’s leading intellectuals, Hall had a huge influence both within…
We’re in a state of moral decline in the West – or so we’re told. From sky-rocketing divorce rates and the shrinking of life-long commitments to an excessive concern with self and consumerism. Morality…
My first ever time on an aeroplane, the mid 1980s, and the in-flight film was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Equally suitable fare for my younger brother seated to my left and my grandma to my right. Flash…
Following the refusal of the federal government to commit to the Gonski Review and the recent announcement in Victoria of further cuts to already disadvantaged schools and students, the issue of equity…
Suicide attacks and car bombings across Iraq this week have killed at least 43 people and left 255 wounded. We are sadly now very familiar with the phenomenon of the suicide bomber, but the particular…
A major Australian Islamic group recently argued for a formal recognition of sharia or Muslim law in the Australian legal system. According to the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Australia should…
La Trobe University’s Dr Jan Schapper recently completed a study into signage and writing on women’s toilets in Australia. The research, just published in the international journal, “Gender, Place and…
American rock band Modest Mouse’s song Black Cadillacs (2004) has a particularly wonderful opening: And it’s true we named our children / After towns that we’ve never been to Inside a song filled with…
Neighbours are a source of growing aggravation in Australia and we are lodging more official complaints about each other than ever before. Excessive noise or odour, inadequate levels of property maintenance…
Health care, fair trials and education are things we readily accept as human rights. Unlike fresh air and food, we can actually live without school or a due process trial for a whole lot longer than without…