Category: Religion

  • Q&A #2 – Writing, Zombies, Creationism and Batman

    I had planned an interesting post for today but it’s been stinking hot in Newcastle – it passed 39’C where I am – and my brain has kind of shut down. I tried waking it up but it just went “nope stupid human, not gonna happen, come back tomorrow” and went back to being lazy.…

  • Some thoughts on extremism

    I posted this on Twitter and Facebook last night in the wake of the Paris attacks and thought I’d post it here as well for posterity and to share some additional thoughts. Like everyone I was shocked and appalled by the attacks and my heart goes out to everyone in Paris and France. But as…

  • Family Trees

    Family Trees

    Do you ever think about your family tree? About where you come from? I’ve been thinking about it quite a lot recently. The idea of learning more about my family line is something that has always interested me and I’ve often found myself looking at genealogy websites, wondering… [Read more…]

  • Dear Clare

    I’ve been doing some soul-searching recently. A post by another blogger upset me and I’ve been trying to work out why. It brought up a lot of feelings about a friend who died when I was a child, feelings I thought I had moved past. I was wrong. I think the reason it upset me…

  • 7 things I want to do before I die

    The beginning of the new year’s made me think about a few things. Well, that’s not unusual; I’m always thinking. ;) But particularly I’ve been thinking about some of the things that I’d like to achieve in my life. Recently I’ve decided to have a look at my priorities, so I thought making a list…

  • Bah, Humbug!

    There’s a certain time when it starts to feel like Christmas for me. Sometimes I can be walking around K-Mart and looking at decorations but it just feels silly; it’s like October and Christmas seems an age away. Plus where would I store them for three months? But around late November I start to get…

  • Is beauty dying?

    One of my favourite novels is George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides. It’s one of the most beautiful, haunting novels I’ve ever read and it holds up amazingly well when you think it was published in 1949. Earth Abides is a post apocalyptic novel but it’s really more than that. It’s a lament for civilisation; human…

  • Quantico by Greg Bear

    Greg Bear has written some of my favourite SF novels in the past but for the last few years has been moving more into the mainstream with his fiction. That’s fine with me as I’ll read anything I can get my hands on and Bear’s thrillers are different to most, but I admit I’m looking…

  • WordPress blocked in Thailand as well

    First WordPress.com was blocked in Turkey, now it seems like Thailand has followed suit. Reports have been coming in since August 22 that the WordPress.com domain has been blocked by the state-owned TOT telecommunications company, preventing their users from accessing all blogs hosted on WordPress.com. The FACT (Freedom Against Censorship in Thailand) blog reports that…

  • When does protection go too far?

    This hasn’t been a good period for John Howard. Howard forgot a Tasmanian Liberal candidate’s name on air, and then the ridiculous upgrades to the government’s VIP aircraft were revealed: $100,000 worth of upgrades, including $9000 in silk wall panelling and $6200 in almond-coloured leather added to the ceiling (refits that were later dropped). The…