May 2016

Indigenous issues aren't always interesting to a lot of people. But the numbers alone are so staggering. Some theories say Australian Aborigines may have been on the continent more than 150,000 years. By contrast 'ancient' Egypt or Greece, or any number of other supposedly ancient civilizations, don't even make 5000 years. And what's even more staggering is that those cultures and civilizations largely collapsed, whereas the Australians just kept on existing, and still do today.

“Look, housing affordability can’t be a problem. If it was, how do so many people own more than one house? That’s just proof that anyone without a house is doubly lazy since if they really worked they should have at least three houses.”

Happy Birthday Miss Kath! See you back at work soonish? :)

Happy birthday!

Prices going down. Lowest interest rates ever. Economic equivalent of the last rites.

Happy birthday :)

So voting is easy. Vote for the party that thinks most of us are lazy bludgers living off the government, and a tiny group of rich people are carrying the rest of us. Or vote for the party that thinks the opposite.

Prince was such a sad loss. Reflecting on the 'genius' tags that were thrown around a lot at the time though, these things are relative. Branford Marsalis is a true musical genius. Has one of the world's best smiles too.

Back burning ranks with daylight saving for me, for stupidity. Choke thousands or even millions with toxic smoke, to save a relative handful of stupidly located houses. Wood smoke is more toxic than cigarette smoke.

It is tempting to think we get healthier and smarter over time. Vanity though, and good PR for health funding.

That's a beautiful t-shirt. So cheap too. http://www.gearbest.com/men-s-short-sleeve-tees/pp_348502.html

That time of year again here when depression and anxiety really ramp up for some people. I give these guys a plug every year, they're fantastic. Their Depression Learning Path is a free download, if you just want to read it. But they also have other resources like audio tracks (including hypnosis tracks) to help people to relax and get depression to lift. It's a revolutionary approach, incredibly simple and fast. No drugs needed.

Still top of my man crush list. http://www.theguardian.com/film/video/2016/may/09/tom-hiddleston-hank-williams-guitar-shop-i-saw-the-light-video-interview?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Depression. In a single diagram. Linked back to basic, everyday behaviour that you can change pretty easily.

Not agreeing with Brian. Lennon was wonderful, but a lot of his cred comes from the mistaken idea that songs are weapons. Songs and art do change the world, but not directly in the way Lennon and the other 60s peace warriors hoped. Didactic art is the worst form of art. Luckily he had enough art in him for it not to matter a lot, but the 'melodic genius' (a muso's damning by faint praise there) of McCartney spoke to more people, more deeply, over a longer time. Like Mozart. http://teamrock.com/feature/2016-05-09/rock-icons-john-lennon-brian-may-the-beatles-queen-lennon

Ridiculously funking good.

"Virtual untethering is mostly virtue signalling. It is deemed good for the soul by just about everyone who talks about social media on social media." Yep.

Lionel Richie, talking about why so many famous musos don't live long lives.

Trickle-down is another way to see the main political differences that divide people. The idea that if hard-working and/or rich people are taxed less, they will then create more jobs and wealth for everybody (the wealth will 'trickle down' to everybody else). Unfortunately everywhere it's been tried it's been a complete failure. It always, every single time, leads to the same thing - all of the wealth gets funnelled up the ladder to the top end. Often that top end don't work harder either, they just have historical advantages, or were lucky, and don't invest the money in productive ways anyway.

Heh, this from Rupert's News Corp, who pay no tax. Murdoch's minions got stuck into this guy because they know this is political poison. They have to make sure that the poor get seen as lazy, lying scum, not people being screwed. Otherwise the trickle down economics they like might start to be seen for the bullshit that it is.

Peter and maths are not friends. Let's help. Firstly it's a third of the population, not half. Secondly they don't pay tax because they don't earn enough money to pay tax. (Not to be confused with stinking rich people who pay no tax, like Peter's boss.) Simple, innit?

A friend said the pain of her father, with dementia, losing his licence was lessened by him not remembering that he used to drive.

I remember Nicole when she had her original face. Sad what Hollywood does to women.

Smarter every day, what a good motto.

Happy Birthday Sam!

David Thompson, Cameron Stevenson, Chelsea Walsh I'm inviting this dog to the next snooker party.

Happy birthday?

I do wonder if 50 years ago it would have seemed outrageous to sell something that might only work for 12 months. Seems to be common now.

Commercial radio is like being on a school camp. Firstly you buddy up, because heaven forbid you had to say something on your own. Then you turn everything into some glorified competition version of Truth or Dare, because you don't have anything smart to say. I feel sorry for the celebs they interview, who get asked to be part of their endless stunts or practical jokes, because they don't actually have anything interesting to ask them. Rove brought the model to TV, which is why his show was always pathetic (to me anyway). Interesting guests asked the most inane questions, while being asked to do something stupid like wear a nappy on their head.

This opossum mum's face is a face I'm sure many mums could relate to.

In a recent survey, 75% of women said they needed more pockets in their clothing. Is this lack of pockets real?

Or...reframe the stress so that you feel it as your body giving you more energy to deal with the challenges of the day. Which is what most everyday stress is, so it's not even pretending. That way it's real easy to let it go, because you're not holding onto it in the first place, you're just using it.

This is a short video about an educational genius. I doubt many people have ever heard of him, or of the approach he invented, called Direct Instruction. It wipes the floor with every other educational approach it's been put up against. This is powerful to watch not just because of the genius of Zig or of DI, but because it also shows why progress in education is so hard to find. You can see directly here the ways good ideas get shut down, in education. It isn't anything to do with funding really, mostly when education asks for more money it just wants smaller classes to keep doing the same dumb things, with less disruption.

So much nonsense gets spoken about the brain. Finally some common sense! (P.S. your brain is just a piece of electrified meat) https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer

The best way to make this stupidity go away is to ignore it. He only said it to dog-whistle to certain voters. And it worked, they've had 2 days of attention on this now, distracting everybody from the fact they don't have any other policies.

What I miss about hair.

THE CHECK UP We go to doctors and dentists for check ups. But this is a type of check up that's even more important, and not as common. To check up or check in on yourself. All it requires is a bit of time, where you can do one simple thing - observe yourself. NOT think about yourself, we don't need any more of that. Observe the thinking too. Just feeling what's there to be felt, emotionally and physically, and gently. Your own sort of 'scan', where you gently check back in to you for a while. If you have pains, to let them be and slowly and gently trace their extent, as you feel where they are and how far they reach within you. Often you will discover the true origin of pain in this way, but it's like birdwatching, you have to give yourself the time to gently observe, while it unfolds. Normally we crash through life at a million miles an hour for just this reason - to try to avoid feeling our actual feelings. But this sort of gentle scan of you can be the most useful and pleasurable thing you will ever do, and it will change your life. It will slow you down a little, and force you to be more gentle with yourself. Sometimes doing this will tell you better and faster than any medical test where your aches and pains are coming from, whether it's a way you've been sitting or walking, or whatever. Emotionally actually gently experiencing your emotions without trying to change them or think about them will similarly open up to you a whole continent inside you that you may have been running away from. If you have trauma in your past and meeting these emotions head on scares the shit out of you, it at least tells you maybe you need to go and see somebody to help you through that part of who you are. Thinking will likely be your greatest enemy, it's like that toddler who demands your attention every second, saying "look at me! Look at me!". Most of your problems will end up being about thinking. Thinking will make you want to react to your scan, to how you feel and what you turn up. To wallow in emotions, or sentimentalise them, or whatever. Watching your thinking in the scan will be the most important part of the scan. Just watch those thoughts pop up over and over, and after a while you realise they're not even you, even though you may think they are. This sort of self-scan can release years of neglect of yourself, years of running away from actual feelings and emotions and physically damaging behaviour. You realise how much you may have been treating your body like a bad second hand hire car, and gain new respect for what it is and what it can do. You feel yourself directly again, in everything you do, those feelings now tell a story that you slowly begin to understand, like learning to read for the first time. Make just 10 minutes a day to do this. It can change your life, make you feel a deep calm and health that no amount of traditional check ups have ever given you.

Somebody saying it like it is.

This is a really clever idea. The one hiccup that comes to mind is how much it depends on the cars driving in perfect formation, for it to work.

Full marks from me :)

Branford Marsalis once said the nice thing about playing in the Dream of the Blue Turtles band was knowing they could go out on the road and kick any other band's arse. Difficult to disagree.

Philosophy, so misunderstood and so interesting. Time doesn't pass. Philosophers have known it for centuries (boom boom), physicists get all the news stories about time but they usually don't have a clue. If it's 3 o'clock right now, when does it start becoming 3:01? How can it be both 3 o'clock now, and also moving to 3:01? Time can't be both passing and not passing.

Definitely spag bol. Never heard of spag bog.

Walter Lippmann saw how it's done nearly 100 years ago. Not to be cynical about pollies either, this is just politics 101.

How anybody can say a 'Foundation for Reason and Science' without laughing still eludes me.

Uncanny resemblance to John Howard and Peter Costello.

Happy birthday :)

Is it just me, or is Vegemite now really bloody expensive? It's made from the waste products of brewing beer, it's not like the raw materials should be in short supply in Oz.