Author Archives

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writer, singer, webwrangler, blogger, comedy tragic | about.me/vivsmythe

  • An Embuggerance

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    Author Terry Pratchett has revealed that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. I can only imagine how distressing it must be for someone who has spent his life as a wordsmith to start… Read More ›

  • Those dreaded office Xmas parties

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    Working from home as I do, I miss out on most of this, and am glad of it, although we are having a neighbourhood party this evening. Last week, Someone (Who Shall Not Be Named) came home wearing this paraphernalia:… Read More ›

  • Wet summer

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    How odd it is for me to write those words after the last few dry years. The word(s) of the last weeks has been “La Niña”, the sister phenomenon to the prolonged El Nino event that has brought us severe… Read More ›

  • Preparing for the holidays

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    So, how’s everybody else doing? I’m panicking. Cards, gifts, decluttering – I’m behind on all of it. Today I have to drastically trim the rampant “La Nina summer” foliage in the garden (tomorrow is the fortnightly Green Waste collection that… Read More ›

  • Rape in the military

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    One of the signs of changing attitudes towards rape, and sexual coercion generally in Western society, where it is harder for men now to openly claim that rape is sometimes OK or to believe that sometimes coerced sex is not… Read More ›

  • Gratuitous John Barrowman blogging

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    I just realised (watching Torchwood from the beginning on cable) that John Barrowman is about to start this year’s panto season, starring as Aladdin at Birmingham’s Hippodrome. He’s a musical theatre lad from waaaaay back. As I look at his… Read More ›

  • It’s a start

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    The Howard refugee policy is going to be partially dismantled by the new Labor government. The detention centre on Nauru will be closed, and the refugees (a few from Myanmar and many from Sri Lanka) currently held there will have… Read More ›

  • Go go Gillard

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    As every media outlet cannot tire of telling us, today is the first day in Australia’s history when we will have a female (acting) Prime Minister, and as they are equally quick to reassure us, it’s only going to be… Read More ›

  • Busy day

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    Today I’m doing some reorganisation of the information architecture here. Now that WordPress has incorporated tagging we are modifying how we label our posts: instead of having a gazillion proliferating categories, we will shortly have a shorter list of broad… Read More ›

  • Sunday Skeptic Link

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    Book Review: The Afterlife of a Skeptic How the execution of a philosopher has been reinterpreted for every era The book being reviewed is The Death of Socrates by Emily Wilson, about which the reviewer has mixed feelings, but the… Read More ›