I had a nice day today – mostly spent lying in bed, reading (a novel), and dozing off in between chapters. Only slightly thinking about work… It’s the whole “we must have this done by Christmas” workload . Not that I am complaining!

In the afternoon, I got up and started a new painting. It has been a while. The canvases were piling up accusatively.

After …

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Mark Twain.

Australians are going to the poll this weekend. Essentially to choose between two parties who are about as differentiated from each other as brie and camembert.

Images from wikipedia

Going for the majority may well be a good thing to do in …

“Can’t beat a skybox! All the excitement of being in the sky, with the security of being in a box!” Marge Simpson.

Many of us dream of flying high. And yet, time and time again we retreat to the safety of boxes. Boxes created by our collective, societal expectations.

We have more choices than ever before to live the live we want. We are wealthier than 90% of the planet’s …

“[America has] two values: How much can a man consume for the highest possible price, and how much can he produce for the possible pay?” said the character Chambord in Robert Ludlum’s The Paris Option (by Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds).

This is likely true of all Western civilisations, including Australia.

We get paid less and less to do more and more work. And yet at the same time, we …

There’s been quite a few stories in the media lately about dodgy Chinese manufacturers. Lead paint on toys, bad pet food and so forth. Without endorsing these bad practices, what I want to know is, how much of this is actually our own fault?

We sit in our safe, clean and large homes well away from the factories of China. Our consumption-mad society demands ever more stuff at ever …

This nicely put together YouTube video by Michael Wesch.

Thanks Greg!

Two interesting videos. Two different messages.

“Cynthia Vanderlip, manager of the State of Hawaii’s Kure Atoll Wildlife Sanctuary, cut open the dead body of a fledgling Laysan albatross (nicknamed “Shed Bird”) to find more than half a pound of plastic in its stomach.”

This is the bits of shit we throw away without a second thought!

This one image sums it all up, without ambiguity, and without unnecessary “designer” fuss.

Read A …

I just realised what the fundamental problem with renewable energy is: it is free and there is a limitless supply of it.

Our current economic model is based on profits from scarcity. If no one can make (big) renewable bucks from renewable energy, no business-as-usual will take it seriously. And if no business will take it seriously, it is unlikely governments will take it seriously.

Oh dear…

I suppose if you …

Another thought from The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff (ISBN 0-416-19526-1):

“[Although] we live in what is commonly described as a Materialistic Society … ours is in reality an Abstract Value society – one in which things are not appreciated for what they are so much as for what they represent.”

So why is Abstract Value so attractive? I reckon it is because Abstract …