In praise of strategic complacency

What follows is the basic text from my talk to “Early Career Researchers” at UQ earlier this month. As you’ll see, they are rough notes, intended for a small and currently employed audience. This is only one experience of “ECR”. I welcome comments for how to expand and edit as I might try to publish [...]

Holiday postscript

NB: This is a preface to some notes on Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft, which I’ll now shift to another post. Every time I go home to Tasmania I tend to become very introspective about where I’m at in life. Taking holidays in Hobart and on Bruny Island – where I spent a lot [...]

So long so long

The Pixies close their set with “Where is my mind?” at the Horden Pavillion last night.

RIP

After the Magic Dirt show at the Doghouse in Hobart some time in ’95 or ’96 my friends and I stole tour posters from the power poles all the way home. Dean played Fairy Park and I asked Miles to teach me bass guitar. Puppyfat must have covered every track of Life Was Better that [...]

Attunements

A friend hurts her back in the middle of a work event she’s been planning for months. Rather than miss the Saturday workshop she Skypes in from bed. Someone can’t RSVP for an event later in the year because she might need to have an operation. Someone who was going to come can’t anymore: the [...]

Farewell 2008, AKA Facebook isn’t working

The next few days I’m sitting out the remainder of a month long stint in my home town, Hobart. Today I got back from Bruny Island, where I grew up, having spent the best part of a week there with my family sampling the delights of Cloudy Bay Lagoon. Thanks to William’s culinary skillz, fresh [...]

Teaching or research?

My unfortunate lack of blogging lately is partly due to travel and the impact this has on other deadlines: I have three articles/chapters due this month and more presentations in Melbourne and Brisbane, as well as a graduate course to convene and an engagement party to organise! This workload was partly designed to fill in [...]

Changes

It seems important to write something about Tasmania.* I found out early in the day that Paul Lennon had resigned as Premier and just watched the telly footage from the various press conferences. Wow though: the amount of time being devoted to the story says something about the status of my home state in relation [...]

Told you I needed an RA

According to AstroBarry – “Astrology for people who think”: LIBRA (September 23-October 22): Something’s got to give in your day-to-day routine, Libra, insofar as you’re balancing (or trying to balance) a brimming schedule of work duties, domestic chores and personal-care maintenance measures. If you’ve been managing it the same way for a while now, chances [...]

No one told you

Whether it’s a sign of the writers’ strike biting or just the serendipity of summer programming, for the past month or two Channel 10 has been screening Friends re-runs at 7pm. This is right about the time that William orders me out of the kitchen, I won’t let myself on the laptop anymore and I’m [...]

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