As a longtime lover of the ‘Sweet Science’, I felt a secret sense of satisfaction in watching the measured way in which Floyd “Money" Mayweather defeated the game and garrulous UFC world champion Conor McGregor on the weekend, with an emphatic TKO in the 10th round of their scheduled 12-round bout in Las Vegas Nevada. Boxing [...]
I read a news story just the other day about a self-declared “grammar vigilante” who reportedly prowls the streets of Bristol, in south-west England, correcting errant punctuation on business signs. Apparently for the past decade or so he has been venturing out late at night, wearing a coat and black hat, to surreptitiously correct sloppy [...]
Some court cases concern life and liberty, some are about money and manipulation, and others grubby politics and power. But in defamation cases everything’s at stake. Our reputation and good name is our most valued asset, because when all is said and done it’s all we have. Youth is transient, beauty skin-deep, and material riches [...]
The sentencing this week in China of three Australian employees of James Packer’s Crown Resorts brings into sharp focus the scary reality of globalisation. Melbourne-based executive Jason O’Connor and China based staff members Jerry Xuan and Pan Dan all pleaded guilty last Monday to charges of illegally promoting gambling, and were ordered to serve between [...]
I was contemplating suicide this week. Not personally contemplating the actual deed mind you - in fact, it may be more accurate to say that suicide was contemplating me. You see, our apartment windows face the ocean and the twice-yearly clean by the burly-blokes-with-beards-and-rope is insufficient for my taste in crystal clear views. So it [...]
The 1959 German film Die Bruecke by director Bernhard Wiki is set in the final days of World War 2, as American tanks drive the Allied victory home on German soil. In a small German village seven young schoolboys declare their fierce determination to defend their country against the American invaders. When they are called [...]
On June 28, 1963, the then-President of the United States of America, the late great John Fitzgerald Kennedy, addressed a joint session of the Oireachtas Eireann, the national parliament of Ireland, in Dublin. He spoke not only as the world’s most powerful political leader of his era, but as the proud descendant of an impoverished [...]
There is so often a deep, unpassable chasm between man and myth. The late James Rieher Snuka, the professional wrestling icon better known to his legion of fans as "Superfly," who died last month, was a hero to a whole generation of TV wrestling fans. Inducted into the World Wrestling Federation’s Hall of Fame in [...]
Remember that awesome pub-crawl you went on in first year uni, the one organised by your student social association, where you started on shooters, then learned how to play beer pong, the whole hilarious process captured on your mobile phones, got absolutely legless, and ended up dancing on the tables? Those were the days, right? [...]
The Bible tells us that the sinner Saul was struck down on the road to Damascus. In a sudden flash of light from heaven, he experienced a divine, life-changing epiphany. For most of us the getting of wisdom follows an infinitely more gradual and circuitous path. Amasa Coleman Lee was a humble country boy, born into [...]
