FAMILIES AND FAMILIAR MYTHS It's hard to imagine any study of human society without an appropriate level of superficiality and imbecility. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the insufferable dripping of the study of human families. Ever since it became the subject of marketing, psychology, and demographic studies, the f... More..

SPIRITUAL EXPLOITATION The concept of satire hardly begins to describe the modern take on "spirituality". Having firmly repressed my scatological leanings in seven languages with a crowbar, I will now attempt to describe the current version of this poor word as it now staggers from one definition of itself to another. It's... More..

The Australian tea tree leptospermum laevigatum is a perennial. It is a hardy, small leafed tree with white flowers, one of the typical Australian bush flora. It grows to about 6 metres and is a no-fuss tree, tough as an old boot. It's a coastal tree, and can handle sandy soil and dry conditions. It's salt resistant and r... More..

If there were to be a symbol of personal domesticity, the key chain would have to rank well up with the front door, and other recognition icons. It means something. The key chain is a sort of physical hypertext. Unlike other accessories, with the possible exceptions of The Bottomless Purse and The Wallet That Time Forgot, the... More..

There are any number of excellent reasons for keeping a traditional gardening calendar. The calendar is probably the best way of organizing tasks and setting reminders from the vast amounts of esoteric knowledge the gardener accumulates. However, that's an awful lot of information, and a series of well-informed scrawls and n... More..

GENETIC ENGINEERING AND THE NEED FOR A NEW SCIENCE: PROGNOSTIC MUTAGENICS. Genetic engineering is the biggest scientific breakthrough since the invention of fire. The living machine of DNA is finally something we can use. Production capacity which dwarfs the industrial revolution is only a few million hours of stubborn re... More..

I've been writing a book about the human mind at war. While writing this book I have found myself inundated with anecdotes, besieged by inference and conjecture, and routinely forced by sheer honesty to open fire on some of the more inept interpretations that infest the subject. I don't often use quotations, in fact I rather ... More..