Reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. Subjects: entropy, degeneration (physical, social, moral), and the phenomenology of time. Set in a Swiss sanatorium with a cosmopolitan clientele, before the First World War; Mann's heavy-handed metaphor for a 'sick Europe'. Narration proceeds at an absolutely glacial pace, appropriate to a door-stopper of ( Read more... )

For any professional or aspiring travel writer, Mark McCrum's guide to travel writing clichés provides an essential crib on what not to do.

How sad, then, that The Grauniad's Simon Holt appeared not to avail himself of McCrum’s wisdom before crafting his review of the Sheraton Noosa Resort in Noosa Heads. The publication date (13 January 2014), ( Read more... )

Like Father, Like Son: A beautifully crafted Japanese film about what happens when parental ambition collides with questions of identity, inheritance and belonging. The premise involves two ordinary families at very different ends of the social spectrum, who learn that their babies were swapped at birth. DNA testing confirms that this "accident" ( Read more... )

Last year, I was gripped by Midnight in Sicily, the book about the Mafia that Robb wrote after living in Southern Italy for fifteen years. Reading this book is an absolutely unique experience. Robb is the only writer I can think of who could have so combined violent crime, art history, eros, food, death, family, and religiosity - which of course ( Read more... )

Insects and birds spotted today, 1:30pm, on the lawn outside the Baillieu library:

Four ladybirds (three yellow-orange ones and one red)
Two dragonflies
One hoverfly
Four butterflies (Common Browns)
One honey-eater
One blackbird

It's day four of my six-day introductory course, Statistics for Research Workers. I managed to convince the faculty to pay for it (hurrah!). My fellow beginners are a diverse group of people, with a range of professional experience, and I've reflected it's a pity we don't get more similar opportunities to meet and work alongside people from around ( Read more... )

I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed Underground, Channel Ten's "factional" drama about the young Julian Assange. It was historically inaccurate, but highly watchable. The too-big woolly jumpers, the music (Painters and Dockers, Midnight Oil), the shots of outer-suburban train stations did capture a mood for me. And what a cracking cast. Rachel ( Read more... )

Our VC has proudly announced that our university is the first Australian institution to join Coursera. Amid all the organisational gloating and boasting, I feel like I'm the awkward kid in the corner ("Please, miss, but why?"). Why is it so great that our university (which is constantly self-promoting - at least internally - as "Australia's best") ( Read more... )

Every so often, I pick up a copy of The Monthly, because it's one publication that is trying to sustain a national conversation on matters of interest. Then I throw it aside again in disgust, because of the smugness, the same old names on the contributors' page, and, to be frank, the dodgy opinions.

Take this recent broadside on higher education, ( Read more... )

I was lucky, very lucky. I was under-prepared and ill-informed, yet I still managed to see the transit on 6 June ( Read more... )