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Blogs
Seeing through Romantic notions of heroism
What does being a hero really mean?
Blogs
The midnight cowboy’s solo Hippocratic stand
RECENTLY, browsing the shelves of a local bookshop, the troubling thought came to me that the last classic had already been written. That never again would we see the like of War and Peace, Gulliver’s Travels, The Trial or Lolita.I wondered whether it was simply the sheer torrent of modern literature that made it impossible for any one work to stand out, or whether there were more sinister forces at work.As a mid-career playwright, relegated to the hinterland of Australian theatre, I had religiously been sending out my most recent manuscripts to all the usual suspects, with steadily diminishing success.Frustrated ... see more
What’s the point? Banish the boring slide show
IT WAS always going to come to this. PowerPoint, that ubiquitous Microsoft presentation program, has ruffled so many feathers worldwide that a serious political party, the Anti PowerPoint Party, has emerged in Switzerland. It’s a move many of us will find easy to understand. Prominent BBC and Financial Times journalist Lucy Kellaway said it most succinctly in a recent blog; “I don’t think [PowerPoint] livens up a dull presentation. I think all it does is sort of distract your attention from a dull presentation. “The essential problem with PowerPoint is people dump too much information onto those slides... then they try and ... see more
Being human with all of its many conditions
IT WAS one of those days...I had convinced a patient to immunise his family for a trip to South-East Asia, despite the travel agent telling him that no immunisations were required. “No immunisations are mandatory for getting back into Australia,” I explained, “but that isn’t the same thing as giving yourself protection from serious infections common in the developing world.”Reluctantly he accepted scripts for the vaccines. I thought my mission was accomplished, but then he arrived back without all of the vaccines I had prescribed.“Well, I decided I didn’t want the flu vaccine because I never get the flu, and then ... see more
