While we miss the past of rose-tinted imagination, one change that modern media and educational fashion has brought really does need to be acknowledged: the extent to which rationality has been downgraded in our daily discourse. Until we grasp how we perceive change there can be no understanding of what is happening around us

So sure are we of the benefits of managed trade that we do little to maintain even those industries where we enjoy a comparative advantage. Access to cheap power, for example, is becoming a memory as green policies distort the market and hobble the use of coal

It is the visual that reigns in our culture. Only when we concentrate do we find the silence within that reminds us of the preciousness of our heritage of language. Amidst the cacophony of voices it is good remember that in the beginning was the written word, not the website

When I was teaching, I would try to get students to run their own reliability tests on the sundry internet sites they would plunder in their search for essay material. 'As with any information,' I would intone, 'we must ask who is putting it before us, and what is their motivation in doing so?'

Australian cities do not lack potential congregants. But although the churches have tried just about everything, from hip-hop to meditation, to bring people in, something has changed within the general psyche. Sunday is now much like any other day of the week

If you are a fan of British comedy, you will […]

The ACT government would like people like us to trade our houses for flats, so that 'densification' can proceed. It keeps jacking up the rates to give us a push-along. My impression is that suburbia is even less fashionable among architects and town planners than it used to be

More than ever we need old-fashioned public servants who will give tough advice. Who else is there to give the lie to the army of private-sector consultants, contractors, lobbyists and PR merchants whose self-interested posturing is irresistible to many politicians?

I discovered my camera was gone halfway across the no-man’s-land […]