Professor Noam Chomsky invites you to consider..

Mike's Pith & Wind - Noam Chomsky
I was drifting off to sleep when I heard Noam Chomsky creaking out of my bedside radio. He was responding to a query from Phillip Adams on his Late Night Live wireless show on Radio National. I wasn’t feeling too well and had gone to bed early, so I couldn’t vouch for what he said, but I gather it was by way of an endorsement of the Occupy protest movement from the world’s oldest living leftie.
I’ve been vaguely aware of Noam Chomsky for years without actually bothering to investigate him, so when Dr Wazz said that Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) of Linguistics & Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, i.e. Noam Chomsky, was delivering a lecture as the guest of Deakin University on Friday night at the Melbourne Convention Centre, I saw it as an opportunity to acquaint myself with the good professor and his view of the world.
We parked across the Yarra in the Docklands Desert and ambled across a pedestrian bridge to the Convention Centre, which rears up, all planes and toothpicks behind the corpse of the Polly Woodside. The good doctor and I were struck by the lavish scale of the building and were generally impressed with the muted orange appointments. The theatre itself (The Plenary) is about as state-of-the-art as it gets; again quite vast in scale, with steeply raked seating ensuring totally unobstructed views of the stage from anywhere in the room.
And the room was buzzing. Mostly young people too – the advertising for the show was exclusively.. read more

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Dick's Toolbox - The bleeding obvious
We are often surprised at the bleeding obvious. The weather bureau forecasts it will rain and it does. Spring follows winter, tides rise and fall. Politicians lie, deny previous statements, refuse to take responsibility and do what they believe will get them elected or re-elected. Chief Executive Officers on enormous and disproportionate salaries spin the facts and ignore public opinion if it gets in the way of the strategic brief they have in front of them. Which is to make as much short term money as possible.
There are seven billion people on the planet and there will be more, perhaps two billion more before it starts to decline. This will naturally have a negative effect on the environment as all these bodies have needs and wants. They will eat, sleep, excrete, get sick, watch television, aspire to some individual transportation and generally want what other people have. They will also have frequent sex, which quite often results in even.. read more