Today I went and saw an advance screening for Michael Moore's latest vehicle, Sicko.

As far as Moore movies go it wasn't a bad example of the genre - some melodrama, some sticking it to man yee-hah moments, a little additional pathos and some laughs.

NOTE: For the hard of thinking I of course add on the obvious rider that he, like most people, believes in truth management. Far be it from me to fail in pointing out the flaws of everyone who considers themselves a mouthpiece.

Now that th...

As I think I may have mentioned before, for the last six months or so I've been working for the Man. It's been pretty much a full time job, but with a few classes of uni thrown in just to spice up the mix, and frankly I'm totally over it. Rather than enjoying working in the field for which I'm trained (ASEAN and general international politics analysis) I've instead found it boring, intellectually stifling and a black hole that sucks at my soul.

So recently I've started looking for other job...

If recent reports are to be believed (and considering the source it would be remiss to engage in even a moment's doubt) I am anti-American.

It's an interesting idea. I'm certainly anti- a lot of things. It's plausible that I would be against Americans. After all, I'm critical of their foreign policy, their domestic policy - damn near everything about their political system bugs me in some way, whether for incompetence, insanity, bloodymindedness or that oh-so-American obsession with mythic...

Obesity is something I've never really understood. I come from a long line of skinny people. In my extended family I have one aunt who was at one stage obese, but that was because she was put on meds for a kidney problem and they totally killed her metabolism. Apart from her (and she returned to normal when she was better) no blood relative could ever be described as more than 'stout'. Same goes for my friends. I just don't know any fat people.Of course it could be prejudice; from an early ...

Check this video out and tell me it isn't so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6MJVzXbqRUBloody Rednecks. Top Gear is one of the best shows on TV; how dare they attack?

Many years ago it became clear to me that God as described by the fundies was unworthy of worship.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't believe. It's just that, well, the god of the Christians is frankly an immoral, vicious bastard with the social graces of a praying mantis and a heart as black as coal.

I don't claim to know the infinite universe. I don't claim to be a good person. But I do try. So when I hear that the Creator is all for the murder of innocent children, or turns...

If you'd asked me before Christmas where I stood on the whole global warming deal, I probably would have said something like:

Well, it seems to be real, so we should probably do something about it. After all, we definitely know the symptoms are real, and we need to do something about them anyway.

But for Christmas I received a book. I must confess right from the start that it wasn't a very good book. In fact in terms of literature I would rate it, entertainment-wise, as being somewhe...

Good is out. No one who's anyone aspires to be a good person anymore. And why would you? As a person of considerable virtue you get absolutely nothing of any value in life.

I mean, what do you get?

Self-satisfaction? Off-hand I can think of dozens of extremely satisfying but not particularly moral ways of getting a thrill.

Freedom from Guilt? As a Catholic I have religious course to Confession, the sinner's greatest boon. Just confess and all that guilt washes away like milk off...

Americans believe their president is a vampire and they long to see him suck the blood of Muslims.

It sounds impossible, even implausible. But the evidence is in and it is dramatic. An entire rodeo stadium cheered the declaration of faux-journalist Borat Sagdiyev when he shouted out (and I paraphrase, because I didn't memorise the lines) "I hope that George Bush will drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq".

An entire rodeo stadium full of people. And that's what, 5000 peo...

There's a quiet revolution going on in the third world, and it's name is micro-credit. The concept is simple. Small loans with no collateral are granted to those who need it most - small stallkeepers, rickshaw drivers, basically anyone who has a pittance to their name but could turn their lives around if only they had a little capital. The amounts are generally tiny in real terms, perhaps just enough to buy a new cart or more profitable stock. The aim is to allow for commercial expansion on ...

Tonight Barnaby Joyce was a guest on the Glass House, everyone's favourite ABC news comedy show. In a surprise turn-up for the books he was actually pretty funny. Stand-out performance was when he called Corinne a doormat but he also put up a good defence when interrogated about his positions on the Iraq War.

It's always good to see the othe side resort to reason when threatened. It's refreshing in a way that, say, Howard's obfuscation or Fat Bastard's mindless pontificating merely dissati...

I don't know if you've noticed but there's been an odd increase in the level of bizarre political spam recently. Most of it could be filed in the staring-mad video-clip posting conspiracy left wing cabinet.

There are a few things that puzzle me. Firstly, what's the go? Is there some secret office somewhere directing hordes of zealots to go forth and post? Or has some nutcase figured out how to program? If that's the case then god save us all, for the technical professions, or so I've bee...

Steve Irwin died today. Rumours have it he was killed by a stingray sting to the heart.

Is anyone surprised he died to one of the animals he spent his entire life pissing off? It's almost poetic justice.

I'm not going to bore anyone by going into political theories on polities and notions of the leviathan, but there are interesting dimensions to the war on terror that I haven't seen addressed in a while.

The concept of the modern democratic state is simple. The people of the nation elect a government to represent them - to put it in metaphysical terms the government is the 1, 100 or 1000-man personification of millions of citizens. Their every action is the will of the people.

Knowing th...

As a student at a mildly vaunted Australian university I am constantly told that I should spend more time researching. My lecturers generally making a point of crossing out every sweeping generalisation I make and, using that barely legible scrawl that passes for handwriting in academia, writing, "You can't say this in an academic essay!" next to it in red pen and then underlined, presumably for added effect.

Personally I picture them shaking a fist at the paper as they do this, their pipe s...