Books on Pakistan & Israel
8 April 2012 | Media
Late last year I travelled around Israel and Palestine, later this year Pakistan is on my wish list. So these two books were interesting primers on those countries. Of course both books proved, yet again, that the more you learn about a subject the less you realise yo...
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The Sad Story of Balalae Island
28 February 2012 | Places
On my way north through the Solomon Islands and on to Bougainville in Papua New Guinea I flew in to Balalae or Ballalae Island. I spent a couple of nights at nearby Shortland Island before thumbing a boat ride to Bougainville with islanders heading to Buin for the Sat...
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Sites of Impact
1 February 2012 | Media
▲ Wolfe Creek Crater, Western Australia
Every now and then I pick up a ‘got to go there’ book, you read it or look at the pictures and that’s what you immediately think. Judith Schalansky’s Atlas of Remote Islands was a fine example, she claimed she hadn’t been t...
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Information & Misinformation
21 August 2011 | Living
At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival Dave Gorman’s Power Point Presentation looked at how ‘facts’ on the web can propagate. He may have been born a Christian and become an atheist, but when his Wikipedia entry described him as Jewish that ‘fact’ soon spread far and wide. ...
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Music
27 December 2010 | Culture
In 2009 I caught four great rock concerts – Leonard Cohen and then Neil Young in Melbourne, Van Morrison at the Albert Hall in London, Al Stewart in Newcastle in northern England. Rock-wise nothing hit the same high in 2010, not even U2 on their 360º tour when it came...
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