Emma Tom

Strangely, I find myself drawn to the words of a young woman blogging on The Australian site. It may be considered intellectualized ramblings, but surrounded by the madness of courts, politicians and fathers, her words rae a soothing broader view.

The alleged masculinity crisis is also old news. Why TV Is Good For Kids explains that the Scout movement was founded by Lord Baden-Powell because he thought the appallingly feminising influence of female teachers had rendered 1900s boys altogether too soft, sensitive and flaccid. And next time you bemoan Australia's literacy standards, remember you're joining a long line of shrill Chicken Littles, including several NSW chief English examiners who accused secondary schools in the 1940s and '50s of failing to produce literate students able to write proppa sennences.

Long tracts roam my mind about the Australian courts and how to communicate with them.
You have to wonder if some sort of drug is given to the legal profession? What else would produce such convoluted thinking that roams so far from reason?

Many years ago, in the time of my own spiritual curiosity, I read the Commentaries of the Talmud til my mind turned to mud late one night. It was on a long walk on a beach in Monterey with the full moon eerie shade that I decided to abandon them.
Talmudic Commentaries share a great deal of style with the writings of other authors I found during that period: Hitler's 'Mein Kampf', Karl Marx 'Das Kapital', and even the pamphlets and books of the Ku Klux Klan, in the way they wander in and out of social and religious meaning to come to atrocious, and often ridiculous, conclusions.

As the preachy head of any cult will tell you in a candid moment, it isn't what you say but the presentation that makes all the difference. No one's really interested in the Truth. The vast majority of people just want a handy fantasy.
And that is the first conclusion one can draw about the Australian courts: At least half the case is in the presentation.

Emma Tom presents the world wryly, examining bit by bit.

AUSTRALIAN society has gone to the dogs. The young are intravenously connected to iPods at birth and think nothing of pulling out a pink bit and performing a turkey slap live on national telly. Parents are permissive, schools are postmodern, and cruise ships, once innocuous floating nursing homes, are now dens of druggish vice and nudist iniquity.

Oh well, I suppose if you want someone to dance with, you have to learn the steps.

Are the obesity ads plagiarism?

Back in about 399BC, the Greek philosopher (Socrates) grouched that the young "love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise". Worse still, they "no longer rise when elders enter the room", "they contradict their parents", "tyrannise their teachers" and spend too much time gorging on treats.

I wonder if Socrates would support or deny a ban on fast food in the schools?
He would certainly question it, now wouldn't he?