Academic journals are in a state of flux. The price rises as owners pay for the cost of buyouts and consolidations; libraries have less dosh; academics still need to publish; electronic editions are easier to search; associations are suffering as they depend on revenue from print editions from journals.
At the same time, new peer reviewed [...]

In Scotland’s Inverness, the polis are fairly polite, there is nae a gun in sight, and a Tazer is probably a skin for a joint.
In the transatlantic Inverness, even the residents are heavily armed and use Tazers to shock their neighbours. Fortunately, the power supply is only 110 volts.
“Deputies were called to a [...]

The Schapelle Corby case has been taken up by comments over at Road to Surfdom.
Amen to Tim and AussieBob, who has just nailed this situation into the coffin of our foreign policy with its manifest hypocrisies and two-bit racist triumphalism.
While Schapelle Corby is the victim (either way) of insane hysteria over the “War on [...]

The radio shock jocks seem to be out in strength, calling for a tourist boycott of Bali. Seems to me like the Balinese are being made victims yet again, suffering the effects of Javanese law and officialdom.
Personally, I don’t get the hysteria. Corby is absolutely entitled to fight her corner, and the Australian press and [...]

Radio shock jocks get to defame, insinuate and slander all the time. Now Derryn Hinch, mustering all his courage, has attacked the dead by claiming Graham Kennedy died of AIDS.
This is what callers to his show told him in reply:
“”You are a skidmark on the jocks of Melbourne society,” said a caller identified only [...]

Australians are very used to vehicles bogging in sand. Dig out the wheel, push stuff underneath, drop it again, roar forwards with the family shouting and pushing and the kid sitting down astonished in a cloud of dust as dirt fires out from underneath.
So this is a familiar image, and we know instantly [...]

“A mother at 13, diagnosed with cancer at 14 and dead by 16, Beckie Williamson was no average teenager. The extraordinary youngster filmed her last year as a legacy for her daughter.”
So the Beeb describes a recent documentary, To Courtney, with Love, from Mosaic Films.
I am amazed by the para on her death:
“When Beckie died [...]

“Peter Thompson: Tell us about Uncle Fred. He was a School Principal.
Hal Wootton: He was the only one of my fatherís brothers who survived the Great War. Heíd grown up on this little dairy farm, in a very tight Methodist upbringing, looking down on less virtuous people outside the church in his world, and he [...]

Juan Cole, usually a key read on the Middle East, stops to have to a think about blogs, journalistic centralisation, and advertising.
“Many of the problems of measurement are probably intractable, but the advertising issue has already been solved by Henry Copeland of Blogads, with the concept of networked ads (which I prefer to call [...]

Can we prove that rotten old sex discrimination is bad for you?
YES!
Insomnia is extremely bad for you (and the people you torment in a state of restless frenzied hot eyed rage).”Overall, insomnia tended to be more common among those who were older, divorced/separated, had low educational attainment, poor health, or low income. Children living at [...]