Flight to security

A while ago a friend introduced me to the idea of the "flight to security". This is where people, spooked by a stressful or traumatic event, rapidly reconfigure their lives to eliminate uncertainty, especially in areas that they feel sensitive about. This might manifest as people becoming extremely parsimonious with money. In extreme cases someone…

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The metric system has no romance

I am a metric kind of person. I say this, knowing that 95% of the world agrees with me and that there are only a few holdout Americans who don't acknowledge the truth: that using anything other than the metric system is ridiculous, and that you are ridiculous. I mean, I know how these things…

The COVID diaries 10 – Schadenfreude

It's October. Schadenfreude season. Let's start with the obvious one - Donald Trump reportedly has Covid, along with a number of his White House staff, cronies, and trophy wife. Clearly this is justice in its purest form - that the man who by his combination of inaction and blustering incompetence has allowed the more than…

Vigour vs experience

When you're young, the natural inclination is to try your hand at everything to see what sticks, what you enjoy and are good at. Kids are the perfect example of this - apart from compulsory schooling, they might be playing football, learning ballet or karate, enrolled in a drama or art class and scouting on…

The COVID diaries 9 – Lockdown 2, electric boogaloo

It's been a long time since I wrote in here. The fact that so much has happened since then has ironically made it harder, not easier, to actually start typing. There's a lot to catch up on. To recap: there were several weeks of reduced restrictions as the lockdown seemed to have worked. The strange…

The Covid Diaries 8 – I miss Iso-Life

Iso-Life is ending and I miss it already. A week or so ago some of the restrictions were relaxed here in Victoria. Playgrounds opened again, you can have small groups of visitors around to your house. In light of the apparently well-controlled Covid caseload here, as well as the escalating difficulty of keeping people at…

The Covid Diaries 7 – The Wipers

The Wipers are here. On every main street, you'll seet them during daylight hours. Young people, many of whom appear to be Indian students, wearing high vis vests. Orange in Burke Road. Yellow in Victoria Street. Is it plumage? They travel in packs of five or more. They chat as they slowly move down the…

The COVID Diaries 6 – Learning things

I've learned a lot about myself these past few weeks. I'm not a very good teacher, for one thing. I mean, I spend a lot of time teaching for my job, and think I'm all right at it. But that's with adults, who are already quite well trained, are highly motivated, and for whom I…

The COVID Diaries 5 – Homeschooling and hedonism

Schools closed here in Victoria a week and a half ago, but only a few days before school holidays were scheduled to begin. Other states are still struggling along, but doubtless they will go to holidays and not come back for some time. Because we're a two-healthcare worker family, our school was able to arrange…

The Covid Diaries 4 – Phony War

It feels a little bit like Paris in 1939. Everyone is waiting for something to happen, whether it be German invasion or viral apocalypse, but very few people have seen the real deal yet. We're sitting at something like 3000-4000 confirmed infections across Australia, which doesn't seem too bad until you realise that testing is…