Laurie Oakes

In the bottom of one of my drawers at home I’ve got this really cool grey T-shirt with a picture of Barack Obama and the words “Obama for yo Mama” written on it.

We’ll actually it’s not that cool anymore, which is why it’s now in the bottom of the drawer.

I never had a Kevin ’07 T-shirt but you can bet there are a lot of those sitting in cardboard boxes and stuffed in the back of cupboards these days too, destined for use only when washing the car or cleaning the bathroom.

Continue reading "We all pay for Obama killing off inspiration politics" »

Remember all the things you learned at school: the periodic table and calculus and Egyptian pharaohs and dangling participles and the causes of the First World War.

Now think about what you learned at school that is actually useful in your everyday life today.  Excluding obvious basics such as reading, writing and arithmetic, I’d nominate two things, neither of which I imagined would turn out to be so handy.  The first is touch typing.  The second is what the teacher announced in the opening class of Grade 11 economics: wants are unlimited but resources are limited.

It’s something I think about all the time.  For example, I like to imagine that if I had an iPad with The New Yorker application on it, I’d be Perfectly Happy for the Rest of My Life.  Sadly though, I predict that soon after, there’d be a strong hankering for a stylish red leather pouch for said iPad. 

Continue reading "iWant therefore iAm" »

The best question to Julia Gillard on Q and A, and her best answer, went like this: “I’d be interested in your thoughts on a scale of 1 to 10 - one being just bearable and 10 being massively annoying - how big of a tool is Mark Latham?”

Gillard: “(Laughs). There are some things that can’t be measured.” (Read Colgo’s take on Gillard’s Q and A performance here).

At the same time Latham was over on Sky News basically accusing the Prime Minister of being sexually inappropriate with him during their encounter at the Brisbane Ekka on Sunday. That’s pretty high on the Tool Index.

Continue reading "That guy on Q and A was right - Mark Latham is a tool" »