2021 - Writing - Page 11

Living your Fullest Life after Breast Cancer

As women age, we have many changes to look forward to as the uncertainties of love and employment blossom into the stability of family and career, and the anxieties of youth are transformed into the wisdom of maturity. Upon my 40th birthday, I had much to be grateful for: two beautiful and kind-hearted daughters whom I adored with all my heart, a loving husband and partner in life, and my labours of twenty years in health and development economics had solidified my career as an expert on health systems in Latin America

By Writing|2022-03-01T12:51:55+11:00December 14th, 2021|Health|Comments Off

A Challenge for the Human Race — the Need for Leadership

There has been much written and spoken about the issue of climate change over the past few years. These discourses build the case that there is a significant change in the global climate and that this change is the result of a continuing accumulation of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere

By Writing|2022-01-27T16:22:36+11:00December 14th, 2021|Environment & Energy, Governance|Comments Off

The future of energy – an Australian way

The first place in Australia to install a permanent electricity grid was the small country town of Tamworth, on Kamilaroi country in New South Wales, in 1888, when street lights were connected to two 18 kW coal-fired generators supplied by the neighbouring Gunnedah black coal basin. The coal was of such excellent quality that it could be literally dug up and shovelled straight into the nearby generator

By Writing|2022-01-23T12:55:19+11:00December 14th, 2021|Environment & Energy|Comments Off

A guide to waterworks for men

Seeing a urologist often involves discussing things that men may have been bothered by for some time, but have managed to ignore. Conditions such as weakening of erections and slowing of the urinary stream are often thought to be part of the ageing process. They can, however, cause significant disruption to a man’s life

By Writing|2022-03-01T12:52:45+11:00December 14th, 2021|Health|Comments Off

Agriculture in Australia: Growing more than our farming future

Food and agriculture are fundamental to human survival and it was the birth of agriculture and farming that laid down the basis for human civilisation. Since the first crops were domesticated around 10,000 years ago, advances in agriculture have been intimately linked with human development and the growing world population

By Writing|2022-03-01T12:53:31+11:00December 14th, 2021|Environment & Energy, Science & Technology|Comments Off

Indigenous Education and the Ladder to Prosperity

The small number of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children at school — 147,181 — belies the complexity and magnitude of the failure of the national school system to ensure that they are educated. Only half the schools in the education system have Indigenous students

By Writing|2022-03-01T12:54:07+11:00December 14th, 2021|Arts, Culture & Society, Human Rights|Comments Off

Indigenous Exceptionalism and the Constitutional ‘Race Power’

Constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians is a fraught topic, presenting legal as well as moral challenges, and involves a large set of issues beyond my scope here. I want to explore in this chapter the problem of how to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, a matter given much thought by the members of the Expert Panel appointed by Prime Minister Gillard in December 2010

By Writing|2022-01-23T12:55:53+11:00December 14th, 2021|Governance, Human Rights|Comments Off

Free Speech, Responsible Media, Law and Liberal Democracy

In this chapter I will be discussing the role of the media in a liberal democracy, and the tension between the essential free flow of information in a free society and the accountability which all power, including media power, must be subjected to for a society to be truly free

By Writing|2022-01-23T12:56:18+11:00December 14th, 2021|Arts, Culture & Society, Governance|Comments Off

AI for better or for worse, or AI at all?

When I was a little girl, I was taught a song about a ball of white string, in which the white string could fix everything — tie a bow on a gift, fly a kite, mend things. The second verse of the song was about all the things that string cannot fix — broken hearts, mend friendships — the list goes on. In all of the research I have been doing about Artificial Intelligence (AI), its governance and what it can do, this song has frequently come to mind

By Writing|2021-12-28T15:58:41+11:00December 14th, 2021|Science & Technology|Comments Off

When the Water Drops are Sweet: Living with Diabetes Mellitus

The term diabetes mellitus is derived from Greek and Latin words meaning excessive discharge of urine (diabetes), which is honey sweet (mellitus). The disease diabetes mellitus was first described as early as 1500 BC by physicians from Egypt and India, who noticed the sweet or honey water in the urine of people with diabetes attracting ants

By Writing|2022-03-01T12:54:49+11:00December 14th, 2021|Health|Comments Off