Featured Photo: Five hundred homes were lost in Canberra in 2003; the whole coastal and near inland of south-eastern Australia was aflame in 2019/2020. Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 1 March 2021 The Last Five Years, Global Threats in 2021: mass extinction, climate change, human population, refugees, Covid-19 and the Internet This article is a companion to my last …
Killing Osama bin Laden, Update 2021
Featured Photo: Pete Souza, Official White House Photographer, 4.06 pm EST, 1 May 2011, Situation room for bin Laden raid Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 1 February 2021 The Killing of Osama bin Laden, Update 2021 Introduction In July to September 2015, I wrote three articles on The Last Days of Osama bin Laden. These were: 1 Abbottabad, 28 July …
The Coal Curse Judith Brett
Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 2 November 2020 The Coal Curse Judith Brett, June 2020 Judith Brett The Coal Curse: Resources, climate & Australia’s future, Quarterly Essay 78, 2020. The Coal Curse is the following Quarterly Essay to Cry Me a River by Margaret Simons which I used to give a 2020 update to my essay on the Murray-Darling Catastrophe. …
Murray-Darling Basin Update 2020
Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 3 August 2020 Murray-Darling Basin Update 2020: Cry Me a River by Margaret Simons Introduction Since I wrote my article The Murray-Darling Basin Catastrophe, which has attracted attention and good feedback, the problems with the Murray-Darling have become even more prominent. The issue has risen in the public consciousness because of prosecutions of cotton growers …
Hummingbirds
Featured Image: The Zion Canyon camping area at Watchman on the Virgin River where hummingbirds flew over the river Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 1 July 2020 Hummingbirds Preamble The featured image shows just how adaptable specialist hummingbirds who migrate to North America are and have to be in the habitats they migrate through and to. Hummingbirds are feisty and …
What is History 11: World Economic History
Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 4 May 2020 What is History 11: World Economic History to 1990 What is History: Richard Baldwin The Great Convergence 2016 Introduction I was planning to write the next Jared Diamond Guns, Germs and Steel articles following on from 9 Guns, Germs and Steel: Overview and 10 Polynesia A Natural Experiment of History and …
What is History 10: Polynesia a Natural Experiment of History
Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 23 January 2020 What is History 10: Polynesia a Natural Experiment of History — Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond Articles in the What is History? series are 1 Introduction 2 Sleep Patterns, 3 The Medieval Mind, 4 Love, 5 EH Carr Historians & their facts, 6 Religion 7 EH Carr Causation in History, 8 EH Carr History as Progress …
Sensual Words
Featured Image: Goya La Maja Desnuda 1797-1800, Oil on Canvas, 97 x 190 cm, Prado, Madrid Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 1 December 2019 Sensual Words in English A Thought Experiment The idea came on me suddenly. I thought of words as visual entities and wondered what a beautiful word would look like. From that it was a small leap to …
The Murray-Darling Basin Catastrophe
Featured Image: WC Piguenit Flood in the Darling 1890, Oil on Canvas, 1895, 123 x 199 cm Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 1 November 2019 The Murray-Darling Basin Catastrophe Don’t sugarcoat it like that, Kid. Tell her straight. (Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, 1969) It is long past time for sugarcoating. We should be sick of the obfuscation and …
Richard Evans Schultes & Rubber
Featured: Wade Davis The Lost Amazon: The Photographic Journey of Richard Evans Schultes, 2004. Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 1 September 2019 Richard Evans Schultes & Rubber Introduction I met a young Swiss man about thirty in Pakistan in 1995. I’ll call him Marc. We shared a jeep with he and his girlfriend up the Kaghan Valley through the snow. …
Understanding the Banking Royal Commission, Australia
Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 6 April 2019 Understanding the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, February 2019. Understanding Corporate Misconduct in General 1 Background 1.1 General Relevance When I was in New Zealand recently, which also has Australia’s banks, no one seemed interested nor had they watched the Royal Commission proceedings on TV …
What is History 9: Jared Diamond Guns, Germs & Steel Overview
Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 2 December 2018 What is History 9: Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond, 1997: Overview & Critique 1 Overview Preamble I read Guns, Germs and Steel 1997 within a year of its publication and was strongly influenced. I had been looking for something about human history that was more scientific in its approach …
Case Study of Q Research
Case Study of Q Research, a Marketing Research Company Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 3 August 2018 Q Research: Portrait of a small Strategic Marketing Research Company Preamble This is a portrait of a small business I started and ran for eight years from 1988 to 1995. It was a small strategic marketing research company that offered something quite …
What is history 8: EH Carr History as Progress
Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 1 July 2018 What is History 8 by EH Carr: The next two Lectures or Chapters 5 and 6 History as Progress & The Widening Horizon Introduction In What is History: Sleep Patterns we found that what we view as normal wasn’t necessarily the same in other periods. Sleep patterns were quite different before …
One Sentence
Featured image: Keira Knightley, Anna Karenina, UK Film 2012 Breadtag Sagas ©: Author Tony, 1 June 2018 One Sentence: a story about great sentences and great first sentences This article on one sentence may veer in an entirely different direction, or not! I don’t always want to be predictable. Journalists and newspapers often write articles on the first lines …