Author Archive

In Victor Hugo’s famous novel, Les Miserables, Jean Valjean is desperate to start a new life after being in prison for nineteen years, but no one will give him a chance. All doors are closed to him. Angry words are spoken to him. Guns are pointed at him. But when all options have been exhausted,…

“You have won second prize in a beauty contest” is the card in Monopoly that few people love to pick up, not so much for the implied insult, though an insult it is, but for the meagre monetary gain. Ten measly bucks! That doesn’t even buy a letterbox on Mayfair. Yet how that card from the…

I achieved maximum Brownie-points this year when I planted a herb garden for my wife; and every day that the garden stays alive, the points accumulate and yield their dividend. For one whose thumb is only green by imagination, I’m quietly chuffed. The parsley is prospering, the mint is multiplying, and the thyme is growing…

What a remarkable observer was that ancient who in the Old Book said: “Moreover, no one knows when their hour will come: As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so people are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them” (Ecclesiastes 9:12). Sadly the words have…

Jesus was sleeping. His twelve disciples were panicking. All thirteen were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of a furious storm. Twelve were reeling and retching and convinced that they were going to die. Only one was asleep and resting his head on the pillow of God’s sovereignty. What a…

Graphic designers can be clever people. The person who constructed the logo for Le Tour de France evidently enjoyed hiding a bicycle-rider in the design. And the GD who drew the work for the Sydney Roosters Rugby League Club no doubt took pleasure in hiding the Sydney Opera House in the rooster’s crest. The Good…

My son and I went gold-digging the other week, to the site of the original gold-rush in Australia, the Ophir goldfields, north of the city of Orange. Unfortunately for us there was no flash in the pan, not even the hint of a flash, but we did come home with a pan-full of stories. Like…

Some people are good at geometry, and others are good at theology, but seventeenth-century Englishman John Wallis was good at both. Professor of Geometry at Oxford, and Secretary at the famous Westminster Assembly in London, he wrestled by day with the ultimate questions of life, and by night, with the square root of 53 digit…

Says my book on astronomy, that the name of the big reddish star in the constellation Orion, is Betelgeux (an Arabic name with some variations of spelling). And that this ancient star is so big, that it not only makes our sun look like the trial ignition of a newborn firefly, but that the whole…

Mr. Rubik has a lot to answer for. He has taken over our house, and over every minute of my children’s waking hours. The word ‘algorithm’ is now as common as ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’. The sound of click-clack as the machine twists and turns is as familiar as the constant hum of the passing traffic….