Blog

One bus journey, two events
By John Carr Throughout the pandemic restrictions, I have continued to travel to the Brisbane CBD by public transport for various, quite legitimate...

Fairness without complexity
John Carr considers a COVID conundrum. During the COVID pandemic, the main dispute in determining national policies has been over the relative...

Getting out of bed
By Greg Spearritt It’s hard to pin down how many Australians identify as atheist, but surveys have suggested that around a quarter of us consider...

Mysterious ways
By Greg Spearritt God, it’s said, moves in a mysterious way. At least, English poet and hymnodist William Cowper said as much in his 1773 hymn...

‘Elite’ schools and the media
By John Carr Queensland’s Courier Mail seems to assume that all non-state schools are ‘elite schools’. Whether the news being reported is...

A fairytale?
A dystopian (realist?) tale by Denver Kanowski The King was troubled. The peasants in his Kingdom were unhappy with the distribution of wealth and...

Faith and reason
By John Carr. The traditional Irish tune ‘Slane’ is a very popular hymn setting and there are four hymns in Australia’s Together in Song that use...

Speaking freely
SOFiA values the honest (and clearly-expressed) exploration of ideas and views that challenge or reflect on the status quo in the fields of reason,...

Private school values
Shore School, an elite Anglican boys-only school in Sydney, has hit the news for very wrong reasons recently. The Year 12 tradition of ‘muck-up day’...

Moral morass
Hypocrisy is something most humans have in common, but willful and systematic hypocrisy is still shocking. This is especially true, of course, when...

Life everlasting
UK novelist Susan Ertz famously claimed that “millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon”....

Stealing the future
Atlassian entrepreneur Scott Farquhar was the subject of a recent Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery program. He and his business partner Mike...