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Below is a list of my favourites albums of the past decade. It is not a “Best of” but albums that I have played a lot over the past 10 years in no particular order or ranking.
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An interesting element of the coverage in some of Australia’s media regarding the attempted terrorist attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is the highlighting of the fact that he studied at the Dubai Campus of the University of Wollongong.

Over at News, we get US terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was University of Wollongong student.

Not sure whether the hacks at News want us to be scared or take some perverse pride that Australia is tangentially involved.

Yep, it ain’t news till we get an Aussie connection. Which is really a sad indictment on Aussie journalism. That the best way to place in international event in context is find out if Aussies are involved. This is very evident when there is a natural disaster with a great loss of life. The media race each other to find out if Australians are involved. If so, then a great coverage ensues to portray the overseas disaster as almost an affront on the Australia way of life.

If not, there is a sense of disappointment. With no Aussie connection, there is no story. Anyway, the media has better things to do. Such as reports on various celebrities that really generate the all important web traffic.

Australia has taken the superstitious nonsense of Catholicism to heart with the strange collective pride that Mary MacKillop is going to be Australia’s first official saint (some say Howard tried to push for the canonisation of Bradman but it didn’t go anywhere).

I have no judgement on MacKillop’s life and the importance of her work. My problem is this whole idea of miracles via intercession that a prospective saint must provide two examples of.

Which suggests that God doesn’t listen very well to people’s prayers if a third party is needed to get some action. Or that he is a hard bastard who is going to do anything unless someone puts up a pretty good argument as to why he should perform miracle.

Also, what happens when someone prays with a saint for intercession and it doesn’t come? If a terminal disease and they die then the conversation in Heaven could end up being pretty awkward. It would be hard to come by but a table showing the number of intercessory prayers made and intercession granted as a result of those prayers would be very interesting.

Maybe it is the super powers of atheism, but the miracles don’t seem that special. It is just playing the odds for cases of spontaneous remissionwhich are documented without apparent Saintly intercession.

Obviously there is a sense of national inferiority masquerading as nationalistic pride that extends beyond Catholics with Mary MacKillop. A rational perspective would be to celebrate her life and works as they were. Celebrating an act of rank superstition does not become a modern nation.

Then again, it is a strange state of affairs when some find it easier to believe in miracles than the science of climate change.

…is a nice little book by Anthony Bozza on, well Why AC/DC Matters. Bozza has a simple thesis, that AC/DC is the greatest living rock band ever and his book explains why.

Those that know me would understand my sympathies to this idea. That is not to dismiss the likes of the Stones, Zeppelin, Bruce and his E-Streeters and so on. But AC/DC’s simplicity has oft been overlooked by critical and popular trends. And Bozza does well in showing how AC/DC’s simplicity is the key to the sound. He explores the nuances of the simplicity, whether it be Phil Rudd’s slightly behind the beat drumming, Cliff William’s slightly ahead of the beat bass or Malcolm’s Young’s right on the beat rhythm guitar. Add in AC/DC’s remarkable understanding of space (think the Highway to Hell or the Back in Black riff) and mix all together and Bozza gives you the key to AC/DC’s huge sound. Don’t be fooled in thinking it is all volume. Far from it.

But even while I agree with the overall thesis of the book, I have quibbles. For example, the following statement:

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