Book Notes: "Cannery Row" by John Steinbeck

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is my first Steinbeck novel. Brilliant. I am not sure whether to feel happy for the residents of Cannery Row, or sad to think that they might live in such a way for readers to find nobility in degradation. I tend to think this novel makes one sad to think that such stories could be noble, yet at the same time glad that despite the gloom, they can be. Steinbeck truly achieves the artist's role of making sense of a cruel world.



View all my reviews

My Ranking: Lecturer of the Year 2013

Thank you to everybody who voted for me in last year's UniJobs "Lecturer of the Year"  competition. For the fourth year in a row, I have ranked number 1 at the University of Canberra. However, in 2013, I ranked number 10 nationally. You can read the original article at the link below:


Lecturer Of The Year - Vote for your favourite lecturer

Another Australian communications industry group hangs up the phone...

© Depositphotos.com/@pressmaster

I argued some time back that the launch of the Australian Communications Consumers Action Network (ACCAN) - effectively a government-controlled industry group designed to represent citizens (how this can ever be is surely astounding) - would lead to the end of the true citizens' voice in the tightly-controlled and rather unrepresentative Australian communications industry. The recent collapse of the Internet Industry Association (IIA) continues this inevitable trend.

When the Australian Telecommunications User Group (ATUG) ceased operations in 2011 (soon after ACCAN commenced operations), then Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull stated that:

The organisation and its members have made a powerful contribution to the telecommunications debate over many years. Sadly, consumers will need more representation rather than less in an NBN world, where the government-owned monopoly will have power to increase prices on most products by 5 per cent more than inflation, and will have no competitive pressure to respond to customer concerns.

When the Australian Government essentially created a lobby group to lobby itself,  there was hardly a murmur from the industry. Indeed, ATUG's demise was largely brought about by the larger telcos deciding not to renew their membership. 

It seems that the IIA found itself in the same leaky boat.

Now with only the government-controlled ACCAN and the industry-controlled Communications Alliance surviving, Australian consumers have no real voice in the industry at all.