The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein, is the ducks fucking nuts. The most fitting endorsement I have heard of it comes from MSNBC's Rachel Maddow; “The only book of the last few years in American publishing that I would describe as a mandatory must-read. Literally the only one.”

Why do we love to hate someone when vigorous disagreement should be enough? In competitive arenas such as sport why do we get so much joy from seeing the object of our hatred not only lose, but also be smashed into oblivion?

Perhaps even more curiously, why is it that we love to hate but we don’t love the haters?

A while ago, my life took a rather dramatic turn, as I became a father for the second time. And then one more time a minute after that. Yes, twins – the perfect way to infuse your wholesome dreams of joyful family life with a cruel, bitter irony.

Circular Quay on a sunny autumn day is a thing of great beauty. The harbour ripples diamond azure like a silken sheet, framed by icons at every angle. For all the cheesy postcards, the clichés and fatigued promotional footage, on the right day and with the right brain it is hard to imagine there is anywhere on Earth more sublime. Add to that a great big fuck-off platter of fresh seafood and the presence of an utterly enchanting media celebrity ethicist and your humble scribe is elevated to a plane of nirvana that losers like the Dalai Lama will never reach.

Today’s circumstances are different from the 1970s when a country like France faced the oil crisis, decided to push towards “energy independence” and eventually reached 75% nuclear electricity.

Whilst still revolving around fossil fuel, our current problem is to develop ways of producing energy that will limit our impact on the environment.

So for Australia, the question is not so much to debate the absolute merit of nuclear energy per se, but to appreciate whether to introduce its use is appropriate in that context. Is it logical to swap fossil fuel issues for nuclear ones?

I’m an impulsive, emotional soul. I make decisions on the spur of the moment, based on my gut feeling. I’ll factor the ‘vibe’ into my reading of any situation. I’m not particularly shy of making my feelings known to others when I’m trying to make some changes in my immediate environment. Sometimes this has worked for me - a certain degree of empathy has allowed me to avoid some dicey outcomes. Overwhelmingly, however, these tendencies have not ended well for me - I’ve ended up with significant debt, have had to make grovelling apologies and have been slapped in the face more than once. So I’m not entirely sure I consider these attributes to be positive, which is why I become alarmed when I see them wholeheartedly embraced by our political leaders.

A couple of weeks ago, The Australian launched a pre-emptive strike against an entire communication platform, claiming that it was hopelessly biased towards Teh Left. (Poor Twitter. What has it ever done to the #LOLstralian Australian?)

“Australian Twitter users are eagerly anticipating Miranda Devine’s (@mirandadevine) appearance on the ABC program Q&A (#qanda) tonight if the tweets of the last week are anything to go by. Moments after host Tony Jones announced last Monday night that the News Limited columnist was to appear, the Twitter echo chamber whirled into a flurry of comment. Not much of it was friendly, however, with many using words not fit for print.”

The first three months of 2011 have seen Australians in an almost constant state of disruption as we’ve been bombarded with natural disasters and the stories of loss and hardship that have followed them. Events like the floods that affected so many areas along the East coast, Tropical Cyclone Yasi and the bushfires in Western Australia grab national attention, and are generally followed by a familiar refrain from those affected “This community will stick together”.

Gambling is a strange addiction. When you say “addiction” most people think of drugs, legal or otherwise. Cigarettes, alcohol, prescription drugs, ecstasy, heroin, cocaine... you get the picture. The thing that’s common to all of these is that there’s a physical component to the addiction. Your body craves the drug, and so you give it more. As a long-time smoker, I know all about this.

I’ve been pretending to know how to write shit about shit for nigh on three years now. A combination of this fine periodical and its charming, intelligent and stunning editor (who has a rubber arm when it comes to red wine) I have gotten away with many a published rant. However, it wasn’t until last month, when I dared to suggest that grunge music was shit and a bunch of snot nosed Poms saved us from it, that I experienced the vitriolic response worthy of a proper writer.

When I was 16 two of my friends died when the car in which they were passengers flipped over. I was in the car behind. The driver of their vehicle raced off to beat us home, a challenge the driver of the car I was in didn’t accept. We didn’t see the crash occur, but we were on the scene within moments.

It’s true. There’s a conspiracy and everything.

The antivirus – or, if you must, antimalware – industry has a touch of the mafia. They give manufacturers a nice little bonus for loading their time bombed “trial” on every PC they ship. “I do you this favour,” croons your antivirus godfather, “and some day, say in 3 to 6 months, I will call on you to pay for this software. But for now, consider it a gift.”

I love my V8 and not just because I could probably take the vast majority of cars at the lights. It’s because this engine is just so damn flexible. At 100 km/h the engine speed is a mind boggling 1500 Revolutions Per Minute (RPM) which is just a smidge over idle. The lowest fuel consumption I have recorded is 8.4 l/100km, which doesn’t sound that good until you realise it is a 6.0 litre V8 engine.

I remember sharing a sports drink or two with my son while playing golf or after a long run. For him it was a special treat. Over recent years though, sports drinks and soft drinks have become increasingly popular amongst young Australians. Bottles have been super sized from 375ml to 600ml in recent years and this larger bottle contains twelve to fifteen teaspoons of sugar.

If you survived last month’s quota of sitting in darkened rooms then take in a quick dose of Vitamin D and get ready for more of the same in April. With Melbourne’s most iconic film house, The Astor Theatre, celebrating a milestone 75th Anniversary on Sunday April 3rd, including a special screening of the 1933 classic King Kong, there are more than just five reasons to get excited about that silver screen in April…

Poulet en Cocotte is essentially a pot roasted chicken. A traditional French dish, it was produced by the subjects of the good King Henry on a Sunday in the management of the chickens supplied to every household at the time. While it is an exceptionally easy way to cook chicken, the cooking temperatures and timings I discovered in a copy of the wonderful American Cooks Illustrated magazine demand not only a leap of faith but one of intrepid courage on the part of the modern cook. Be assured though, recipes in Cook’s Illustrated are tested and created in America’s Test Kitchen - the site of the popular American cooking show. Articles in the magazine detail how the author came to the final recipe and the trial and error followed to arrive at it. It was with great confidence therefore that I carefully followed Charles Kelsey’s directions recently to produce a wonderfully comforting family meal on a cool Autumnal evening.

As part of the recent Melbourne Food & Wine Festival, a tasting called Return to Terroir was held at Fed Square, where over 60 of the world’s leading biodynamic vintners gathered to pour and talk about their wines. Return to Terroir is an organisation of 176 wine makers that span the globe.

I have written about biodynamics before and it seems to be a wine topic that, without fail, polarizes the crowd. You are either a believer, a practising zealot or you think it is a bunch of hippy shit and the whole lot of them are away with the fairies.

Say what you like about Ricky Ponting, actually don’t; that’s my job. After all, I’m the one with a sports column and you’re not, unless you are, in which case, fuck off and think up your own Demetriou jokes.

Where was I? Ricky Ponting. Never liked him. Sure, he cleaned up his act after that night at Big Bill’s Bottomless Bogan Bourbon and Beefsteak Barry Barn, but there was just something missing from him and the team all through his captaincy. Winning a lot, for one thing. Ha, see what I did there?