At the time I thought Justene was an expert in cool; she had experimented already with cocaine and other drugs for a couple of months now, lost her virginity at thirteen, and threw the best parties. She had a big mouth and everyone but her parents knew of her after school activities. There we were, the four of us, huddled around the island in her kitchen where an eight ball of coke lay. At that age, Justene defied all authority and found drugs the ultimate blow in the silent war against her abusive father. Isaac was simply too stupid not to do drugs; he thought nothing of it because he thought nothing of everything. Shauna was a smart goody girl but followed me like a sheep; she followed me off a cliff of destruction.

"Take a hit fool," Justene urged. She spooned out and cut out my first line, looked at me, laughed, mumbled "lightweight," and cut it in half. I, on the other hand, did drugs to feel alive.

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I've always viewed the war in Iraq in a positive, liberal light: the defeat of authoritarianism, the extension of democracy. Of course, that makes me a very minor liberal voice in contemporary Western discussions. However, I realize something: my POV is not going away in the left, it is in fact growing.

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About a year and a half ago, I quit my day job as a programmer and started burning through my savings (and at the end, borrowing money from family) in a quest to work for myself by making my own websites.

15 months later, I have one fairly successful website, a half-dozen or so failed websites, a bunch of debt, ruined credit and I'm back working for the man. For all you would-be webmasters out there, here's my $25,000 dollar lesson:

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An agitated passenger was shot this week in Miami for disobeying a police order and allegedly threatening a bomb. Why is no-one upset? Are we that fearful of security that both liberty and humanity must be sacrified?

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I live in Sydney. Yesterday a friend who lives overseas emailed me to ask what was going on. This was my reply.

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But Cronulla and the Sutherland Shire are struggling to remain in their white-bread time warp.

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The Canadian Government's Department of Public Works has recently announced a change to their hiring policy - a change that would ensure that only women or visible minorities are given new jobs in that department. The change has given rise to accusations of racism, especially coming from a government that has described itself as "colour blind". The Deputy Minister of Public Works, David Marshall, has ordered the new policy to be put into place for the next five months, at which time it will be reviewed.

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Regions of the world often exist in states of uneasy peace. As with a super saturated solution, a seemingly innocuous event can serve as the catalyst for a violent reaction. Scratch the glass and stunning things will ensue.

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All right, pop quiz. Guatemala City. Nerd with boring job. Social order is deteriorating; you're almost at your wit's end. What do you do? What do you do?

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Surprisingly the answer to the second question is "Yes" but we need to work up to that more slowly.

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George A Romero's Dead trilogy - Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead - were low-budget, low-production value gore-fests dismissed by critics but loved by horror fans. Over the years they wormed their way into popular consciousness and have been re-evaluated, elevated from exploitation B-movies to savage satires on modern American society. With the recent release of sequel Land of the Dead, now is a good time to look back at Romero's films and their cultural impact.

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