Dissent
Are US conservatives the new defenders of free speech?
Trans dilemmas
On Covid protesting
Speak up or keep quiet? Your options for everyday dissent
O beautiful for polluted skies: a Wyoming story
A singer and a crooked lawyer
Layers of corruption: multinationals and states
Western civilisation: what about it?
The glyphosate chronicles: pesticides and power
What’s the story with Ramsay? Debate over Western civilisation degree
An HIV mystery in Africa
Supply and demand: think again about economic theory
A disastrous quest for justice: the story of Michael Spautz
Academic dissidents: be prepared for reprisals – and more
When activists attack scientific dissent
An orchestrated attack on a PhD thesis
Learning from Snowden: insights for whistleblowers
An online mobbing: academic freedom under threat
Whistleblowing and loyalty: insights from moral foundations
Skills and personal development
Future sports: the mental frontier
Non-starters: on failed initiatives
Is age just a number?
Can you focus as well as you’d like?
Tiny habits for writing
The voice in your head: dealing with chatter
At your best: Dan Cable’s method
Be confident – but not too confident
Indexing your book
Natural talent and beyond
The value of asking
On being successful
Write, write, write: learning from Boice, Gray and Jensen
Doing your best under pressure
Scholarship and the academic game: on grants and publications
To do your best work, focus
Stress: how it can be good for you
The advantages of negative emotions
Mathematics: essential learning?
Daily data: be sceptical
Older body, youthful mind
A title for your article: on choosing titles
Stick with it: develop grit for success
Practise, and keep practising (for expert performance)
Think freakier
Marking blind: fairer marking of essays
Learning: how to do it better (and write better too)
Rapid learning the Josh Kaufman way
Marking essays: making it easier and more fun
War, peace, nonviolent action
Genocide reflections
The technology of occupation: Israeli contributions
The narrow corridors of US power: responding to genocide
Defending Ukraine: an untried option
Prophetic witness against the war machine
Understanding global conflict: insights from Paul Rogers
Building activism: insights from Hahrie Hahn
Assassination, Inc.: on drone killings
Was 9/11 really so special?
One-eyed in the sky: Eye in the Sky double standards
The politics of American Sniper
Military research dilemmas: does military corruption matter?
Understanding protest: reading James Jasper
Learning from dictators
Health
A Covid cure? The war on ivermectin
A message from the Turtles: review of a vaccine critique
Who’s afraid of The Real Anthony Fauci?
Understanding resistance to vaccination
Making a vaccine in record time
On not making up your mind (about Covid)
Why you should get moving
The virus and the economy
Vaccination debates: the corona connection
Virus debates, stimulated by Covid-19
Ageing: how to do it better
Vaccination in perspective
Opiate addiction in a market economy
The surgical sugar pill: surgery as placebo
A different kind of evolution: who decides about synthetic biology
Healing via the brain: Norman Doidge on neuroplasticity
The daily fix: caffeine and its problems
A prostate story: should you be tested for cancer?
Vaccination passions: insights from moral foundations
Pharmacrime and what to do about it
Personal dynamics
The doubling danger
Where is the real you? Creating the self
Reputations under attack: a six-part series
Thinking about death
When you’re in the news
Painful routes to happiness
Happiness and buying a house in Sydney
Leadership and its discontents
Addicted to the screen? On behavioural addictions
Understanding minds
Are you lucky? Success and luck
Subtle prejudice
What’s on your mind? How we (mis)understand others
Dealing with information overload
Narcissism on the rise: Anne Manne tells
Dealing with shaming the Jon Ronson way
Feeling good when others suffer: schadenfreude
The benefits of face-to-face interaction
Bad behaviour in disasters
Social dynamics
An X account takeover
Corruptions of power?
Deepfakes: an introduction
US fascism? Lessons from Bertram Gross
Controlling our thoughts and actions: body language
In praise of scholarly values
Anonymous authorship
What is university research for?
Conspiracies are everywhere!
The watched versus the watchers: on surveillance
Humans: reconciling bad and good?
A Greta story (on Greta Thunberg)
Judges and sexual harassment
Using bad’s power for good
Wollongong: horror behind the scenes
A cult of smartness: implications for education
Truth versus bullshit: on fake news
Trusting people and machines
Snowflake journalists: PC peculiarities
The perils of measurement
Is US politics a lost cause: Thomas Frank’s Listen, Liberal
A tale of two steel towns: Gary, Indiana, and Wollongong
Boldly promoting alternatives, including giving money to the poor
Questioning a Trump-making system
Your attention please! Media, advertising and propaganda
Mathematical models: the toxic variety
Learning from failure
Preventing catastrophe
The rise and decline of Illawarra Citizen Advocacy
Online harassment
If not elections, what else?
Online and objectionable?
The well-dressed anarchist
The story-editing solution: social interventions that work
We’re being analysed: insights from social media
News, fast and slow
Politics and morals
Open access dilemmas
From selling politicians to promoting deliberation
About Brian
I’m emeritus professor of social sciences at the University of Wollongong. I’ve written 23 books and hundreds of articles on nonviolence, dissent, scientific controversies, democracy, information issues, education and other topics. See http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/ for copies of all of them.
I’m also vice president of Whistleblowers Australia and host a large website on suppression of dissent.
The posts here are shorter commentaries on health, dissent, education, happiness, scientific controversies, self-development and other topics. Many are based on books I’ve read.
If you have suggestions of any sort, on the site or topics you’d like me to cover, please let me know. Send feedback to bmartin@uow.edu.au
The precursor to this page is my “comments to colleagues”, http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/comments/.
Brian Martin