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Hi, I'm David Brewster - welcome to my website and blog. I'm a freelance writer and copywriter able to assist you with your writing needs, whether for print or the web. I bring a strong background in business to my work. I'm based in Melbourne, Australia. Check the Services page for more details. Otherwise, please enjoy reading my articles. And please subscribe by RSS or email to receive future articles as they are published.

Like Senator Steve Fielding, I am a lapsed engineer. Like Steve, I have attempted to understand the science of climate change. Unlike Steve, I eventually understood that the task is beyond ordinary mortals. In fact it is even beyond the intellect of a single engineer. I realised that we should be leaving it to the experts with the broadest possible exposure to the issue.

For a while late last year, I spent many hours trying to draw my own conclusions about climate change. I grazed on books, chewed through reports and fed on the ever-expanding harvest of internet articles. I even snacked on the rants of blog commenters with names like “treeman” and “thingadonta” and “havequestions”. I was careful to keep my diet balanced, ensuring that I was consuming equally from the tables of both the believers and the sceptics.

But it was all to no avail. [click to continue…]

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A review of ‘The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work’ by Alain de Botton; ISBN 9780241143537

Ever had that sinking feeling of seeing something that you invented in your mind becoming a huge commercial success … for someone else? As a writer, that’s the same feeling I had when I read The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. This is the book I wish I’d written.

Most of us spend a healthy slice of our lives working. We spend additional time thinking about work, but these thoughts are generally focused on the job at hand. We think through an upcoming meeting, worry about a deadline or scheme about our next job change.

Much less often do we think about the wider connection of our work to our community. Rarely, if ever, do we think about the extent to which others’ work impacts on, and is essential to, our way of life. [click to continue…]

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Do we Expect too Much of our Politicians?

Like my father, I like to converse with the television. Every time a politician talks out at me from the box, I can’t resist the urge to talk back. If I were to read a headline like the one on this post, I would probably head straight for the comments box and launch into a tirade against the average parliamentary representative. As a rule, politicians are self-absorbed, narcissistic egomaniacs … or is there another side to this story?

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Obama’s Cairo Speech Dissected: The Power of Language

So Barack Obama has made another inspirational speech. This is hardly remarkable: we’ve known for some time that Obama makes George W. look like a performing seal, and an inarticulate one at that. Yet even in this context Obama’s speech in Cairo was remarkable. In less than 6000 words he was able to strip bare [...]

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Experts Agree – or Do They?

The expert is the shaman of our time. The expert offers a guiding arm, steering us through bustling and confusing crowds of information. Experts help us understand complex issues. Experts teach us. Experts help us make choices. Experts help us solve problems. But can we rely on them?

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Avoiding Murder on the Internet: Making Writing Worthwhile

Yep. Nup. Nothin’. No one. Sort of. Dunno. Nowhere. Good. That’s about the extent of it. Your average teenager’s vocabulary as captured cleverly by songwriter Peter Denahy in his song Sort of Dunno Nothin’.
Parents all over the world bemoan their offsprings’ metamorphosis from bubbly, verbose toddler to mumbly inarticulate teen. Yet it is a mistake [...]

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Why Budgets are Dangerous

In the last week or so, the International Monetary Fund released another of its major economic outlook statements. Business and financial media all over the world earnestly pored over the numbers as if the future had been foretold by some all-knowing wizard. The strong sense was that, with this new-found certainty, decisions could finally be [...]

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Tweeting out around the World: discovering Twitter

What’s a bandwagon if not for jumping on? So it is that I’ve found myself quite regularly tweeting, retweeting and even twooshing over the last few weeks. So it is that I find myself joining nearly every magazine and newspaper in the Western world and writing about the newest kid on the internet block: Twitter.
What’s [...]

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When Disaster Strikes Close to Home

We are all used to disasters. Modern communications bring images of disaster from all over the world, directly to our living rooms, as they happen. You would think this relentless exposure to the cruelty of both man and nature would prepare us for when disaster strikes close to home. It doesn’t.
Saturday, February 7, 2009 was [...]

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Inspiration from a Clown and a President

The night before Barack Obama’s inauguration we watched the 1998 movie ‘Patch Adams‘. It turns out that Patch has a bit in common with Mr Obama. Both can provide us with inspiration for dealing with challenging times and for getting more life out of life.
Patch Adams is an American doctor who believes, literally, that laughter [...]

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