Quadrant articles from January 2008

Quadrant archives from January 2008

The election outcome.(Editorial)(Editorial)
January 1, 2008... THE RESULT of the November 24 general election came as no surprise, though the polls if anything turned out rather more accurately than was anticipated. But it seemed pretty much time for a change of government, other things being equal, and...

Altered History.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... SIR: David Kemp's reply (December 2007) to "The Dismal Beginning to the Fraser Years" (July-August 2007) essentially avoids its main thrust. It focuses instead on three incidental matters, and on defending the attitude which his Public Service...

Christians and "Social Justice".(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... SIR: When I saw the title of November's editorial I expected to be outraged when I read it. However, I found myself in agreement with much of what you said. It is the Catholics more than anyone else who engage in the sort of behaviour you were...

Sociobiologists and neuroscientists.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... SIR: Since Brian Coman started the "Quadrant debate over sociobiology" (Letters, November 2007) in the September edition and now compares it to the Iraq war, should one assume that he now regrets something which, like the Iraq war, was begun...

The Lawson misunderstanding.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... SIR: Thank you for Patrick Morgan's timely reading of Henry Lawson's works (November 2007)--and in the same issue for the apt and witty title of Coman and Jones' dingo article, "The Loaded Dog". It has puzzled me that Lawson's fine early...

Dawkins' arguments.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... SIR: Claiming that Professor Dawkins' arguments for atheism are rational, Mike Alder (Letters, November 2007) also makes the farfetched argument that certain communist and other mass murdering regimes were not atheist but religious. He stops...

Qur'anic interpretation.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... SIR: In his article (November 2007) Fr Herman Roborgh outlines, as I understand it, the Farahi-Islahi school of thought's approach to Qur'anic interpretation in relation to Islam as a political movement (one that takes into account historical...

The plight of teachers.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2008... SIR: Peter Ryan's nasty spray against teachers as "traitors" (November 2007), while par for the course these days, should not be allowed to stand unchallenged. It is true that Victorian parents did vote for candidates who "connived in the...

Shelter from the storm: reflections on the "Risk Society".(economic condition and risks)
January 1, 2008... As an economist, it is my duty to talk about costs.--J.B. Brigden RISK IS INHERENT in life because life is inherently uncertain. As Peter Bernstein has put it, uncertainty simply means that more things can happen than will happen--and while...

Anti-Semitism, its origins and prognosis.
January 1, 2008... RECENT NOISES made by the group of "independent Jewish voices in Australia, the UK and Canada, who claim to have been silenced y the Jewish leadership because of their criticism of Israel's policies and the failure to achieve peace, have...

Pantoum on Two Rhymes.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... PANTOUM ON TWO RHYMES The blood in my veins is the blood of kings. If we all had our rights I'd be Duke of Earl With a cut-glass voice and a bat of wings So why did I marry a working girl? If we all had our rights...

Cherry Blossom.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... CHERRY BLOSSOM Blossoms are out on the trees, on the trees at the Medway Maritime Hospital With their elegant shapes and their heady perfumes, they colour the morning air. Springtime has come to the alleys and...

Paris, May 1968.(First Person)(Personal account)
January 1, 2008... As I LAY ASLEEP in Italy... Though not exactly Italy, but Herefordshire. David Wordsworth (a remote descendant of the poet) and I had decided to do some walking in the English countryside, and we agreed on the Golden Valley, partly because he...

Quine's Pine.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... QUINE'S PINE (Quine is the American philosopher Willard Van Quine. It is all explained on the internet.) I want a sloop. A flush-decked, ten-gun sloop, One mast, rigged fore-and-aft, is what I most Desire. But slooplessness...

Escape from Salamaua: a conversation with Ashley Chapman.(History)(Interview)
January 1, 2008... ASHLEY CHAPMAN was one of the few people ever to flee in danger from an invader in Australian territory. He was an oil depot manager on the north coast of New Guinea when the Japanese military arrived. A six-week arduous cross-country trek got...

Lawyer's Holiday.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... LAWYER'S HOLIDAY This is luxury I've never known Outside certain books I've read. Beautiful girls take my clothes off And then take me to my bed. A paradise for a lazy man Who likes a woman's touch. ...

Wattles by Water.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... WATTLES BY WATER i Fishing for redfin with green rods, wattles scatter pollard on a pool. ii The wattle blossom on the slow current--comets with tails of pollen. iii Riverbank wattles--...

Small Hours.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... SMALL HOURS Always the same dream, it pleases me: Narcissus in his favorite sport coat reading his favorite lyric poet, "it is fitting and just," he says adding, "dignus et justum est" because he is a...

Covering reality with gold leaf.(society and Islamic fundamentalism)
January 1, 2008... THERE'S SOMETHING QUAINT about the earliest paintings in Florence's Uffizi Gallery. In these religious paintings, you know who is important because of their relative size. The big people are the important ones. The little ones are less...

Two Ballinas.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Two Ballinas Two Ballinas I have in mind though they are separately pronounced-- the Irish one is "Balli-na". We drove straight through it unannounced. The place was cold with Sunday cars all parked and no one...

Kentish Cousins.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Kentish Cousins Visiting her Kentish cousins, partner's only, not my own, I feel the stories ramify, an unsought gift I have on loan: stories of their vanished parents-- and ten steps even further back I...

Codger.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Codger Suddenly I've been persuaded to buy myself a "codger cap"-- or that is how I think of it. It makes me feel a different chap, the way its says so clearly "English" but of what class I'm not quite sure. ...

Apt Nomenclature.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Apt Nomenclature Do the names of English towns deliver what they seem to mean? A century of economics is summarised in Milton Keynes. And Leighton Buzzard, not far off, is somehow waiting to be fed. One...

Problem.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Problem Horse-floats here in Sweden prompt an overdue analysis. You trail behind them slowly, wondering how it could have come to this. Once, between the shafts, they dragged us cheerily with no great fuss. ...

Pots and Plots.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(poem)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Pots and Plots Flashing by the railway gardens, each family with its little plot, one thinks about them ten flights up and how a cactus in a pot is not enough for those who've left the smells of an ancestral...

Update.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Update Two years later... no, not quite... everything's still going well-- our friends in Stockholm, still together, find that age can't break the spell. With magnifying glass at breakfast he starts her...

Esperanto.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Esperanto Surfacing again each Sunday, whether breakfast's rice or cheese, their parents speak a mother tongue but children use teenagerese, a simple grammar made of grunts, a vocab that contrives to never ...

"Of all the kings of Portugal".(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(poem)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... "Of all the kings of Portugal" Of all the kings of Portugal we've seen the last but one today-- well, not quite him but all his rooms, his bathtub and his queen's bidet. Inside this castle in three styles, each...

Touch-down.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Touch-down At festivals, of course, you hear it, this clapping for an absentee-- the young director in L.A. already on a higher fee. In aviation, it's less common, A pilot's way with physics' laws in...

Horseback.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(poem)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Horseback All those heroes high on horseback fill the European squares. Each country's had its yard of sunshine-- now it's yours and now it's theirs. Generals, ambitious kings re-drew the logic of their maps--...

Catalonia.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Catalonia Only certain cities have it. A street plan may suggest the mood. It's in the fluency of subways and in the flourish of the food. A string of kings has been and gone with sometimes a caudillo, too, ...

La mode francaise.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... La mode francaise We've done it once again, mon Dieu! Yet again we failed to see that we were still in France, alas, and cappuccino had one "p". The girl who smiled her savoir faire as we enquired "Italiano?"...

Ja Ja Si Si.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Ja Ja Si Si The joy of the self-evident... the way they lazily agree from north to south all over Europe, the ja, ja, ja the si, si, si. What is it they agree upon? The sun is up? The weather's fine? Some...

Old Jokes.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Old Jokes "The enemies of agriculture in Russia are precisely four," our Prague friend's saying with a smile as if it were a football score, "Summer, winter, autumn, spring." He apes his hapless commissar. ...

Departures and Arrivals.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(poem)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Departures and Arrivals The vestiges of Vladimir are growing harder to detect: bad PAs, appalling plumbing, boring buildings you suspect must once have housed the local Stasi, apartment blocks in slow decay. ...

Even Children.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Even Children One thing you learn from travel is to be more careful where you're born. It helps to vet your parents and the class and race from which they're drawn. Mistakes made here are serious and take a...

Compare and Contrast.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Compare and Contrast Switzerland's a courtyard garden; Germany's an old estate; Switzerland runs right on time; German trains are sometimes late. Switzerland's a living postcard; Germany does not quite care, ...

The Other Shoe.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... The Other Shoe How is it that the French keyboard requires two key strokes per full stop? You're waiting in a cheap hotel for the other shoe to drop. French sentences habitually are prone to languidly extend ...

Apt Nomenclature.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... Apt Nomenclature It's strange how often all through Europe names don't quite mean what they should; towns say something else in English-- the locals think that Bad is good. Zutphen is a case in point. It ought...

The Curvatures.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... The Curvatures The curvatures, the curvatures... back home we drive 300 Ks, our small car clinging to the tar, upside down to that new day arriving for our friends up north, entering to their different June....

His Arms.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(Poem)
January 1, 2008... HIS ARMS his arms fold over each other left palm firm against the lower right arm right fingers curve loosely across the biceps golden hairs glisten on tanned skin arms that have dug holes for trees posts fences ...

Narcissus in the Ink.(BITS & PIECES (Europe '07))(poem)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... NARCISSUS IN THE INK I took a faddish nonsense And wove a certain charm With words designed to scintillate, postulate, disarm. My lines were splendid nothings, Mere heady repartee: My ink pools weren't for...

Policy debate in the Rudd years.(Kevin Rudd)
January 1, 2008... DESPITE AUSTRALIA remaining one of the world's most prosperous nations, its ability to maintain a high standard of living for all Australians (particularly low-income earners) is being tested. Problems receiving greater attention in recent...

Mushrooms.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... MUSHROOMS Russian novels are full of people gathering them, while wishing they were in the city.

"I'll take the fifth on that": the right to silence and the presumption of innocence.
January 1, 2008... It is not a private citizen 'S duty to prove his innocence, it is the government's to prove his guilt. --Ian Welsh I'VE SELECTED the above quotation because it illustrates in stark form the power differential between the typical...

Sons.(Poems from Lerici)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... SONS "And what will these boys do when we close our eyes for good and they'll have to fetch for themselves?" My mother used to say it to no one in particular, at home, in the shop, wherever she stepped. Not to me,...

Also.(Poems from Lerici)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... ALSO Diu al ghe. S'al gh 'e la figa al ghe. (There is a God. If there's the cunt there is God.) --Cesare Zavattini Against a pile of logs, at La Frediana, you would say, touch me, this body must...

Like An Expert Hand.(Poems from Lerici)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... LIKE AN EXPERT HAND Now that it's evening and the cicadas have stopped, now that the fly has been replaced by the mosquito and there is a slight coolness that makes the air mild, even now it is still your voice that...

In November.(Poems from Lerici)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... IN NOVEMBER It was pleasant to return home at night after a dance or a dinner your head swimming and the eyes on the streetlamps swaddled by midges thick in the mist and the lights of the houses all turned off and...

Of A Love.(Poems from Lerici)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... OF A LOVE It is now winter wherever I look but it's fine up here, we are in my mother's small field and it's dusk. For hours the springtime that you are has been moving around me --all that one can say of a...

Minon.(Poems from Lerici)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... MINON Minon good cat who did not return. When I walk through Montemarcello I see many good-looking cats, but none has your snout and your marmot ways. The roofs that touch the window from which you came in ...

Avian Effects.(Poems from Lerici)(Poem)
January 1, 2008... AVIAN EFFECTS A crow, vivid black-- on the mirror of its back the sky flashes chicory-blue The trees exhale jewelled finches, colouring the wind. That small ember in the tinder grass-- a...

Solving two problems with nuclear power.
January 1, 2008... AS THE SAGA of Australia's federal election moved towards its climax, the strident discourse of political prejudice and petty point scoring threatened to drown out the discussion of matters of real national importance. High on the list of...

Bush Lemons.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... BUSH LEMONS Once there was a vineyard here in green and ordered rows. Now the bleaching grasses bend and nothing fruitful grows except a self-sown lemon tree with leprous, aching boughs, heavy with the...

In Caesar's pocket: the possible inseparability of church and state.
January 1, 2008... APART FROM his being a cardinal, which is pretty daunting, George Pell, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, is a very large man of imposing, if not menacing, presence. He has great intellectual acuity, a good education (DPhil, Oxon), is...

The pen-pusher is mightier than the soldier.(Department of Defence's administration)
January 1, 2008... IF NOTHING ELSE, the report of the Board of Inquiry into the fatal crash of a navy Sea King helicopter in Indonesia in 2005 revealed that the persistent problems in the Defence Department of the past thirty years remain. At the time of the...

What makes a man a hero: the moral life of Friedrich Nietzsche.(Philosophy & Ideas)
January 1, 2008... IT COST HIM TO TRAVEL: one day in the train and three to recuperate. He never visited Paris or London or Brussels, never went west to Madrid or Lisbon. He endorsed Herder's claim that German was Greek, but made no effort to cross the Balkans to...

Blood Memory.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... BLOOD MEMORY On the afternoon I am to meet God, I cannot raise my eyes. Mediocrity wills everything to plastic in the room, even the music on plastic earphones coos insipid sentiment. A vase of fuchsias burns,...

The poetry of romantic and economic man.(Cargoes by John Masefield)
January 1, 2008... JOHN MASEFIELD'S "Cargoes" is a very fine poem, packing an enormous amount of imagery and atmosphere into eighty-seven words. It is clear, vivid and immediate, and has been deservedly enshrined as a classic and repeatedly anthologised: ...

Beachcombing.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... BEACHCOMBING I coveted the pretty ornament. Like a child I wanted the sweet colours, the crimps, the curls. I wanted it for no reason, or for no good reason. I was walking among the detritus when the market closed. ...

That first unpleasant and magnificent poem.(The Iliad)
January 1, 2008... THE ILIAD is an unpleasant poem. For much of its length one intent countenance hacks and jabs at another. Skulls, with a name and provenance casually attached, are split open like so many rockmelons. Spear and sword probe downward past...

A Love of Headaches.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... A LOVE OF HEADACHES Hand in hand we climb the stairs; our bellies full of wine and cheese, each sodden, drunken step disturbs the air. We are ships listing on heavy seas. We dock and crumple to the sheets where...

On interpreting literature.
January 1, 2008... THE CONFLICT OF INTERPRETATION PARTISANS IN THE CONFLICT of interpretation adopt different positions over what literature ought to be studied, and with what comes why and how. There's no claim to objectivity here, which is fine since the...

In what dimension?(Into the Wild and Beowulf)(Movie review)
January 1, 2008... "EYE CANDY, that's what it is. I liked it, but it's eye candy," my young companion I 1 exclaimed as we walked out of the 3-D version of Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis combination of digital animation, an epic poem and, for just about the first time...

Old suburban country gardens.(Poem)
January 1, 2008... OLD SUBURBAN COUNTRY GARDENS They are full of incomplete dreams hedges which have grown too high fallen fences gone to seed dandelion garden tennis courts a mineral not vegetable mangle rusting in peace, its gutta...

Ever-ready Ted.(Story)(Short story)
January 1, 2008... I have always liked the thought of living in Darwin. The leisurely lifestyle, the tropical warmth, the fishing and the people have always appealed to me. So, the last time I was there, I filled a few hours stating into real estate agents'...

Dancing around.(Story)(Evelyn heard a noise out the back)(Short story)
January 1, 2008... Evelyn heard a noise out the back, somewhere in the yard, but couldn't be sure it was their yard. The district nurse had come to shower Ron and she liked to stay in the house when the nurse was here. It wasn't that she didn't trust her, she...

Finding my mother's magic.(Story)(Short story)
January 1, 2008... Cups of tea blew steam into the air and Aunty Flo scratched her chin. She looked at Mum across the kitchen table. Mum sat with her elbows resting on the table and her hands coveting her nose and mouth. Because she didn't sit like that very...

Adventures among the trendies and uglies: the Liberal wars: a cautionary memoir.(The Liberals: The NSW Division 1945--2000)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... The Liberals: The NSW Division 1945--2000, by Ian Hancock; Federation Press, 2007, $49.95. Not the least merit of Ian Hancock s timely examination of the Liberal Party in New South Wales is his balanced treatment of the Liberal Wars--the...

Who won?(Vietnam: The Australian War)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Vietnam." The Australian War, by Paul Ham; HarperCollins, 2007, $55. THIS IS AN EXTREMELY good book. We probably had to wait thirty years for someone to do it, in order for them to be able to read some more of the often damning archives....

Light on the dark ages.(Britain in the Middle Ages: An Archaeological History)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... Britain in the Middle Ages: An Archaeological History, by Francis Pryor; Harper Perennial, 2006, $24.99. IT WAS THE WORST of times--life was said to be nasty, brutish and short. Even the words, such as medieval, let alone dark ages, are...

Wall of misery.(The Berlin Wall: 13 August 1961-9 November 1989)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... The Berlin Wall: 13 August 1961-9 November 1989, by Frederick Taylor; Bloomsbury, 2006, $35. IN THE SUMMER Or 2006 friends of mine, a middle-aged couple from Bautzen, a thousand-year-old city in the Upper Lusatian region of Saxony between...

Hot metal days.(The Argus: Life and Death of a Newspaper)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... The Argus: Life and Death of a Newspaper, edited by Jim Usher; Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2007, $39.95. THERE WAS A JOKE among Melbourne journalists in the 1950s that whenever reporters from the city s morning papers were ushered...

The long schism.(The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited)(Book review)
January 1, 2008... The Jewish-Christian Schism Revisited, by John Howard Yoder; William B. Eerdmans and SCM Press, 2003, US$35. THAT CHRISTIANITY BEGAN as a sect, which gradually separated from Judaism during the second or even third century of the Common...

The art and craft of luncheon.
January 1, 2008... DOCTOR JOHNSON used to say that he regarded a chair in a tavern as the throne of human felicity, and he certainly spent enough time there to know what he was talking about. I understand his view, but I would amend his dictum, and say "a chair...