Quadrant articles from March 2008

Quadrant archives from March 2008

Vale Paddy McGuinness (1938-2008).(In memoriam)
March 1, 2008... We regret to record the death on Australia Day, January 26, 2008, of the editor of Quadrant, Padraic Pearse McGuinness. A former editor of the Australian Financial Review and a columnist on the Australian, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age,...

The Defence bureaucracy.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... SIR: I retired in 2001 after more than thirty years as a Defence Department public servant. During the latter part of my career, I worked in the Force Development and Analysis, Human Resources and Management, and Resources and Financial...

A response to John Stone.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... SIR: John Stone's comment on my address to the National Archives on the 1976 Cabinet Papers and his reply to my response lead me to note the following points for the record: * Stone has not attempted to defend the inaccurate advice which...

Sufism and other confusions.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... SIR: Paul Stenhouse's article "Islam's Trojan Horse?" (December 2007) is deeply felt. He has reservations about the wisdom of the appointment of a Fethullah Gulen Professor of the Study of Islam and Muslim-Catholic Relations (not Islamic...

Early christianity.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... SIR: The article by Michael Giffin, "Writing and Reading the Canons" (June 2007) and his book review of The Jewish-Christian Schism by John Howard Yoder (January-February 2008) have made me wonder whether he has succumbed to the modem literary...

The sword and the cross.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... SIR: Roger Sandall (December 2007) takes his slipper to Roger Scruton, who, he says, has contributed "to the confused and inadequate response to [Islam's] murderous depredations by an all-too-accommodating Western Christian host". Scruton's...

Educating doctors.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... SIR: John Woolcock's article (July-August 2007) decrying the elimination of lectures at the University of Queensland medical school in 2008 reminded me of my own training at the University of Cape Town medical school in the early sixties. ...

Our greatest prime minister.(How Good Was Howard?)
March 1, 2008... This is the first in a series of articles that will critically appraise the eleven and a half years of the government of John Howard. The intention of the series is both to look back on the Howard era and assess its place in history, and to...

The follies bizarre: Australia's political theatre.
March 1, 2008... THE HERO of a Stephen Sewell play, and clearly his creator's alter ego, says: "People change. I still hate the cunts, but I guess I just don't think killing them is the right answer any more." The victims of the character's loathing are...

Eucalypts in Exile.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... EUCALYPTS IN EXILE They've had so many jobs: boiling African porridge. Being printed on. Paving Paris, flying in her revolutions. Supporting a stork's nest in Spain. Their suits are neater abroad, of denser...

The struggle to keep faith in the Blake Prize.(appreciating religious painting)
March 1, 2008... IN A MODERN WORLD overwhelmed by secular pursuits, few now pay much attention to the way in which religious imagery manifests itself on canvas. It was a different story in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, when the church depended on mosaics,...

Green Fire.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... GREEN FIRE Parroting the music of greed, lorikeets-- flying billboards for colour--prove once again pigs can fly. At least in the flowering season: lorikeets, for their needy reasons, descend from the sky like...

Adrift in a perilous kingdom: Christopher Koch's The Memory Room.
March 1, 2008... Few of us consciously make contact with that sub-world of espionage which is the myth kingdom of our century. Thus MUSES THE NARRATOR, Cookie, in Christopher Koch's earlier novel The Year of Living Dangerously. Spies, and their secrets,...

Strangers in their own country: A diary of hope.(education)
March 1, 2008... DAY ONE WE ARE EXPECTING Charlotte and Margaret to begin a ten-week educational marathon. To what extent can they catch up? I met Charlotte s mother, three years ago, when she was making a rare visit to Sydney from a very remote...

Family Portrait.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... FAMILY PORTRAIT for Anna All my life I've lived with the photograph my mother took with her when she left the Ukraine and travelled to Germany before the outbreak of World War II-- hanging, today, in an...

The classroom lottery.(teacher-student relations)
March 1, 2008... "ANDREW BOVELL--who's he?" This was a Year 12 English teacher's response to a student after reading this name in the opening of her essay on the Australian film Lantana, his corrections having included two question marks above this apparently...

Mosquito Meditations.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... MOSQUITO MEDITATIONS 1. Koan The mosquito whines at me once more. Very well, I will instruct you, small one. Come, meditate on the sound of one hand slapping. 2. Altered State Having heard it...

Heat.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... HEAT You think I would be untrue, you think I would be a liar, if I were to say to you that your swimming pool is on fire. But it actually and factually is. In flames like a burning tyre, incandescent like...

My First Lithium.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... MY FIRST LITHIUM I was twenty-one, and high and mighty. I stomped to my psychiatrist, angry. I took a seat, felt better, turned mellow. I went in, happy as a child in snow. Then I asked him for an arm wrestle, ...

Turkish Dessert.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... Turkish Dessert In Beatrix Potter's nursery luncheon was always the same. Grilled cutlet and rice pudding was the name of the game. Curious then to see so far from Peter Rabbit and Tom Kitten that in...

Bread without Butter.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... Bread without Butter From a small country diner (this is a true story) Bread with Butter $1.00 Bread with Marjerin $.90 Bread without Butter $.60 Bread without Marjerin $.50

The mad rush to decarbonise: Ross Garnaut's unmeetable challenge.
March 1, 2008... IN 1759 SAMUEL JOHNSON wrote Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, a tale of three young people who had grown up in royal seclusion, but who escaped in order to experience what the wider world had to offer. They were Rasselas, the prince, Princess...

The new relevance of David Stove's critique of Darwinism.
March 1, 2008... IN THE Victorian Readers Eighth Book, nestled between "The Lady of Shalott" and "The Passing of Arthur", is Charles Lamb's story "The Origin of Roast Pork". The "great, lubberly boy", Bo-bo, is playing with fire under the house and...

Clean Sweep.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... CLEAN SWEEP Swept skies, wind brushed down trees-- The gust of swift strokes passes Through grasses teased and combed. Who owns the fallen leaves? No one's neighbour does. On an edge that is a balcony...

Morning Star.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... MORNING STAR i.m. Michael Corry Woken neither by sound nor light he leaves the house and stands outside to look at the Morning Star-- drawn by an impulse he doesn't understand but responds to, step by step....

Losing it: a conversation with Joe Hockey.(Interview)
March 1, 2008... JOE HOCKEY, a thirty-year-old lawyer and club fast bowler of burly rather than fashionable beanpole build, was elected to federal parliament as the Liberal member for North Sydney in 1996, when the Coalition won its first election in thirteen...

The Turtle Comes up for Air.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... THE TURTLE COMES UP FOR AIR every few minutes it stretches its neck extends its ancient head from its shell breaks through the surface like my son's penis as he lies in the bath when I look, he withdraws under the...

Letter to William Carlos Williams.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... LETTER TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS Dr Williams, you wrote on prescription pads the poetry rose from the droves of people who poured past your eyes and my eyes are raging with tears of frustration as she and he and they...

The future of Easter in a secular society.(Religion)
March 1, 2008... HOLY DAYS AND HOLIDAYS IT IS NOT SURPRISING that in Australia the two major Christian holy days--Christmas and Easter--are also the major national holidays. After all, Christianity has influenced a great deal of Australian private life and...

Potatoes.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... POTATOES The cutting edge of the potato peeler slid under the rim of the potato's skin and as I turned the lumpy vegetable with my opposite hand the raw smell breathed deep inside my lungs. It had an earthiness...

Zinnias.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... ZINNIAS O fiercely classical rectitude, brazen offerings on puritanical stems, rippled plates of delight on righteous pedestals, Biblical as in the Song of Songs, I honour you. ...

Indicting liberal democracy for genocide.
March 1, 2008... AS CONTEMPORARY EVENTS in Darfur and Kenya illustrate, it seems that genocide and genocidal violence are now a constant presence in global politics. Academically, this is reflected in the work of various centres of genocide studies, such...

The coup of 1808 and the rule of law.
March 1, 2008... AUSTRALIA DAY this year marks the bicentenary of the only military coup in Australian history. Popularly, but inaccurately, known as the "Rum Rebellion", the Coup of 1808 played a crucial role in establishing a firm foundation for the rule of...

Stranger.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... STRANGER I. On the bus, she caught my eye and blushed: maples in autumn sky. II. Winter blew them clear, but one leaf clings, like here to there.

Sound.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... SOUND In the darkness lifting a piece of kindling from the woodpile-- that appalling sticky sound of a redback's web tearing.

New Lilies.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... NEW LILIES i Do they feel safer, the goldfish, now the pond is shielded by lilies? ii Fish float under the lily-pads... if only frogs sat on top! iii Coming in to land on...

Reconciliation, Tasmanian style: the neglect of Risdon Cove.
March 1, 2008... THE SITE AT RISDON COVE, across the Derwent River from Hobart's northern suburbs, has a very long history. For the British, settlement began in September 1803, when a young man, Lieutenant John Bowen RN, led a party of forty-eight made up...

Stone.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... STONE Great-grandma Madigan had the wit to run from Clare-- from potato blight and sodden rain and charity cold as Celtic bogs. Crossing the seas to a place of vines where Irish girls could make a start, she...

Blackcurrants.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... BLACKCURRANTS walking to the Farmers' market was like dawdling two miles to school when we were small the sun singing lightly over the road and grass our talk jumping from bikes to blue scabious plucking rosehips...

Road Train.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... ROAD TRAIN the driver says for your convenience there is a toilet at the rear of the coach that is not operational and when we reach the burnt plain sit back and enjoy the Monaro Scenery despite air conditioning...

The poet of sudden cloudbreak: a commentary on Thomas Traherne.
March 1, 2008... Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. --Einstein THE POEMS of Thomas Traherne (1637-74), Anglican parson, mystic and enthusiast, present unlikely substance in our era of the God Delusion. In the more...

The Christian resonances of modern epic.
March 1, 2008... The phenomenal and enduring world-wide success of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Harry Potter tells us something which many cultural commentators may be missing. Let us look at part of what these tales have in common. In each of them...

Finishing Up.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... FINISHING UP Nightfall... and I am still here in the school at the prison farm. My children will be at the table, filling their mouths with food and chatter. And the littlest one will be asking her mother,...

Creation of the Birds.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... CREATION OF THE BIRDS after the painting by Remedios Varo I paint birds from starlight. The harder my art, the stronger their wings-- solar or lunar feathered, iris-barbed. The ultrasonic syrinx, drawn from my...

Hieroglyph Moth.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... HIEROGLYPH MOTH When the white ermine wings opened at night like a book of frost smoking in the dark, I understood the colours of vowels painted on moth fur-- the black, red, saffron signs of a...

Creation of the Trees.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... CREATION OF THE TREES after the painting "Harmony" by Remedios Varo I set the musical stave on my desk, strung notes on its metal wires, using fossils, shells, prisms, as quavers and semiquavers, trying to make music...

The genres are rising.(movie genres)
March 1, 2008... THERE IS NOTHING film-makers find more comfortable than working in a traditional genre. They know, or think they know, that the form, whether it is a gangster movie, western, musical, epic or whatever, has already been accepted by the audience....

Prayers Flags.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... PRAYERS FLAGS I left the store with Kleenex and a Snickers bar. The girl behind the counter said, "Enjoy your afternoon"; I said, "You too" and walking home I asked myself what I could do, if anything, to reel...

Salvation.(Short story)
March 1, 2008... Today was his fiftieth birthday and it was very hot, as it usually was on 24th June in London. As he walked down the six flights of stairs from his flat, he could feel his shirt beginning to stick to his back under his lightweight jacket,...

Career Information Night.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... CAREER INFORMATION NIGHT an academic is academic an architect builds himself up an astronomer is starry-eyed a baker rises every morning a butcher cuts up corpses a chef is a man on heat an electrician is a...

The rectilinear man.(Short story)
March 1, 2008... "Can we go and see my mum this weekend?" David glanced up from his Saturday morning newspaper. He and Sandra sat together on the balcony of their apartment, two coffees on a small table between them. Sandra gazed at her husband,...

Beachcombing.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... BEACHCOMBING A leafy seadragon washed ashore in the storm. I pick it up, stare at its miniature horse-head drawn into a long snout ending in "O". So sad, that little mouth! O! And yet as I walk...

The age of the spin-doctors: blair or blair?(Andrew Marr and British history)
March 1, 2008... HERE IS ANDREW MARR'S legend of British history since the Second World War. There have been two true leaders--Clement Attlee and Margaret Thatcher. They radically changed the United Kingdom. The others (Macmillan, Heath, Major among the Tories...

Religion resurgent.(The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, by Philip Jenkins; Oxford University Press, 2007 (revised edition), $32.95. WHAT IS THE MOST successful social movement of the twentieth century? Which religion has the most new...

It's a wonderful universe.(The Shape of Space)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... The Shape of Space, by Jeffrey R. Weeks; Marcel Dekker, 2002 (second edition), $45. I recall in the dim distant past playing the then new computer shoot-em-up games, where you had to navigate a spaceship on a computer screen by pressing...

A Summer Morning, Sydney.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... A SUMMER MORNING, SYDNEY Opening the bathroom window, I can see across the alleyway, secretly, this young woman on the edge of her bed. Like a stretch of sand damply bared by flourishing foam,...

Australia under attack.(Max Hastings' Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45)
March 1, 2008... FOR YEARS, Max Hastings has personified the red-blooded, macho, up-front-with-the-troops British war correspondent. I occasionally wondered whether he might have rubbed a bit too closely against Ernest Hemingway, transplanting a few tufts of...