Quadrant articles from May 2003

Quadrant archives from May 2003

Gloating and biased journalism. .(Iraqi war and U.S. occupation)(Editorial)
May 1, 2003... GLOATING SEEMS to have become one of the most used words in discussion of the Iraqi war. From the beginning ABC commentators and others who were against the war have been accused, with some justification, of gloating over every apparent reverse...

Sunshine, not tears. .(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... SIR: Michael Casey ("Solving the Problem of Meaninglessness", March 2003) gives us his grim and pessimistic view of the consequences of a world without meaning. I suggest he study a bit of anthropology, history and statistics to cheer up. His...

History and the movies.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... SIR: In "Questions of History" (January-February 2003), Neil McDonald is right to point out that Saving Private Ryan is a bit out of whack with historical reality. When Steven Spielberg is doing serious, non-Indiana-Jones drama, he nearly...

Darwinism and science.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... SIR: Ms Teichman's analysis of Darwinism (March 2003) was unpersuasive and misplaced. Her understanding of contemporary Darwinism was inadequate and her argument dogmatic: "evolution is quite compatible with creationism". As with all dogmatic...

Any time soon.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... SIR: I found Dr Robert Solomon's article (April 2003) timely. Did he miss "any time soon" as an example of yet another American phrase that has replaced a word? I wonder if this lengthening of words to phrases is a way of keeping the...

Strehlow and the Aborigines.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... SIR: I find it difficult to understand why many of those who write about the life of Professor T.G.H. Strehlow prefer to concentrate on what they refer to as the negative aspects of his life instead of the common sense he put forward regarding...

Who's afraid of the Brave New World? (Bioethics).
May 1, 2003... THE BIOETHICIST Leon R. Kass, who has been one of the most persistent opponents of human cloning, argues that we must ban it totally as a tactical step to head off the emergence of a truly horrible society something like that depicted in Aldous...

The reluctant Pacific nation: policy taboos, popular amnesia and political failure. (The Pacific).
May 1, 2003... OVER THE PREVIOUS two centuries, Australia went out into the South Pacific as biblebashers and blackbirders; as carpetbaggers, captains and canegrowers. We sailed and traded and built and searched for gold and souls. And, of course, we sought...

The Kyoto Protocol's statistical fallacies. (Environment).
May 1, 2003... About 300 years ago, a Flat Earth Society was founded by those who did not believe the world was round. That society still exists; it probably has about a dozen members. --Dr R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, when asked on February 20...

The House Left in English.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... THE HOUSE LEFT IN ENGLISH The house has stopped its desperate travelling. It won't fly to New Orleans, or to Hungary again though it counts, and swears, in Magyar. It is left in English with its life suspended, ...

The Pleasures of Apartment Life.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... THE PLEASURES OF APARTMENT LIFE 1. The pleasures of apartment life do not include romance. We do not talk among ourselves; there might just be the chance that one might prove presumptuous and drop in...

Flexibility.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... FLEXIBILITY Trying to achieve the same neck-flexibility as the watching hens, the old woman twists to inspect the soles of the shoes she's wearing.

Inadvertent Things.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... INADVERTENT THINGS Could it be, even though they look like happenstance, inadvertent things are signs of Benevolence-- less than fate but more than chance?

The numinous and the narrow: Java and the Islamists. (Asia).
May 1, 2003... May 1995, Candi Ceto, Central Java: We walk up the terraces of this beautiful temple complex, high in the misty, green hills behind the great Javanese city of Solo. We are alone with our friends; the crowds of the lowlands are nowhere to be...

New England Farmer.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... NEW ENGLAND FARMER Often he would catch me by surprise--the way he'd appear in the distance and casually walk across the paddocks, his dog beside him or at his heels-- after I'd arrive at work, and say,...

Roses.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... ROSES My mother grew roses whose names belonged to a different era-- Apollo, Montezuma, Mr Lincoln, whose petals and whorls gave off such reflections you'd shield your eyes in mid-summer as you...

Why I am a relativist. (Philosophy & Ideas).(Transcript)
May 1, 2003... WHEN JESUS CHRIST was brought before Pontius Pilate, He said that He had come into the world to give testimony to the Truth. Pilate replied with the now famous question, "What is truth?", and as Francis Bacon pointed out, the Roman governor did...

An enthusiasm for John O'Hara. (Devine).(Biography)
May 1, 2003... PETER MICHELMORE, an old friend--and to give him his deserved independence, old in his own right--touched me recently by remembering the reason why, countless years ago, I went on a driving holiday through the coal country of Pennsylvania. It...

Bondi 1938-42, or, oy, how I didn't suffer. (First Person).(recollections of a young Jewish refugee)
May 1, 2003... I ARRIVED in Bondi in April 1938 from Vienna. I was eight years old and the only thing I could say in English following my father's unsuccessful attempts to teach me more from a book was, "You turn on the tap to get hot water." Not very...

The Test.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... THE TEST How good is their best? and how good is their rest? The first is a question to be asked of an artist. Both are the questions to be asked of a culture.

Keys.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... KEYS He slammed the car door and realised, peering in, knowing he had committed a breach, at his keys dangling behind the steering wheel, stranded like memory beyond reach, he was locked out. He had been scheming to ...

The failure of aboriginal segregation. (Society).
May 1, 2003... SINCE MY RETIREMENT from active participation in political life, during which I was Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in 1971-72, I have continued my involvement with Aboriginal policy issues. Most recently, that has included several visits to...

Worth the lifting and stacking: further thoughts on James McAuley. (Literature).(Biography)
May 1, 2003... I HOPE that this paper supplements the article by Geoffrey Lehmann in the December Quadrant and contributes to a further appraisal. The difficulty of an agreed appraisal is illustrated in the two recent biographies, Michael Ackland's Damaged...

Roads to perdition. (Film).(Movie Review)
May 1, 2003... THE OUTBREAK OF WAR made the seventy-fifth Academy Awards the most fascinating in living memory. Stars like Susan Sarandon (slated as a presenter), Martin Sheen and Barbara Streisand had all risked their careers to denounce the war, and many of...

Afternoon Rain.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... AFTERNOON RAIN Rain fell lightly in the afternoon, barely leaving the roadways wet on the drive home-- but damp enough for kilometres of bitumen and concrete to be covered with patterns like maps in an atlas...

The Dead.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... THE DEAD The dead have families living who lack something that the dead have: unconcern for family, and for sadness, traffic noise, and fear of being unemployed: all that's our business. Full of...

The Flying Bed.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... THE FLYING BED after Frida Kahlo After the third miscarriage what else could I do but erect the bed-easel and paint so furiously my bed levitated out of the Henry Ford hospital into the region of...

Still Life.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... STILL LIFE after Frida Kahlo The sun and the moon have shrunk to the size of an orange and a pomegranate. They hover above my yellow table daring me to taste them.

The beast out there.(Excerpt)
May 1, 2003... Some lead a life of mild content... --Saki Around me as I flew the evening sky of Wunderland was full of light. Alpha Centauri B, so brilliant in its time as to cast its own sharp shadows at dusk and to fill the air with colour, yet...

The journeyman.(Fictional Work)
May 1, 2003... There is a place deep within the Mornington Peninsula hinterland, a place shrouded in mystery and intrigue, a place where, as a child, I used to hide from the big bad world. To get there you had to follow specific instructions--turn left at the...

What Women Want.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... WHAT WOMEN WANT There is something about the act of feeding-- two needs reach out, intersect with a soundless click. It's why centuries of Christian art showing us giving the breast to babies never palled, why...

Three Haiku.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... THREE HAIKU crumbs around my coffee-- no one going by stops going by in the dead of night-my thoughts turned to my next breath farewell party-- the sweetness of the cake hard to swallow

Spiral.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... SPIRAL At the top the end of the circular climb rests the ultimate Bodhisattva a life-sized sandstone head Large pendulous ears-- his sculptor knew the way of old men's ears-- they just keep growing-- ...

"Ovid's Love Nest Found by Banks of the Tiber".(Poem)
May 1, 2003... "OVID'S LOVE NEST FOUND BY BANKS OF THE TIBER" --Sunday Times Under three meters of clay, walls and an in-floor mosaic, of Dionysus, perhaps? White-flecked beard and laurel crown, carrying a flowering, beribboned...

Radius.(Poem)
May 1, 2003... RADIUS The slight thinning of the upper limb before decision of knot and twigs The place where eye and skeleton first meet to argue over the lumpen end of adolescent radius The embarrassment of a growth...

Twopence coloured.(Philosophers' Hobbies and Other Essays)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Philosophers 'Hobbies and Other Essays, by Jenny Teichman, illustrated by Michael Jorgensen; Black Jack Press, 2003, $22. SHE'S A ONE-OFF, this Jenny Teichman. One minute she's discussing Aristotle's doctrine of the soul. The next, she's...

A bigotry of their own.(Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture, by Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young; McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002, $52.95. This book has already been vindicated in Australia. It was the subject of a...

New democracy or old shambles?(The War over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... The War over Iraq: Saddam's Tyranny and America's Mission, by Lawrence F. Kaplan and William Kristol; Encounter Books, 2003, $54.25. AT THE TIME of writing, we have reached the end point of a short, successful, but unnecessary war to...

Alive to the otherworld.(Exemplary Damages)(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... Exemplary Damages, by Dennis O'Driscoll; Anvil Press Poetry, 2002, about $24. DENNIS O'DRISCOLL is one of the reasons we can continue to believe in contemporary poetry. His lucid, uncompromising, profound yet playful intelligence looks...

Defending the unprepared. (Ryan).
May 1, 2003... WHEN AUSTRALIANS really get stuck into fighting a war, few nations do it better. The valour and effectiveness of our fighting men are acknowledged, and most acknowledged where it matters most--by their enemies who meet them on the battlefield....