Quadrant articles from May 2007

Quadrant archives from May 2007

Unions and industrial relations in the new era.(Editorial)
May 1, 2007... WHAT IS HAPPENING to trade unions and the workforce? Certainly we know that union membership is continuing to decline--that is hard evidence derived from the Australian Bureau of Statistics labour force survey. But it also seems on the less...

The history summit.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... SIR: I was interested to read John Hirst's response (April 2007) to Keith Windschuttle's Latham Lecture (January-February 2007). As a good historian Dr Hirst would want me to correct some significant errors in his letter. These are as follows....

Historians and slavery.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... SIR: I enjoyed reading Keith Windschuttle's "Abolition of the Slave Trade: The Australian Connection" (April 2007), but I do wish Mr Windschuttle would conserve some of his ammunition for more serious targets. The article reminds me of the late...

The Sydney Anglicans.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... SIR: Quadrant is highly valued and admired by its readership. It is a journal with a sound record of insightful comment that can usually be relied upon to avoid the biases of the left-wing commentariat. Each issue of your journal finds its way...

Science and religion.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... SIR: In your March editorial you say, "Those who like to speculate that there are avenues to knowledge other than those offered by science are having themselves on... [though] this does not stop the many prattlers on the ABC who talk about the...

Orwell and the intelligentsia.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... SIR: Thank you for locating the source of George Orwell's observation that: "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool" (letters, March 2007). It resembles Cicero's comment: "There...

Galton on stage.(Letter to the editor)
May 1, 2007... SIR: For those tantalised by Roger Sandall's reference to Brian Lipson's performance as Sir Francis Galton in A Large Attendance in the Antechamber (March 2007), Malthouse Theatre will be re-presenting the production this November. Details can...

The true Genesis of amnesty international.(History)
May 1, 2007... THE HIGH TIDE of the Cold War concealed vastly more than fanciful antics by KGB agents, and it is unlikely that we will ever know how many quiet initiatives originally designed to divide, influence, distract or, ultimately, to overcome...

Redskins, high hats and blackfellas.(History)(Mayflower: A Voyage to War)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... WHEN THE NATIVE AMERICANS (Indians) first came into contact with the English in Puritan New England in the seventeenth century they were awed and amazed by the things the Europeans had brought with them". Whether it was an iron plough, a musket...

Was David Hicks indoctrinated?(Foreign Affairs)(Biography)
May 1, 2007... AFTER MORE THAN five years of public interest in the David Hicks case, we are still unsure about his reasons for leaving the comforts of suburban Adelaide and travelling to war-ravaged Afghanistan, joining the anti-Western Taliban and receiving...

Voyeurismo.(Travel)(The Naked Tourist: In Search of Adventure and Beauty in the Age of the Airport Mall)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... You've SPENT 10,000 YEARS getting there. It's not pretty but it's yours--the swamp, the forest, the tree house where you live. Bigger and stronger tribes drove you down from the better land higher up the slopes, so you fell back on a...

Why is Australia anti-war?(Defence)
May 1, 2007... NO ONE IN HIS RIGHT MIND wants to go to war. One does not have to be a combat veteran to know that war is a dirty, bloody and highly stressful affair especially in the contemporary tasks of peace enforcement. Of course, those who don't have to...

Alang--The Graveyard of Ships.(Poem)
May 1, 2007... ALANG--THE GRAVEYARD OF SHIPS. (A port in India where ships are run aground and broken up for scrap metal by native labourers.) Slowly the great ships slide down the slip of ice waves, Cut their path where kelp gardens wave...

Mother and Son.(Poem)
May 1, 2007... MOTHER AND SON I must be less than eighteen months old-- naked, in my mother's arms, face pressed against hers as if danger was nearby. We're standing in an empty field with a hill in the background....

Dawkins and the morality of the bible.(Religion)
May 1, 2007... MOST OF THE PUBLISHED responses to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins have focused on his atheism, and have either given general support to his ideas or else dismissed them as extreme and simplistic. They have not given much attention to...

The power of death in a secular society.(Religion)
May 1, 2007... SOME WORDS, when used in a certain context, trigger a question mark in consciousness for reasons that are not immediately apparent. Years ago, when working as a hospice chaplain, I heard nurses talk of quality when discussing the end stages of...

Bradman the orthodox.(DEVINE)(Sir Donald Bradman)
May 1, 2007... THE CONTRADICTIONS in Sir Donald Bradman's character contribute both to the continuing fascination with the legend and a certain hesitancy in the popular embrace of him. On the one hand there is the uninhibited, overwhelming, force-of-nature...

Tyburn.(Poem)
May 1, 2007... TYBURN On one side is a bustling city street And over on the other side the park. You loiter on the corner and you watch The afternoon beginning to go dark. This unassuming spot was the abyss, The gaping terror...

Andre Malraux's grand adventure.(Literature)(Biography)
May 1, 2007... MEN WHO HAVE BEEN raised in the potentially suffocating atmosphere of an all-female household occasionally rebel in interesting ways. Truman Capote was one, Hemingway was another, and so was Andre Malraux. But unlike Hemingway, who fashioned...

Notes a dog philosophy.(Literature)
May 1, 2007... RABELAIS REMINDS US, in his prologue to Gargantua, that Plato calls the dog, in the second book of The Republic, the most philosophical creature. Dogs love to gnaw bones, the cortex of which must be broken open to allow them to savour the...

Anchor Walk.(Poem)
May 1, 2007... ANCHOR WALK The foremast tunnels into the white wall of fog, radar our only eye-- a thousand green pixels ornament the screen: gill-netters, tenders, and processing platforms so dense they echo like a strip of...

Schweik in New Guinea.(First Person)(Short story)
May 1, 2007... ORO BAY IS A COVE in Papua New Guinea, where I, and a mixture of experienced soldiers, many from the Middle East, together with a crowd of greenhorns just nineteen years old, were disembarked. Fighting was going on further up the coast, but our...

The quest for the male lesbian.(First Person)
May 1, 2007... THE PHILOSOPHER William James is said to have awoken hazily one night after a drug-induced dream and scribbled down what he believed to be the answer to the great mystery. In the morning he read what he had written: hogamus bigamous ...

Grief, mass and symmetry.(Short story)
May 1, 2007... His latest relationship collapse involved the mad pursuit of a Greyhound bus to a roadhouse on the outskirts of Dubbo; Quender was panting with the effort of that summer chase as he related spare details to the Slovak who listened, head down...

Hospital visit.(Short story)
May 1, 2007... My dad was in hospital having one of his operations. I went to visit him. I took along a shirt. So there's the whole story right there, me, my dad, and this shirt. Which I had bought, let me make clear from the outset, with my own money....

Five Haiku.(Poem)
May 1, 2007... FIVE HAIKU thin snowfall-- footprints left near ours early light-- snowflakes sharing the same gravity spring morning-- a crowded elevator on the way to the top one shadow separates...

I thought of Archimedes.(Space, Time and the Categories: Lectures on Metaphysics, 1949-1950)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... Space, Time and the Categories: Lectures on Metaphysics 1949-1950, by John Anderson, edited by Creagh Cole; Sydney University Press, 2007, $29.95. I was sittin' on a hard bench Listenin' to Professor Ryle I was sittin' on a...

Writing Lives.(Life Class: The Education of a Biographer)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... Life Class: The Education of a Biographer, by Brenda Niall; MUP, 2007, $32.95. BRENDA NIALL'S BOOKS established her over many years as one of Australia's most successful biographers. Each title sold widely, enjoying successive reprints,...

One man's contribution.(Arndt's Story: The Life of an Australian Economist)(Book review)
May 1, 2007... Arndt's Story: The Life of an Australian Economist, by Peter Coleman, Selwyn Cornish and Peter Drake; Asia Pacific Press, 2007, $45. HEINZ ARNDT'S was a full, rich, productive and good life. It was worth a good biography, and Peter Coleman,...

Short weight.(Book review)
May 1, 2007... Weighing Up Australian Values, by Brian Howe; UNSW Press, 2007, $29.95. PRIME MINISTER John Howard and his senior ministers have spoken frequently of the need for refugees and immigrants to be tested on their understanding of "Australian...

Out of our depth.(Poem)
May 1, 2007... OUT OF OUR DEPTH Children float in the wide stream as if they are debris of a far-off disaster gravel sliding golden over their bodies gilding hair slicked down to heads It's safe in the shallows a gentle force...

Meeting George Orwell.(Ryan)
May 1, 2007... NOT LONG TURNED EIGHTEEN, I set off for the wars in New Guinea with a square, mysterious object poking its corners against the canvas at the bottom of my kitbag. (That's the soldier's capacious sausage-bag, not his back-pack.) Of all the...

Bat Trang Road.(Poem)
May 1, 2007... BAT TRANG ROAD Like a dragon's back, the ridge glides across the plain: village after village on one side; on the other, fields that have dried to an infinity of clay. Far off, freeway fragments float above...