Quadrant articles from November 2004

Quadrant archives from November 2004

How the media pack got it wrong.(Editorial)(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... WITH THEIR USUAL alacrity, the Australian media hardly missed a beat before carrying on as if their behaviour, bias, and lack of recognition of reality during the recent election campaign had never existed. The mass of the press gallery has...

The Theresienstadt film.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... SIR: According to Professor Maley (Letters, October 2004) I offered judgment on a book I had not read. I did not. What I did do was to "contribute a view to the contretemps in... letters... about Holocaust language and asylum seekers". ...

German guilt and forgiveness.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... SIR: Konrad Low's argument against the guilt of the Germans (September 2004) is marred by one fantastic paragraph: "The Basic Law establishes... a right to resistance. It does not speak of a duty to resist. Where is the ethical norm that...

Let mathematicians save the earth.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... SIR: Garth Paltridge is surely exaggerating (October 2004) in saying that sceptics about climate change need large-scale resources to challenge the global warming consensus. As he rightly explains, the main issues are the reliability of...

Who is our head of state?(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... SIR: I refer to the article in the September issue by my colleague, Professor George Winterton, on the subject of the head of state. As I related in The Cane Toad Republic (1999), the term "head of state" came into use as a substitute for...

Damien Parer.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... SIR: Congratulations to Murray Sayle and to Quadrant for the article "Damien Parer's Propaganda Masterpiece" (October 2004). I got to know Parer well in the PNG campaign of 1942, and greatly loved him. If he had been a saint, he would have...

Joe Wilson's credibility.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... SIR: It is unfortunate that Neil McDonald (September 2004) was "particularly impressed" by diplomat Joe Wilson in The World According to Bush, since Joe Wilson is not impressing anyone much nowadays except with the extent of his loss of...

The Da Vinci Code.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... SIR: It was surprising to see a reviewer in Quadrant (September 2004) taking seriously the central premise of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. That premise--that there has existed since 1099 a secret society dedicated to keeping alive the fact...

Leo Strauss and the Straussians.(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... SIR: Readers of Matthew Sharpe's "Leo Strauss and the 'New American Century'" (September 2004) are entitled to wonder whether all philosophers engaged in politics do harm. Following Richard Rorty, Sharpe raises the spectre of the loss of...

Irish-Australian attitudes.(Australia)
November 1, 2004... LIKE ONE OF THOSE planetary alignments that occur from time to time, this year occasions the commemoration of four key dates in the Irish-Australian mental landscape: two events in Australian history, and one in Irish literary culture that also...

The Transit of Venus.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... THE TRANSIT OF VENUS Professor Penny has set the sun against cement block walls of metallurgical sciences--grey with age. Punting with cardboard and pin-hole paraphernalia orchestrated in the lunch break he...

No more sit-down money.
November 1, 2004... IN JULY AND AUGUST this year I returned to the Kimberley--one of the many places for which I had responsibility in earlier years as Minister of Aboriginal Affairs. I was curious to find out how the cattle stations that had been handed over to...

Don't do what Australia has done.(Universities)
November 1, 2004... ON JULY 7 I RECEIVED a message from an academic colleague in Israel, which included the following passage: The Technion and other Israeli universities are currently engaged in a very difficult and apparently crucial debate about how to...

The black farce of the Khrushchev years.(History)
November 1, 2004... HOW DOES ONE recognise psychotic regimes? Surprisingly, no matter where they are swung along the left-to-right spectrum, the signs are amazingly consistent. The military march like marionettes, oversized statues line unnaturally large public...

Garden Violet.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... GARDEN VIOLET i So unassuming even the bees have missed it-- the garden violet. ii The violet and I-- instinctively we exchange an Eskimo-kiss. iii I lay the violet on the...

David Day's defence mythology.
November 1, 2004... WRITING IN the Australian recently, anti-British and anti-American polemicist David Day claimed as part of his continuing attack on Australia's military and cultural alliances that "a deep vein of anxiety about invasion has been part of our...

Japanese Garden at Hotel Narita View.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... JAPANESE GARDEN AT HOTEL NARITA VIEW 1. 1st Master Swordmaestro at ease and perfect, he outwaits the storm loose-sleeved in his formal garden, under the small umbrella-shrine there for his need on the path, ...

Time for a Few Questions.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... TIME FOR A FEW QUESTIONS If we can make time why can't we sell it? If we can waste time why can't we recycle it? If we can find time why can't we hide it? If we can take time why can't we return it? If we can pass time...

Laws against obesity and other sins.(Society)
November 1, 2004... THE EVENTS IN IRAQ, and other countries liberated from oppression, demonstrate the difficulty of implanting a democracy, or as in the case of Iraq, restoring the democracy that was lost in 1958. (It is often forgotten that until 1958 Iraq was a...

Survival.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... SURVIVAL The St Andrew's Cross spider knows as much about survival as the marketing men who have studied traffic flows and such while locating the most likely position for a new takeaway hamburger store; it...

How Woodstock passed me by.(Devine)
November 1, 2004... WHAT WERE THE SIXTIES really like? My lifespan encompassed the fab decade but I must have been looking away at the time. Truth to tell, I wasn't prepared for sexual revolution or an alternative lifestyle when the 1960s dawned, being...

Boy Meets Gramophone.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... BOY MEETS GRAMOPHONE Malayan beetles died for this, crushed for the gramophone--compacted into music, rotating at 78. The hairs on my arms stood on end. A man serenading a mule would sweep me off my feet, as the...

Why the Queen is not our head of state.(The Constitution)
November 1, 2004... HOORAY! We may yet get a decent debate going on the question "Who is our head of state?" At last a leading republican (George Winterton, "Who is Our Head of State?" Quadrant, September) has tried to respond to my claim that the governor-general...

The Quick of It.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... THE QUICK OF IT (for Graham McDonald, National Folk Festival) Rosellas in the cypress trees are feeding upside down while yellow trucks on demo sites cart off the heart of town. But on this stage two slender...

Choosing schools: government v non-government.(Education)
November 1, 2004... FOR MOST of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the main single influence on choice of school in the Australian colonies, later the states, was religious belief. Within the Protestant majority a few wealthy families sent children to...

The Going.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... Bowl The Tao of forgetting is just pure emptiness held in trust but lifting a little transparency from blue to farewell sadness. Forgetting even forgetting. Did I honour her enough casting off the cliff edge...

One Way to Lose a Husband.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... ONE WAY TO LOSE A HUSBAND Every family has an odd cousin who dresses like a rag bag and laughs or cries at the wrong time. Was she Evelyn, Elaine or... what? She always seemed hot, and inappropriate. Apparent...

Bay of Angels, Nice.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... BAY OF ANGELS, NICE Cote d'Or, Cote du Soleil, Cote d'Azur, her smile is a Bay of Angels. Angels white as distant boats. Boats becoming sails. Sails bending the wind. The wind hiding in the sea. The sea...

Wary Asians on a theme: dramatising in the near north.(Theatre)(Critical Essay)
November 1, 2004... "WARY ASIANS on a theme," observed Ranjit Fernando, broadcasting from Sri Lanka. He meant "Variations on a theme", but although he is a television personality, like most inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent Ranjie has a VW problem, in the...

Fifty thousand who left a mark.(Literature)
November 1, 2004... WITH A RELATIVELY low-key ceremony on September 23, Oxford University Press launched The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (the ODNB), the greatest feat in the history of publishing. Edited by Professor Colin Matthew until his sudden...

The Luftwaffe Bar.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... THE LUFTWAFFE BAR Tonight all is quiet in the Luftwaffe Bar on Charing Cross Road. It never really took off. In the Goering Lounge the bar staff are taking their uniforms off. No more will cocktails called ...

Insufficient Knowledge.(Poem)
November 1, 2004... INSUFFICIENT KNOWLEDGE You have to start with insufficient knowledge, yes, this, and yes, praise be, then this, you have to have that kind of courage. A breath, a step, a word: it's to your advantage to begin. There...

Excerpts from a cryptic Odyssey: a low-fat Homer for healthy moderns.
November 1, 2004... Cyclops: The cave-dweller is not looking good. No one is to blame, but the hangers-on are sheepish. This will cause a splash. Laestrygonians: They'll leave the weaving ships with no turn unstoned. Circe: She circles round with food and...

A birdseye view of the Norwegian Sea.(Story)(Short Story)
November 1, 2004... There was the sun hardly up behind the roofline (long cloud the colour of cutlery) and here was his crackle-of-a-dad tell'n him 'n Bri how to slip yr, legrope on the near hindleg of the beast, wash its teats with a soapy rag, pick'n off the...

The properties of things.(Story)(Short Story)
November 1, 2004... The huge iron bath was filled with stream water on which floated two short planks. Handfuls of white wildflowers rotated on its surface. Warmed by a fire underneath, it was lit by candles flickering in the enfolding trees and mossy banks. The...

Snapshots from the third Reich: from the Ivory Tower to Sally Bowles.(Books)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... IN HIS BITTER MEMOIR, Defying Hitler, Sebastian Haffner outlined three kinds of internal exile that tempted dissidents under the triumphant Nazi regime. Each one brought its own spiritual death. One was a retreat to the Ivory Tower. You had...

Bringing comfort to strangers.(Blood, Bones and Spirit: Aboriginal Christianity in an East Kimberley Town)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... Blood, Bones and Spirit: Aboriginal Christianity in an East Kimberley Town, by Heather McDonald; Melbourne University Press, 2002, $38.45. THE LIVES of contemporary Aboriginal people, displaced but surviving, are central to Blood, Bones...

The sea-road of good intentions.(Citizen Labillardiere: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755-1834))(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... Citizen Labillardiere: A Naturalist's Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755-1834), by Edward Duyker; Melbourne University Press, 2003, $59.95. IN HIS NEW BOOK, Citizen Labillardiere, Edward Duyker offers an informative and considered...

Nerve and trust.(Journey to the Stone Country)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... Journey to the Stone Country, by Alex Miller; Allen & Unwin, 2003, $22.95. I WOULD LIKE to pay tribute to Alex Miller's novel, Journey to the Stone Country, which won the Miles Franklin in 2003. I began it as part of a duty-read and by the...

Loveless country.(The Veiled Kingdom)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... The Veiled Kingdom, by Carmen bin Ladin; Virago, 2004, $29.95. ON SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, Carmen bin Ladin looked, horror-struck, at the terrifying images screening on her television and knew at once who had done it--her brother-in-law, Osama....

Guilty as charged.(The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art)(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art, by Roger Kimball; Encounter Books, 2004, $46.95. WITHIN LIVING MEMORY it was still widely believed that one of the objectives of education was the development of strong,...

Housman, Baldwin and the King.(Ryan)
November 1, 2004... FOR A COUPLE of years back in the 1970s, I contributed a column to the Australian newspaper, and then (after an interval) to the Melbourne Age. There, after some months, a new editor asked me to perform weekly, because he "just didn't fancy"...