Quadrant articles from September 2007

Quadrant archives from September 2007

Liberty, the media and national security.(Editorial)
September 1, 2007... IT IS DIFFICULT not to feel a little sorry for journalists involved in the current protracted and extremely boring election campaign. Far from the idealistic model of journalists as reporters who go out and find the news, they are in a world in...

Dawkins and God.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... SIR: Responses to my article on Dawkins and God (May 2007) have fallen into two classes: those that challenge my criticism of Dawkins' atheism, and those that challenge my criticism of the morality on display in some Bible stories. I will...

The beginning of life.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... SIR: On the great questions raised in the recent exchange of letters between God (April 2007) and the Editor (July-August 2007) I have nothing to say, beyond remarking on the difference in tone between the two letters: God comes across as...

On the neglect of archery.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... SIR: "He [Pope Benedict] has been attacked by Western critics for arguing that, among the major religions, Catholicism [sic: pre-Protestant Latin Christianity] offered a unique blend of obedience to God (faith) and Greek philosophy (reason),...

The great unknown.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... SIR: Paul Monk's assessment of the atheist bloc is the latest shot fired in a running battle across the pages of Quadrant between atheism and religion. It included a qualification of Sam Harris's charge against religion and society that...

God and imagination.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... SIR: James Franklin (Letters, June 2007) seems to have a problem with his imagination. "It is hard to imagine how such things (humans) could have arisen from a completely non-personal divinity," he says. I, too, have a problem with my...

God and poetry.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... SIR: I don't always enjoy your journal, except the poems in it, for often it seems to me that most of the articles are there merely because they happen to suit your predispositions. However, your editorial in the July-August 2007 issue seems,...

Two different composers.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... SIR: In Quadrant's July-August 2007 issue, Fred Blanks reviewed Norman Lebrecht's book Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry. Unfortunately this article (and quite possibly the...

Deaths in Capestang.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... SIR: Reading Milton Osborne's "Forgotten Deaths in La France Profonde" (April 2007), reminded me of an experience I had in May 2005. I was riding a bicycle along the Canal du Midi from Sete to Carcassonne in southern France. My...

A message from Islam.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... SIR: I write this letter because I am concerned about the future of Quadrant and you, yourself. I am also in difficult circumstances but not frightened, because you, as an atheist, will probably lack the courage to publish this letter. ...

The republican smokescreen.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
September 1, 2007... SIR: I don't think Sean O'Leary (Letters, June 2007) will get an answer to any questions, never mind eight. I have been trying to get an answer to just one question for some years now without success. The question I have asked, which has been...

In Rudd we trust: the failure of left-wing political commentary.(Politics)(Kevin Rudd)
September 1, 2007... AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS of substantial economic reform, reflective of Australia's attempt to benefit from the international economy, the subject of politics remains largely debated at the public intellectual level between two sets of...

Guide a la Cimetiere Critique.(Readings)(Poem)
September 1, 2007... GUIDE A LA CIMETIERE CRITIQUE Ici le tombeau de Derrida, La-bas, la pierre de Roland Barthes... Here is the tomb of Derrida, Over there, the stone of Roland Barthes. Recall the pride of Levi-Strauss? Gaze...

Certain Essayists.(Readings)(Poem)
September 1, 2007... CERTAIN ESSAYISTS The flowers in your prose Have totally smothered the florist. I can't even see to the end of my nose Let alone the trees in your metaforest.

Another Academic Proposal.(Readings)(Poem)
September 1, 2007... ANOTHER ACADEMIC PROPOSAL Thick soup they ladle out now for our lunches, Great gobs clinging together in soggy bunches. Where are the consommes of yesteryear When the main aim of soupmakers was: Be clear? I can't be...

Epitaph on an Anthology of Light Verse.(Readings)(Poem)
September 1, 2007... EPITAPH ON AN ANTHOLOGY OF LIGHT VERSE O heavy chaff! To have To laugh.

On Reaching Seventy for Robert Mezey.(Readings)(Poem)
September 1, 2007... ON REACHING SEVENTY for Robert Mezey Turning over in your grave, you wake, amazed to find you're still alive.

The origin of the specious: on the worldview of the sociobiologists.(Science)
September 1, 2007... HOW ARE YOUR GENES today? Mine are in especially fine fettle and one group of them, the writing genes, have directed me, via electrochemical stimuli, to write this little piece. Those who disagree with what I have written below should direct...

Challenges to "progressive" feminist orthodoxy.(Society)
September 1, 2007... The real emancipation of women, real communism, will begin only where and when an all-out struggle begins against this petty housekeeping, or rather when its whole-sale transformation into a large scale socialist economy begins. --V.I....

History and conscience: on pride, shame and historical reflection.(History)
September 1, 2007... HOW SHOULD NATIONS react to their history? Is it legitimate to feel pride for what our ancestors achieved? Is it legitimate to feel guilt or shame for their sins? If human beings were creatures of pure logic, neither reaction would be...

The Capitals.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... THE CAPITALS As a cocktail rimmed in money and salt breezy Perth seems free of fault. Darwin's a hot Canberra holding a dish of pearls, land rights and box jellyfish. Real Canberra clangs flagpoles on windy nights ...

The foundation of Western Shanghai (part two).
September 1, 2007... ON JANUARY 1, 1850, epicentre of a dramatic century, the 200-year-old British Navigation Acts were formally repealed. The acts had prohibited imports to England except on ships owned by Britons or by nationals of the country of origin of the...

On being older: (with welcome support from A.J.P. Taylor).(Devine)(Alan John Percivale Taylor)
September 1, 2007... LAST TIME I WROTE at any length about being old, I wasn't even seventy-five. Now I am a few weeks short of seventy-six. The additional time has been welcome and enjoyable. It has been accompanied by some increase in aches and pains and minor,...

Constantine, the first Catholic emperor.(Religion)
September 1, 2007... THE BEST-KNOWN HISTORIAN of the Roman empire is the Englishman Edward Gibbon (1739-94), who produced the masterly History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This work was influential for generations of young English university...

Last breath.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... LAST BREATH The morphine breathes through your skin. They have unclipped the empty sack of blood and won't fit a new one. We ask them to come and check the morphine pump: you have begun to gasp as the pain breaks...

Night words.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... NIGHT WORDS We will never talk as we did with the murmur of our words deep in the stillness of our bed. Gentler than touch, your calm voice reached into me. Your words would lead by a path not of my choice to...

Truth and universities in Australia.(Universities)
September 1, 2007... THE QUEST FOR TRUTH has traditionally been the vocation of those who choose university life. This has been expressed in the nineteenth-century ideal that the university stands for the realm of solid knowledge as opposed to the opinion of the...

Waters of Leith: A Sang at Last.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... WATERS OF LEITH A Sang at Last Waters of Leith Waters of Leith my tears were shed in the Waters of Leith They darkened the peat-dark drifting stream which welled from the deep spring of my dream: ...

Bound.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... BOUND Like bookends you kept the volumes of your shared life upright and together But the pages remained uncut, unread between vellum and glued endpapers

Chiaroscuro: in response to John Constable's "A Boat Passing a Lock", 1826.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... CHIAROSCURO In response to John Constable's "A Boat Passing a Lock", 1826 "I was always determined... that my pictures should have chiaroscuro, if they had nothing else." The pilgrims follow the hawthorn hedge and...

Themistocles? Hugh White is out to sea.(Defence)
September 1, 2007... The Defence Update, which John Howard launched last week, was a seminal document in the development of Australian strategic policy. This is all the more important to recognise given the desperate and somewhat disgraceful efforts of former...

In praise of Yeltsin.(Foreign Affairs)(Boris Yeltsin )
September 1, 2007... IN THE 1960S I HOPED, without much confidence, that the world's four trouble spots might one day be free: Israel from the threats of neighbours, South Africa from apartheid, Northern Ireland from sectarian domination, and Russia from communism....

A history charm.(Literature)
September 1, 2007... MOMENTS ARRIVE WHEN, half-a-dream, we bump against a vivid thing that tantalises as it pleases. Whether it is a saintly face in a crowd, or a finely wrought work of imagination, I suggest the actual movement in the mind is the same. Attraction...

First day of school.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL All morning we see them --streams of children walking with bunches of flowers, presents for their teachers on the first day of school. Mothers and grannies too, and babies pushed in...

Three Maltese Falcons.(Film)(Video recording review)
September 1, 2007... INCREASINGLY DVD RELEASES are becoming the visual equivalents of critical editions of literary texts. There are deleted scenes--usually excellent, as if the director is saying, "look what good material was cut". (Only Kenneth Branagh has had...

Brown suits.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... BROWN SUITS Sorting clothes for movie costume, chocolate suits of bull-market cut, slim blade ties ending in fringes, brimmed felt hats, and the sideburned pork pie ones that served them. I lived then. The...

My offered hand: for Krailie.(Poem)
September 1, 2007... MY OFFERED HAND for Krailie Through August's soft yellow days and muzzy mauve nights, I check your breath, butterflying into my offered hand, and try to fathom the tides in your dreaming face. This...

Oak.(Short story)
September 1, 2007... They're shouting again. I lie very still and concentrate on willing them to stop. Brittany says thoughts have power. Her chin jutted out when she said it and she looked fierce. I hope she's fight. Once Mum and Dave start, it's usually hours...

Clive James' Europe without Baedeker.(Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Cultural Amnesia: Notes in the Margin of My Time, by Clive James; Picador, 2007, $49.95. I find that any self-respecting artist must be, and in more than one sense of the term, an emigre. --Witold Gombrowicz THE EMIGRE Clive James...

All About Evil.(The Roots of Evil)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Roots of Evil, by John Kekes; Cornell University Press, 2005, US$19.95. PART I of The Roots of Evil describes and explains six real-life examples of wicked behaviour. "The Sleep of Reason" (The sleep of reason brings forth monsters)...

The History Correspondent.(Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson, edited by Richard Davenport-Hines; Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006, $59.95. I MUST DECLARE a slight partiality. In 1996 I had a brief meeting with Lord Dacre, as Hugh Trevor-Roper had...

Standing for Spain.(The Last Crusade: Spain, 1936)(Book review)
September 1, 2007... The Last Crusade: Spain, 1936, by Warren H. Carroll; Christendom Press/Freedom Publishing, 2004, $29.95. WHEN THE HEROICS of the Spanish Civil War come up--Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, Hemingway's fictions, or the effusions of various...

Abode of dusty angels.(Ryan)
September 1, 2007... IN THAT STRANGEST of immortal books, Herman Melville's Moby Dick, no passage is stranger than the half-page which precedes the main text, as a paean to all librarians who ever sat behind the counter, or plied the dedicated duster among the...