July 2011
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Howard Florey & Alexander Fleming
On 2 September 1940, as the Battle of Britain raged, a short, grey-headed man with a dapper bow tie presented himself at the pathology...
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SOCIETY
'Nagasaki: The Massacre of the Innocent and Unknowing' By Craig Collie
Lian Hearn
Nagasaki stands at the head of a deep-water harbour on the western coast of Kyushu. It was where foreign traders came to Japan, each...
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WORLD
'The Hall of Uselessness' By Simon Leys
Linda Jaivin
The Hall of Uselessness, a compendium of Simon Leys’s cultural and political commentary, is an elegant mansion of many rooms, connected by...
More ...Vanity Case: The 54th Venice Biennale
Sebastian Smee
Who would have thought that the first major movement of the twenty-first century would be a revival of trompe l’oeil? I admit, it’s...
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CULTURE
Sound Harvest: David Lumsdaine’s 'White Dawn' and 'Big Meeting'
Andrew Ford
Whenever the old conversation is had about what constitutes the authentic Australian sound in classical music – and fortunately it is had...
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Couch Habit: 'In Treatment: Season Three'
Robyn Davidson
If, like Frederick Crews of the ‘Freud wars’, you think Freud was a crank, and his legacy a “spurious, ineffective pseudoscience”; or if,...
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CULTURE
Like the Day and Night: Terrence Malick’s 'The Tree of Life' and Julia Leigh’s 'Sleeping Beauty'
Helen Garner
Terrence Malick’s new movie The Tree of Life (in national release), recently garlanded with the Palme d’Or at Cannes, comes muscled up with...
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SOCIETY
Beneath the Boulevards: James Boyce’s '1835: The Founding of Melbourne & the Conquest of Australia'
Malcolm Turnbull
The beauty of Melbourne’s wide boulevards, its opulent architecture and magnificent parks remind us of the extraordinary wealth and...
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WORLD
Empire of the Mind: Robert Hughes’s 'Rome'
Peter Conrad
In 1966 Robert Hughes concluded his first book, The Art of Australia, with a sardonic farewell to a country he had already quit. The final...
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WORLD
Stardust Memories: In Search of Real Italian Food
Peter Robb
Tony Bilson has done incomparable good for eating in Sydney over a long time. The gold-coated egg yolk was a Melbourne boy’s astute pitch...
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WORLD
After Spring: The Struggle for Liberation in the Middle East
Waleed Aly
“What happens if you vote no?” I ask. “Nothing. There is no one else.” So, na’m, urged the billboard: yes! This had nothing to do with...
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SOCIETY
The Hot Seat: Chris Bowen and the Malaysian Solution
Jana Wendt
The Malaysian Solution, a project he claims largely as his own (“Courageous, minister”, I hear Sir Humphrey Appleby snorting), holds out...
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POLITICS
Minds at Risk: Choosing the Right Path for Adolescent Mental Health
Lisa Pryor
This included $419.7 million over five years for the expansion of two services for young people championed by Melbourne psychiatrist...
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MEDIA
Second Life: Mark Scott Embarks on Another Five-Year Term
Margaret Simons
Shortly after his appointment to the top job in mid 2006, it seemed as though the 3-D virtual world Second Life was the new thing – a place...
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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
In the Rat Room: Reflections on the Breeding House
Gail Bell
In many ways it was the perfect job for a young recovering panic merchant. Geographical isolation, hours alone with non-speaking mammals, a...
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SOCIETY
Sparkle and Shine: Child Beauty Pageants in Australia
Julia Baird
“I would have girls regard themselves not as adjectives but as nouns.” –Elizabeth Cady Stanton, c.1870 There’s nothing particularly...
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POLITICS
The Quest for Muslim Jedis: John Safran’s new ABC TV project
Craig Sherborne
The world is up this way, just over here. Follow me. Mind your head, you are entering human nature. There are narrow tunnels of religion....
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WORLD
Comment: Noam Chomsky and the Sydney Peace Prize
Nick Dyrenfurth
It was a sublime moment of coincidence. In the midst of reading The Finkler Question, English novelist Howard Jacobson’s comic meditation...
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ECONOMICS
Comment: Gough Whitlam at 95 Years
Lindsay Tanner
Many books have been written about the political drama of the Whitlam years, particularly the government’s ultimate dismissal by Governor-...
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