March 2010
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
600 Million Rabbits & Myxomatosis
Rabbits are poor conservers of energy. They can’t adapt to drought. Their diet is not diverse. All in all, they are not well suited to the...
More ...WORLD
'Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion and Jewelry' by Leanne Shapton
Michelle de Kretser
In Thomas Hardy’s elegiac poem ‘During Wind and Rain’ there are “Clocks and carpets and chairs / On the lawn all day”. As any trawler of...
More ...WORLD
'Point Omega' by Don DeLillo
Sebastian Smee
The title of Don DeLillo’s new novel reverses a concept known as the Omega Point, which was coined by the renegade Catholic thinker Pierre...
More ...SOCIETY
Through a Glass Brightly: Andrea Arnold’s 'Fish Tank' and Tom Ford’s 'A Single Man'
Luke Davies
“Life’s a bitch ’n’ then you die,” sings the rapper Nas on the soundtrack of Fish Tank (released nationally on 11 March), Andrea Arnold’s...
More ...SOCIETY
Distant Sounds: 'Community: A Compilation of Hobart Music'
Robert Forster
When is Tasmania going to produce some great bands? It must be soon, if only through the converging of cultural forces, time and the fact...
More ...POLITICS
Progressively Liberal: Malcolm Fraser: The Political Memoirs
Tim Soutphommasane
Malcolm Fraser tells a story about his time as army minister in the 1960s administering conscription during the Vietnam War. In a hotel bar...
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CULTURE
Divine Comedy: The Personae of Barry Humphries
Peter Conrad
In 1987 on her British talk show, Dame Edna Everage abruptly asked Sir John Mills when he intended to retire – a tactless query, expressed...
More ...Blankett Slate: Australian Style
Clare Press
“Are not the colours exquisite? And see how intricate the patterns.” So said the two swindlers intent on convincing Hans Christian Andersen...
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SOCIETY
The Better Self?: Germaine Greer and 'The Female Eunuch'
Louis Nowra
It’s 40 years since Greer published her first book, The Female Eunuch, and became famous. I first read the book when it came out in...
More ...POLITICS
Dangerous Precedent: The Melbourne Model
Margaret Simons
Davis mentions the book when I ask him why, at a time when the higher education sector is more stressed than ever before, he is trying to...
More ...SOCIETY
The Wild Frontier: The Child Gangs of Tweed Heads
Mandy Sayer
Martin climbs off his bike and walks through the piles of rubbish towards the verandah. It’s then that he sniffs a deeper, ruder stench:...
More ...Close at Hand
Kate Rossmanith
One morning in 1683, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a merchant and amateur scientist in the Dutch city of Delft, set about the daily ritual of...
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SOCIETY
Ghost Writers
Gail Bell
This time last year, I roamed through the over-furnished rooms of Katherine Mansfield’s birthplace house in Tinakori Road, Te Puakitanga,...
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CULTURE
Good Neighbours
Alan Saunders
Eugene Kamenka, supervisor of my doctorate at ANU, expert on Marxian thought and a man who would never have thought his name would appear...
More ...Water Gods
Anna Funder
Not long ago I stood at the edge of my local pool in inner Sydney looking forward to getting a load off my feet – not that I had seen them...
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SOCIETY
The Tree People
Arnold Zable
A year on from the Black Saturday fires, there’s a perverse beauty in the burnt forests, a striking interplay of black and green. The...
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POLITICS
Comment: After Copenhagen
Robert Manne
Over 200 years ago human beings began burning large quantities of the coal, oil and natural gas that had been buried under the Earth’s...
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