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August 2007

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    Raimond Gaita | The Nation Reviewed | August 2007 | Politics | Society & Culture

    More even than Margaret Thatcher, John Howard is an ideologically driven prime minister. At the 2006 dinner celebrating Quadrant's fiftieth birthday, he spoke admiringly of the magazine's campaign against black-armband history, against the political correctness...

  • Throwing the Book
    Alice Pung | The Nation Reviewed | August 2007 | Business

    The Old Man is sitting on a plastic chair outside the room, his hand resting on his wooden cane. His left leg cannot bend at the knee because an epoch ago the barefoot doctors in China gave him the wrong medicine for a minor foot injury. Now his leg sticks out in front of him...

  • Trunk Call
    Gideon Haigh | The Nation Reviewed | August 2007 | Society & Culture
    A story is told of the young Tom Stoppard applying for a job in Fleet Street. "It says here you're interested in politics," said the interviewer. "OK. Who's the home secretary?" Stoppard blandly returned his gaze. "I said I was interested,"...
  • The Optimist The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Nicholas Brudenell | The Nation Reviewed | August 2007 | Foreign Affairs

    In March this year Herman Wainggai caused a problem at an ALP branch meeting in the outer-Melbourne suburb of Eltham. His speech on West Papua was so extraordinary in what it revealed that those present were not sure how to react. Some prepared to clap; others, seemingly...

  • Live Long and Prosper
    Christopher Scanlon | The Nation Reviewed | August 2007 | Society & Culture
    Noam Chomsky aside, Mark Okrand is probably the world's only celebrity linguist. Okrand, whose dissertation focused on Native American languages, was hired by Paramount Pictures in the early 1980s to devise a language for the Klingons for the second film in the Star Trek...
  • Timor's Future: Xanana Gusmão and José Ramos-Horta
    Mark Aarons | The Monthly Essays | August 2007 | Foreign Affairs
    Young boys stand forlornly, holding phone cards for sale. Skinny men carry bamboo poles over their shoulders, dangling fruit. Others weave their bicycles dangerously through the traffic, clutching scrawny chickens or bunches of crabs. Beside roadside vegetable stalls elderly...