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November 2007

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    | November 2007
  • Comment: Why We Need a Change of Government
    Robert Manne | The Nation Reviewed | November 2007 | Politics

    In the October issue of the Australian Literary Review, Australia's most influential political journalist, Paul Kelly, published an article attacking Australia's intellectuals. Kelly sought to turn Donald Horne on his head. Horne had famously described...

  • Detainee DON 94
    Linda Jaivin | The Nation Reviewed | November 2007 | Foreign Affairs | Politics

    "I am so frustrated," says Morteza Poorvadi.

    Life is pretty good these days for the hardworking 24-year-old Iranian with the idiomatic English and irrepressible sense of humour. He runs a small business doing home decoration while studying part-time...

  • Lazarus Taxa The Online Monthly - subscriber only access
    Ashley Hay | The Nation Reviewed | November 2007 | Business

    Extinction is one of the most popularly understood scientific ideas - that dangerous slide through the categories ‘threatened', ‘vulnerable', ‘endangered' and so on. There are celebrity cases like dodos and thylacines, and lesser-known cases like Colombian grebes and crescent...

  • Checkmate
    Leigh Sales | The Nation Reviewed | November 2007 | Society & Culture

    One recent Sunday morning, Ian Rogers, the greatest chess player Australia has produced, showed up at a small tournament held at the Ryde-Eastwood Leagues Club, in Sydney's north-west. Chessboards were arranged on trestle tables in an upstairs function room; apart from...

  • All Bogans Here
    Anna Funder | The Nation Reviewed | November 2007 | Media | Society & Culture
    In a recent Chaser sketch, Julian Morrow dressed up as a "citizens' infringement officer" in a yellow fluoro jacket. He walked the streets of inner Sydney conducting a baby-name audit. Where appropriate, he handed out fines.

    "Sebastian," a...

  • Getting Elected: The Australian Labor Party & the American Democrats
    Michael Gawenda | The Monthly Essays | November 2007 | Foreign Affairs | Politics

    When I arrived in Washington in November 2004, George W Bush had just been re-elected. The Republicans had held on to their majority in the Senate, and had actually picked up seats in the House of Representatives. If there was hubris in Canberra after the Coalition's...

  • The Principle of Necessity: Justice Menhennitt & Australia’s Roe v Wade
    Gideon Haigh | The Monthly Essays | November 2007 | Politics | Society & Culture

    Yet no decision has ramified so powerfully as one just 14 months after Ryan's execution, in a case that occasioned little publicity, and on the crucial day none at all. On 26 May 1969, the front page of the Age proposed as the most pressing question for...

  • Lies that Tell the Truth: The paradox of art and creative writing
    Simon Leys | The Monthly Essays | November 2007 | Media | Society & Culture

    This essay was originally an address to the annual conference of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, where its title, at the request of the organisers, was changed to ‘Historical and Other Truths' - which was deemed more appropriate for such a serious audience. For...

  • Eco-Worriers: Michael Pollan’s ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ & Bill McKibben’s ‘Deep Economy’
    Robyn Davidson | Books | November 2007 | Environment

    It would be interesting to know how many trees and how much oil (petrol for the delivery of, aviation fuel for the author promotion of, ink for the printing of, machines for shredding the remainders of), have gone into the plethora of books bringing us the bad eco-news in the...