Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
Of Guinea Worms and Thylacines
“Cheer up, sad world,” he said, and winked—
“It’s kind of fun to be extinct.”
—Ogden Nash, “Fossils”
Considering how little I know of natural history, I am well-informed about the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger. I suspect that this is the case with many a person normally uninterested in or ill-informed on the subject of wildlife. I have a small collection of books about the strange and fascinating creature, hunted to extinction, and recently while in Australia added to that collection by buying Paper Tiger: How Pictures Shaped the Thylacine, by Carol Freeman.
I suppose I should have known what I was in for from the choice of epigraph: Mao Tse-Tung’s famous lucubration on nuclear weapons as a paper tiger. By page 4, Louis Althusser, the impenetrable French Marxist philosopher—whose most lucid and indubitably true statement was J’ai étranglé Hélène, “I have strangled Hélène”…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
