Thomas Sowell on the epidemic of righteous ignorance and those responsible: If education provides anything, it should be an ability to think — that is, to weigh one idea against an opposing idea, and to use evidence and logic to try to determine what is true and what is false. That is precisely what our […]

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At her Transverse City blog,  Quadrant contributor Philippa Martyr posts a little cartoon that rather neatly lays out how Pope Francis’ utterances are so often presented as much more than the sum of their parts. Who knew, for example, that the Pontiff’s dismay at finding anchovies on his pizza inspired a ban on Catholics eating […]

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Writing of China’s latest escalation in the confrontation with Japan over the Senkaku Islands, Richard Fernandez wonders at the conspicuous absence of another player, the United States: “Washington may surprise us, but it has been unable to push back anywhere lately, a situation so obvious it provoked Hillary Clinton to warn that if the US […]

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I wrote about the contract for the Australia Network in Quadrant in March, 2013, noting that the Commonwealth auditor-general and even the ABC Lateline program found the deal “shonky”. I would say in addition: The ABC’s $233 million contract from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to make overseas broadcasts through the Australia Network […]

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Fresh from helping The Guardian bare details of Australian intelligence-gathering in Indonesian, the national broadcaster’s editor-in-chief next set about uncovering the “leaker” of his favourite talking heads’ salary details. He found out, alright, which is what you would expect of someone earning $700,000-plus per year Turns out the ABC leaked those pay figures itself.  

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At Daily Life, Fairfax’s online chronicle of appropriate thought, the freakish and the semi-coherent, Sarah Macdonald writes of storytime in her thoroughly modern household: “…most young girls want Barbie dolls and young boys still want guns, but many mothers and fathers of my generation are attempting to not give them such toys ….  My kids […]

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It was getting late in Canberra when two-time PM Kevin Rudd announced his departure from Parliament, but the rigours of a tempestuous day could not crimp the effusive praise for a man few of his purported admirers will be glad to see gone. Others have been somewhat more candid.

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Michael Kile comments: Quadrant‘s Tony Thomas is right to emphasise Sir John Houghton’s role in driving Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change policy during the 1990s (“The Serpents Egg,” May, 2012). Some readers may be unaware the late environmental scientist, Stephen Schneider (1945-2010), had a crucial influence on him. Schneider, a researcher at Stanford University’s Woods […]

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Comedian Charles Firth explains how he picked up a total of $30,000 for a “museum” featuring the names of well-known people, each matched with a single key word: ‘‘So we thought, OK, how can we scam an arts grant by creating a program? A museum of words was the cheapest thing in the world.’’ To […]

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More than a year after his coverqage of the Gillard/AWU affair prompred an acrimonious parting with Fairfax’s 2UE, Michael Smith will be returning to the airwaves as Ben Fordham’s summer replacement. He has kept busy in the meantime.

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