May 2023 Volume LXVII, Number 5, No. 596
A Summer’s Day Read
The Leftist Myth of William Cooper
More on the Tudors
Katherine Mansfield: Public Masks, Secret Disruption
Slovenly Language Begets Crazy Economics
The Capture: Deep Learning and Deep Fakes
Contents
-
The sound of a scuffle from the other side of the fence. Something tore. Another slap. 'You scratched me, you bitch...' I heard a loud smack. Silence. Then Gloria croaked, 'Look ... look what you’ve done ... You hit me! Oh, you bastard, you bastard...'August 4, 2024
10 mins
-
The oft-repeated and much-embroidered tale insists the Aboriginal activist led a ten-mile march through Melbourne to the German consulate to protest Nazi persecution of the Jews. Indeed, some over-enthusiastic promoters of the Cooper myth even go so far as to anoint him 'the only man in the world' to denounce kristallnacht. It's a great story, but that's all it is and ever has been -- a storyJuly 2, 2023
16 mins
-
Lucy Wooding’s Tudor England is a very good book -- fair in tone and with a vividness that can make you feel you are there. If there is a quibble with her perspective it is the very modern suggestion that the rift with Rome might have been less bloody. It's a nice thought, but inspired by post-WWII ecumenicalism rather than the global politics of the ReformationJune 11, 2023
11 mins
-
How would the history of literature have evolved if consumption had not claimed Katherine Mansfield a century ago at the age of thirty-four? The New Zealand-born writer's influence on writers such as D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf is well known, as was the professional and personal challenge she presented to them as she explored her vision of literary ModernismJune 10, 2023
23 mins
-
Suppose when the national accounts come out we don’t describe economic growth according to what additional goods have been produced but according to what’s been spent. Try it at home: last year was bountiful year and spent a lot -- and next year will be even better, if we can only just increase our spending. If that seems silly on the home front, it is no less ludicrous on a national basisJune 7, 2023
14 mins
-
The BBC six-part thriller focuses on the abuse and manipulation of cutting-edge deep-fake CCTV footage for personal and political ends. Yes, it's fiction, but only just. During the recent lockdowns, New South Wales and Victoria trialled facial recognition software to help enforce movement-restriction laws, while in Western Australia monitored almost 100,000 people to assure compliance with COVID edictsJune 3, 2023
13 mins
-
The most popular thing to do in Varanasi is to die—or for those who are already dead, to be cremated. If the ancient city was known as the City of Light, it was probably on account of all the funeral pyres. For the well-to-do, a good old-fashioned body-burning on the banks of the Ganges is still available, even in our world of pollution restrictions. For everyone else, there are handily located gas-fired crematoriaJune 2, 2023
8 mins
-
After the Soviet Union's fall, Putin pragmatically abandoned Marxism-Leninism, leaving him in want of a rationale for his loathing of the West and a pathway for restoring Russia greatness. His great mistake -- one of them -- was persuading himself that Ukrainian nationalism was not genuine but, rather, evidence of a conspiracy for which the remedy was short, sharp military action. Oh, how wrong he wasMay 30, 2023
20 mins
-
Once the idea of an entitlement takes a grip on the public mind any proposal to reduce it can be easily opposed on moral grounds. If we now say, for instance, that the government shouldn’t endlessly subsidise the lifestyle choice to live in remote regions, it is treated as an affront to Aboriginal rights. How much better were presumptive entitlement to be trumped by a recognition of moral duty and sacrificeMay 29, 2023
6 mins
-
As the COVID panicdemic raged, JobKeeper paid out $89b to workers forced to stay at home, with payments often higher than what people had received while working. More money out the door. Between 2019 and 2021, Commonwealth public debt rose from 35 to 48 per cent of GDP, the states going even further into hock. Here we might learn from the Swiss and the 'debt break' that has served them well since 2001May 26, 2023
20 mins
-
Among the most despicable moral failings of the zealots of decarbonisation, environmental, social and governance principles is an indifference to the point of callousness that elevates a 'first world' ideology above all else -- including the welfare of the world’s poorest people. Bluntly, climate activists are at best shallow, parochial and self-centred, and at worst, greedy narcissistsMay 25, 2023
11 mins
-
If the spirit of tolerance endorses the fundamentalist 'other', it also endorses intolerance at second hand. This is the West’s multicultural dilemma. It requires all citizens to tolerate non-Western minorities in the name of diversity, but the minority need not adapt to the secular values of the adopted country. Put simply, cultures move from barbarism to the rule of universal reason at different speedsMay 24, 2023
15 mins
-
As economic activity recovered post-COVID, energy demand surged, but supply could not keep pace due to the neglect and closure of carbon-fueled generation. As a further and directly related factor, add to this finance sector's enthusiasm for ESG -- environment, social and governance -- which has seen capital expenditure on oil and gas decline by almost 60 per cent since 2014May 22, 2023
13 mins
-
Even a short visit to the supermarket can raise profound questions of human existence. How far, and to what extent, are people the masters of their fate? Totally? Not at all? Somewhere in between the two -- in which case, how does one apportion the ratio between misfortune and the bitter fruits of self-infliction?May 20, 2023
8 mins
-
Dark Emu owes much of what passes for its credibility to the belief its author is the Aboriginal elder he claims to be. In the year the Voice is to be voted on it hardly seems controversial to ask Magabala Books, which professes to publish only indigenous writers, for evidence confirming the accuracy of its star author's claimsMay 19, 2023
11 mins
-
The former director of the CIA and Secretary of State from 2018 to 2021 makes the case in his memoir, Never Give an Inch, that the Trump administration, sometimes despite Trump himself, adhered to a philosophy of 'peace through strength'. Unlike the foreign policy pursued by his Oval Office successor, that approach mostly workedMay 18, 2023
13 mins
-
Sun-Tzu propounded was that it is possible to defeat an enemy without firing a shot. This concept is especially relevant to Australia and many other open democratic countries which welcome immigrants and adhere to the principle of free trade. Such countries are highly vulnerable to economic and political influence, with Beijing taking advantage of every opportunity to advance a vision of global hegemonyMay 16, 2023
11 mins
-
The tramp stamp will always look suggestive on a twenty-something yoga instructor; the shoulder skull will always look fearsome on a twenty-something muscle-head. At forty or fifty, not so much. Tattoos were better suited to a time when the average life expectancy was thirty-eight. People don’t age well, but tattoos age even worseMay 15, 2023
8 mins
-
Despite Christian Jerusalem’s long continuity, believers in and around the Old City are faced with almost daily harassment and intimidation by a small but assertive minority of young thugs totally unrepresentative of wider Israeli society. Look to Israel's electoral system and the religious zealots in Benjamin Netanyahu's latest cobbled-together coalition for an explanationMay 12, 2023
15 mins
-
It’s not in principle foolish or wrong to take precautions against violence and terror in politics—but things take a trickier turn when we go from protecting ourselves against violence to conflating it with political ideas we oppose and then fail to define. If much of your policy is based on a false belief, it’s going either to fail or to produce perverse results. As a case study, look to recent events in GermanyMay 11, 2023
9 mins
-
Viewers who endured the ABC's predictably dyspeptic and frequently inane coverage of the coronation will draw solace from Nigel Biggar's Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. Unlike, say, former newsreader and now full-time complainiac Stan Grant, the author grasps that the past is a different place. It's a simple concept, but one that remains beyond the ken of manyMay 8, 2023
27 mins
-
The Scientific Method is not a contribution to the academic literature -- it is much more important and helpful than that. As a guide to research and the evaluation of research findings it will be much appreciated by anyone with a serious interest in science as a source of knowledge and a social institutionMay 7, 2023
7 mins
-
Art today is an enigma, more a question and a collection of uncertainties. For a building to succeed, the requirements must be stated with clarity. Little wonder then that Sydney Modern failed to find a solution, its mission never having been properly stated. The result, as Paul Keating sneered, is a 'special events complex masquerading as an art gallery'May 6, 2023
19 mins
-
Much as in a Soviet-style museum, what ought to be unbiased expert information has been corrupted to support a political line. The museum's website entries, 'Tear it Down' and 'Whose History' are prejudiced, inaccurate and at points untrue. Yet there they are for all to see, brazen repudiations of everything a museum should beMay 1, 2023
14 mins
-
Smoke (after Théophile Gautier) See over there, beneath the trees […]April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Transience A luminous, tangerine, and blazing expanse burst out to […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Woodwork Teacher Starting each class with his well-worn saw, “One […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Narcissus Shaving in the River While it’s true, he was […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Weighing the odds Time turns us into historians Then […]
April 28, 2023
2 mins
-
Poddy Calves for Polly and Moo The smell is bucolic, […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
I See You There I see you there down the […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Revenge History is written by the victors, So they […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Robodebt Royal Commission We are chief witnesses In the […]
April 28, 2023
2 mins
-
The Space In Between Stars She may have been excised […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Afternoon Delight From the start a kind of secret guilty […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Winter 2021 Midnight. Neon light. Blackbird with insomnia. Singing like […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Poet of Quirk I write in praise of Andrew Burke— […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
the shark wonders gumming the soft parts of a done […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Streetlights and Butter Knives I came upon a streetlight once, […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Red Hill she matured not through growth or learning but […]
April 28, 2023
1 mins
-
Though painful to endure, shame and embarrassment are nevertheless extremely […]
April 28, 2023
8 mins
-
-
Luke Whitington’s reflective poems express an intense, sensory, deeply felt […]
April 28, 2023
10 mins
-
Of Life and of Leadership is not a typical, unidimensional […]
April 28, 2023
5 mins
-
This tribute to Owen Harries presents thirty-five of the 270-odd […]
April 28, 2023
12 mins
-
Indigenous disadvantage resides not in the affluent City of Mitcham […]
April 27, 2023
6 mins
-
The first shot of the Ukrainian War was fired in […]
April 27, 2023
17 mins
-
In September last year the Albanese government advertised for applicants […]
April 27, 2023
11 mins
-
Divisive Labelling Sir: The late historian John Hirst pointed out […]
April 27, 2023
8 mins
