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
And Then Come the Nightjars: Down on the Farm
Bad luck is nightjars. They fly silent.
Michael Vallance
I went to Bali last month for what I thought was going to be a relaxing two-week holiday. But by the end of the trip, I was glad to get back home to have a holiday from my holiday.
The flight to Indonesia was turned around two hours out of Melbourne when a disturbed woman stalked up and down the aisles and threatened anyone who told her to “settle down”. You may have heard about this on the evening news. We had to go through the entire customs de-boarding ritual and were put up in an airport hotel in order to catch the next flight the following morning.
Then, after three days of relative bliss in Bali, ten out of our party of thirteen came down with Bali belly after a night out at a Japanese restaurant. Most members elected to try the latest Bali belly cure: an IV drip of vitamins and hydration fluids, delivered directly to your room (and into your arm), by a mobile doctor-and-nurse team—at $200 a pop. I chose the…
The Editor of Quadrant Music, Alexander Voltz, has won the symphonic section of the prestigious George Enescu International Competition in Bucharest.
Sep 03 2024
1 mins
Some have argued that Auden was a victim of his own naivety regarding the prospect of impending war. A few days before its declaration and while on a Greyhound bus at the end of that 1939 “honeymoon” with Kallman, he had written home to England: “There is a radio on this coach, so that every hour or so, one has a violent pain in one’s stomach as the news comes on. By the time you get this, I suppose, we shall know one way or the other.”
Aug 29 2024
15 mins
This is the paradox of the War Against the Past: those who are waging it are, inadvertently, denying themselves the capacity to win. For if your past is evil, if your centuries-old story is defined by bitterness and bad faith, how can you possibly hope to redeem yourself?
Aug 29 2024
11 mins
