Latest Articles
The Republican presidential contender is an acquired taste. Given the alternative, it's a taste persnickety conservatives should make the effort to acquire
Sep 09 2024
4 mins
The proportions of Aboriginal children and young people placed in a relative or kin placement or with an Aboriginal foster carer have decreased, and the proportion of Aboriginal children who were reunified with their families has declined.
Sep 09 2024
17 mins
Following a Chinese Star
Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China,by Simon Winchester. Viking, 2008, $32.95.
One of the great synoptic works of developmental biology is a three-volume work that was published by Cambridge University Press in 1931. Over 2000 pages long, Chemical Embryology provides not only an exhaustive account of changes in the embryo and placenta (osmotic pressure, pH, respiratory gradients, metabolic processes) but a descriptive history of the egg from its earliest mythic beginnings. “Practically nothing was left out,” wrote its author—one Joseph Needham, born 1900, only son of a Harley Street physician specialising in anaesthetics and an erratic, high-strung mother (who so seldom saw eye to eye with her husband that she called her son by a different Christian name).
Joseph Needham was the leading light of the Cambridge Biochemical Laboratory. Already he was being hailed as the new Erasmus, so impressive were his intellectual reach and vigour. He did have the…
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
