Latest Articles
A Sydney-based academic and columnist for the Nine rags sets out to explain the US to Australians. It's not a pretty picture
Sep 20 2024
8 mins
The philospher began with the conviction 'the only human activity that seems to have any importance' is the great cosmic 'why?'
Sep 20 2024
24 mins
In the Senate, a very queer notion of free speech
Sep 20 2024
2 mins
Euphemism
There are no more husbands and wives:
instead, we are asked to bring a “partner”.
The word, but not the meaning, survives.
Children have no more parents in their lives:
forms ask for the name of their “carer”.
There are no more husbands and wives.
When a bureaucrat contrives
to give the chaos of life some order
a word without its meaning survives.
A visitor to the Blind Centre arrives:
it is renamed “Vision Australia”.
He leaves before the husbands and wives
open their fund-raising drives.
The Deaf School is now “The Society for Better
Hearing”. The meaning scarcely survives.
Euphemism, everywhere, thrives.
A phrase is a sequence of letters.
There are no more husbands and wives.
The word, but not the meaning, survives.
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
