Dr Paul Bauert, an educated man, on Tuesday compared Nauru unfavourably with Auschwitz, a comment so far beyond sanity and couth that he may well have secured forever the crown of Australia's most odious virtue signaller. Joe Dolce wrote in our April, 2018, edition of Maximilian Kolbe and the real death camp. Someone should send Dr Bauert a copy

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The Netflix series Victoria earns top marks for costumes and art direction, and the acting isn't bad either. But as an accurate representation of history, let's just say the dresses are fetching the sets very easy on the eye

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The First’s subject is as hoary as Horace: those who cross the ocean change their sky but not their soul.                    —Ed Cumming ________________________ Since the publication of The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells in 1897, popular imagination has been drawn to the idea of humans travelling to, and colonising, the planet Mars. […]

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Abbott’s Boobies Papasula abbotti. Endangered seabirds of Christmas Island. White, with black eye patches, wings, tails, marked flanks, blue webbed feet, males have grey bills, females, pink, in face-to-face courtship display, pairs mate for life. Eggs weigh 10% of body weight, incubated under both parents’ feet,   who take turns, in shifts. High risk of extinction, […]

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Broad Arrow Café Broad Arrow Café was busy that day, the tables were arranged tightly to heel— two minutes of terrible shadow play.   A Colt AR-15 Carbine at bay, Martin Bryant went in and ate a meal. Broad Arrow Café was busy that day.   That’s not funny, someone heard someone say, not realising […]

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Lullaby for a Battered Child Toys in darkness far away, shining in a box in my mind, just beyond my reach. Mama’s sleeping, Daddy’s not here, they can’t hear us, in our secret hiding, just you and me.   Punished children soon grow up, mixed up feelings, emotions, they don’t want to know.   Someone […]

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[An] assassin, dressed as a mailman, murdered a former Iranian diplomat inside [the District of Columbia] Beltway, in 1980, a tactic that intelligence and police officials insist came from Condor …   —James Grady In 2010, an Andean Condor named Thaao (pronounced tay-oh) died at the Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was eighty years […]

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Gore, vengeance, pillage and politics, all packaged by Netflix in a multi-season series depicting Alfred the Great's campaign to create what we now call England. How accurate, historically, is 'The Last Kingdom'? Accurate enough to make it more valuable than a mere entertainment

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Bush Chinwag Why do we assume birdsong profound? Why don’t we grant birds the intelligence to motor-mouth on, and be as superficial as us?   Those two Rosellas, chirping back and fro, could be discussing the bright blue feather, of Esmerelda, a Fairywren, just flown in, for a visit, escaping weather,   sporting the latest […]

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There is indeed life after politics, as Margaret Thatcher's transport minister demonstrates with his series Great British Railway Journeys. As even a Guardian writer concedes, Portillo is 'a weirdly compelling host' whose passion for trains and history cannot help but take viewers along for the ride

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