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Keywords: Civilisation

  • MEDIA

    Sex education in Pornland

    • Lyn Bender
    • 27 May 2011
    15 Comments

    British sociologist Gail Dines argues that porn shapes young people's expectations of how sex should be, at the cost of healthy intimacy. Positive erotic portrayals can inspire and guide us by enhancing our perceptions and extending our narrow world view. Dines argues that the hardcore porn industry promotes a damaging view of sex that shapes young men's (and women's) fantasies and expectations of how sex should be, at the cost of healthy intimacy.

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  • INFORMATION

    Former state governor derides Good Friday football

    • James Gobbo
    • 03 April 2011
    9 Comments

    The proposal that a match at the MCG could project an Easter message is ludicrous. The Easter message calls for time and prayerful reflection. Even Islamic and Jewish leaders have supported the special status of Good Friday.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Laura's French fry odyssey

    • George Estreich
    • 15 March 2011
    2 Comments

    Sleep was not in two-year-old Laura's holiday plans: she inhabited several time zones, none of them ours. One night, at 11, when she was getting revved up for another two hours of play, I decided to take her to the shops. I should mention that Laura has Down syndrome.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Christmas gallows

    • Charlotte Clutterbuck
    • 22 December 2010
    1 Comment

    Despair, Damnation, and Capital Punishment are my Christmas fare this year. During my research into literary executions, I was shocked to find so few cases where they were opposed on Christian grounds, and so many examples of Christian acceptance.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Keith Richards' other church

    • Philip Harvey
    • 08 December 2010

    'When you are growing up, there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully — the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you,' writes Richards. Librarians know better than anyone that the library attracts the most unlikely clientele.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Shopping as communion

    • Sarah Kanowski
    • 15 November 2010
    6 Comments

    Buying and selling has shaped history. Alongside goods, new ideas and practices get exchanged, leading to the creation of remarkable civilisations. My young daughter and I recently caught a bus into the city to do some shopping. A mundane errand was transformed into something magical.

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  • RELIGION

    Rethinking indigeneity in the age of globalisation

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 November 2010
    3 Comments

    There is an emerging Aboriginal middle class. The contested questions in those communities relate to the expensive delivery of services including health, housing and education. The contested issue in the urban community is over self-identification as Aboriginal by persons of mixed descent.

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  • RELIGION

    Speaking for country, speaking for self

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 July 2010

    Fr Frank Brennan's address to the Melbourne College of Divinity Centenary Conference, Trinity College, University of Melbourne, 6 July 2010.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Criminals and other animals

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 10 June 2010
    4 Comments

    Nicky is curled up asleep on the couch. She is an innocent, and we feel affection for her. But as the camera pans around, we realise we have been sharing Andrew's leering perspective. The scene foreshadows Animal Kingdom's most appalling atrocity.

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  • RELIGION

    My debt to a wandering priest

    • Frank Brennan
    • 25 May 2010
    3 Comments

    When Fr Julian Tenison Woods was no longer welcome in the south, he came and conducted scientific expeditions and parish missions in Queensland. In 1881, he conducted a parish mission in Maryborough, where he got Martin Brennan, my great-grandfather, off the grog and back to church.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Beyond the global storytelling crisis

    • Colm McNaughton
    • 29 March 2010
    10 Comments

    It is becoming clear that we are probably not going to avert cataclysmic forms of climate change. The foundational Greek and Hebraic imaginaries, the mythical narratives that frame western civilisation, can no longer contain, inform and explain what we experience. We need new stories.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Fatherhood after the apocalypse

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 04 February 2010
    5 Comments

    The blurring of right and wrong in a world where civil structures have disintegrated, is seen in the Man's escalating wildness; his desperation to preserve the life of his son, and his conviction that the end of survival justifies a growing list of dubious means. 

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