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Keywords: Universe Story

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Doomed actor's devastating ego trip

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 22 January 2015

    Riggan's ego is immense. The action takes place backstage during the days leading up to the premier of his latest vanity project, and onstage during a series of previews. Riggan is out of his depth, prone to humiliating blunders, including one that results in a near-naked dash through the crowds of Times Square. But his resolve to affirm his greatness in the eyes of a media and public that has dismissed him is maniacal.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Human Rights, the national interest and the will of the people

    • Frank Brennan
    • 11 April 2014
    1 Comment

    'Whether or not we have a bill of rights, much of our human rights jurisprudence remains partial, failing to extend rights equally to all. Once we investigate much of the contemporary discussion about human rights, we find that often the intended recipients of rights do not include all human beings but only those with certain capacities or those who share sufficient common attributes with the decision makers. It is always at the edges that there is real work for human rights discourse to do.' Frank Brennan's Blackfriars Lecture

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  • EDUCATION

    Equipping students for moral argument

    • Frank Brennan
    • 30 September 2013

    Full text from Frank Brennan's lecture 'Law teachers as gatekeepers of law, public morality and human rights: Equipping our students for moral argument in a pluralistic legal environment' at the Australian Law Teachers Association Annual Conference 2013.

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  • RELIGION

    Storm proof: good news for all seasons

    • Clare Boyd-Macrae
    • 20 September 2013
    2 Comments

    Times are no more stormy now than they have ever been. And yet there is a different quality to our storms than there has been in the past. Two things contribute to this. First: it is now a reality, even a likelihood, that we will destroy our planet. Second: we no longer have an assumed, central narrative that informs and inspires us.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Crime kids served celebrity gods

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 08 August 2013
    1 Comment

    'God didn't give me these talents and looks to just sit around being a model or being famous. I want to lead a huge charity organisation. I want to lead a country, for all I know.' In 2008–2009 a group of teenagers stole $3 million of jewellery and clothes from the homes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and other Hollywood stars. Coppola portrays this as an outcome of materialism centred on celebrity worship.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    George Zimmerman in the Bizzaro world of US gun laws

    • Jim McDermott
    • 19 July 2013
    10 Comments

    Fearful men should not be able to walk suburban streets carrying hidden revolvers. Yet that's the Bizarro universe the US finds itself in. Politicians in the US and Australia take note: if you spend your time creating a climate of anxiety, whipping up hysteria or building walls in order to score political points, the eventual result is going to be children lying dead in your streets or drowned off your shores.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Coming to terms with Christmas

    • Ellena Savage
    • 21 December 2012
    2 Comments

    My most vivid childhood Christmas memories have little to do with Christmas. In one, I'm rifling through the antique wooden bowl beside my grandmother's fireplace, finding hundreds of ancient marbles. They glow in the amber light that spills through the hand-crafted lead-glass lights. I don't even remember the presents I got that year.  

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Sad stories of teenage trauma

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 06 December 2012
    3 Comments

    As an introvert and writer Charlie is deeply empathetic. He sees in others sad stories that reflect his own. His sister is in an abusive relationship, and his gay friend is having a secret affair with a closeted peer. In being so deeply introspective Charlie misses the destructive consequences of his own actions.

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  • RELIGION

    Rejection of women bishops is not terminal

    • Andrew McGowan
    • 26 November 2012
    30 Comments

    Last Saturday the Rev. Ellinah Wamukoya was ordained as bishop of Swaziland. Most eyes in Australia however were on the Church of England's General Synod, which stumbled at the threshold of a change that would have embraced the consecration of women bishops. This may prove to be the less significant story.

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  • MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD

    The just world fallacy and the need for empathy

    • Sarah Burnside
    • 26 September 2012
    5 Comments

    Human beings have a bias towards a belief that the world is a fair place in which one's actions have appropriate consequences. This 'just world hypothesis' implies that those who suffer calamity must be at fault. It is the opposite of empathy and poses a serious challenge for those who seek to implement progressive social policies.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    My life as a Florence tour guide

    • Benedict Coleridge
    • 22 August 2012
    6 Comments

    All is not quite lost. There's still Michelangelo's David in the Academia — that's 'famous' and always makes for a good Facebook album cover. But after queuing for two hours, you feel rather underwhelmed — David isn't the 20m high statue of a ripped male you had been expecting, and there isn't a secret passageway leading from his gluteus maximus to a torture chamber beneath the Vatican.

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  • RELIGION

    The Pope's butler did it!

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 31 May 2012
    53 Comments

    Catholics get used to being asked why they are Catholic. These days, in light of cases of clergy sex abuse and cover-ups, and perceived abuse of authority and contempt for women, the question is more accusatory: 'Why are you still a Catholic?' The recent affair of the Pope's butler provides a way out of this interrogation.

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