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Keywords: Library

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Book junkie's detox nightmare

    • Brian Matthews
    • 02 September 2011
    7 Comments

    My wife and I are performing a difficult, heart-rending task: culling our books. There are thousands of them, on shelves and in boxes, some of which were sealed and labelled 25 years ago. I know who to blame for setting me on the path to this agonising task. It was Mrs Murphy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Census and Labor's Catholic vote

    • Brian Lawrence
    • 09 August 2011
    14 Comments

    The Census will play a central role in the planning of the next Federal election. Past results show that while much of Labor's working class base has abandoned it, a solid base of Catholics remains. But many of these supporters are now standing near the door bemused or angry. These figures show that while low income earners have abandoned Labor, a solid base of Catholics have stuck with it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why we swear

    • Philip Harvey
    • 06 June 2011
    6 Comments

    Fining people for swearing is silly. We can no more control what people say than we can hold the wind, or even a very large fart. Victoria's swear-fine laws are likely to be used either as threat or reality on those who can least afford the fine and cannot fight back.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Stories from the Struggletown Library

    • John Falzon
    • 25 May 2011
    10 Comments

    There was a liberal use of corporal punishment in my school. We were seen as a loutish bunch of lads who needed a firm hand. It did nothing to help my education. You don't create a smart and confident Australia by taking to people with a stick.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Gospel bit players

    • Philip Harvey
    • 21 April 2011
    7 Comments

    The conventional homily on the miracle of the lame man focuses on his faith and hope. But Irish poet Seamus Heaney draws attention to the faith, hope and charity of the man's friends, who will go to any trouble to help their mate in his hour of need.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Songs of England at war

    • Philip Harvey
    • 23 February 2011
    3 Comments

    Gallipolli was a disaster and a relatively minor conflict, but it is upon such 'minor' conflicts that Empires are built. These songs go to the heart of a contradictory dilemma: the love of country on the one hand and the ugly extremes of patriotism on the other. 

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  • RELIGION

    King James Bible a masterpiece but not an idol

    • Philip Harvey
    • 01 February 2011
    29 Comments

    2011 is the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. It will be said that the King James is the soul of our language and that it shares pre-eminence with the Bard. But all of this talk will be at odds with the actual purpose for which it was created.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Schooling in the classroom without walls

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 31 January 2011
    13 Comments

    The furore that erupted when Chinese-American mother Amy Chua accused Westerners of being too soft on their children masks a subtle sharpening of middle class parental expectations in Australia.

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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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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Art by and for the lost

    • George Estreich
    • 01 December 2010
    2 Comments

    The word graffiti encloses a vast spectrum from vandalism to art. At one end, a black slosh across a dry-cleaner's window: no message, only a mess. At the other, a Martian-green man on the side of a defunct warehouse, brooding on a thought as immense as himself.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Politicians stoke the violence myth

    • Ellena Savage
    • 26 November 2010

    I used to carry a knife in my handbag. Like nearly a quarter of Australians, I believe that 80 per cent of all crime is violent crime; I was concerned for my safety. And then I discovered that if my self-defence weapon were used, it would likely be used against me.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Inside Canberra's Catholic lobby

    • Frank Quinlan
    • 18 August 2010
    11 Comments

    This election we consider a PM who is doubted because of her atheism, an Opposition Leader who is doubted for being too 'Catholic', and the Greens who are doubted as being anti-Christian. Church social agencies have been involved in important issues with each of these groups.

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