Keywords: Science Fiction
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 20 June 2013
During a lecture at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, biologist Geoff Burton speaks of the agonising genetic disorder that claimed the life of his infant son. He insists that his subsequent research into prenatal diagnosis and treatment is not related to eugenics. But merely naming the slippery slope doesn't negate it.
READ MORE 
-
EDUCATION
- Tony Thompson
- 08 January 2013
4 Comments
My son goes to a friendly primary school and is making progress. But his handwriting is poor, he hates sitting for long periods, and doesn't understand why the girls are 'better at everything'. He likes sport and art, which involve 'doing stuff'. Schools have been battling with adolescent boys for centuries. Maybe it's time to give some ground. Monday 24 September
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Barry Gittins
- 05 December 2012
4 Comments
Hindrance Day was conceived as a means of commemorating the millions of acts of self-indulgence that marked the First Gillard-Abbott war on unAustralians. The concept of two minutes' ignorance was popularly adopted across what was left of the civilised world and became a key ritual of the annual celebrations.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Moira Byrne Garton
- 02 October 2012
35 Comments
Following the rape and murder of Jill Meagher in Melbourne last week, many women admitted they too may have risked the short walk from pub to home in the early hours of the morning. Few men would see it as a risk at all; nor would they understand the 'continuum of threatened violence' women encounter with distressing regularity.
READ MORE
-
EDUCATION
- Tony Thompson
- 24 September 2012
10 Comments
My son goes to a friendly primary school and is making progress. But his handwriting is poor, he hates sitting for long periods, and doesn't understand why the girls are 'better at everything'. He likes sport and art, which involve 'doing stuff'. Schools have been battling with adolescent boys for centuries. Maybe it's time to give some ground.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
When I was 15 I decided not to kill myself. I am still sometimes prone to baseless bouts of depression, but that ragged dark hole has never engulfed me. The main characters in two recent films are notable for deciding to live, rather than lie down and be overrun by dark emotions and events.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
So we may yet have a Mormon, Mitt Romney, as the Republican contender for the White House. Forty years ago this would have led to a perceived clash of loyalties: 'Who runs America?' — remember the fuss about John F. Kennedy's Catholicism? Nowadays this seems to the be least of Romney's troubles.
READ MORE
-
MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD
- Jessica Voelker
- 14 September 2011
1 Comment
One American physicist claims each breath we take contains molecules of air that were also breathed by Archimedes, Aristotle, and even Jesus Christ. Through physics, religion, the human body, and mythology, there is a thread that weaves us into a continuous rich tapestry.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 17 March 2011
New Queer Cinema is a genre marked by its robust portrayal of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender protagonists, usually as outsiders or renegades from conventional society. Alienation and otherness drive the characters into each other's orbits with the force of a familial bond.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Adrian Phoon
- 08 July 2010
4 Comments
The toys are brought to a landfill, where they are
dragged towards an incinerator, a fiery pit equivalent to any
vision of Hell confected by Dante. It's harrowing stuff for an animated feature, but you can never tell what the toys find more threatening: death
itself or the despair of becoming obsolete.
READ MORE
-
ENVIRONMENT
The Howard years made me feel ashamed to be Australian, and I felt about his electoral defeat the way East Germans felt about the Berlin Wall coming down: as a kind of cleansing. Rudd disappoints for a different reason.
READ MORE
-
ARTS AND CULTURE
- Philip Harvey
- 16 April 2010
6 Comments
In one poem Les Murray would reduce the causes of the
Black Saturday fires to differences in forest management between 'hippies' and 'rednecks'. Utilising
poetry to play the blame game demeans our understanding of the complexity of that disaster.
READ MORE