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Volume 17 No.11

14 June 2007


 

  • AUSTRALIA

    Muddy ovals under threat from climate change

    • Colin Long
    • 13 June 2007
    1 Comment

    Those of us who played school or local footy in our youth remember bitterly cold days, ankle-deep mud and finding it difficult to tell team mates from opposition through the layers of mud caked on jumpers. My twelve year old has already played for more than five years, but has not experienced one of those afternoons.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    A short note on secrets

    • Brian Doyle
    • 13 June 2007
    5 Comments

    Women and secrets led me to murky confusion where I have lived ever since. The first girl I ever kissed swore me to secrecy, but we were fourteen years old then and I didn’t actually have anyone to tell the secret to, since my brothers and friends would have fallen down laughing at the very idea that a girl had kissed me.

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  • RELIGION

    Happiness and the Inner Self

    • Clive Hamilton
    • 13 June 2007
    10 Comments

    We all want to live a happy life. But what do we think of when we ponder our own happiness? In today’s society, dominated by the techniques of marketing and the culture of consumption, we are being persuaded to think of our happiness in a quite different way — as the gratification of our desires.

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  • RELIGION

    Oath demands what many would willingly give

    • Geoffrey King
    • 13 June 2007
    7 Comments

    Whether the imposition of an oath will further its aim is extremely doubtful. An oath is a legal instrument of a rather blunt kind, of its nature demanding only minimal compliance, whereas what is needed is a positive atmosphere in which traditions and values can be learned and appreciated.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Burmese Days and banana leaves

    • Sarah Nichols
    • 13 June 2007
    2 Comments

    Nearly twenty years ago, San San Maw was a student revolutionary fighting the Burmese Army on the Thai-Burma border. Now she lives in an outer eastern suburb of Melbourne.

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  • RELIGION

    Is New Zealand a Christian country?

    • Peter Matheson
    • 13 June 2007

    The question of whether New Zealand should see itself as a Christian country has bubbled up in an unexpected way. The word ‘Christian’, itself, has become, almost unusable, associated in the public mind with fundamentalist bookshops and the like, or with short lived political parties which tout moralistic codes.

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  • RELIGION

    Power of polemic is self-perpetuating, but not persuasive

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 June 2007
    10 Comments

    The much commented-on recent books by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have reintroduced a broad brush anti-religious polemic. It has much in common with religious polemic against the secular world.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Saying thank you to an ambivalent society

    • Saeed Saeed
    • 13 June 2007
    3 Comments

    The Sudanese Lost Boys Association of Australia recently organised an Appreciation Day. The newly arrived South Sudanese community engaged in community work. Despite the jubilant atmosphere and images of the South Sudanese men, woman and children planting trees in the park, the most remarkable aspect of this event was that it happened at all.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Grubby oil grab that left a tiny country gasping

    • Christine Kearney
    • 13 June 2007
    1 Comment

    Ugly. Rapacious. Bruising and governed by the narrowest definitions of national interest. These are a few of the descriptions that spring to mind after reading this devastating portrait of Australia’s negotiations over oil and gas resources in the Timor Sea.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Greenhouse mafia's scorching approach to climate change

    • John Button
    • 13 June 2007
    11 Comments

    No wonder people hope for arguments which suggest climate change will go away. The discussion about climate change has become increasingly feverish, polemical and downright dishonest.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Island nation looks inwards after monarch's passing

    • Luke James
    • 13 June 2007
    14 Comments

    The recent death of the Samoan Head of State, Malietoa Tanumafili II, has elicited public and private comment noting his good leadership and unique status in Samoa’s political history.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    What Paris did next

    • James Massola
    • 13 June 2007
    7 Comments

    The big news recently has been Paris Hilton, the heiress and celebrity who is famous for being famous. Hilton has been in the news because she was sent to jail for drink driving. One wonders what all this has contributed to the sum of human existence.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    In the Dreams of Whales & The Muses

    • Grant Fraser, L.K.Holt
    • 13 June 2007
    2 Comments

    In the dreams of whales we are the sons of Ishmael, / Fleet of limb, / Sheened with droplets of water, droplets of air, / Crammed with kindnesses.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Redemptive Romulus a film for the ages

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 13 June 2007

    Romulus, My Father should be remembered as one of the great Australian films of 2007. It should also be the film that cements Eric Bana’s place as a serious actor of considerable ability.

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