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Volume 17 No.10

31 May 2007


 

  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Aloofness the price for master critic's knowledge and incisiveness

    • Clive O'Connell
    • 13 June 2007

    2003 Nobel Literature prizewinner and Adelaide research fellow J.M. Coetzee, offers even-handed judgements about arcane authors. He assesses their work with an understanding assurance that abstains from proclaiming genius where there is only fitful talent.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Recherche Bay researcher aided natural beauty preservation

    • Peter Pierce
    • 13 June 2007
    1 Comment

    Five years ago, when Recherche Bay in Tasmania's far south was threatened with logging, the heritage importance of the area had to be freshly and strenuously established. The work of local historian Bruce Poulson proved crucial.

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  • RELIGION

    Downsizing as a form of modern asceticism

    • Paul Collins
    • 13 June 2007
    8 Comments

    We live in a world where the dogmas of economic rationalism and consumerism rule supreme. Rather than physical penance, today's asceticism involves a deliberate downsizing and an abandonment of infinite expansion as the measure of success.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    'History wars' propel local yarns into big picture

    • Susan Aykut
    • 13 June 2007

    Organisations that commission the writing of their history know that they must speak to their own people. But they should also engage with big picture debates that put people's stories into a larger context.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    A nuclear reactor in my back yard

    • Colin Brown
    • 13 June 2007
    2 Comments

    In 1996, Lucas Heights was renamed Barden Ridge, in order to preserve property values. Few people enjoy living near a nuclear reactor. Many also doubt that building more nuclear reactors will provide an answer to our run away greenhouse gas emissions.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    No place for truth in citizenship training school?

    • Erasmus
    • 13 June 2007
    4 Comments

    It’s an ordinary day at the Citizenship Traditional School. Citizenship questions are about Australian values – fair go, mateship, correct use of English, etc. Take the questions home and memorise the right answers.

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  • RELIGION

    Hitchens returns to bosom of Left to denounce God

    • Scott Stephens
    • 13 June 2007
    5 Comments

    In God is not Great, Christopher Hitchens dismisses religion as the invention of hucksters and frauds. Although he has abandoned his leftist position, this is a straightforward reiteration of Marx’s own critique of religion.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Rabbit proof fence not Jigalong's only barrier

    • Jack Waterford
    • 13 June 2007
    2 Comments

    Jigalong is a remote community in WA, best known for its association with the Rabbit Proof Fence. Remote Aboriginal communities suffer greatly from undeveloped nature of their economies, and the institutional barriers created to prevent them developing.

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Time to plan for migration forced by climate change

    • David Corlett
    • 13 June 2007
    5 Comments

    Even the skeptics are accepting that climate change is with us. Yet the impact of climate change on the movement of people around the world – usually the poorest – is almost entirely absent from public debate.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Why is it so hard to say sorry?

    • Ursula Stephens
    • 13 June 2007
    16 Comments

    This year's anniversaries are reminders of the importance of "sorry" in the reconciliation process. Why is it so hard to admit that most human of qualities, fallibility? Regret, atonement and forgiveness lie very much at the core of spiritual values.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Grave notes

    • James Waller
    • 13 June 2007

    A selection of 31 one-line poems.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Justifying civil disobedience

    • Michael Mullins
    • 13 June 2007
    3 Comments

    Rural landowners are planning a day of "civil obedience" on 1 July to assert what they believe is their right to clear native vegetation from their land. How is this different from the civil disobedience of anti-war protestors such as the Pine Gap Four?

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Few Aboriginal digital citizens 40 years after referendum

    • Margaret Cassidy
    • 13 June 2007

    The award-winning 2006 Rolf de Heer film Ten Canoes was shown to mark last weekend's anniversary. While the film itself, and many of its actors and collaborators, have a significant online presence, Australia's indigenous culture remains under-represented in the digital medium.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Inconvenient truths and crude awakenings

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 13 June 2007
    1 Comment

    A shocking new documentary with compelling economic and cultural arguments that add weight to the warning environmentalists have been issuing for years. When the oil runs out—and it has to, eventually—it will drastically, permanently change our world.

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