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Keywords: Curiosity

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Elegy for the 298 of MH17

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 21 July 2014
    17 Comments

    The deepest questions raised by the deaths of those on the plane shot down over the Ukraine are the unavoidable questions that face us all: questions about the patent precariousness and vulnerability of our lives, about what matters to us when our grasp on the future is so tenuous, about the mysterious conjunction of love, loss, pain and gift, and about the capacity of the human heart for evil and the terrible consequences that follow.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The weight and wonder of a brother's last words

    • Brian Doyle
    • 18 June 2014
    12 Comments

    We give great weight to last words. Most of the time I'd guess that those words are about love. I'd guess that some of those final words are shrieks or gasps or utterances of astonishment. The very last thing my brother said before he died was 'The answer is in the questioning.' I have thought about those words for two years now. It turns out you can ponder them from every conceivable angle and never get to the bottom of what they mean.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The boy who never stops

    • Clare Locke
    • 10 June 2014
    4 Comments

    I'm sitting on sturdy chair, stretch cotton nightie, baby to my breast in this pale light, my newest success. Memory has framed this view, of life dawning, love nestled quietly in a sure footed chair. Years on, that honeyed perfection, the bliss of triumphant togetherness, soothes the shock of his rage, his energy.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Don't let plane panic paint all men as paedophiles

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 02 May 2014
    15 Comments

    For feminists who have fought for generations against sexism, the argument that men should be excised from children's orbit lest they commit the same atrocities of which a small percentage of other men are guilty is chilling. It rubber-stamps the notion that people's character and behavioural choices are determined by their gender, and presupposes that individuals can be judged on the basis of their group's collective history.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The empathy revolution

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 14 February 2014
    3 Comments

    While realpolitik can drive us beyond a healthy scepticism to cynicism and indifference, British cultural thinker Roman Krzaric contends that when we look beyond the real — through imagination, creativity, vulnerability and networking — we can bring about the ideal of 'empathy on a mass scale to create social change' and even go about 'extending our empathy skills to embrace the natural world'. Without dreamers like Krzaric, we're stuffed.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Indonesia gives a Gonski

    • Pat Walsh
    • 24 July 2013
    3 Comments

    Like Australia's Gonski reforms, Indonesia's initiatives are designed to give its economy a competitive edge by upgrading its human resources. But the changes also have the potential to radically transform Indonesia in other ways. Future generations who have been encouraged to think for themselves, to question and to criticise will be very different citizens to their forbears.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Boys using violence to impress girls

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 30 May 2013

    Some lessons need to be learned more than once. A young boy punches an older peer in defence of the honour of a girl he admires. The girl is so impressed that she invites the boy on a date. Is violence, then, an approved medium for the defence of romantic ideals? The boy tests this premise twice more, with less gratifying results. 

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Abbott's animal charms

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 03 May 2013
    5 Comments

    Casting a Victorious PM Abbott as a puppet of Pell and Howard, or a fiddler with women's rights, seems risible; Abbott is bound by social restraints after all. Nonetheless, there is something ominous in David Marr's droll observation: 'His values have never stood in his way.'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    The Palestinian who would be Jewish

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 11 April 2013
    1 Comment

    A Rabbi informs Joseph that although he has been circumcised and celebrated his Bah Mitzvah, the revelations about his biological origins mean he must undergo 'cleansing' rituals to be accepted as a Jew. Religious institutions err when they elevate legalism over human need. In this instance the institution is found wanting.

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  • RELIGION

    Social justice and the 21st century family

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 27 September 2012
    20 Comments

    In the 2012 Catholic Social Justice Statement on the family, 'the family' is characterised by stable relationships between husband, wife and children. In Australia families of this kind are the exception. Reflection on family needs to consider the factors that create instability and suffering to children in a variety of relationships.

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  • RELIGION

    Vatican prefers tanks to talks to achieve unity

    • Andrew McGowan
    • 21 August 2012
    53 Comments

    The Personal Ordinariates established this year in the UK, the USA, Canada and Australia have failed in their stated aim at promoting untity between Catholics and Anglicans. They suggest that the real position of the Vatican on Christian unity is about absorption rather than convergence.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Beyond the Liesel Jones fat spat

    • Catherine Marshall
    • 27 July 2012
    7 Comments

    The brutal media critique of swimmer Liesel Jones on the eve of the Olympics was typical of society's tendency to chew up and spit out its heroes once it deems them to be no longer useful. If it dented her confidence, Jones may have taken strength from Australia's first ever international sports champion.

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