Big Australia
It’s been a couple of weeks since Ken Henry’s speech at QUT kicked off something of a debate about Australia’s future population. Henry – noting carefully that he was speaking only for himself, not Treasury – raised concerns about the [...]
Claude Levi-Strauss
The French anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, has died, aged 100. Levi-Strauss was one of the towering intellectuals of the second half of the twentieth century. At Crikey, Guy Rundle provides an appreciation, and contextualises Levi-Strauss’ thought and influence for our times.
Grumpy is the new black
Jason Wilson has a spiffy piece up at New Matilda on the rise and rise (and fall?) of the “trollumnist” – the op/ed columnist who provokes for advertising’s sake. He instances Miranda Devine, David Burchell, Planet Janet and Catherine Deveny. [...]
That other race
As Phil observed on Facebook, the political classes are going to work themselves into a lather over a poll on the day when a horse race stops the nation. Newspoll shows Labor’s primary at 41, down 7 points, and equal [...]
Censorship alert
The World Today yesterday ran a story today about the CSIRO blocking a paper that had been accepted for publication by the journal New Political Economy after being internationally peer-reviewed. The had been submitted by Dr Clive Spash, a CSIRO [...]
"Electric Dreams" are not just in the home.
While the format of Electric Dreams is now thoroughly familiar – a modern-day family is placed in a facsimile of some past historical era, and their reactions to it recorded for the camera, this BBC reality show (screening early on [...]
Keating on Costello (… and everything else)
Paul Keating hasn’t been reticent lately about letting people know what he thinks … though, perhaps he never was. PJK has been in the news decrying the artistic establishment for neglecting Geoffrey Tozer, pondering cities and dubbing Canberra “a great [...]
Climate crunch and Copenhagen: the fierce urgency of now
Back in 2003 James Hansen was saying that we had about 10 years to get ourselves organised to tackle global warming and climate change. You ignore him at your peril. For three days this May some of the best minds [...]
2009 Melbourne Cup open thread
The first Tuesday in November is almost upon us again, so here’s a thread on which you can post your Melbourne Cup selections, reflections, recollections, fashion tips, hangover remedies, revolutionary critiques and whatever else takes your fancy.
Lazy Sunday!
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!




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