April 22, 2013 – 10:46 pm
Chrissie Amphlett and the Divinyls provided a decent chunk of the soundtrack to my young life; reports of her early death (aged 53) hit me in the childhood memories, hard, much like the arrest of Rolf Harris, or pictures of Berliners crawling over the remains of the Wall. I have, by saying those things, disclosed [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Also posted in Books, Fark!, Popular culture, science fiction
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Tagged Ayn Rand, Bleak House, Chrissie Amphlett, cultural capital, DC Comics, Dr Who, Ender's Game, geekiness, geeks, high culture, Jane Austen, Jarndyce v Jarndyce, literary criticism, National Organisation for Marriage, Orson Scott Card, Reason Foundation, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, the Divinyls, Tolstoy, Ursula Le Guin
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January 10, 2013 – 9:30 am
The further back you can look, the further forward you are likely to see. Winston Churchill. With the release of the first film of The Hobbit trilogy, An Unexpected Journey, the blogosphere is rife with Middle Earth allusions. My favourite is Frances Woolley’s wonderful post (with some great comments) The Macroeconomics of Middle Earth, though [...]
By Lorenzo
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Also posted in Blogging, Economics, England, Environment, History, Law, Marriage, Politics, Popular culture, Public Policy, Religion, Sexuality, Society, Technology, Welfare
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Tagged Andy Warhol, consanguinity, deepak Lal, Distributism, Eric Crampton, Fascism, films, Frances Woolley, Industrialisation, J R R Tolkien, Kingdom of Wessex, luxury good, Matthew Akers, Morton, Niall Ferguson, Pope Gregory, Scott Sumner, Winston Churchill, world war one
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September 7, 2012 – 7:42 pm
There have been many campaigns, over the years, to improve literacy in Australia (and in other developed nations, too). It is well known that even with universal, compulsory education, a percentage of young people finish their schooling and really struggle with reading and writing. Finding ways to address this is a common and worthy cause [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Also posted in Academia, Australia, Books
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Tagged Andrew Norton, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Brisbane Writers' Festival, Germaine Greer, IEA, Jane Cowell, literacy, Matthew Condon, Nick Earls, numeracy, Queensland Literary Awards, State Library of Queensland, Steve Horwitz
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August 26, 2012 – 9:50 pm
Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August Bank Holiday lark; And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And [...]
August 10, 2012 – 5:16 am
For I will consider my Cat Jeoffry. For he is the servant of the Living God duly and daily serving him. For at the first glance of the glory of God in the East he worships in his way. For is this done by wreathing his body seven times round with elegant quickness. For then [...]
Federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has admitted he’s not only a reader of “mummy porn”, the steamy sub-genre of literature featuring descriptions of sex scenes, he has a preferred author. Mr Abbott told the Sydney Triple M breakfast show The Grill Team, that he had read both The Bride Stripped Bare by Australian author Nikki [...]
By DeusExMacintosh
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Also posted in Australia, Fark!, Funnies, Politics, Popular culture, Sexuality
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Tagged Australian Liberal Party, Australian politics, Books, Fifty Shades of Grey, Julia Gillard, slash, Tony Abbott
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SL and I must be en rapport because we’ve both jumped on the Fifty Shades of Grey bandwagon at the same time: her earlier comments are here. The common thread is that neither of us are impressed, and neither of us likes bad writing. The difference with my review is that I broke my resolution [...]
The other day, Pavlov’s Cat drew my attention to this piece on why bullies bully, particularly in schools. The tl;dr version? Telling kids that they’re all that produces narcissistic, entitled little monsters who think the world owes them a living. Contrary to the mythology, bullies have high self-esteem, not the opposite. Well well well (three [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Also posted in Books, Personal liberty, Public Policy, The Left
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Tagged Andrew Bolt, Antony Loewenstein, Cassandra Wilkinson, Centre for Independent Studies, Christos Tsiolkas, Jeff Sparrow, Left Turn, SDA, Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, Shoppies, sinclair davidson, Trade Unions
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Few people are aware that it was murdered Sturmabteiling (SA) leader, Ernst Röhm, who quipped — apparently just before his execution during the Night of the Long Knives — that all revolutions devour their own children. His papers, discovered after the War, reveal that he thought this observation applied to all revolutions. There was no ‘good’ [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Also posted in Books
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Tagged 1984, Catching Fire, Dr Strangelove, Factory Acts, George Orwell, Juvenal, Khmer Rouge, literary pastiche, Mockingjay, panem, panem et circenses, Revolutions, Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games, The Killing Fields, THX 1138, Tuol Sleng, Vietnam War, William Golding, Year Zero
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For those of you who read either the Age or Andrew Bolt, you will be aware of this article, which points out the following: More than a third of the winners of Australia’s most prestigious literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award, are now out of print. Of the 53 books that have been awarded the [...]
By skepticlawyer
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Also posted in Australia, Books, Bring Laws and Gods, England, science fiction
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Tagged Andrew Bolt, Antony Harwood, Michael Heyward, Miles Franklin Award, Text Publishing, The Hand that Signed the Paper, The Kindly Ones
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