Category Archives: Literature

Do What Thou Wilt

March 6, 2007 – 6:39 pm

Continuing my professional interest in evil…
Without Aleister Crowley, those well meaning people who press cheap tracts on the dangers of the occult into your hands would have to find other ways to waste their Saturday nights. Crowley is a staple - no, a star - of tractdom. Almost inevitably, [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in Religion, Skeptics | Comments (11)

Corrida!

February 7, 2007 – 12:34 am

At one point when I was living in Italy, I paid for mum to come and stay with me for a couple of months. She’d never travelled to ‘the Continent’ as the Irish so quaintly put it, and her last holiday had been on the boat on the way over to Australia - in 1950. [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in Philosophy | Comments (8)

The straight dope

January 18, 2007 – 11:25 pm

UPDATE: Just to be crystal clear, this is the main reason I wrote this post:
None of the BBP2006 judges made a call on their own work. No one judge had power over all the nominations from any given writer. Mark Bahnisch had nothing to do with the judging. Ken Parish made any final calls. Do [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in Blogging | Comments (282)

This Old Man

January 16, 2007 – 8:26 pm

One of the most difficult writing assignments I ever had was a commission to write a piece on my father. Initially, my piece was simply one of a collection of essays by Australian writers on their fathers. Ross Fitzgerald, the cranky but interesting (and loudly teetotal) historian was the editor, and as he’d stood by [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in Media | Comments (48)

Guest post by Ron Kitching: Educate the Babblers

January 10, 2007 – 4:59 pm

Ron Kitching, Australian libertarian legend, has been a bit concerned about the quality of debate around these parts. To that end, he’s assembled a convenient classical liberal reading list for everyone to be going on with. He’s so far been reluctant to comment - despite having a password - so I suggested he put together [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in Economics | Comments (41)

Other Places

January 8, 2007 – 11:30 pm

I wrote this piece while I was living in Italy, some years ago now. It was originally an experiment in Italian composition, to see if I could sustain a piece of complex prose in a foreign language. It got rather baroque in spots - the sort of thing you can carry off in Italian and [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in Religion | Comments (1)

The Spectacle

January 5, 2007 – 6:03 pm

For whatever reason, I’m in a Roman mood just now. The reaction to my Christmas piece over at OLO probably kicked it off, to the point where I admitted (privately) to a mate that I largely wrote that piece in order to show off my translations from Statius’ Silvae.
I taught myself Latin in year 12 [...]

By skepticlawyer | Comments (17)

The Trial

January 4, 2007 – 4:18 pm

Having offended some of the crispier varieties of Christian over at Online Opinion with my Christmas piece (some of the comments are clearly eligible for the inaugural ‘Graeme Bird and Steve Munn Grumpy Blogizen Award’), I thought I’d better get a start on Easter. Unlike my previous effort, this piece is fiction, and - I [...]

By skepticlawyer | Comments (13)

Proof that some artists shouldn’t be let loose in public…

November 23, 2006 – 9:32 pm

What with server brownouts and all the Ashes hype, I haven’t been keeping up with the latest from Australia’s kultural kommissars. Daniel Barnes, one of our friends from across the Tasman, supplied the mp3 of a recent interview with author Bryce Courtenay (The Power of One etc). It kinda gives new meaning to backflip.
Go here.

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in General | Comments (19)

A fraction too much fiction concluded

November 19, 2006 – 9:45 pm

Chapter One is here; Chapter Two is here.
PLANT CLOSURE
Rumours about Holden’s planned closure of operations in Logan City were confirmed yesterday when the managing director of Holden in Queensland, Mr Simon Wheelwright, confirmed that the plant would close in a week’s time.
Angry workers staged a protest outside the company offices in Brisbane yesterday. Mr Kevin [...]

By skepticlawyer | Comments (2)