Gene-splicing our way to success?
Having only recently re-watched the superb Jurassic Park Spielberg film based on Michael Crichton’s book (of the same name), I…
Labor’s recession we didn’t have to have
Federal spending is set to increase to its highest level since the mid-1980s, pandemic spending aside, at 26.6 per cent…
Welcome to Country!
As a 20th Century Scot, arriving in Australia as a migrant teenager when assimilation was the base criteria for migrants…
We Brits never realised how good we had it under Boris Johnson
Just under two years ago, the UK Conservative Party made the ridiculous decision to oust former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.…
Rome was exhausted by its greatness. Are we next?
By casting our minds back to Rome, one orients themselves in a place of marching legions, splendorous festivals, and swarming…
Women and wealth: inheriting $3.2 trillion in the next decade
What a turnabout. Half a century ago feminism was all about celebrating women’s success. There was huge excitement about women’s…
Making masculinity toxic
An apparent spike in sexist and misogynistic behaviour by male students has given rise to a new training program for…
Defending Dave: Australia’s biggest online rally for free speech
Australia’s biggest ever online political rally for free speech is happening tomorrow night from 7-10pm (AEST) following the attack on…
NAPLAN: doom, gloom, and blame
The release of NAPLAN data last week unleashed a flurry of doom, gloom and blame. As if we needed further…
Dave Pellowe reported to HRC for replacing Welcome to Country with Psalm 24:1
The Church and State Australia (CSA) ministry founder, Dave Pellowe, faces a complaint put before the Queensland Human Rights Commission…
Miracle worker Tim’s stellar career in the Labor circus
Say what you like about Tim Pallas – his career achievements are, by any measure, remarkable. From abattoir worker to…
UK puts misogyny and Islamic terrorism on an equal footing
UK Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced Labour’s plan to expand the Terrorism Act of 2000 to incorporate acts of…
Our tinpot tyrannies
I am reliably informed that the former premier of Victoria, Dan Andrews, regularly strolls down Collins Street in Melbourne’s CBD,…
Australia’s jihad-supporting government
Time to acknowledge an uncomfortable truth. The Australian Jewish community was conned by the Labor party prior to the last…
China goes for gold in South China Seas
For those who like their sport served with a side order of geopolitics and didn’t want to see the last…
Perils of two-tier rule
Authorities are reprising the techniques of managed messaging and gaslighting deployed with great success during the Covid years to exercise…
Get tougher now on border patrolling
Recently another four boats transporting economic immigrants were found on the West Australian coast, up in the Kimberley region. The…
History in remote hills
For almost a century, geochemists have been making minerals and rocks in high-pressure high-temperature laboratory experiments. Water fluxes melting rocks…
Kamala Chameleon
Perhaps the greatest pretence at the Democratic National Convention is that Vice President Kamela Harris was the enthusiastic first choice…
Our woeful elites
Somehow the label ‘ruling elites’ doesn’t quite do it. There is too much of a whiff or stench of the…
The selfishness of defecting to another country
Elite sport is a selfish business. It’s all about achieving success for yourself. However much others have contributed to your…
How Israel is clearing Hamas out of Rafah
Rafah, Gaza The heat, the sand, the soldiers. I’m in Rafah, a war zone unlike any other. As a former…
Putin takes revenge for the Kursk attack with glide bombs
In the sprawling and unlovely village of Billopilya, only five miles from Ukraine’s border with Russia, when death comes, it…
Biden bids a late-night farewell to the DNC
Chicago Monday night at the Democratic National Convention served as a protracted thank you and farewell to President Joe Biden…
Kiwi life
New Zealand in crisis Given the destruction the previous Labour government inflicted on this country, and the damage caused by…
New Zealand’s carbon sequestration problem
Ongoing concern about climate change has fuelled debate about the part carbon sequestration might play in reducing New Zealand’s net…
Why New Zealand is cracking down on immigration
The government of New Zealand this week tightened the country’s working visa rules in order to stem historically high numbers…
Why is New Zealand’s deputy PM rowing with Chumbawamba?
In their musical heyday, the English anarchist punk band Chumbawamba enjoyed a reputation for having an irreverent attitude towards those…
The persecution of ‘the plebs’
The power of surprise
You would think that Andrew Bovell, the man who wrote Lantana, would not be subject to the petty indignities of…
The standard of beauty
Maxim Vengerov is touted as one of the world’s greatest violinists, the kind of musician who can fill Carnegie Hall…
Deranged and fantastic horrors
For a century King Lear has been thought of as the greatest of Shakespeare’s tragedies and the title role as…
Rescued from the Comanches
Isn’t it extraordinary how the new-style, super-arty balletic circus has transformed the old child-delighting world of Heffalumps and daring young…
Saved from certain death at Auschwitz – by playing the cello
Bees and mammoth bones, a shipwreck, horse urine (preferably female), a 17th-century craftsman and a 20th-century genocide. Playing an extended…
The juicy history of the apple
In Food for Life, Tim Spector’s book on the science of eating, the author gives the chemical makeup of a…
The enduring charisma of Brazil’s working-class president
A better title for this book might have been ‘Lula: A Drama’. In the first of two long- anticipated volumes,…
Is it wrong to try to ‘cure’ autism?
Is autism the worst thing that can happen to a person? Is ABA – Applied Behaviour Analysis – the right…
Tales with a twist: Safe Enough and Other Stories, by Lee Child, reviewed
Lee Child has sold more than 200 million books. He reckons his royalties at about a dollar per book. He…
How could Hitler have had so many willing henchmen?
Eight decades after the second world war ended, for how much longer will we produce massive books about Hitler and…
Her weird name was the least of Moon Unit Zappa’s problems
On Frank Zappa’s first date with Gail Sloatman, he blew his nose on her skirt. As acts of territory-marking go,…
Whoever imagined that geology was a lifeless subject?
Rocks are still and lifeless things, and geologists are men with beards whose emotional bandwidth is taken up with an…