How Alex Jones won
One of my favorite Walt Whitman stanzas goes like this: I’m a pioneer! I’m an explorer! I’m a human, and…
The flag wars have come to the Netherlands
The small community of Uithoorn, just outside Amsterdam, has unexpectedly found itself on the front line of Europe’s flag wars.…
How sumo wrestling bounced back
Sumo is the featured attraction at the Royal Albert Hall this weekend in a rare foray for the ancient sport…
Will Trump’s peace hold in Nagorno-Karabakh?
On the Armenian banks of the winding Aras River, which represents the border with Iran, I am approached by two…
Albo the ‘Man of Lead’ while Chalmers has no clue
Anthony Albanese, a Johnny-come-lately in the extreme, declared his idiotic support for a Palestinian state just moments before Trump’s negotiations…
Book of Trump
And so it came to pass that a prophet arose from the banks of the Hudson River, a baby born…
Comedy notes
When Qatar ‘won’ the rights to host the 2022 Fifa World Cup, its leaders experienced what addicts describe as ‘a…
La de da
Everyone who has read the work of the late great Thomas Bernhard, the Austrian novelist forever spitting his fellow Austrians…
Aussie life
It’s not often you can say, ‘I know exactly how he feels’ about your Prime Minister. But in following the…
Language
Cheryl asks me to explain why we call someone who is off their rocker ‘dotty’. Well, ‘dotty’ has had that…
Everything and the girl: a lit-crit dissection of the Swifty world
The brilliant but unknowable songwriter is short-changed by this curious hybrid of slangy fangirl excitement and veneer of scholarship
A sip of Israeli history
We were drinking Israeli wine as the talk ranged from frivolity to seriousness: from Donald Trump to the tragic paradoxes…
Why men are the disposable sex
I am a proud father. Both my daughters got good degrees. But better still, they smoke, go to pubs and…
