no. 545
White to play. This is from Finn-Abbas, Varsity Match 2019. A strategic puzzle rather than a tactical one. White has…
Climate change
In Competition No. 3089 you were invited to put your own spin on a weather forecast. The seed for…
2399: Lines of work
Eight unclued entries (two of two words, one hyphened) form a folk rhyme used as the basis for the first…
to 2396: Reader …,
Unclued lights were husbands (40A) of Jane Austen’s heroines. First prize Alison Hinder, Sholing, SouthamptonRunners-up Janet Dibley, Polegate, East Sussex;…
Why is it only privately educated women who get to lecture people about ‘oppression’?
Scarcely a week passes without a privately educated young woman with a successful career in journalism publishing a book about…
Are IQ tests really the best way to measure nature vs nurture?
I have a dim memory from 1970 of a primly dressed distant relative visiting in a Baby Austin. This, I…
Dear Mary: what’s the polite way to ascertain someone’s gender?
Q. When my mother was widowed ten years ago she decided to take in lodgers to pay the gardener’s bills…
Red meat and red wine: the ideal way to spend the first Sunday of Lent
Life is far too important to be taken seriously. At least, that was the conclusion which we meandered towards as…
Why the OED says ‘coloured’ is offensive
‘The term coloured, is an outdated, offensive and revealing choice of words,’ tweeted Diane Abbott last week in response to Amber…
Australian letters
Virulently proportional Sir: James Allan’s rhetorical assault on Jacinda Ardern suffers from a plethora of boringly familiar trans-Tasman prejudices. To…
Aurum by Alice Topp
Such a wonderful word: ‘verve’. Not used much now, it’s one of the words we owe to the French. We…
Business/Robbery etc
Is it $8.5 million of BHP’s shareholders’ money wasted on a directors’ virtue-signalling frolic to further their climate change credentials…
Australian notes
On academic freedom The dismissal of Tim Anderson from his academic post at the University of Sydney has triggered a…
In praise of Justice Fagan
One sombre fact of life in contemporary Australia is the steady flow of terrorism prosecutions in which individuals have been…
China notes
Australia’s China obsession: get over it The Chinese economy is slowing, and everyone except the Chinese Communist Party knows it.…
Diary
It was well before sunrise on a February morning at Bondi Beach. A handful of walkers, joggers and runners were…
Germany’s schizoid approach to Israel
One would have thought that, for certain historical reasons, Germany today would show extra-sensitivity in avoiding appearances of anti-Semitism. However,…
My pencil knows best
A recent Wall Street Journal editorial ‘Who’s Afraid of Socialism?’ laid out the case that much of the US Democratic…
Super Justice Warriors
Captain Marvel, released to cinemas this month, is more than just another addition to the already saturated superhero film market.…
Judge dread
Let me talk about an example of an undemocratic trend from my home state of Queensland. A fortnight ago the…
Newspeak, translated
‘There’s not a good enough reason for Adelaide to be there,’ quipped ALP grandee Graham Richardson on Sky TV, inadvertently…
Labor goes coal turkey
Opinion polling last week provided chilling evidence that Australians are planning to elect a Shorten Labor government – the Greenest…
What the EU will say when Theresa May asks for a Brexit extension
Now that Parliament has backed an extension to the Brexit process, the ball is effectively in the EU’s court. Whether…
Climate strike? In my day it was nuclear first strike
Another day, another mass walk-out from schools around the world, including throughout Australia, by children protesting about their elders’ inaction…
