Sydney (pseudo) Science Festival 2017
The Sydney Science Festival (August 8-20, if you want to put it in your diary) has booked an Opera House…
Ugly socialist genes
Trigger warning: This article contains Swiftian satire. The current animus from the left, culminating in the attempted murder of a…
When electricity becomes a luxury
“Where do you go?” They are all older women, retirees from the federal and Territory public services, the ASO5 and…
Ban Lee Rhiannon!
A woman who changed her surname so she could be named after a legendary Welsh witch wants to ban the Lord’s…
Not losing our religion
Findings from the 2016 Census that 30 per cent of Australians report having no religious affiliation have led to renewed…
Cory Bernardi has his work cut out for him
The ancient Greeks often used the art form of storytelling, using fables or parables to get a point across. One…
Assisted dying: theory and practice
Last week three people died together in what is being called a ‘triple suicide pact’ in a resort island at…
There will be blood
Wyndham Lewis was a painter, poet, publisher and picker of fights. No target was too grand or too trivial: sentimental…
Car trouble
Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is an action, heist, car-chase film that is said to reinvent the action, heist, car-chase film.…
American quartet
Politics and art can make for an awkward mix. Much more than with religious subjects it seems to matter whether…
Back to the future
As Kraftwerk took their 3D show around Britain last week, a document from 2013 surfaced online, purporting to be their…
Mad about the girls
It’s not unusual to see a pop concert on TV where teenage girls and a group of middle-aged men are…
Lessons in love and loss
Some of the time, most of the time, it’s tricky to believe in God. There’s just too much that’s sad…
Orchidelirium
The lady’s slipper orchid, Cypripedium calceolus, is both a beautiful and silly–looking plant. It is the strangest of our native…
Letter from a Corbynista
Dear Uncle James, Thank you for your note (‘Letter to a Corbynista’, June 24). Firstly, of course we’re still friends,…
Sharia for feminists
Is Islam inherently misogynistic? That old charge arose again after the Manchester bombing in May, with the suggestion that Salman…
Andy’s ace
Who will you cheer for if Andy Murray meets Roger Federer at Wimbledon? It’s not a straightforward question, at least…
When gossip was king
This month marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Nigel Dempster, once the world’s best-known gossip columnist. For three…
A century of De Stijl
It starts as soon as I arrive. In Den Haag Centraal railway station, the kiosks, windows, lift shaft, piano and…
The Corbyn coalition
One of the most disappointing things about the general election for me was how few people must have read Nick…
Roll over Beethoven
If you want to see an opera director kicking a genius when they’re down — and I mean really sticking…
Hyped to death
Hand it to the Americans. They know how to hype a young talent to death. The latest to be asphyxiated…
Here comes the Sun
It was most odd. Four decades after I’d walked into the Sun to start my first shift as a news…
What Alice did next
In Competition No. 3004 you were invited to submit an extract from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Trumpland. As I was…
2316: Divine alteration
Seven clues contain a redundant word, each defining one unclued light. These seven unclued lights all undergo partial 1 across…
