Arts and Sport
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Squid Game: what the subtitles don’t tell you
Eight cultural specificities in Squid Game explained to help you do business, build stronger relationships and succeed in Korea. Continue reading »
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The new magazine publishing the best podcast interviews in print
Introducing The Podcast Reader, a new magazine for the intellectually curious that features select transcripts from the world’s best long-form podcasts. Continue reading »
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The counter-revolution that AFL needs
This weekend’s AFL Grand Final is only the seventh time that the finals series hasn’t included one of the great four: Carlton, Collingwood Richmond and Hawthorn since 1925. Continue reading »
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The documentary trying to build a democracy movement in Australia
In an entertaining, new documentary, Craig Reucassel is working with the Australian Democracy Network in trying to help build a healthy democracy that is more fair, balanced, accountable and participatory. Continue reading »
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Children of Coal: my mother’s story
Judith White grew up in the north of England when it still ran on coal. Her new memoir has her mother Joan at its centre. Continue reading »
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Doing the heavy lifting: Australians’ obsession with a metaphor
The Americans have been doing metaphorical heavy lifting since the 1930s. Before that heavy lifting was something done by people, such as wharfies or weight lifters, or machines, such as cranes. Continue reading »
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Summer games in Tokyo – the Paralympics
The current Paralympic Games are being carried out in the context of the dual crises facing Japan. Continue reading »
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Resilience via poetry, a South Sudanese story
Behind the stay-at-home Covid restrictions, the mental health of thousands is threatened. Cries for help multiply. To virus induced threats, including isolation if schools and universities stay closed, migrants must also deal with the trauma of past events plus the stigma of not always feeling accepted in a new country. Like Achol Arop. Continue reading »
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Paper, web-page, rock
We are madly digitising all the published materials we can get our hands on, but technophile Geoff Ebbs has an insight into the ephemeral nature of our digital obsession. Continue reading »
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White privilege in sport runs deep, including the Olympics.
Racist abuse experienced by Black England players is the tip of the iceberg and our response must go deeper and wider and shine a light on white privilege, in the global sports industry. Continue reading »
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Has the lesson of Guernica been forgotten?
Eighty four years ago, the much loved Spanish artist Pablo Picasso made a statement about war through a mural called Guernica named after the Basque town that bore that name. Have we forgotten his message? Continue reading »
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I weep for India, and those left behind
I will never again see India in the same light, once a place of excitement, vibrancy and opportunity. Its people are hurting at depths we will never understand. In my heart I may never forgive myself for what I’ve done. Continue reading »
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Standard piano keys are too wide for too many. But alternatively sized keyboards are on the way.
The piano is the instrument most preferred by music students. It is often the instrument of their dreams: playing beautiful music perfectly and displaying extraordinary pianistic athleticism. However, the conventional keyboard – with its fixed key width – is unsuitable for many, dooming them to a future of unmet hopes. We can’t change our hands Continue reading »
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Take a closer look – the art galleries among victims of the pandemic
There are many things so many of us have missed during lockdowns that it is difficult to make a list – or even start to develop one in ranked order – even though there has been plenty of time to think about it. Continue reading »
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Rewriting the creation myth of Blue Poles as it approaches 70
Blue Poles didn’t just come out of the blue – or the bottle – for Jackson Pollock, contrary to the ‘creation myths’ that grew up when the NGA paid the then jaw-dropping sum of US$2.1 million for the work. It was at least five years in gestation. Continue reading »
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Sidney Nolan’s St Kilda paintings: the ‘innocence’ of a man in his 20s with a wife and two mistresses
The Canberra Museum+Gallery is exhibiting several of Sidney Nolan’s St Kilda paintings until March 30, complete with a Children’s Trail for the nippers. But are the paintings as innocent as the stories that have built up around them – curated by Nolan himself – suggest? Continue reading »
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Tokyo 2020: The Troubled Games of the XXXll Olympiad
On 25 March, the Olympic Torch Relay is to set out from Fukushima with its “sacred flame” on a national circuit, visiting all 47 prefectures and arriving at Tokyo’s Games venue for the opening ceremony on 23 July. But will this scenario really play out? Continue reading »
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Line between sledging and racism continues to blur
An invidious Sydney tradition surfaced again at the third Test match between Australia and India last week, with six spectators ejected from a stand for allegedly racist chants towards a nearby Indian outfielder. Continue reading »
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Strung out on centre court: the loneliness of the long distance tennis player
January has long been the month when the international circuit wends its way to Australia, with the Australian Open a key event on the calendar. While Covid-19 delayed the Grand Slam until early next month, January remains a bittersweet time for me. I can’t help but reflect on my professional tennis career. But while I Continue reading »
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Crossword clues and bullying: the almighty power of the Australian pro-Israel lobby
The influence of Colin Rubenstein and his lobby group does not just limit what mainstream media outlets dare publish, it forces self-censorship on editors and journalists alike, writes John Lyons in his latest book. Continue reading »
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Review: The shock, horror and rage of Mark Willacy’s Rogue Forces
Respected journalist Mark Willacy’s Rogue Forces is imperative reading for its detonating exposé of Australian SAS war crimes in Afghanistan and the systematic cover-ups at varying levels of the Australian Defence Force operations. Continue reading »
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Answers to Trump questions about attacking China and Iran
The question of who would tell Trump the truth when needed and who would stop him if he tried to go to war with anyone became increasingly urgent as his presidency unfolded. On the matter of war, we now know the answer. Continue reading »
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Misreading Dark Emu
Criticisms of the book Dark Emu and its author, Bruce Pascoe, continue to appear, and to become more puzzling. It is as if the overwhelming popularity of Pascoe and his message have disturbed comfortable convictions about Australian history shared across a wide segment of Australian society. Continue reading »
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Review: ‘Human Kind’ by Rutger Bregman
What a marvellous book! A powerful refutation of one of the most deeply entrenched and mistaken assumptions built into our taken-for-granted world view that human nature is nasty. Continue reading »
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Bringing ‘the Doc’ to the masses – review of Gideon Haigh’s new book
H. V. Evatt could be a massively polarising figure and that is more than unfortunate. It has closed many minds to what we should be celebrating and promulgating as true Australian values. Those values – not merely espoused, but judicially declared and enacted by and because of Evatt – are in evidence throughout Gideon Haigh’s Continue reading »
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Ships in the Night: A Vietnam war story, by Greg Dodds
Greg Dodds’ career began as a professional Australian soldier who served as an intelligence officer with the Australian Task Force in Vietnam in the late 1960s. In this racy 200-page monograph, Dodds disposes with scholarly requirements – no footnotes, no glossary, no reading list or sources. To appreciate its full context, the reader should have Continue reading »
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A review of ‘The Dance of Folly: or how theatrics have tarnished the rule of law in Hong Kong
A series of acute points are made by Henry Litton in his new book, The Dance of Folly. These typically pivot on his observations of how judges, across various courts in Hong Kong, have been drawn away – by lawyers – from what he argues is the essence of well-grounded, common law reasoning towards playing Continue reading »
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The Mountbattens: the British Establishment at its most privileged and eccentric.
“There are four kinds of officers: hard-working and intelligent, lazy and intelligent, lazy and stupid and hard-working and stupid. The first are fit for top staff appointments, the second are fit for the highest commands, the third can be tolerated, but the fourth type could prove dangerous and should be instantly removed.” Continue reading »
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Unsettled – seeing First Nations histories represented in the Australian Museum
Museums, libraries and archives are traditionally not culturally safe spaces for First Nations peoples. As state institutions, they have supported the colonial process and they have privileged certain histories over others. The collections that they hold often position Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as objects or specimens of scientific and anthropological study. The historically Continue reading »
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China Panic: Australia’s alternative to paranoia and pandering by David Brophy
This is a truly excellent account of the “panic” surrounding Australia-China relations over the last few years, especially since 2017. It is well-researched, analytical, nuanced and very well written in a highly accessible style that is both scholarly and colloquial. One of the book’s strong features is a whole chapter covering the role China assumes Continue reading »
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Everyman as soldier: how men in suits in drawing rooms conned the people – and their families – into fighting on in WW1.
David Stephens reviews Douglas Newton’s Private Ryan and the Lost Peace: A Defiant Soldier and the Struggle against the Great War. Continue reading »
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Douglas Newton’s Private Ryan and how peace efforts were sabotaged in WW1
Every now and then a historian produces a book that gives a rational and compassionate insight into the war of 1914-18 and the origins of the Anzac legend. Douglas Newton has given Australia such a work in his story of Private Ryan set against the backdrop of war aims and peace movements. Continue reading »
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‘Mr Sin’ aka Abe Saffron had a little mate at ASIO headquarters
Abe Saffron, the king of Sydney’s vice rackets, had a long friendship with Dudley Doherty, a top spy with the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Continue reading »
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Beyond apocalypse fatigue
We can have economic growth without wrecking the planet, says economist Per Espen Stoknes. Continue reading »
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