Lushington Brady
Those Were No Ordinary Rabbits!
It’s one of the classic scenes of movie comedy: Tha’s nae ordinary rabbit! When Sorcerer Tim warns King Arthur and his questing knights that the way to the Grail lies through a cave “guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with
Lying Media Don’t Make Your Nutty Theories True
The phenomenon known as “Gell-Mann Amnesia” is named after physicist Murray Gell-Mann. One day, Gell-Mann read an article on particle physics in a mainstream news publication and was aghast at how wrong it was about a subject he knew intimately. He was reading another article, on foreign
Be One of the Brave Few
In the German movie Das schreckliche Madchen (The Nasty Girl), a high school girl is determined to win an essay prize by writing about her little town’s brave resistance to the Nazis during the Third Reich. Everyone is delighted. But, as she delves deeper, she finds the terrible truth:
The Longer They Lie the More We See It
It’s gaslighting on a massive scale. Ann Coulter’s Law writ far and wide. Propaganda of the dimensions and determination not seen since the Soviet Union or Maoist China. The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command
When Family Connections Are Closer than You’d Like
The widespread adoption of DNA testing from genealogy websites has had some intriguing outcomes. Law enforcement have used family trees to trace down suspects in cold cases, most famously the Golden State Killer. On a more personal level, DNA tests have rattled skeletons in family closets, unearthing unexpected siblings, secret
Just Where Do Her Loyalties Really Lie?
The fallout from the Fatima Payman affair continues to rock the Albanese Labor government. The growing political crisis is raising a raft of issues and covering few of the participants in glory. For all her whining about being “intimidated”, the truth is that Payman was treated with kid gloves by
Full Stop, Comma, Comma, Full Stop
If you’ve ever slogged your way through Jack Kerouac’s stream-of-consciousness prose poetry, like the infamous two-page last sentence of On the Road or the whole of Maggie Cassidy, you’ll appreciate the importance of punctuation. As the old joke goes, it’s the difference between
How Was This Even Allowed?
I’ve asked before, and I’ll ask again: when do we start spitting on teachers? It’s a rhetorical question, of course. I’m not really advocating hawk tuah-ing on random chalkies. Most of them are more-or-less dedicated professionals who do a pretty good job. Some
Nothing like a Good Old Purge
When you live in a Clown World, it’s inevitably a case of in memo veritas. We’re all used to seeing this week’s Babylon Bee satire become next week’s news. But when yesterday’s meme (literally) is today’s news, we’re not just in Clown World:
Joe Biden: The Gods Have Spoken
It’s been a very, very, very good week for the Trump campaign. Ever since the presidential debate made Joe Biden’s senile decay so screamingly obvious that even the mainstream media couldn’t lie about it any more (though plenty of them are still giving it the ol’ college
Why We Should Stop Calling Them ‘Renewables’
Too many bad ideas are allowed to fester unchallenged because, as George Orwell wrote, “the average human being never bothers to examine catchwords”. We see the truth of Orwell’s observation all around us these days. Whether it’s the media throwing around slurs like ‘far right’, or activists shouting
‘EVS Are a Bit Shite’, #36
The good thing about most fads is that it’s pretty easy to move on. For those of us who lived before the age of social media, most of our faddish past stays mercifully buried in old photo albums and the long memories of our friends. Some fads, though, are
What Has Twiggy Learned from China?
Well, it looks like Andrew Forrest has learned a thing or two indeed from his paymasters in China. Not just how to literally sell your country to a foreign power, or how to undermine your own, democratically elected government by toadying to the bully-boys of communist dictatorships. Now, his
Price Sets Out a New Way
The Dutton opposition in Australia is going big and bold. Ever since John Hewson was belted so thoroughly in 1993 for daring to lay out his policies in detail two years out from an election, the received wisdom has been small-target strategy. Don’t tell anyone what your policies
Unlocking the Secrets of an Ancient Marvel
In 1900, sponge divers found a submerged wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera. The wreck was a treasure trove, yielding bronze and marble statues, pottery, glassware, jewellery and coins. And a strange lump of corroded bronze and wood. When the finds were sent to the National Museum of Archaeology