Richard Shaw, Massey University It’s easy to look back at the bad haircuts, beige clothes and brown Beehive carpets and chuckle. But whatever one’s views on its aesthetics, the Fourth Labour Government – elected 40 years ago on July 14 – was no laughing matter. After nine years of economic
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:
Toby Rogers Toby Rogers has a PhD in political economy from the University of Sydney in Australia and a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley. I would like to start a conversation on the relationship between science and power. By “science” I mean the field
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
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
Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria Research Institute and Amanda Karakas, Monash University Any night now, a “new star” or nova will appear in the night sky. While it won’t set the sky ablaze, it’s a special opportunity to see a rare event that’s usually difficult to predict in
The unspeakable atrocity of 9/11 has certainly spawned more than its fair share of silly conspiracy theories. But probably the most damaging one is the official one: that al Qaeda acted alone. That, it appears, is a lie. It’s a lie that should have been exposed almost immediately
In the US, the Democrats and their lickspittles are bragging that the economy is doing just fine. In Australia, Treasurer Jim Chalmers claims that the government is keeping inflation in check and mainstream media seals hork a chorus of agreement. Just don’t you believe your lyin’ eyes about the
Barry Brownstein AIER Barry Brownstein is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore. Let us be wary of the soothing narrative that downplays the seriousness of growing antisemitism. The belief that Jew hate will diminish once the Israel-Hamas war concludes may be misguided. As I
It’s okay. It’s nothing to be too concerned about, that is, for those of us with the inside knowledge that 1News weekend international politics stories are written by their cadet internship of 12-year-olds from local intermediate schools while the grown-up reporters take a break to
Michael Bassett Political historian Michael Bassett CNZM is the author of 15 books, was a regular columnist for the Fairfax newspapers and a former minister in the 1984–1990 governments. Ever wondered who or what is constantly trying to block the new government’s policies? Why is it that announcements
It’s become drearily commonplace for an over-excited media to proclaim that every moderately interesting scientific discovery “turns science on its head”. For once, though, they’re onto something. Perhaps the most exciting development in paleontology since the Ediacara discovery in South Australia in 1946 has taken place in
Who was Kilroy, and why was he here? He was what might be considered a prototypical example of what biologist Richard Dawkins dubbed a “meme”, a simple cartoon drawing of a man peering over a wall, with the tag, “Kilroy Was Here”. It spread across every theatre in WWII were
George Ford Smith George Ford Smith is a former mainframe and PC programmer and technology instructor, the author of eight books including a novel about a renegade Fed chairman (Flight of the Barbarous Relic) and a nonfiction book on how money became an instrument of theft (The Jolly Roger Dollar)
We can all sense that Western civilisation is collapsing around us. The left celebrate it, the rest of us worry about it – hence the surprising, to some, women especially, fact that a great many men ponder the Fall of Rome quite regularly – and we all want to blame (or lay
