Dawn of a new earache as inner-city corellas rise to top of pecking order ... a mixture of long-billed and little corellas
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The Art of Darkness
Evil repels us, so why are we so fascinated by its horrors? Angela Bennie explores the allure of theatre's great villains
One of the most notorious ideas to come out of the very troubled 20th century is the philosopher Hannah Arendt's notion of "the banality of evil".
The famous phrase was the result of Arendt's observations of Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Jerusalem for genocide. At the heart of his defence was Eichmann's claim that he did what he did because he was just following orders; he was really just doing his job
We still have Hillel’s great dictum, ‘In a place where there is no-one, you at least must strive to be someone.’ So go for it. Write! At least you know you won’t be burnt at the stake or sent to Siberia anymore!
• Anatomy of evil [Mystic separates the fad from the divine Kabbalah, a kind of Jewish mysticism, is going through a faddish and commercial phase ; The buzzword is early intervention, and with scant scientific back-up anxious parents are seizing on treatments to keep their children in the race to achieve Growing pains ]
• · Memoirs are our modern fairy tales, the harrowing fables of the Brothers Grimm reimagined from the perspective of the plucky child who has, against all odds, evaded the fate of being chopped up, cooked and served to the family for dinner. What the memoir writer knows is what readers of Grimm intuit: the loving parent and the evil stepparent may in reality be the same person viewed at successive moments and in different lights. And so the autobiographer is faced with the daunting challenge of describing the narrow escape from being baked into gingerbread while at the same time attempting to understand, forgive and even love the witch
'The Glass Castle': Outrageous Misfortune ; Daphne Guinness meets the scriptwriter behind TV's hit Spooks and asks him why a solitary life as a novelist appeals. GNBN depicts the sleazy rather than stylish side of espionage. George and Charlie are stuck in a grotty London photo lab, unaware they are both MI5 spies until they receive an order from HQ to kill each other. Then bloody, and black, humorous twists unfurl Master of mind games ; Australia's tallest peak has been unlucky with names. Explorer Sir Paul Edmund de Strzelecki seriously overestimated the linguistic skill of Australians when he named the NSW landmark after Polish patriot Tadeusz Kosciuszko. The "z" soon went missing, as did the correct pronunciation. The z was officially put back in 1997, but the pronunciation has remained a wayward kozi-os-ko, not kosh-choosh-ko. Now Australia's Polish ex-servicemen are angry at suggestions the mountain might have dual names, the second to be Aboriginal. We should respect tradition, says a spokesman of the name bestowed by Strzelecki in 1840. However, after being here as long as 60,000 years, Aborigines might just have the edge in the tradition department. Now, what is the Polish for "mole hill"? Naming rights
• · · Not so many years ago the federal public service was a no-woman's-land if you happened to be married Back off, battleaxes - only sexist pigs need apply ; The lies that complicated the extraordinary life of World War I veteran Marcel Caux are put to rest in a book to be released this week Digging the dirt
• · · · The best clowns tell us truths, and laughter sugarcoats pure acid. Uys, with his mixture of hope and despair, of satire both inspiring and corrective, is a very necessary clown. Erections and Elections, The Big Laugh ; Some new movies show sex in explicit detail, but are they sexy? It's being sexy that's really tough
• · · · · Pulitzer Prize-Winning Biographer Offers a Unique Perspective on Benjamin Franklin, France, and the Birth of America The Great Improvisation ; Publication of Robert Beattie's long in the works book NIGHTMARE IN WICHITA: the Hunt for the BTK Strangler has been accelerated even further BTK book could hit store shelves next week ; In true paperback style, the story of how one of the greatest finds of the past 100 years has been compromised by alleged illegal and unethical practices began with a woman. Bones of contention
• · · · · · Booksellers caught up in the myriad details of running both a bricks-and-mortar and virtual bookstore may give little thought to the importance of affiliate programs, but as anyone who has spent time surfing the Web knows, affiliate links are as commonplace on websites as billboards are on highways The Importance of Being Affiliated ; MediaBay's growing affiliated line of digital audiobooks MediaBay to offer Penguin Group (USA) Audio Titles via Download