Thursday, July 06, 2006



From the time the plane touched down in Sydney on 8 September 1980 , I sensed my world was about to change forever.  Political enemy of the state one day, political refugee at Traiskirchen the second and Antipodean free man at Villawood the third. Boundaries are erased when political escapees are active in assigned different roles ... Women today expect more help around the home and more emotional engagement from their husbands. But they still want their husbands to be providers who give them financial security and freedom ...

In his book So Help Me God former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore, the “Ten Commandments judge,” State Acknowledgement of God

Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: The stories of a life: intellectual Father Christmas
A special issue of The End of Biography, including an editorial on the stories of a life. As Gordon Bowker points out in his life of Orwell, it is interesting to note that the central character in 1984 works as a kind of anti-biographer. Winston Smith’s profession is, of course, to falsify the past, to eradicate individuals from history:

Freud focused too closely on an individual’s past. Today a personal biography is more like a collection of short stories than a novel. It can be difficult to find a theme running through it.


• He approaches Marx rather as an enthusiastic naturalist might view a virile alligator; the beast is magnificent, but some of its habits are frankly disappointing Hysteria of ideas: See you later, alligator [Biography keeps the idea of the author alive, and does do with a mixture of history and fiction. Resuscitating the author ; In order to be able to create a life-narrative the individual needs a collective social backdrop Plotless individualism]
• · PDF version: Joseph Epstein on Friendship Among the Intellectuals ; Amitai Etzioni who kindly links to Media Dragon writes about the rights and responsibilities of immigrants The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Vetting Services
• · · Peter Coleman who used to be the regular visitor at the NSW Parliamentary Library notes Why Anglos Run the World ; Statistics indicate it is Is church too feminine for men? ; My kids want me to stay home tonight so that they can play Hop on Pop. But I'm hoping that my wife and I will somehow manage to hop on a plane to Finland instead. She Ain't Heavy, She's My Wife
• · · · BROKEN GENIUS: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age Madness in the method; A review of The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India How to be Lank, Fleet and Nimble ; Management guides claim that anyone can make it, if they work hard enough. By promoting this false dream, such books threaten to turn us into slaves
• · · · · Today people do not believe in objectivity but in a variety of perspectives. Post-modernism has provided biography with scholarly legitimacy. The individual against theory ; The exotic, benign image of the Himalayan kingdom cannot conceal the battle between authoritarian politics and democratic dissent that is shaping its future. Bhutan’s democratic puzzle
• · · · · · Conservative hypocrisy puts college out of the reach of working-class Americans Divesting From Our Future ; Why is it that you can't recall a single instance when Thoreau described shitting in the woods or a time when he discussed the romantic shortcomings of hermitage? As long as I can remember, I have romanticized the notion of becoming a hermit. Kauai Diarist: Jungle Boy