Recent publications
Climate change is not our #1 problem
It is easy to forget that climate change is not the only issue facing the world today. In ignoring other problems we run the risk of introducing inefficient solutions that make other problems worse. A good example is the promotion of biofuels...
What has happened to modern art
Photographs of naked thirteen-year-old girls, crucifixes immersed in urine, and videos of chickens being decapitated: this is modern art. So you'd think, at least, if you went by what gets the most attention in the news, and never visited art...
How long until our pubs have no beer?
Australians are consuming the same amount of alcohol per person as they were 20 years ago. Nevertheless, we are suddenly being told by the federal government that the country is in the grip of a binge drinking ‘epidemic'. In March Kevin Rudd...
Empty spaces: Government regulation is killing Australian culture
There is now an increasingly significant barrier to a vibrant Australian culture-nanny state regulations and bureaucratic red tape. The most difficult time for any artist is at the beginning of their career. Artistic entrepreneurs don't hold the...
Cathedrals and the birth of freedom
Andrew McIntyre reviews Cathedral by Jon Cannon Enter any one of the great gothic cathedrals of Western Europe and you cannot help but be overwhelmed by their beauty and profound mystery, and also the sheer size, boldness and complexity of their...
Gordon Ramsay's Worst Recipes
The problem with Gordon Ramsay isn't his swearing. It's his hypocrisy. Gordon Ramsay, Britain's most notorious celebrity chef has demanded ‘stringent laws-licensing laws-to make sure produce is only used in season.' In a BBC interview in...
The imaginary bikie threat and due process in South Australia
South Australian Premier Mike Rann is obsessed with the Hells Angels. The Labor leader thinks that bikie gangs like the Hells Angels are a scourge on his state and the root of most evil, and that they are threatening the very existence of the good...
The moral code of Grand Theft Auto IV
Want to steal cars and shoot cops? Then Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) is the videogame for you. You won't be the only one playing it: released for the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 in April this year, it's the game of 2008. In its first...
Have bad movies edged out good?
Chris Berg reviews Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics. It may not come as a surprise that Hostel: Part II, the 2007 movie which depicts nearly an hour and a half of brutal, explicit and uninterrupted torture, is...
Rudd's summit misses the point of policy
Kevin Rudd's government was inspired early into its term to call upon Australia's ‘one-thousand most intelligent people' to nominate themselves to be invited to a talkfest in Canberra to harvest ideas. Leading opposition politicians quickly...