Society & Culture
Father knows best: don't buy into this false festival
Damon Young My whole family is sick. My daughter's cheeks look like they've been rouged with lipstick, and she's screaming at me snottily. My wife sounds like Demi Moore - in a bad way. And my son's virus is subsiding, which is very bad news. He's gone from placid and bed-bound, to throwing Lego submarines at his sister, and refusing the stir-fry he righteously demanded. Miserable.
If you're thinking of acquiring a Third World baby, adopt a new attitude
LISA PRYOR Don't leave it too late to have babies, girls. There must hardly be a young women out there who has missed out on this warning. It is a lesson pressed on them 100 times over, in the media and over the dinner table.
Betwixt sacred and propane
TONY WRIGHT The great-great-grandson of whalers takes time out to commune with two southern right whales whose message is that old ways must pass.
Love, love me loo? Hey, you've got to hide your lav away
WARWICK MCFADYEN An artist's tools are legitimate objects of desire, but where's the fascination in the apparatus used to dispose of an artist's stools?
An optimist's errata: now there's a novel solution
RICHARD GLOVER Like all prize-winning novelists, DBC Pierre believes the Western world is in a state of terminal decline. His new book starts with a guy deciding to commit suicide and continues downwards from there.
Sainthood demeans what Mary MacKillop stood for
Robert Irwin 6:32am Mary MacKillop was a great Australian, but she will not become Australia's first saint but rather the Catholic Church's first Australian saint.
Simplistic pacifism won't help Afghans
Andrew Riddle 6:32am As I sat through another politics lecture the other day, I felt a slow rage building inside me. ''Counter-insurgency,'' this particular lecturer declared, ''is all about winning hearts and minds. We've heard all this before – in Vietnam!'' It's always easy to oppose war.
Messy affair a blow to court's sanctity
RICHARD ACKLAND The solemn edifice of justice depends on the public having some sort of respect for and confidence in judges. That sounds like one of William Blackstone's platitudinous pronouncements but it's something the judiciary trots out frequently to remind everyone that they are ''in touch'' yet remote.
Interim deal is sole hope for Mid-East talks
Yossi Beilin The peace talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will not succeed in finding a permanent solution to the conflict. But the talks are not just another attempt whose failure would have no consequences.
All Australians deserve a dividend from good economic times
Susan Helyar There are no excuses for not reversing years of cuts to social spending.
The elderly aren't babies, so why talk to them that way?
David Campbell A patronising manner from aged-care staff adds to their patients' woes.
Comment
Award has become an unholy irrelevance
John McDonald IF ALL religion were as vague and nondescript as the works in the Blake Prize, the world would be a much more peaceful place. Nobody could ever be passionate, let alone fanatical, about the lame and timid entries in Australia's leading competition for religious art. Or should that be ''spiritual'' art?
The breakfast club
Myf Warhurst Lining up for nightclub entry is one thing, but lining up for scrambled eggs?
Heckler
Please don't talk around the subject
HECKLER CALL out the word police. Our language is under attack, again. This latest spree of linguistic violence is by the people that want to talk to us ''around'' things.
Foretold: Leaders ignore housing affordability
Charles Purcell Like some carnival mystic, before the last election I wrote some predictions in an envelope and sealed it, with instructions only to open it after the election was over. Lo and behold, when I opened the envelope afterwards my prediction proved right: ''That neither party will do anything about making housing more affordable.''
Results point to failure for My School site
Stephen Elder NAPLAN test results may improve, but not broader measures of learning.
Gaddafi turns back time with a crusade in reverse
Julie Szego For far too long, the intellectuals of the West have ignored, and even ridiculed, the candid and illuminating observations of Muammar Gaddafi: Libyan leader, best-selling author of The Green Book (even if the market was rather captive) and travelling circus of epiphanies.
The secret desires of men, and why they go unfulfilled
PAUL SHEEHAN We are awash with an appetite for romantic and sexual fantasy. Call it the Twilight phenomenon. It merely adds to the sexual suggestiveness which permeates our lives. But underline the word ''fantasy''.
True wisdom needs age and real world experience
ELIZABETH FARRELLY Who, apart from a bunch of career academics, would think wisdom something you could teach in a classroom? Like, "See you at 4. I have a wisdom test." Just call me Odysseus.
Disturb the sound of silence in the city
Sacha Molitorisz Mixed reports from the musical underground: there's good, bad and no news. First, the bad. A long-standing live music night on Oxford Street threw in the towel last week. After three years at the Exchange Hotel, the weekly event Sosueme replaced up-and-coming bands with DJs.
Opposing same-sex adoption is not bigoted
Peter Kell The optimal family arrangement is for a biological mother and biological father raising their children in a committed long-term relationship. Where this is not possible, the next best arrangement should replicate as closely as possible the primary arrangement of biological mother and father.
Forget Wagner, I'm here for Brunhilde
DANNY KATZ Can we separate Wagner's artistic achievements from his personal views?
A shot at real people power
Amanda Tattersall The news that a group of independents that will decide the government highlights new political opportunities for the power of community-based coalitions of community organisations, religious organisations and unions.
The harsh reality behind fairytales
Nina Funnell I recently read a horrific story about a 14-year-old girl who was traded by her own father to a violent, aggressive and much older man. Typical of most domestic violence cases, the abuser isolated her from her family and friends, effectively imprisoning her in his home.
House, marriage and children - in their own sweet time
ROSS GITTINS The media leap on any suggestion of social change. At present there's talk of younger people being happy to keep renting rather than buy their own homes. Before that there was talk of career women not wanting children. And before that, we kept hearing about young people not bothering to get married, even after the kids had started arriving.
Same-sex couples face injustice on adoption
Verity Firth I recently met a family in my local electorate, Balmain. As in many families, both parents work and go to playgroups and weekend sport. Their cupboard is full of prepared gifts for the endless cycle of year 1 birthday parties. They are expert in keeping the peace between their bossy daughter and her baby brother.
Sex, I'm sick of it
HECKLER Have you ever seen one of those couples in a park on a Sunday afternoon rolling around on top of each other like it's no one's business? Except it is everyone's business because all the small children, their parents and grandparents are standing around having to pretend that this lewd display is not taking place in front of them.
Never the twain shall meet
Richard Cooke Our tame world has long since lost its way to truly go wild.
Anxiety: the price of being human
GEOFF GALLOP Life is full of contradictions and the sources of anxiety are many.
Law needs to catch up with cyber bullies
Lachlan Riches Last winter, a 14-year-old Lismore boy named Alex Wildman was beaten and bullied until he hanged himself. This event was disastrous enough, but, a year on, legislation designed to combat cyber-bullying (the probable reason according to the coroner behind Alex's suicide) is, because of the election outcome, facing an uncertain future.
