There isn’t much call for an old English-style hotel pub in Bankstown these days. This particular part of the city, Old Town Plaza, is especially bereft of watering holes thanks to the enormous Bankstown Sports Club around the corner. Yes, there’s the Bankstown Hotel and the RSL on the other side of the train line, […]
history
At the heart of David Marr’s new book, Killing for Country, is a crucial question. How should we deal with old, ugly secrets within our own families? Should we ignore them as excesses of the past, when and where things were done differently, or should we examine them closely for clues and lessons that might Continue reading »
A year ago the British Museum only reported on theft from its collection. Why has it taken so long for news of thousands of missing, stolen or damaged artefacts to emerge?
Genealogy is fun, but it has never been an entirely innocent pastime. The establishment (or fabrication) of pedigrees has been essential to the policing of social and racial hierarchies. The Nazis, however, made it a murderous obsession. A banal family record could be a license for advancement or a death warrant. According to the historian […]
The post The Trouble with Ancestry appeared first on The New York Review of Books.
Do you remember this?
If you do, congrats. People have short memories. But, yep, once upon a time, George W. Bush was the butt of everybody’s jokes. For very good reasons too, as you can see.
As a matter of fact, that wasn’t an exclusively American thing. Down Under Dabya was cause of much hilarity.
This clip, however, never made it to a top-10 list of Bushisms:
"If it is safe, dump it in Tokyo! If it is safe, test it in Paris! If it is safe, store it in Washington! But keep our Pacific nuclear free!"
For the first time since the US achieved global domination economically and militarily after WWII, the military industrial complex and Biden administration fear the rise of China. They have decided that it must be crushed. The US, NATO and its compliant states have whipped up a frenzy of fear and loathing for the Chinese. This Continue reading »
Finding beauty in science is timeless. But we shouldn’t let it blind us.
The post What Is a Beautiful Experiment? appeared first on Nautilus.
Penny Pepper explores how she encourages disabled people to reclaim labels – to twist and refute them
Madrid, 6 August 1973––fifty years ago. The son of one of Franco’s generals has summoned us, a gang of rowdy friends, to his absent father’s luxurious home. Lounging on gold brocade sofas, merrily we smoke dope and drink booze till we’re high as larks and tight as owls. At some befuddled point I pick up Continue reading »