Stephen E. Ambrose wrote three volumes of biography on Nixon. At the start of his undertaking, he loathed Nixon, like most academics that had lived through Watergate. His wife, as it happened, was a Nixon supporter. By the end of the three volumes, they had swapped: Ambrose had developed a grudging respect for Nixon, his […]
My answer is the same as Philip Newton’s, which is the same as KP Wee’s. I do have photos of me, but whenever asked for an avatar, I rummage in Spotlight for “Nick Jpg”, which is rather slimmer pickings. My avatar picture, courtesy of my wife, is me doing something uncharacteristic. Lying down in the […]
I live in Greektown, Melbourne. Which means I see a lot of Greek tats sported by Greeks. And I do plenty of looking down on the cookie cutter nationalism of biceps with inked Molon labe, and Maeanders that look a little too close to swastikas. But of course, I’m a cultural conservative, so I would […]
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-30/cory-bernadi-leads-coalition-push-to-change-18c-race-hate-laws/7796356 I think it puts me in a strange uncomfortable place. On the one hand, I am a libertarian in many things; I am more libertarian, certainly, than my fellow Australian latte-sippers (as opposed to American latte-sippers). And my position is that Bernardi’s dilution is right: there is a difference of threshold between “intimidate, humiliate, […]
Originally Answered: Have you ever caught someone talking about you in another language? A2A. How many gajillion squintillion answers are there here already? No, not reading the thread. OK, answering to be neighbourly, Sofia Mouratidis. I was in Crete. I was not on my nice, cosy familiar native easternmost neck of the island, where the […]
I am not a visual person. And though my attachment to this image is quite predictable—me being such a homebody and desperately attached to a sense of home, it’s only grown on me gradually. The view of the central railway station of Melbourne, across the beautiful brown Yarra river (its brownness mitigated by night), from […]
We will never find out. My father conducted a scientific experiment at 19, to determine his answer to this question. He vaguely remembers passing out. My control issues are much too deeply embedded for me to recapitulate my father’s empiricism. Once I realise that I am affected by imbibing booze, I get annoyed enough at […]
Others on this thread have spoken to their impostor syndrome. I won’t answer with that: we are all, as Michael Masiello once put it to me, broken toys here, which correlates with us falling into our knowledge rather than training for it. I’ve never formally studied Ancient Greek, for example. I don’t say anything online […]
https://au.news.yahoo.com/video/watch/32478931/federal-politicians-attend-church-service-ahead-of-parliament-swearing-in/#page1 The question has gotten much more airplay around the Red Mass (including the West Wing episode The Red Mass). And Catholicism isn’t anywhere near as close to a State religion in the US, as Anglicanism would have been in Australia before Federation. Ulysses Elias’ answer points out the wording in the Australian constitution. A […]
So. Mate. Maaaaate. Youse wanna hang out in a ciddy where youse’ll get the bestest idear of some dinky-di Aussie culture, mate? Tough question, because of our parochialism, and because our culture has been shifting noticeably over the last fifty years. For the old Australia, a regional city. Tamworth, New South Wales, because they play […]