A fifth of Britain’s young people are out of work; how long before they snap?
The International Labour Organisation has recently issued warnings about possible youth unrest in the future, as young people…
Whacking your funny bone really hard will cause a mild nerve injury which may take minutes, hours or even days to come good.
Image from shutterstock.com
Put a finger on the point of your elbow.
Feel inwards from there about half and inch or slightly more until you find another bony outcrop.
Got it? Good.
Tap with your finger in the valley between those…
The Courier Mail never retracted a story alleging Manning Clark was a spy, even though the Press Council ruled against them.
AAP/Dave Hunt
It is a matter of public record in Australia that my grandfather was a communist spy.
That he wasn’t really one doesn’t always matter. Manning Clark, famous Australian historian and my father’s father…
The bones of Richard III, whose remains were found more than 500 years after his death at the Battle of Bosworth Field.
AAP/University of Leicester
“It will be a whole new era for Richard III,” Lynda Pidgeon, spokeswoman for the Richard III Society, said of the discovery that the skeleton found under a car-park in Leicester is almost certainly that…
Are displays of emotion from sportspeople about convincing us that it’s not just about the money?
fox2mike/flickr
Any major sporting triumph without euphoric emotion or a serious opening of the floodgates would seem strange. Commentators tell us that tears show “passion”. Fans seem to demand them. It wasn’t always…
NSW premier Barry O'Farrell needs to reform the law to give Sydney University more responsibility for its colleges.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Why is the University of Sydney powerless to stop bullying behaviour in what the public sees as “its colleges”? This has been a constant refrain in recent weeks as the controversy surrounding the behaviour…
Spermatorrhoea was said to be ‘the most dire, excruciating and deadly maladies to which the human frame is subject.’
Guillaume Duchenne
MEDICAL HISTORIES – The second instalment in our short series examines how the spermatorrhoea epidemic changed the scope of medicine.
Every period arguably invents its own illnesses, medical disorders…
There are some powerful stories in the Anzac tradition but many more that are unknown to students.
Australian War Memorial
“What are your legs? Springs. Steel springs”.
Archy’s nervous mutterings before he sprints into gunfire are familiar in Australian history classes. So are the tale of Simpson and Duffy and their “bravest…
Australia is not fulfilling its obligations to its veterans.
Flickr/Another Seb
By John Cokley, Swinburne University of Technology
Ten years ago this month, John Howard’s Minister for Veteran Affairs, Danna Vale, launched a searchable internet database known as the World War 2 Nominal Roll.
It was intended to be a virtual war memorial…
Why is it that we no longer teach the big story of how everything came to be?
Universe image from www.shutterstock.com
All human societies construct and teach creation myths or origin stories. These are large, extraordinarily powerful, but often ramshackle narratives that try and tell the story of how everything came to…
1783: Maria Anna Mayrin murders a three-year-old girl, turns herself in and is sentenced to death.
Stadt- und Staatsbibliothek Augsburg, Graphic, Verbrecher etc.
The Holy Roman Empire, 1704: Agnes Catherina Schickin slits the throat of a seven-year-old boy.
1746: Johanna Martauschin smashes the skull of a small child.
1753: Sophia Charlotte Krügerin cuts the…
Australian humanities subjects need to get on board with MOOCs and develop Australian voices in online learning.
World image from www.shutterstock.com
FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: We continue our series on the rise of online and blended learning and how free online courses are set to transform the higher education sector. Today Ruth Morgan looks at the…
Former Prime Minister John Howard is misinformed about the Australian history curriculum.
AAP Image/Julian Smith
There is a great deal of derogatory, evidence-free and ill-informed opinion about how history is taught in Australian schools. But these tired arguments are so often repeated that we can actually put them…
Will we ultimately see 2012 as triumphant, or as just one step in an emerging global tragedy?
Jenny Varley
A combination of 33-year satellite records, measurements made over the past century, and long-term proxy analysis suggests Arctic sea ice may be at its lowest level for more than 1,000 years.
According…
Statuettes and a reproduction of the automatic theatre of Hero of Alexandria.
Alan Dorin.
As humans, we create life. And we’re all familiar with the idea of artificial intelligence. But what about artificial life? What is it, and why should we care?
Artificial Life is a recently labelled but…
The Crusader fortress of Krak De Chevalier has been damaged by shelling after rebels used it as a defensive position.
AAP image
The looting of the Baghdad Museum in 2003 during the invasion of Iraq is an example the consequences of war on national heritage. Almost a decade on, the civil war in Syria has seen history repeating itself…
The final pieces of the historical puzzle around the 1975 Whitlam dismissal are not as sensational as they first seem.
Image courtesy of National Archives of Australia. NAA: A6180, 13/11/75/33
Much hyperbole has been generated by the recent revelations concerning Sir Anthony Mason’s involvement in the 1975 dismissal, but for the most part it shows ignorance of the past.
Earlier this week, The…
By deliberately making false historical sources, students can learn to think more critically.
Historical hoax image www.shutterstock.com
What happens when you teach students how to lie? Answer: they become better historians.
More than a decade ago, back in the days of Web 0.5, a student of mine submitted a generally well-written essay…
Revolution and war: is it all just a little bit of history repeating?
blprnt_van
They say history always repeats itself – empires rise and fall, economies boom and bust – but is there a way to map and predict the dynamical processes of history? The new and highly controversial discipline…
President Nixon’s meeting with China’s Communist Party Leader Mao Tse Tung in 1972 began closer ties between the two countries.
Wikimedia/Office of Presidential Libraries
Now, as at the time of the Vietnam war, the global primacy of the United States is increasingly being questioned.
Among the reasons are its role in the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), the continued and…
Vietnam-US relations, as represented here by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vietnam’s Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, have come a long way.
EPA/KHAM/POOL
Today marks the 50th anniversary of Australian forces arriving in Vietnam – the beginning of a war that had a huge impact on social and political life here in Australia and abroad. The Conversation will…
Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne’s recent comments show his misunderstanding of curriculum.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
On the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night, Shadow Minister for Education Christopher Pyne was asked what the Liberal Party would do about the national (history) curriculum if they came to power. Pyne…
If the same parts of Australian history are taught over and over again, we shouldn’t be surprised that students lose interest.
Flickr/murphyeppoon
Buried away in the correspondence columns of last week’s Sunday Age, a former history teacher’s letter “Where’s our history?” started an intense and confused debate about a “threat” by the national curriculum…
Media commentators have been eager to paint Neandertals as artists – but why?
Federico Gambarini/AAP
An article published recently in Science sheds new light on paintings found in 11 cave sites in Spain. At 40,800 years old, some of these paintings could be among the oldest anywhere in the world.
But…
On her recent visit to Thailand, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi said her country had an urgent need for basic education.
EPA/Barbara Walton
On June 1, after decades of struggle to be a legitimate voice for the Burmese people, Aung San Suu Kyi addressed the World Economic Forum on East Asia in Bangkok. She did not raise a call to arms or popular…
Guillaume Le Gentil sailed the seas for many years to catch a glimpse of Venus in transit.
Brocken Inaglory
On Wednesday, as you’ll no doubt know by now, a rare celestial event will occur. Venus will pass between the earth and the sun – the transit of Venus. You might also already know that this cosmic spectacle…
Don’t look at the transit of Venus directly … but make sure you look at it.
Jan Herold
When Australia II won the America’s Cup yacht race in 1983, then-prime-minister Bob Hawke famously exclaimed: “Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum.”
Taking inspiration from this…
Vitamin C is so often suggested as a treatment for the common cold that it’s almost considered common sense. This well-known vitamin is primarily found in fruits and vegetables, with small quantities in…
Religious groups claim “ex-gay” therapies have scientific merit.
flickr/michael keith photography
It’s been decades since electroshock therapy or other psychiatric interventions were routinely employed to “treat” homosexuality. These days, reparative therapy is more popular. It involves a combination…
Modern professionals have an opportunity to undo some of the hardships created by pathologizing same-sex attraction.
stigeredoo
Homophilia, a term once used to define “unnatural” relations between same-sex people in the early- to mid-20th century has been given a makeover. Urban gay communities around the world are using homophilia…
Analysing Anzac speech, slang and reading material gives us a better understanding of their experience.
EPA/Tolga Bozoglu
Many place the Anzac legend at the heart of the Australian national identity. But some have rightly challenged this idea, opening up debate about why the Anzac story is so central to our national mythology…
Information is everywhere all at once these days, which raises questions around how it should be archived.
petit hiboux
We all know the internet has enabled the creation of digital worlds of multi-layered, interconnected online information. But who’s going to protect this information for current and future generations…
Australia has a long history of engagement with Asia, as Melbourne’s Chinese Museum demonstrates.
Greenstone Girl
AUSTRALIA IN THE ASIAN CENTURY – A series examining Australia’s role in the rapidly transforming Asian region. Delivered in partnership with the Australian government.
Today, Professor David Walker looks…
Medical schools once battled with a shortage of cadavers, which led to some unsavoury practices.
Derek Harper
The recent discovery of hundreds of human body parts in the University of Cologne’s cellars shocked Germany’s academic community and raised broader questions about the rights of people who donate their…
Drugs smuggled into a South Australian prison. If jails can’t be kept drug free, what hope is there for wider society?
AAP/Thuy On
Australians have always loved their drugs – more so than any other nation in which those same drugs are proscribed and used under threat of native, criminal penalties.
Drug taking is a national trait…
Local history has an important place in Australia. The academic world should get involved.
Flickr/Kate's Photo Diary
Local history is one of the most popular forms of history in Australia. Yet there is a yawning gap between the enthusiastic amateur and the academic historian.
While some academic historians engage with…
Greater Western Sydney may be a new team, but Sydney and AFL have firm historical ties.
AAP Image/Paul Miller
The AFL season kicks off today and there’s a new team in town – Greater Western Sydney. Some don’t like it – the cynics claim Aussie Rules has no historical foothold in western Sydney.
I disagree.
While…
The victims of forced adoption want an apology from the Commonwealth government.
Nikkirk
A long-awaited Senate Committee report will tomorrow reveal whether the Commonwealth’s policies and practices played a role in coercing young, unwed Australian women to give up their newborn babies for…
International Holocaust day is an important day to remember all atrocities in human history.
EPA/Jacek Bednarczyk
It’s hard to imagine that a whole race of people can be forgotten. But if no one chooses to remember them, genocide can mean just that, leaving a large hole in our history and dooming future minorities…
Pardoning Breaker Morant should not be a priority for the government.
AAP Image/Australian War Memorial
Early in the New Year, while most of us were thinking about going to the beach or when it would be okay to consign those unwanted Christmas presents to a charity bin, Commander Jim Unkles of the Royal…
How and why has Australia Day become so important?
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Some 224 years ago on January 26, the First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove. Just 1500 people disembarked with nearly 800 of them convicts. The date saw the beginning of the British penal colony, then known…
You may want to start hoarding supplies and making your end of world plans now – before it’s too late.
Flickr/Necromundo
If you believe the doomsayers, the human race is not long for this earth. By the end of this year, our number will be up: the four horseman of the apocalypse will be upon us, fire will rain from the skies…
Momentum is gathering behind calls to pardon the father of computer science.
BinaryApe
You may have read the British Government is being petitioned to grant a posthumous pardon to one of the world’s greatest mathematicians and most successful codebreakers, Alan Turing. You may also have…
Many Aboriginal people, like boxer Anthony Mundine, look to Islam as a way of re-connecting with their roots.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
Muslim conversion is growing in Indigenous communities.
In the 2001 national census, 641 Indigenous people identified as Muslim. By the 2006 census the number had climbed by more than 60% to 1014 people…
It’s December 15th, 1983. Around 13,000 people, a capacity crowd, are packed into the Sydney Entertainment Centre. This is the last of five Cold Chisel shows there.
Fans had queued for blocks, some had…
Indigenous Australians systematically burnt grasslands to reduce fuel and stop fires raging out of control.
Flickr/pietroizzo
Aboriginal people worked hard to make plants and animals abundant, convenient and predictable.
By distributing plants and associating them in mosaics, then using these to lure and locate animals, Aborigines…
Italian-Australians deserve an apology for their mistreatment in internment camps in World War II.
Australian War Memorial Collection
Last month, the South Australian parliament unanimously accepted a bi-partisan motion moved by Labor member, Tony Piccolo, to acknowledge the wrongful internment of Italian civilians living in Australia…
Mussolini made the trains run on time. But having a strong leader is risky.
Flickr/Galaxy FM
“If I Ruled The World” was a tune made famous decades ago by English comedian and singer Harry Secombe who sang of making every day the first day of spring as well as other miraculous improvements. It…
‘Generation’ is a slippery concept. More research is needed to tell real people’s stories.
Flickr/Mickey van der Stap
Generational difference is one of the major issues of our time. Game shows like Talkin’‘bout Your Generation assume that Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y contestants have very different attitudes and knowledge…
We are still learning about the Mongolian invasions, 750 years after they happened.
Hanoi History Museum, James Delgado
Archaeologists from the University of the Ryukyus in Japan have discovered part of a 13th century ship that apparently belonged to Mongolian warlord Kublai Khan.
The ship is believed to be a remnant of…
Who will take over the family firm after Prince William is under discussion by Commonwealth leaders.
AAP/Lyndon Mechielsen
UPDATE: Commonwealth leaders have now agreed that laws will be changed to allow sons and daughters of any future British monarch to have equal right to the throne. The ban on the head of state marrying…
It’s wrong to assume that China makes no effort to reform its political system because its culture does not support such change.
Flickr/Katherina
The skepticism of contemporary China’s multilayered and painful efforts to achieve legal and political reform makes many wonder if democracy can really grow in the Chinese soil. This is such a haunting…
The velocipede created one of several cycling booms in Australia.
Harpers Weekly (Dec 18, 1868)
CYCLING IN AUSTRALIA: Forget about the wild scenes of public adulation for Cadel Evans following his Tour de France triumph. Forget about the widespread admiration for champion cyclist Anna Meares following…
Francis Galton pioneered the concept of eugenics in this lab in London in the late 19th century.
Flickr/Science Museum London
Eugenics — the science of improving the race —was a powerful influence on the development of Western civilisation in the first half of the twentieth century. And Melbourne’s elite were among its chief…
Do we take the sophistication of numbers one to ten for granted?
duncan
While adding up your grocery bill in the supermarket, you’re probably not thinking how important or sophisticated our number system is.
But the discovery of the present system, by unknown mathematicians…
Australian veterans of the Pacific theatre in WWII attend a VJ Day memorial.
AAP
Sometimes an historian will challenge one of the key ideological myths of Australian capitalism.
Henry Reynolds does it in his work on the colonial treatment of Aborigines, a treatment some go so far…
Refugees fled the Crusades. This is a detail from St Dominic and the Albigenses by Pedro Berruguete.
Flickr/derechoaleer
Given the often hysterical media coverage of the refugee debate you could be forgiven for thinking that people seeking refuge in other countries is a new phenomenon. Not so. Refugees have been around since…
Thousands of Brits moved to Australia for the thrill of a more glamorous life. But many struggled.
Flickr/MarkFaviellPhotos
Published biographies, and indeed many histories, are often about the famous, rich or powerful. And most often, they’re about men.
I’ve preferred to research and write about so-called “ordinary” men and…
Did music precede language for Homo sapiens?
Spuz/Flickr
All human cultures and social groups that we know of respond to music and dance. The type of music may vary but the underlying, fundamental principles of making music are the same.
Our recognition of…
