Painting Fakes

So, today is the 231st anniversary of the first British convict fleet landing in Sydney Cove.  This was the beginning of the British invasion of Australia, but far from the end of it.  In my home town, home of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples, and the surrounding country of peoples including the Quandamooka, Kabi Kabi and Mununjali, the invasion did not start in earnest until 1823.  In November of that year the surveyor Lieutenant John Oxley sailed through Quandamooka waters and slowly rowed up the Maiwar River, surveying as he went.  Unaware that the river already had a name, he renamed it the Brisbane River after his boss Sir Thomas Brisbane, Governor of NSW.  In consequence the surrounding land, originally called Meanjin, also came to be called Brisbane. Among more peaceful encounters with the land's owners was an ugly confrontation which resulted in a young Aboriginal man being shot and possibly killed.   A year later a small party of convicts and ...

In Lady Windemere's Fan  Oscar Wilde has one of his characters define a cynic as someone who 'knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'.  This much quoted aphorism provides the title of Mariana Mazzucato's recent book, The Value of Everything: Making and taking in the global economy. Mazzucato is an academic economist, born in Italy, educated in the USA and currently working at University College, London.  Her central concern is, how does value get created in modern economies?  In an earlier book, The Entrepreneurial State,  she examines the often overlooked role of government in creating valuable and even game-changing innovations.  This book repeats some of that, but focuses mainly on the position of the financial industry.  Does this industry create value, or simply extract it? The problem, she says, is that economists, and hence the rest of us, are confused about what value actually is.  The classical economists - Adam Smith,...

You might remember that I have a bit of a soft spot for disgraced Aussie cricketer David Warner.  It's irrational - after all, he cheated - but rationality is not everything. For those who came in late...  In March last year Warner, then Australia's cricket vice-captain, was suspended along with captain Steve Smith and fellow opening bat Cameron Bancroft for tampering with the condition of the ball during a test at Newlands, South Africa, and for lying about it afterwards.  Bancroft, at Warner's suggestion and with Smith's knowledge, applied sandpaper to the ball to rough up one side so it would swing.  Warner and Smith got 12 months, Bancroft got nine. In the last month, as the Aussie cricket season has rolled on, we have heard from both Smith and Bancroft.  Smith was first out of the blocks, featuring in some Vodaphone ads which neatly commercialise his suspension and doing a press conference as well as some interviews.  Here's one he did with fo...

I am not a Christian because it makes logical sense or because I can prove the message to be true.  I am a Christian because the teachings and life of Jesus seem to me to be the best and most compelling guide to living a good life. A few years ago I read lots of apologetics of various sorts. It started with me reading some of the New Atheist writers - Dawkins , Dennett , Harris , Shermer - who were getting a lot of airplay.  With the exception of Shermer, these learned gentlemen all have a great certainty that religion is an ancient anachronism.  However, their efforts to refute religion are compromised by their failure to actually learn anything about the religions they are attempting to disprove.  Nuanced, mature faith just seems like a mystery to them - Harris even suggests that religious 'moderates' are dangerous because they provide cover for fundamentalists.  Dawkins seems to believe that if he can disprove young earth creationism he has therefor...

In 2019, the National Rugby League will be played without Johnathan Thurston for the first time since 2001.  Cue the obligatory memoir! The latter part of Thurston's 2018 season was somewhat surreal. His North Queensland Cowboys had a terrible year and were out of title contention by mid-season.  Thurston himself was playing like a man who may possibly have stretched his career one season too many.  If his career had finished with his final on-field act of 2017 - overcoming a busted shoulder to kick a classic curling conversion from the sideline and win Queensland the second State of Origin game - that would have a been a more fitting farewell.  Yet everywhere he went he was feted, with opposing teams presenting him farewell gifts after each game. His final act on the field, so to speak, was perhaps an appropriate sign-off for both the season and the career.  The match was an otherwise inconsequential game between the Cowboys and the equally struggling Gold ...