Timothy Roberts
Timothy Roberts is a Melbourne-based writer whose current interests include Victorian literature, evolutionary biology and Roman history. His essays, reviews and articles have been published in The Age, College Literature, The Australian Rationalist, The New Matilda and The European Legacy, among many others. He is also the author of four student guides to classic and modern works of literature. Much of his writing can be found on his website.
Once mainly associated with shrill killjoys and desiccated reductionists, atheism has recently received a jolt of adrenaline from Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others. Yet while these writers delight in exposing religion’s philosophical deficiencies, their tone is predominantly negative. Fortunately, The Australian Book of Atheism goes beyond simply rehashing the New Atheists’ exp ... (read more)
Christopher Booker is appalled that humanity has thrown its glimmering record of progress on the pagan bonfire of environmentalist superstition. He is shocked that the scientific community is helplessly in thrall to a cabal of corrupt hacks masquerading under theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s confected rubric. He is dumbfounded that ‘natural’ climatic fluctuations have been spun ... (read more)
Plagiarism, like death, taxes, and hangovers, will always be with us. Tackling the problem historically, anthropologist Susan Blum demonstrates how this scourge has traditionally infested selective entry tests like fleas on rats. Her fascinating exposé of the ingenious techniques used to conceal plagiarism during the imperial Chinese court’s brain-bending entrance exams, for example, demonstrat ... (read more)