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"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff) LATEST POSTS:
- Dennis Prager v Cedars-Sinai Lawsuit
- Dennis Prager Through Randall Collins: Interaction Ritual Chains
- What is a ‘Received Idea’?
- Jordan Bardella: The Manufacture of Normality
- Everyone Became Television: Bourdieu’s Warning and the 2026 Iran War
- Marine Le Pen
- The Coalition-Proximity Rule
- Nigel Farage
- Bernard Haykel: A Life Between the Text and the Gun
- Walker Connor (1926-2017)
- Benedict Anderson and the Nation as Imagination
- Anthony D. Smith: The Student Who Kept the Question and Rejected the Answer
- Ernest Gellner
- Eric Kaufmann: The Man Who Made the Majority Visible
- Dominic Cummings: A Biography
- Steve Lopez: The Last City Columnist
- California Historian Kevin Starr
- Stephen Kotkin: A Life in Power
- William T. Vollmann: An American Life in Excess
- Rod Dreher: A Life in Exile
BEST POSTS:
- * The Enlightenment Wasn’t Enlightened (6-23-26)
* Mr. Burge Draws The Line (6-23-26)
* 'Improving on Democracy' (6-17-26)
* People Leak To People Who Are Fun (6-11-26)
* Why Does Australia Produce So Many Great Journalists? (6-11-26)
* Steve Wynn and the Press: Power, Litigation, and the Contest Over Las Vegas (6-3-26)
* Sheldon Adelson and the Journalists (6-3-26)
* The Vigilant Animal: Thinkers Who Reject the Myth of Human Gullibility (6-2-26)
* The Cost of Refusing the Misunderstanding Myth (6-2-26)
* Show Me How It Travels (6-2-26)
* The Norm Explainers (6-2-26)
* Centering Marginalized Voices (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Washington Post put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What would it look like if the Financial Times put its reader first? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for the Los Angeles Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* What It Would Mean for The New York Times to Put the Reader First? (6-1-26)
* Why Wembanyama Lives on the Perimeter (5-31-26)
* The Emotional Palettes Of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco & Sacramento (5-27-26)
* The Administrative Capital: Sacramento Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* San Diego - The Quiet Republic (5-27-26)
* The Quiet Bar: San Diego Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* SF v LA Legal Culture (5-27-26)
* Why Talent Travels Poorly Between San Francisco and Los Angeles (5-27-26)
* San Francisco and Los Angeles as Rival Models of Urban Access (5-27-26)
* Social Cliques in New York, 2026 (5-25-26)
* Social Cliques in San Francisco, 2026 (5-25-26)
* The Rival Courts of Washington (5-25-26)
* The City of Private Rooms (5-25-26)
Category Archives: Sydney
A Hero System Essay on St. Andrews Cathedral Music Director Ross Cobb
In the autumn of 2020 the cathedral on George Street stood empty and Ross Cobb kept playing. The choristers could not gather under one roof. The law forbade it. So they sang into phones and laptops in scattered homes across … Continue reading
Posted in Sydney
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Eternity in Chalk
Arthur Stace (1885-1967) woke at four in the morning and went out into the dark with a stick of yellow chalk in his coat. He knelt on the cold pavement. He bent his head. He wrote one word in a … Continue reading
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Kyle Sandilands and the Economics of Offense
Kyle Dalton Sandilands (b. 1971) dominated Australian breakfast radio for two decades and changed what commercial broadcasting in that country rewards. He built the largest breakfast audience in Sydney through celebrity interviews, sexual confession, manufactured conflict, and a persona that … Continue reading
The Moral Grammars of London, Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo
These cities rank among the world’s great urban centers. Each holds deep reserves of capital, talent, institutions, and prestige. Yet they do not reward the same virtues. A man who rises with ease in one city may stall in another, … Continue reading
Sydney and Melbourne Talkback: A Comparative History, 1967 to 2026
The convict-versus-free-settler story is the explanation Australians reach for first about almost any difference between the two cities, and that is the warning sign. It explains too much. Transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840. Talkback as a legal … Continue reading
Invisible Sydney: The Cliques and Closed Rooms of a Harbour Aristocracy
Sydney runs on water and on memory. The city sorts its elite less by spectacle than by anchorage, and the highest standing belongs to the man who looks permanently moored: the right school behind him, the right board beneath him, … Continue reading
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The Emotional Palettes of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth
Brisbane carries the mood of a slow Sunday in the subtropics. Heat and humidity slow a man down and loosen his hurry. The brown river bends through the center and sets the pace. Colors run warm: jacaranda purple, river water … Continue reading
Malcolm Knox: A Life in Australian Letters
Malcolm Knox was born in 1966 and grew up in St Ives on Sydney’s North Shore. He attended Knox Grammar School for thirteen years, captained the First XI cricket team, played in the First XV rugby side, and competed in … Continue reading
Posted in Australia, Malcolm Knox, Sydney
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SMH: ‘AI won’t kill the law degree. It will redefine it’
This Sydney Morning Herald op-ed reads as marketing copy dressed as analysis. Two law school administrators defend law school. That is the structure and the limit. My four coalition questions apply. Johns and Walton draw their salaries from Sydney Law … Continue reading
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The Jurisdictional Wars: Alliance Theory and the Battle for Bondi
Orthodox Jews in Bondi and the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney do not compete for authority by declaring a desire for power. They compete by invoking moral languages that frame their claims as fidelity to halacha, loyalty to Torah life, and … Continue reading
Posted in Anti-Semitism, Bondi Beach, Jews, Sydney
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