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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.

Timothy Roberts reviews 'Here on Earth' by Tim Flannery

February 2011, no. 328 04 May 2011
Tim Flannery’s books are not known for their uplifting qualities. The Future Eaters (1994) and The Eternal Frontier (2001) both relate the rapid extermination of hapless (yet presumably delicious) megafauna by the human inhabitants of the Australian and North American land masses, while The Weather Makers (2005) grimly catalogues modern humans’ catastrophic effects on Earth’s climate. ... (read more)

Timothy Roberts reviews 'The Australian Book of Atheism' edited by Warren Bonett

March 2011, no. 329 01 March 2011
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)

Timothy Roberts reviews 'The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with "Climate Change" Turning out To Be the Most Costly Scientific Blunder in History?' by Christopher Booker

March 2011, no. 329 01 March 2011
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)

Timothy Roberts reviews 'My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture' by Susan D. Blum

April 2011, no. 330 24 March 2011
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)