Missing Link Daily
Posted by Ken Parish on Friday, March 28, 2008
A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Stephen Hill and Saint.
Politics
Australian
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Derek Barry is unimpressed by the gimmickry of Earth Hour.
Apathetic Sarah wastes no sympathy on Jenny Macklin (unsuitable for bed-time).
The Currency Lad thinks Kevin Rudd has lost his religion - in China.
Under NSW FOI laws, Peter Timmins notes that only applicants for information apparently need to observe time limits. Government departments can take as long as they like. If you live in NSW, remember that you voted for these shonks. Can O’Barrell be any worse?
International
Jonathan Quong puts the case for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.
wmmbb has some interesting news for Jaguar fans. Is this latest example of economic globalisation the coup de grace for British pride?
The Currency Lad notes Phillip Adams’ defence of Obama is playing to script, but finds the possible outcomes of the Democrat+ic convention far more interesting.
Jack Lacton scoffs at the Syrian minister for Expatriates who bagged Australia’s message of support for Israel 11. saint: The idea that a country needs a Minister for Expatriates should have been enough [↩]22. gilmae: Israel has one as well, Minister of the Diaspora, Society, and Fight Against Antisemitism. [↩]
Juan Cole covers the detail of clashes between Sadr militias and Maliki government forces in Iraq, while Spencer Ackerman suggests the Americans are being held hostage by Al Maliki and John Qugggin puts the situation in perspective.
Barbara Barnett fears that the US Democrats have formed a circular firing squad, while Chris Dillow discovers Hillary Clinton’s Nietzchean dimension:
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The important thing here, though, is that Hillary is not unique. Prioritizing the will to power over the truth is a defining feature of managerialism. Managers presume that the world can be bent according to their will. And, time being a tricky thing, it’s a small step from thinking the future is wholly malleable to thinking the past and present are as well - as Stalin knew in his notorious doctoring of Russian history. Hillary’s “mis-speaking” is in the same category as New Labour’s smearing of David Kelly and bosses’ presentation of company accounts …
Economics
Peter Martin reckons Rudd was a goose to promise that tax would under no circumstances increase as a proportion of GDP.
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Issues analysis
Eliezer Yudkowsky discovers that forbidden fruit tastes sweeter in only 676 words + footnotes.
Harry Clarke uncovers a tobacco company “research” scam that lends a new level of meaning to unethical.
Arts
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On the Colombia University Press blog Darrell William Davis offers a fascinating reading of Taiwanese director Ang Lee’s film, Lust-Caution, the film about sex and espionage that outraged China’s prudish moral authorities. In this adaptation of Eileen Chang’s short story Ang Lee adeptly portrayed the the development of the symbiotic relationship between the two main characters, Wang Chia-chih and Mr. Yee, exploring their destructive contest of desire. And, as Davis notes, the suspense of this film is very much driven by the subterfuges of the two main characters who, in oscillating between lust and caution, shift in their roles as hunter and hunted to provide a fascinating psychological portrait of the clandestine world beneath the splendour of 1930s Shanghai.
The director asserts that Eileen Chang “understood playacting and mimicry as something by nature cruel and brutal: animals, like her characters, use camouflage to evade their enemies and lure their prey” (Chang 2007: 61). Scriptwriter James Schamus invokes Zizek to explain further: Yee wants Wang not in spite of his suspicion, but “it is precisely because he suspects her that he desires her. . . . And so lust and caution are, in Chang’s work, functions of each other, not because we desire what is dangerous, but because our love is, no matter how earnest, an act, and therefore always an object of suspicion”
Leapster argues that the NY Times’ list of the best 1000 movies ever made is actually 137 greatest movies + 863 unmitigated calamities (via Tony the Teacher)
Sunday ramblings, cold coffee, recycled love and theatre at Minktails.
Sport
Mike Salter reckons Australia was lucky to escape with a tense 0-0 draw against China. 33. KP: Soccer certainly is a rivetting game, lucky Mike can be bothered watching it [↩] An exasperated tigtog presents a quick remedial class in obstetrics for economists. 44. GT: No pun intended - all the “offers” for today were already used up. The “would” supply was looking a bit dodgy for a while there too [↩]. The fierce on-line cock-fighting continues at Club Troppo. With luck, a new venue will present itself over the weekend.
Snark, strangeness and charm
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This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 11:33 AM and filed under Missing Link, Uncategorised.
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Democratic party, Democratic convention. “Democrat party” is a right wing coinage intended to be an epithet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_Party_(phrase)
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 11:56 am | PermalinkThe insult completely escaped me, anyway.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 12:00 pm | PermalinkDon’t oppress them, Ken! Leave off ‘i’ and ‘c’ and you’re NO BETTER THAN TIM BLAIR BY GOD.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 12:09 pm | PermalinkYou post a link to an interblog conflict, fire up the conflict by using terms from one side of the dispute, participate in the conflict yourself, and now wish the conflict would go away. You can be incredibly lame sometimes, Ken.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 1:11 pm | PermalinkChrist, can’t we just grow up. Macklin is a senior government minister and the chief executive of a large government department. If she’s out of town on governmet business she deserves to get first rate accomodation.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 1:21 pm | PermalinkApathetic Sarah shouldn’t believe everything she reads in the newspapers:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-and-Sports/20080326-The-Oz-brings-new-meaning-to-the-term-beat-up.html
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 2:36 pm | PermalinkTry saying it with a Southern drawl and all the emphasis on the last syllable!
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 2:37 pm | PermalinkBtw, the first link to the fierce infighting (and yep, Troppo does seem to be interblog snark central at the moment) points to a film review.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 2:39 pm | PermalinkMmmmmmmm
Missing Link was a useful round up of some of the best writing in the ozblogosphere. Since the new team has come on, it has become something of a gully trap for right wing bagging. There’s a place for that - it’s called Catallaxy - but Troppo is meant to be a genuinely pluralist site, and a thing like Missing Link only works if it doesn’t come to be seen as a fix. Keep it up and it won’t be worth the click.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 7:23 pm | PermalinkHave to agree Tim - it was pretty lame of Ken to leave my comment on the on-line cock fighting scene in today’s ML, when he could have edited it out.
A few more remarks like that and it won’t be long before I get hosed out of the gully-trap.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 7:43 pm | PermalinkKim,
That first link is supposed to be to this post.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 7:49 pm | PermalinkGoodness….comment #4. It’s clear Blair has been wounded. Don’t like your own medicine, Tim?
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 9:37 pm | PermalinkPeter Martin link is to some soccer site.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 10:18 pm | PermalinkIn that case, my sincere apologies to Ken, Gummo. The comment does apply to ML, though - why link to a conflict, ramp it up, join in, then act as though it’s somehow beneath this place?
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 10:27 pm | Permalinktim,
Why not step back for a moment, adopt a mood of sardonic detachment, look at the behaviour of everyone involved, and have a bit of a laugh at the silliness of it all?
Works a charm for me. You should try it sometime.
(parry in quarte, riposte in sexte).
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 10:55 pm | PermalinkPS
Guess we now know where today’s cock-fight is going to happen.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 10:57 pm | PermalinkIn answer to Tim at #14, it’s partly a function of being a group blog. I did the original link on flying monkeys, but took part in the subsequent ramping, joining, and dissociating. Others have their specialisations too — Gummo is an incorrigible ramper, while Ken is a mere sober joiner. Clearly, though, we must aim at greater collective accountability.
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 11:33 pm | PermalinkWhoops, that should read: ‘…but took no part in the subsequent…’
Posted on 28-Mar-08 at 11:35 pm | PermalinkActually, James and Gummo, I prefer poster #12’s innovative approach: making comments that relate in no apparent way to anything. Let me try:
So, you’ve never been oyster hunting, eh?
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 12:33 am | PermalinkI claim responsibility for ‘Democrat’.
I have seen “Democrat” and “Democrats” all over the media from our own ABC to the Washington Post and also all over U.S. liberal blogs not to mention on the lips of Clinton and Obama themselves, that I did not know “the Democrat convention” (oops even in the Canbrerra Times) carried so much baggage.
Perhaps I should have written the Democrats’ convention.
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 1:01 am | PermalinkActually, I think non-sequiturs are actually the whole point of blogging!
Which leads me nicely to my next point: the significance of Beethoven in the development of 19th century romantic music is often overrated, don’t you think?
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 1:05 am | PermalinkYou make a strong case, TimT. But you’ve failed to allow for the inevitable increase in gravitational forces upon re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. A newbie error, my friend.
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 1:24 am | PermalinkDon’t stop now. I was actually entertained there for a minute.
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 1:54 am | PermalinkOMFG, he’s right. Personally I prefer to think of it as “compulsive” rather than “incorrigible” behaviour.
Anyone know of a good twelve step program?
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 2:15 am | PermalinkRampist! By the way, Ant, it was clay, not sand. That’s why the water pooled on the surface.
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 2:44 am | Permalink“You can be incredibly lame sometimes, Ken”
Coming from one of the lamest of them all.
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 3:09 am | Permalink#19 Sounds like condoning the use of Democrat superdelegates as a cheap substitute for democratic.
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 3:13 am | Permalink#29: Aargh! I’m hit! Better use my dying seconds to tap out a LOLniall:
I’m outside ur house
Scratchin ur Camry
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 3:28 am | Permalinkoh dear oh dear……is that the best you’ve got Timmy?
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 3:51 am | PermalinkThat woul be nicely balanced, if it was. I don’t think this is
quiteremotely the same thing. IIRC the Jewish Diaspora predates Israel by a millenium or so and only very few of them are her expatriates.That said, I believe Italy has such a post - they even have one or two expatriate seats in the Italian senate.
~ ~ ~
That’s a cheap (and low) shot against bosses! If only politicians were so accountable…
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 3:53 am | PermalinkYou can be incredibly lame sometimes, Ken”
Coming from one of the lamest of them all.
I know U R but what am I?
Posted on 29-Mar-08 at 1:30 pm | PermalinkGadzooks, Blairelzebub, it’s like ducking into some provincial dime bar for a light and finding the former Heavyweight Champ wrestling a tag-team of midget chicks in a jelly pit for cigarettes and tips.
Might be time to hang ‘em up, son. Too old, too slow…far too sentimental for the clinical modern game.
1000 a day before brekky for three months still = a draft, y’know.
Hope you’re full of beans, feeling upbeat, remissioning gangbusters.
Posted on 30-Mar-08 at 3:25 am | PermalinkEveryone:
Completely off-topic but …. ABC-TV’s Four Corners program on Monday evening is “Debtland” - a look at the impact of unrestrained consumer credit, predatory lending, etc. in Australia.
Would someone kindly notify Fyodor that it will be on. Thanks.
Posted on 30-Mar-08 at 10:29 pm | Permalink