* - this doesn’t mean we’re going steady or anything, OK? I’m saying that purely as an appraiser of material for Missing Link.

Uncompromising panning, I must say. I guess that settles the whether to see it question!

Here’s what Richard Watts said (retrieved from my feed reader):

The Australian Shakespeare Company’s Richard III - Unhinged, which I saw tonight, is the single most painful production of the Bard’s work it’s ever been my misfortune to sit through. Elston’s sons Arky and Otis, as the young princes whose fate is to be murdered in the Tower, show as little skill as actors as their father has in directing what should be a dramatic, audatious and blackly comic work. Save for Francesca Waters as the Duchess of York, the female cast are uniformly dreadful. Of the men, only Brendan O’Connor as the mad, bad and dangerous to know King Richard shows any real strength in his role, and sadly, even he seems strangely drained of energy by the production in which he labours. With no sense of gravitas, no emotional thrill, no electricity or tension, I urge you all to avoid, avoid, avoid this wooden, lumpen, tedious exercise of a production at all costs.

That wasn’t Ken, it was me. And the reason I chose that phrasing is that as soon as you moot the idea of researching biochemical differences between races and race specific medical therapies, some numb-nut is going to use it as an excuse to defend or advocate research into behavioural and cognitive differences between races.

To make my own position clear, I think that the research you suggest would be valuable, perfectly proper and ethical, while the numb-nut proposals wouldn’t be. It’s a tricky business - how do you advocate real scientific research into the effects of genetics on biochemistry, physiology, perhaps even neurology, without a lot of pseudo-scientists attaching their parasitic little selves to your coat tails?

Maybe YouTomb would help there.

No I don’t. As far as I’m concerned it’s just a nonsensical song with a catchy chorus and a decadent theme. And I’ve no idea why in a moment of inspiration I decided that it was a good anthem for the Liberal Party, beyond the obvious mention of ‘Priests and cannibals, prehistoric animals’.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovH46-o0rLw