Wednesday’s Missing Link

Courtesy Daily Flute

Wednesday’s Missing Link is running a bit late.   Maybe if I don’t mention it they won’t notice it’s actually Thursday.

As for Best Blog Posts 2006, Little Timmy Blair doesn’t think much of it.   The posts are too long, he reckons.   The only real blog is a link-studded ‘gotcha’ short item smartarse gossip column like his.   And the BBP posters use the first person pronoun far too much.   It’s a sign of bad writing, Little Timmy was taught at cadet journalism school (but is blogging journalism?). Little Timmy’s distant relative Eric disagrees, but what would he know?   Mark Bahnisch hosts a serious discussion on this vital issue, while Darlene Taylor takes the mickey out of Little Timmy.

Anyway, on with Wednesday’s Missing Link before Thursday turns into Friday.

News and politics stuff

WorkChoices lives up to its billing – at least for employers large and small, who can now sack whoever they like pretty much whenever they like.   Mark Bahnisch, Tim Dunlop and Trevor Cormack all analyse the AIRC Village Roadshow decision.

 Other news stuff

• knowledge + innovation – left-leaning Gary Sauer-Thompson professes to support “the neo-liberal  ¹ of fostering university knowledge and technological innovation”, in order to condemn the Howard government for failing to keep Blundstone’s manufacturing facilities  in Australia.   However it isn’t immediately obvious how such knowledge or innovation would have helped Blundstone (or pretty well any other textile, clothing and footwear manufacturer) to resist the siren  song of low wage countries.
• They don’t hate us because of our freedoms – Ken Lovett focuses on an article by right-leaning pundit Dinesh d’Souza where he blames the American Left for September 11!!   I”ve mentally demoted D’Souza to the ranks of barking mad RWDBs.
• Forcing history on schools – Andrew Bartlett joins the History Wars and attempts the dangerous feat of balancing on  a barbed wire fence in the crossfire.
• Domestic violence a teensy weensy insignificant matter: lawyer  – Caz gives celebrity lawyer Chris Murphy a well deserved kick in the goolies.
• Maggie Thatcher and the sensitive new age conservatives – ‘RightThinker’ laments the UK Tories’ lurch to the left under current leader David Cameron.  
• Pink turns red – Matthew K notes that pop singer Pink seems (at least partly) to have seen the error of her ways in supporting PETA’s campaign against mulesing of sheep.
• Selective enforcement of “vilification” laws – John Ray highlights seeming double standards in the Bracks government’s enforcement of its odious Racial and Religious Tolerance Act.
• Oops she’s done it again – ‘Bilious Young Fogey’ writes about yet another apparently abominable decision  by NSW magistrate Pat O’Shane.   O’Shane sued Janet Albrechtsen for defamation a few years ago  (and partially succeeded) for making the seemingly  commonsensical observation that O’Shane should be sacked from the bench.   The NSW Court of Appeal agreed that suggesting O’Shane was unfit for office on the available materials was fair comment, but upheld the decision against Albrechtsen on other grounds!    

Life and other serious stuff

• Scaredy Cats ‘R’ Us – ‘Galaxy’ explores the proposition that fearfulness is a major theme of contemporary Australian culture.
• Why did the leftist line on sex fail – Mark Richardson discusses a recent post by Jill Sparrow at LeftWrites and  muses about “the left’s” seeming abandonment of the  first wave feminist line on stripping, porn and the like.   I’m pretty sure the (self-styled) hive mind over at Lava Rodeo swarmed over Sparrow’s post recently too.
• Mad, bad or just plain stupid – a typically excellent post by Don Arthur provokes an equally fascinating comment thread.
• This Old Man – Helen ‘scepticlawyer’ Dale posts about her father,  and labels him  a serial petty thief  and brothel creeper, providing in the process a wealth of material for the amateur psychiatrists among her readership.
• Flowering-arranging the unkillable weed reporting Australian workforce participation rates – Paul Watson’s blog is the archetypal example of the “babyboomers ate the universe and shat it on their children” wrangle (as David Tiley colourfully describes it).   But it does seem that there’s a marked divide between the winners and losers among the so-called Gen X.
• History and memory – Sophie Cunningham writes (and photoblogs) about her time as a child at North Head Quarantine Station.
• Not that I’d ever set foot in a McDonalds … – Paul Mitchell puts the case for fair trade coffee (or at least provides a few links).
• Kennesaw gun ordinance, yet again – Tim Lambert takes on American uberblogger Glenn ‘Instapundit’ Reynolds on gun laws and blows him out of the water.   I hope Tim soon makes good on his promise to blog on Australian gun law research, because my reading of the recent stuff suggested that Howard’s gun laws had had no measurable effect on an already-existing downward trend in gun crimes.
• Blog for Choice Day – Helen ‘Cast Iron Balcony’ Smart reveals something I hadn’t known.   The figure of 100,000 elective abortions in Australian each year (often bandied about by “pro-life”  campaigners) is  grossly misleading.    Between 75% and 90%  of these are in fact ordinary miscarriages.    
• Nottlesby’s thoughts on city living – ‘St. John Nottlesby’s’  self-consciously twee musings are an acquired taste, but I’ve acquired it.
• Finding Leonardo – David Tiley investigates the story of  a long lost Da Vinci fresco allegedly hidden behind a false wall!   Another superb Tiley masterpiece.  
• Postpartum Androgens – brand new baby daughter  induces paternal protective impulses in Armagnac.   God help male suitors when she hits teenage years.

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