Missing Link – Andrew Johns edition

Well, I could bill this as the Andrew Johns druggie special edition, because Joey’s turn at the Notting Hill Carnival has certainly made a few waves around Ozblogistan. As is often the case, Wicking managed to combine Johns’ efforts with one of the stranger animal interest stories going around:

A cat in Sydney’s eastern suburbs was taken to a vet high on cocaine and benzodiazepines. The eight-month-old Himalayan cat arrived at the Double Bay clinic on Monday morning with dilated pupils and a racing heart after being accidentally locked in a cupboard overnight, Fairfax newspapers reported. It was having trouble walking, was easily startled, paced incessantly and was too anxious to have a thermometer inserted into its rectum, said a report in this month’s edition of Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery (…) the owner’s wife admitted the cat could have licked plates of cocaine which had been served at a dinner party two days earlier.

There’s more on the whole Joey brouhaha in the Troppo Sports Stadium section.

I’ve also pinched a graphic for this issue from Bilegrip, simply because that’s the biggest head of broccoli I’ve ever seen, and the riff on said head is, ahem, interesting. On something of a more brain-foody note, another candidate for personal post of the year is this piece on the economics of gambling from Harry Clarke:

The conventional economic theory of externalities would suggest a case for having a competitive gambling industry and, instead of regulating to achieve monopoly power, levelling a tax on the price charged for a gamble – on the expected loss – that would force the gambling operators to internalise the social costs gambling imposes on the community.

Today’s issue brought to you by a somewhat reduced Missing Link crew – James Farrell, Amanda Rose, gilmae and Helen ‘skepticlawyer’ Dale. Peter Black and Legal Eagle are both snowed under on the work front, so I’ve done what I can to fill in during their absence, with a selection from LE’s lefty blogs and Peter’s RWDBers. Please don’t shoot the piano player – I’m doing my best…

1. News and Politics Stuff

Gary Sauer-Thompson’s somewhat minatory post on Peter Garrett’s assimilation by the Borg of the ALP Right segues nicely into Andrew Bartlett’s take on Labor’s conversion to the ‘no entry’ provisions of Workchoices; an example of

how parties can be vehemently against something one minute, ferociously bagging out people who voice any form of support for it and the next minute theyre adopting that same thing as policy.

Labor won’t get away with expedient flip-flops if they don’t control the Senate, according to Andrew.

One point of differentiation between the Federal parties was – apparently – their respective health policies. However, in an excellent guest post for Catallaxy, Financial Review economics columnist Sinclair Davidson points out that Labor’s policy is, like Howard’s, designed to undermine Federalism.

On a related issue, Jim Fryer at Thoughts on Freedom discusses just how difficult it is for libertarians to exist in the conservative dominated GOP, and discusses a piece pleading for them to stay with the Republicans even if none of their preferred candidates win the nomination.

In other posts documenting our general drift toward fascism, LP guest Mercurius Goldstein shares first-hand experience of Sydney’s APEC security crackdown, while Pavlov’s Cat links to a story in Crikey! about Federal Government’s plans to put truants into chain gangs directed by ‘business managers’. She doesn’t ‘recognise this country any more’. But she may not be alone: Tim Dunlop notes that the Lowy Institute’s annual survey has just been published, finding that the public’s priorities are out of step with their leaders’.

Does this apply even to the members of the High Court? A post by Bernice at LP on its most recent decision launches an interesting comment thread on whether prisoners should be allowed to vote.

Darlene at LP reviews Constructing Fear. She finds it ‘too simplistically rendered to have much of an impact on the viewer’ but, as she says, you can download the whole thing and judge for yourself.

Jim Belshaw reprises Hayek’s great essay in his own take on ‘Why I am not a Conservative‘. John Ray takes the conservative meme a little further, with a clear-eyed analysis of what conservatives both are and aren’t. An excellent companion piece to Belshaw’s essay.

John Quiggin welcomes the abandonment by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists — perhaps the last reputable organisation clinging to denialism — of its official position denying there is evidence that humans cause of global warming. However, as Brian Bahnisch explains, while the rest of the world is getting serious about negotiating binding targets to replace the Kyoto Protocol, John Howard is leading a charge (in his own mind) to a new land of ‘aspirational’ targets.

Niall Cook notes that as with every other fight, only the lawyers are going to win in Tasmania.

2. Life and Other Serious Stuff

Gianna needs more convincing that girls’ preference for pink is innate.

saint has a lot to say about the Blake prize entrants, and in the end comes to the conclusion the artist says he was going for. Later, saint has an anecdote about a co-worker with Down’s Syndrome, contrasting it with a tragic mistake involving the attempted abortion of a fetus with Down’s Syndrome.

Andrew Leigh calls for finely targeted education programs and discusses a paper explaining why.

Oz at Decomposing Trees attended a speech by Morgan Tsvangirai and gives us some thoughts on the prospects for Zimbabwe.

Nick Gruen at Troppo is kinda over Oxfam’s anti-trade rhetoric, and is on the lookout for an aid alternative. David Jackmanson at Let’s Take Over has a few interesting tips on the aid front, including a documentary from Ghanaian teacher De Roy Kwesi Andrew.

Polemica’s Guy has learned at least one good thing about the UK.

What happens when blog wars go too far… Jason Soon on some real live flame wars.

3. The Yartz

He was the poet of the mountains and tall timber, and time has acclaimed him our greatest. Others have sung of burning plains under a fierce sun, But Henry Clarence Kendall preferred the grandeur of the big hills or the mystery of unfooted dells.
~ Matilda

A wise reader of this site succinctly identified that the voting pattern of this series seems to involve nothing more complex than the following equation: 1 good person + 1 shit person = Finalists.
~ Scott 2 Be Certain, on Australian Idol semi-finals.

I wrote in praise of Magic 693 (now Magic 1278), the Melbourne oldies station with a playlist so vast and eclectic it barely qualifies as a playlist at all. This little known treasure is a cheery beacon of eclecticism in a dreary sea of conformity. Or, to arbitrarily switch metaphors, it is a precious resource which needs careful tending from the ravages of witless business practices.
~ Sarsaparilla

Tell anyone they’re about to sit through a 3-hour period drama – the French adaptation of a British literary classic – and you could forgive them for worrying that life, perhaps, is too short for such things. But it’s precisely because life’s so short that one should rush to see this intelligent, invigorating film.
~ Last Night on the Riveria, on Lady Chatterley.

~ Richard Watts reports back from the Melbourne Writers’ Festival.

~ A great piece on Torres Strait Islander culture from apathetic Sarah.

4. T.S.S

(troppo sports stadium)

Well, Andrew Johns and recreational drugs are all over the show. We’ll kick off with sidelined here and here, and follow on down the line with a piece by David Jackmanson:

Find your own path in life, and teach your kids that as well. In particular, learn well that people you admire might not be all you think. Deal with it.

Meanwhile, Jason at stoush.net points at the elephant in the corner, the clear and present double standards in the NRL drug testing regime exposed by Andrew Johns’ admission of years of recreational drug taking.

In non-Johns news, Tony the Teacher on the Demons.

5. Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad

Fan boys are nuts, you say? Dog fans and Jesus fans have their moment in the inanity spotlight at The Legal Soapbox.

Some pictures of the red moon by Prophet; also doing a fine impression of a philistine.

Glen is perplexed by his blog visitor stats: go help him out.

J.F. Beck assembles a true collection of the Mad, Bad, Sad and Glad. Go read.