Missing Link Daily

A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, James Farrell, Gilmae, Darlene Taylor and Saint.

Politics

Australian

Apathetic Sarah asks a difficult question: will Brisbane be stupid enough to re-elect Campbell Newman for a second term as Lord Mayor?  Well, New South Wales re-elected Morris Iemma and his mates, so anything’s possible.

Andrew Norton wonders if policy matters for the Liberals.

Jeremy exposes the opposition to Rudd’s tax cuts as the shameful class envy that it is.

International

Shaun Cronin hopes Castro’s retirement will open the door to a rational solution to the US-Cuban standoff.  Meanwhile, the old dictator’s demise has induced some uncharacteristically robust stoushing in the intellectual blogopshere, with Chris Bertram’s vaguely laudatory post at Crooked Timber drawing a vitriolic response from economist Brad DeLong, who suggests that Bertram is a “dead-ender” who is making “an impressive play for the stupidest man alive crown”.

David Bath reports that Bill Gates has been accused of recklessness in bypassing the WHO with his antimalaria project.

Pavlov’s Cat laps up Guy Rundle’s assessment of Hilary Clinton’s latest tactics.

Law

Marcellous tells of an encounter with an intimidatingly grumpy judge at the weekly directions list session, seemingly sent down to whip practitioners into timely performance, an objective Marcellous argues might actually harm the interests of those it was (presumably) aimed at protecting (namely clients).

Overlawyered is having a stoush with Erin Brockovich (yes, the real one), who thinks his accusing her of ambulance-chasing is “shameful”.

Not surprisingly, it seems that Dan Markel from Lawprawfsblog has been copping a bit of stick over his proposal for a sex licence for under-age minors.

Michael Froomin posts about an extraordinarily draconian injunction (restraining order) imposed in US litigation against website Wikileaks:

Dynadot ¹ shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or any other website or server other than a blank park page, until further order of this Court.

I bet Andrew Landeryou is hoping Solomon Lew and his lawyers don’t take inspiration from this precedent.

Jack Balkin points out that there are law blogs and then there are LAW blogs.

Issues analysis

As if a conspiracy-theory driven inquiry wasn’t enough, now Al Fayed gives us the laudatory statue (via Saint).

A non-snarky call for attendee ideas for the 2020 conference.

Lee Malatesta has theories on the Secularisation of American Religious
Right.

Andrew Leigh links to an important new report on education and social mobility in the USA.

Joshua Gans corrects a misconception about how exactly Apple is hurt by the ‘smuggling’ of iPhones.

Legal Eagle muses at length about what makes people commit genocide.

Academic lawyer David Kopel posts about his research into a question which gives one or two clues about the orientation of its authors: is there a relationship between guns and freedom?  Sounds like the sort of work you’d expect Tim Lambert’s mate John Lott to be involved in. 

Howard Wasserman ponders the extent to which the Religious Right has succeeded in eliminating abortion as a perceived serious/valid option, at least in the plot lines of American movies and TV.

Arts

It’s all Arrah and the Ferns at Off the Record :

Arrah and the Ferns forming is a happy accident. Their debut album, Evan is a Vegan, is a candy store full of Wurlitzer organs, banjos and sunshine filled guitars. While the whimsical, sweet melodies and convivial moments remind me of Play School, the lyrics spew vitriol about emo kids and ways to kill someone. Apart from the amusingly malevolent words, I also love the Arcadian atmosphere imbued within each song. 

Tev at Elegant Variation coins some distinctly inelegant literature classifications, including “lick lit” (which arguably should really be clit lit) and “prick lit”.

Perry Middlemiss digests lots of reviews of Peter Carey’s new book His Illegal Self.

At The Art Life, Bonny Dot Cassidy reviews and photoblogs a sculpture exhibition by Linda Marrinon called Beautiful Troopers, at Roslyn Oxley Gallery.  Andrew has apparently enlisted some co-bloggers while overseas junketing at ABC/taxpayer expense  (I suspect). 

Sport

Cook. V8.  Included because surely *someone* cares.

Andrew Leigh discusses a comment box idea by Francis Xavier Holden suggesting that the AFL (massively) subsidise a team to relocate to Darwin in order to create “trickle down” social benefits for indigenous communities.  ((I’d love to see regular AFL matches in Darwin rather than just the lone annual Western Bulldogs premiership clash.  But there’s zero chance of the AFL squandering its funds on a relocation.  The necessary subsidy would be huge, and not only because of the high airfares cost.  Darwin’s small local population base (less than 120,000) would make such a venture non-financially viable for the foreseeable future.  We get around 10,000 to the annual Bulldogs game, but would be lucky to get 5,000 to more regular fixtures.  As for the imagined social benefits, there’s already a thriving local AFL(NT) first division comp in which any young indigenous player with ability already plays, and really promising ones are snapped up rapidly for the national AFL draft.  There are lots of indigenous NT players in the AFL and have been for years ~ KP))  

Snark, strangeness and charm

Mean Sarah has been eavesdropping on her new American neighbours, while new hubbie Gam hates revhead cars.

Tim Blair takes a jab at Queensland academics’ take on blogospheric power and a truther finding shelter in South Australian academia and a Jew-hating psycho-site.

The British government thinks bottled water is an immoral cancer. An ex-pat Scot has some advice.

If you want to learn how to avoid doing crap Powerpoint presentations, Peter Black links to the answers.

1. presumably Wikileaks’ domain host[↩]