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
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The main message of Garnaut’s interim report, as John Quiggin sees it, is that:
At this point, the risk of moving too fast on climate change is non-existent.
Robert Merkel too is pleased by Garnaut’s stress on the urgency of the matter.
Anonymous Jeremy analyses the latest Herald Sun laura norder beatup.
Graham Young observes that the Rudd government’s claim of a binge-drinking ‘epidemic’ isn’t actually supported by the facts on Australians’ alcohol consumption.
The Poll Bludger throws out an olive branch to Dennis Shanahan in the ongoing war between the psephology bloggers and News Corporation.
International
Ken Lovell agrees that it makes sense to outspend everyone else on military hardware. But too rigid an adherence to this philosophy can get you into trouble once you start using that hardware to occupy other countries indefinitely rather than merely fight wars.
Pommygranate dissects British watermelons.
Matt Welch dissects the NY Times’ story of an alleged recent John McCain extra-marital affair, while Publius thinks the allegations are more than a little thin but wonders whether the NYT has more evidence up its corporate sleeve.
And on the other side of the ledger, Belle Waring points out that the Republican-aligned media have already started the racial slurs against Obama:
The truly beautiful thing about this is that it incoherently wavers between two poles of repulsive slander: is it Communist Negroes having sex with our white women? Or are Communist Jewesses subverting black Americans who, patriotic though modestly ill-treated, would have been able to resist had the party not offered them the tempting fruits of miscegenation?
Economics
Amir at Astrolabe advertises a US public broadcasting documentary, Commanding Heights, on the evolution of economics in the last century.
Harry Clarke considers using economics for gun ownership control.
Law
Beastiality + necrophilia = no crime at all? asks/observes Eugene Volokh:
Hathaway first argues his conviction should be reversed because the term animal in WIS. STAT. § 944.17(2)(c) does not include an animal carcass. He rather convincingly contends that animal means a living creature.
Legal academics Mark Graber and Michael Klarman debate questions about the American Constitution and race (ad nauseum some might think).
Issues analysis
Twenty five years later, and it’s Round 2 of the fight to save Brisbane’s Regent Theatre from developers, as Mark Bahnisch explains.
Lauredhel argues that it’s unethical to appropriate the personal stories of your political enemies, even if they are in the public domain. The local blogosphere’s own Mark ‘Ozconservative’ Richardson is one of her three case studies.
The never-extinct debate on whether ‘high art’ deserves its appelation, has flared up on LP.
Arts
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Alison Croggon argues that theatre (or at least theatre actors) are saving the soul of the Australian film industry. Not one of her most convincing arguments really.
Tim T has posted the latest edition of his hit series Dr Who for the blue rinse set, which explains the image at right.
Sport
Regarding the Indian cricket auction player auction, Bridgit at GrodsCorp finds the frivolous disposal of such riches in bad taste, given that county’s still extensive poverty.
Who says Test cricketers aren’t role models? Not your average Joe, says Tony T.
Dani Rodrik highlights a proposal to promote peace in the Middle East through soccer by getting Israel and the Palestinian state to jointly stage the 2018 World Cup!! Is this a sillier idea than Dan Markel’s sex licence for horny teens proposal? Possibly a dead heat.
Shaun at Sidelined has a mid-week NRL news roundup, starting predictably with Willie whipping out his willie in public.
Snark, strangeness and charm
As a cyclist myself, I can empathise with what Apathetic Gam did. I’ve never done it myself, but I’ve been tempted a few times. And Sarah is a peculiar girl, always posting photos of naked women. Still, it must certainly boost their blog’s hit count.
How do you steal a 4 tonne railway bridge?
Scott notes an uncanny resemblance between Julia Gillard and Scottish actress Tilda Swinton.
Nothing at all against the Apathetic Youth blog – but do you realise that Missing Link links to it in every edition, often twice per edition?
Umm…why has my blog been kicked off the blog roll? Did I do something wrong?
With regard to xkcd comics, you’re missing half of the joke if you don’t also post the alt-text which accompanies it.
For this one, it’s “What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they’ll keep being wrong!”
Laura
We pick what we think is worthy of highlighting. The Apathetic Youth couple has been writing some great stuff recently, especially material on topics a little different from what everyone else is writing. We don’t have a policy of sharing the mentions around so everyone gets their turn or something, it’s necessarily a subjective judgment.
Nico
You’re certainly still in the Google reader centrist category. However, Gilmae took over responsibility for that category a couple of months ago, and I suspect that he uses his own feed reader subscription set rather than the ML Google Reader one. It’s conceivable that his reader doesn’t include your blog. I’ll raise it with him and ask him to make sure that all the centrist blogs from google reader are also in his own feed reader. I certainly know from when I was reviewing the centrist blogs that I quite regularly found posts of yours that were well worth inclusion.
Faustus
Thanks for that.
Hmmm…..Belladonna, eh? Nice tats. Just what is she looking at, I wonder? Certainly not the mag in her hands.
Oh, by the by……it seems I’m in the blog roll twice. I can’t possibly be that attractive.
Oh, I thought I was going to find out about UK watermelons. Libertarians less interesting.
“The Apathetic Youth couple has been writing some great stuff recently,”
Really?! Maybe I’m not scrolling down far enough…..
Well I like it anyway (they’re in both my group and James’s, I think), and that’s why I include them fairly often. Feel free not to read their posts if you don’t like them(or participate in the ML selection yourswelf as a team member, or better still in the Love Gods exercise, in which case it will represent in part your own taste rather than that of others who have chosen to do the work).
“Feel free not to read their posts if you dont like them(or participate in the ML selection yourself as a team member, or better still in the Love Gods exercise, in which case it will represent in part your own taste rather than that of others who have chosen to do the work).”
See? I knew you’d say that. You have a point, though I’m not sure that it has much to do with the one that I was making.
Trying to catch up on my own reader. There’s Slim, whose churned out three posts on the trot after a quiet spell. Granny p in the Canaries writing books, Helen with some galloping something. But I have come here and taken a side-road to find myself as a voyeur of sorts at a wedding. Weddings and Brides make me cry, but not on the net it seems. Nice dress. Its always nice to put faces to names.
I admit it, I was lured out by the nude woman. Yeah, I wonder why too. All very incongruous.
Is there room in this list for a post that does not endorse the rush-to-Garnaut? I think there just isn’t sufficient risk to justify mitigation measures as drastic as he is contemplating.
Peter
We’d generally prefer to offer well written posts canvassing both sides of an issue. Thus, if you know of a well written post putting the other side of the argument to Garnaut I’d really like to know about it. That mostly wouldn’t include bloggers like Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt, who for some reason think sneering and sledging makes a roolly roolly strong argument (although some lefties have similar techniques).
Your post certainly essays a substantive argument, although my own reading suggests that it’s misconceived (see, for example, http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/13/215043/37 ). Nevertheless, the argument deserves to be highlighted so that people can make up their own minds. Accordingly I’ll include it in Monday’s Missing Link Daily.
I got your joke, Geoff.
As for the apparently disproportionate share of ML space awarded to the Apathetic ones, Ken is right that they’re in my folder and Ken’s. But ‘Ken’s’ in this case means a folder called ‘photoblogging’. In other words, he is supposed to be only looking for pictures, but gets sidetracked.
Thank you Ken. That’s generous.
Thanks, too for the link. I’ve previously read the ‘how to talk to a skeptic’ article. I have to say it reminds me (perhaps it’s the title) of pamphlets by Bob Santamaria that they used to hand out at my Catholic High School about how to debate with the Communists (not forgetting the Protestants, of course). I’m just not swayed by a theory that explains away the ‘holocene optimum’ as a galactic cycle and then switches to another ‘long stretch’ theory (carbon+water-vapor feedback) on behalf of current anxieties. The convenience of this argument, to me, is a bit too much like Bob’s defense of Immaculate Conception.
I think many people who bother to look will find it hard to accept there’s enough of a threat even in current temperature records to call for a 70-90% carbon emissions cut.
Best wishes — Peter
There is a guy in India who runs a little job called Reliance, and is building a house. It is about 16 stories high with seven of them for parking plus more for accomodating his 300 attendants. I suspect the very poor actually appreciate the cricket.