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
via Terry Sedgwick |
Pommygranate summarises former Treasury Secretary John Stone’s arguments on why John Howard was Australia’s greatest Prime Minister. ((Hot candidate for time-wasting post of the week IMO ~ KP))
Apathetic Sarah is understandably appalled by Queensland Health’s treatment of its nurses.
International
Winston Apple (naively) hopes that the US Presidential candidates will stop attacking each other, while Doug B looks at it as a hiring rather than electoral decision but then proceeds to ignore several of the criteria he just prescribed and plumps for … . Meanwhile, Paul Horwitz sees the Clinton campaign strategy as babyboomer narcissism (where are you Paul Watson?), Brad DeLong takes a hard look at infighting on the Clinton campaign team, and Dale suggests that the remaining primaries mathematically can’t determine the outcome of the Democrat contest:
It shows that there is no circumstance under which regular voters can grant the nomination to either candidate: if Obama gets 100% of the remaining popular votes, he ends up 46 delegates short; if Clinton gets 100% of the remaining popular votes, she ends up 184 delegates short. No matter what, Super Delegates will decide the outcome.
Savo Heleta makes a measured pessimistic examination of South Africa 14 years after the new Constitution came into operation under President Nelson Mandela.
Jonathan Pearce argues that libertarians should oppose Britain’s continued membership of the European Union:
One of the reasons why I, as a libertarian, am broadly in favour of self-governing nation states is not out of some starry-eyed belief that they are always better than some broader alternative, but because experience teaches us that it is increasingly hard to make changes on a large, supranational level where there is not a shared culture or shared language.
Economics
For readers who haven’t heard about Ken Henry’s response to Peter Costello’s line that ‘Treasury doesn’t know about water’, this summary from Peter Martin is obligatory. Peter also asks: which is Australia’s weakest economy?
Fred Argy urges the RBA to go easy, and proposes a policy package for flexible but fair labour markets as a long term solution.
Daniel Drezner looks at the increasingly disturbing tendency towards protectionism among US Presidential candidates.
In a (fairly rare?) piece of econosphere snark, Henry Farrell takes a rather bitchy shot at Greg Mankiw.
Law
Eric Knutsen muses about the role of apology in litigation.
Peter Black posts about Telstra’s High Court loss against the ACCC.
Issues analysis
The post looked too texty – that’s my excuse anyway (from rimedhitaf at Flickr) |
Caste-iron Helen catches the Maribyrnong Mail in a piece of rampant sexism.
Harry Clarke posts a serious piece on the functions of the female orgasm and asks readers to resist residual prudery and the snigger factor. Consider it done.
Tim Lambert shoots down the latest piece of ‘evidence’ doing the rounds of the AGW Denialist columnists.
Is nanotechnology about to deliver unlimited solar power? asks Brian Micklethwait.
On the broader issue of anti-scientific politics, John Quiggin welcomes the publication of an explicit declaration of the Republican war on science. ‘Of course,’ he writes,
theres nothing new about the general viewpoint, that science is just another type of ideological system. It was until recently, widely held on the left. But its now far more common among Republicans, where it is now the dominant viewpoint.
An entertaining critique follows. Meanwhile and in response, Jake Young argues that it’s not war just pedantry.
John McCain may not be part of the main Republican assault on science; but he doesn’t resile from a skirmish when there are votes in it. tigtog reports, and sets the record straight on autism and vaccinations.
If thoughts can be read (as may soon be the case), then Norman Geras argues for an absolute (constitutional?) prohibition on any sort of thought crime.
Ken Lovell doesn’t think much of proposals to offer schoolkids financial incentives to learn.
Guy Beres wonders why socialism is a dirty word.
Arts
dr. faustus notes the music release experiment Nine Inch Nails are conducting has very little in common with the experiment conducted by Radiohead.
Perry Middlemiss profiles lapsed Troppo author Sophie Masson (who I didn’t realise was a crime fiction author along with her many other accomplishments).
Mark “OzConservative” Richardson sees the hand of soulless feminism in the new soapie Cahsmere Mafia.
Tim T posts an extended but surprisingly interesting review of the autobiography of GK Chesterton.
Adele Geras promotes a couple of interesting-sounding short story collections.
Sport
Norman Geras administers a quick one question quiz:
Name the odd one out, and discount gender in doing so.
Neil Harvey, Herbert Hoover, Garfield Sobers, Harry S. Truman, Graeme Pollock, Ronald Reagan, David Gower, Bill Clinton, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama.
Mike Salter is angry about AFL’s claim to be the “indigenous” footie code, and reckons the Aborigines should join him.
Snark, strangeness and charm
The internet weeps for the lack of updates at KevinRuddRLess.
Is the ANU Australia’s nastiest university? asks Ronda Jambe.
Peter Black reckons Twitter is an idiot and spam free zone. I’m (KP) not convinced.
Dr Faustus avoids over-extending his (seemingly formidable) forensic skills in suggesting that attempting to defend murder charges by claiming that the victim stabbed himself 31 times might not succeed.
Tim T photoblogs harsh realities, cold hard truths and existential horrors.
The Stumbling Tumblr discovers a truly surprising archival Anzac Day March photo.
KP: No one will ever work out how to a) Send tweets to tens of thousands of users while also b) not causing Twitter’s ruby on rails back-end to achieve sentience in a spasm of distress-driven rapid evolution and delete itself to end its own suffering.
Ye Gods…..that sounds like a description out of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
“Hot candidate for time-wasting post of the week IMO” LOL, slim pickings yesterday.
Yes, strangely only two posts yesterday with local Australian political focus that had any significant element of originality. I wonder why? Probably just that when you do a ML feature every week day there are bound to be occasional slow days.
Thank you Ken for adding my article in your digest of the best of the blogosphere for March 6.
Savo Heleta
I think Savo Helenta’s article is too pessimistic. The facts are broadly as he describes them (although the ‘whites only’ signs at beaches and park benches etc. disappeared long before Apartheid ended – that is a minor criticism). He concentrates on the poverty and it is a terrible thing to see, and on the HIV/AIDS crisis – a sure sign that civil society is broken. But the point is civil society in South Africa was broken before Mandela walked from jail. It was broken before he went to jail – if civil society hadn’t been broken Mandela would never have gone to jail. He overlooks the improvement in inter-personal relationships that have occured and under-estimates the impact the burgeoning black middle class. I also think he (and many others) under-estimate the time and effort it’ll take to fix a broken civil society.
Sure the current government are corrupt and the power blackouts are an appalling display of government failure. But let me say unambiguously South Africa is a better place now than it was. Crime and violence have been democratised and in many areas crime is on the decline.
Anyway just some thoughts – many South Africans, I suspect, would agree with every word he wrote.
KP:
At last! The padlock has been taken off comments box in the Rudd R Less blog.
I’m going over to the Oz Ideas blog now then back to my own rough-as-guts Counter Summit.