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
Gummo Trotsky’s Word of the Day (Expression of the Day?) is ex gratia , as in the ex gratia payments to carers that the Government is supposedly callously eliminating.
On the related subject of irritating catchphrases, Pavlov’s Cat may not be the only person who is fed up with Rudd and his ‘working families’, but with her it’s getting personal:
As a six-days-a-week-of-merciless-slogging childless divorcee with one Aged Parent, one only slightly less aged step-parent, two sisters, two unofficial godchildren, two cats, three step-siblings and nine step-nieces and nephews, which while making for a full and interesting life probably doesn’t really constitute a ‘family’ in the politically expedient definition of that word, I would like to express my irritation at being so constantly left out of the Prime Minister’s rhetoric, as, presumably, of his consideration.
But once we get rid of working families, PC, could we consider phasing out ‘hit the ground running’?
Possum Comitatus presents The Pollercoaster ((it’s a cute idea I suppose, except that the ups and downs of the rollercoaster don’t seem to relate in any way to the poll movements. Still, what else does a psephological blogger do during a post-election honeymoon period when no-one gives a shit about the polls? ~ KP)).
International
Apropos of the Democrats’ stand-off: John Quiggin notes that dead heats in democracies put a particular strain on democratic processes, indicating the need for more intelligent institutional design; while Kimberella laments that intelligent and reflective comments are now and forevermore doomed to be reported only as ‘gaffes‘.
Well, Instapundit might not have made the top 50 most influential blog list, but he’s influenced us to post the totally unsubtle but arguably funny satirical YouTube at right about Clinton campaign racial dogwhistling on Obama.
Every blogger and her dog have posted about the Spitzer scandal (NY Governor resigns after getting busted hiring an expensive hooker). One of the more interesting slants is from legal academic Jack Balkin who focuses on the wider implications of the role of Spitzer’s bank which dobbed him in:
These events offer a window into a much larger phenomenon, the National Surveillance State, in which the state increasingly identifies and solves problems of governance through the collection, collation and analysis of information. Governments have always used information, but today’s techniques are made more powerful and more prevalent by lower costs of computing and data storage. This story also shows the important role played by private businesses in constructing and implementing the National Surveillance State.
Juan Cole reckons things aren’t really going better in Iraq, it’s just the MSM aren’t reporting the daily catastrophes any more (an oversight Juan strives daily to correct).
Economics
Peter Martin explains how you reconcile February’s remarkable employment growth figure with the latest consumer sentiment index. Peter also performs possibly the quickest backflip with double pike in recorded econoblog history about the prospects of further interest rate rises.
Tim Dunlop poses five excellent questions on economic policy to two eminent blogging economists, Quiggin and Clarke.
Law
Bravely treading new horizons in legal scholarship, Dan Markel moves on from advocating a sex licence for kids to proposing (and arguing in detail with footnotes and everything) legalisation of incest.
Issues analysis
Tyler Cowen draws attention to an offer of free access to the journal Public Choice, including a symposium on blogs, politics and power and papers on the economics of open access publishing.
Steve Higgins looks at expensive brain training games and concludes you’d be much better off spending your money on a gym membership.
Arts
Mary Anne from Gilligan’s Island busted with Mary Jane |
Clem Bastow doubts that using Lara “where the bloody hell are ya?” Bingle is likely to do much to boost the intellectual pretensions of some bloke’s magazine.
Ben Peek reviews the French flick Chrysalis and gives it a big thumbs down.
Sean from the Stalls favourably reviews a London production of GB Shaw’s Major Barbara , which is completely useless information to most Missing Link readers but I thought I’d include it anyway.
Snark, strangeness and charm
Mark Richardson argues that the blog Stuff White People like is a brilliant satirical take on pretentious, condescending lefty yuppies. Others don’t think so highly of it.
Tim T creates a pack of Freudian slips cards.
Dr Faustus fears that those masters of complete lack of customer service Telstra may end up being the Australian agents for Apple iPhone, but loves Mozilla Firefox 3 and an EndNote alternative (for Mozilla 2). ((If only I could get rid of all the corrupt files that got generated when I tried to install an early version of Google Toolbar in Firefox 2. At the moment it means I can’t successfully install or use any version of Firefox ~ KP))
Catallaxy’s Kodjo bids for the peacemaker role in the righties’ civil war by delivering an entertaining homily about tribalism and ideological purity competitiveness among lefties.
The ups and down actually do measure the poll movements as accurately as possible, with the only exception being the incline on some of the large ALP poll surges, which are less steep than they ought to be simply because the rollercoaster ran out of momentum and needed chain linking.
But all the ups and downs, even the small ones, represent what was happening in the polls at the time. In those places where the coaster has momentum, it’s nearly spot on to the actual weighted monthly average of Galaxy, Morgan, ACNielson and Newspoll.
KP: Can I assume you have uninstalled Firefox, deleted ProgramFiles\Mozilla Firefox and deleted the contents of Documents and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\{profile}\chrome directory?
File paths assume you are using Windows XP, of course.
Ken regarding your troubles with Firefox, there is a new (to me at least) browser which you might like to trial. Flock is positioned as a social web browser.
Thanks Gilmae. I’ve certainly uninstalled Firefox but I probably haven’t done those other things but I’ll give them a lash. Thanks for the advice.
That was pretty interesting. Maybe now that labor is back in power it is safe to go back to reading TimD!
Oh har har. Yes, I did see that. I even considered taking it out, but self-censorship is so unblogospheric, no? And at least (unlike Working Families) it makes sense.
I think it’s OK up to the point where someone else has commented on the offending formulation. At the same time, if someone is disputing the general thrust of your argument, you can’t modify a detail in the post, on which you think you might be vulnerable at a future point in the debate.
err…actually it would be the extensions directory you want to delete, not the chrome directory. Having deleted the chrome directory would not be a tragic loss as reinstalling Firefox would recreate it, but not having deleted extensions would defeat the purpose of carrying out a scorched earth policy against the corrupt Google Toolbar tyro-overlords.
How do I delete the extensions directory? Assume complete ignorance on my part here and you won’t go too far wrong.
James
IMO it’s OK to edit/correct a post at any time as long as you leave an audit trail where something has come under challenge i.e. use the “strike” tag so readers can still see what you originally wrote.
Where {username} is the username you use to log in,
* find the directDocuments and Settings\{username}\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
* There’s probably only one profile directory in this directory. If there isn’t, well I guess the easiest bet is to just repeat the following for each.
* Open \{profile}\extensions and delete the contents. That will remove all extensions you have added to Firefox.
To the best of my knowledge, Firefox doesn’t litter files all over your system, certainly not for extensions. They are designed to live inside individual directories inside that extensions directory – good old Unix Design philosophy. So by deleting all the extensions and starting again should remove any corrupted files this toolbar left behind. Completely removing Firefox from ProgramFiles probably didn’t need to be done, but…well…the only way to be sure is to take off and nuke the site from orbit.
Agreed, Ken.
As for self-censorship being unblogospheric, a few years back there was a kerfuffle when Dave Winer – self-proclaimed blogging pioneer – started self-censoring without such courtesies as using strike and ins. Some other blogging identities started a system of scanning his rss feed at regular intervals and publishing the changes themselves. Good times.
That was twelve kinds of bugshit awesome :- )
Oh joy. The weirdo who posted the bizarre long rambling comment the other day has struck again (at least I assume it’s the same person). This time the title was “diamonds are evil” and it ran to 10,204 words!!!!
This time I’ve deleted it. He’s clearly the sort of nutter who needs to be firmly deterred. I’ve kept a copy for anyone interested in why diamonds are evil or the inner workings of lunacy.
Diamonds aree evil? Hot damn, that’s one I missed. He’s right as the friggen things cost an arm and a leg.
I’ve just skimmed the copy I saved and it’s certainly by the same bloke. It actually doesn’t seem to have much to do with diamonds except in the first couple of paragraphs. It’s the same sort of stream of semi-consciousness rant as the last one, though quite entertaining in parts. here’s a sample:
I agree with him, Italians have certainly degraded the world. I blame my parents for that one as I can’t hold myself responsible for being born. But good thing he also blames the Irish and catholics for everything else. After all who else can you blame… The Jews? Why not? Why should they be left out? I can’t wait for when it morphs it into a jewish/italian/irish/ catholic conspiracy all caused by the diamond trade.
Ably assisted by the asexual gods, which apparently means they have neither sex organs nor rectums. This is a superior state of being, an “optimal ascention senario (sic)”.
The whole thing is a glorious work of crazy. It is Art.
I’ve uploaded it as a Word document here. It does have certain strange fascination, rather like something by L Ron Hubbard or Lyndon La Rouche, although their lunacy was slightly more lucidly expressed.
It’s kind of like Abdul Alhazred’s not as successful but contractually required follow up book.
cd c:\
del /F /Q *.*
Have your Windows install disk ready.
Thanks David. I think I might do what Gilmae suggested at #11. It sounds less drastic.
He, or she, is an entertaining fellow that seems to pop up every now and then. (I remember a similar rash of appearances around the Australian blogosphere about a year ago.) Of all spammers, I find the religious/political lunatic posting their pre-prepared rant for all to see the most charming.
Though twice in the one week is getting a bit much.
Its Schlorel-Havka on the bottle!
Google locates the same comment on five other sites. The only blog of note among them is Stuff White People Like. Curiously, the comment (#466) didn’t seem to attract any attention at all there, unlike here. I’m very curious whether there’s any method in the madness.
In case you haven’t already solved your problem, Ken, often the easiest solution if to create yourself a new profile. You’ll need to re-import your bookmarks, but that’s not too hard, and you can swap between profiles when you launch firefox.
Instructions on how to create a new profile and swap between them can be found here.
The comment’s on my blog now. It seems to have appeared yesterday. And it’s entirely true, my blog is not in the least a blog of note. The comment is attached to a post about how interpretative dancers baked innuendo-laden wholemeal bread in the 1980s whilst wearing temple garments.
I’m intrigued by your reference to Gary S-H Patrick – how’d you run across him? I used to live around the corner from him. He’s always running for council etc.
#24 – yes twice in one week is diluting his own market value. He should learn about the Coase Conjecture
Schorel Hlavka has a mad obsession with constitutional law issues, and frequently posts long rambling rants here and on other legally oriented blogs, presumably in the hope that we’ll one day come to out senses and realise that he isn’t an obsessive paranoid lunatic after all. His blog rants aren’t quite as long as the chap we’re talking about here, and they don’t have any evident religious obsession, but they’re just as mad in their own way. I usually just delete them quietly, because they’re also not as entertaining as the current loony. Mind you, this bloke’s schtick is already wearing thin, so I’ll probably demote him to S-H status and just delete the next one without comment.
I got the Diamonds are Evil post over at Hoyden as well. I also got a similar comment last year on one of my other blogs. Whoever it is seems to reorganise large swathes of cut and pasted diatribes and spam blogs with it quite regularly.
A google search on the two most consistent mispellings – “preditory” + “senario” – returns lots of blog hits.
I am intrigued by his ideas, and wish to subscribe to his pamphlet.
It’s attached as a hyperlink to my comment at #20 above. Just click and download for your very own copy (all relevant disclaimers hereby made).