A digest of the best of the blogosphere published each weekday and compiled by Ken Parish, gilmae, Gummo Trotsky, Amanda Rose, Tim Sterne, Jen McCulloch and Stephen Hill
Politics
Australian
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2020 Roundup
Is it too late for Joshua Gans to get a guernsey in the Missing Link Wrapup of 2020 Wrapups ? He had a jolly good time and caught up with friends. Henry Ergas (via Jason Soon) shared my own (KP) reaction to the Summit recommendations:
Often, the agencies to be created seem like full employment programs for participants in the summits various streams. …
Equally, the Creative Australia stream did not hold back, with calls for federal outlays on the arts to rise to some $2.5 billion per year, on top of a new national endowment for the arts, so that spending would exceed the government arts budgets of all other Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation countries, including the US and the major European countries. Doubtless, this would create an enormous class of artists dependent on the public purse; whether it is a recipe for a creative society seems far more doubtful.
Tim Blair Timbo notes Rudd’s thespian aspirations and that, in line with a notorious prediction from John Howard, interest rates are higher under Labor.
Jeremy is aghast at Andrew Bolt’s latest smear of “The Left”.
Andrew Landeryou delights in the continuing troubles of Andrew Jaspan at The Age.
Darryl Mason discusses the Olympic Torch relay.
Andrew Bartlett records his impressions of the Summit, while John Quiggin is amused by the spectacle of Alexander Downer and David Flint slating Summit participants as “elites”.((And that’s it for the Summit as far as I’m concerned. ~GT))((Well, the Summit at least achieved one thing – a rare blogosphere ideological divide crossing consensus that it was an almost complete waste of time ~ KP))
International
Tim Lambert updates the saga of the New Zealand Listener and the Climate Change Zealots (Denialist Wing).
Economics
Dave Bath suggests it’s time for governments to start treating financiers like three-year-olds.
Andrew Leigh is horrified by the Rudd government’s plans to slash the budget of the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Law
At Science Blogs, Orac examines the subpeona-issuing activities of a lawyer seeking to prove that vaccines cause autism.
Jack Balkin continues his indictment of Bush’s America as the National Surveillance State.
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Issues analysis
Harry Clarke would like to see government policies enacted to encourage private sector adoption of climate-proofing technologies.
Alan Johnson courageously argues that the Euston Manifesto signers are/were the true voice of the left. ((presumably as opposed to all the other “post-left” traitors who failed to support Bush and Blair ~ KP))
Stuck for the material you need to construct a straw feminist? You might find what you’re looking for at the latest Carnival of Radical Feminism.
Arts
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Larrakin offers a delightful eulogy by F.W. Boreham focused upon the works of Australian author/poet C.J. Dennis, whose most famous work The Sentimental Bloke would also go on to become one of this country’s earliest feature films.
Sven Birkerts offers a fascinating essay attempting to explain the transformation in the work of Knut Hamsun that would see the writer move from the free-spirited anarchism of the starving artist in Hunger to the bucolic celebration of toil in The Growth of the Soil. In the process Birkets attempts to countenance how a writer whose work was capable of such psychological acuity could be so strangely drawn into the revulsive banality of Nazi ideology (Hamsun would offer his Nobel Prize for Literature as a gift to Joseph Goebells and would write an obituary describing Hitler as a “warrior for mankind”).
Darlene reviews Without a Net: the female experience of growing up working class.
Sport
The Currency Lad notes the reports of Jack Gibson’s Alzheimer’s Disease and approves of his appointment as Coach of the Century. ((And dislikes Phil Gould. I feel conflicted now.~gilmae))
Mike Salter argues that it was a fine effort for the Olyroos to even make the Olympics; a good result there will just be an added bonus.
Snark, strangeness and charm
Microsoft Assistant image via Cast Iron Helen ((may be very useful in fending off spurious CL allegations that any criticism of the actions of any right-leaning figure are in bad faith unless accompanied by a condemnatory list of every vaguely similar act by a lefty, however long ago ~ KP))
I (gilmae) sympathise with oz in the correct sense of the word.
Lee Malatesta talks about love and neoplatonic monotheism, wrong directions taken by the Christian Church and a corrective influence from Dante. ((I never quite know where to put Lee amongst our categories, but the posts epitomise good writing so I’ll add them even if we don’t have a “Reflective Spirituality” section.~gilmae))
Tim Dunlop makes a futile plea for an end to silly name-calling in political debate.
Global warming oppresses women!
Helen has found a new, must-have, blog plug-in.
cam took the road to Tombstone.
From that oppressing women story:
Well, thanks to that Johnson article, I’ve got the horizontal axis of next week’s political compass sorted. Any suggestions/requests for the vertical?
The Malcolm Fraser axis. Goes from “Evil Enabler” to “Bit of a Dick”. Also works with Jimmy Carter, apparently.
And according to a bit of famous graffitti in Booth St Annandale, he was also the Hilton Bomber. They’ve scrubbed it now but it was there a good 25 years.
Speaking of vaccination, I came across the most bizarre anti-vaccination attitude yesterday – that vaccination isn’t effective.
I wonder if “woman from the Consultatiebureau” has a blog.
Seems some Sydney dude is behind the whole vaccines don’t work spiel.
I love the quotes from various doctors/scientists. Apart from the irony of promoting the opinion of mainstream scientists and doctors as being worthy of respect while simultaneously attempting to knock-down mainstream science and medicine, there is an apparent assumption that readers will equate “not 100% safe” with “doesn’t work”, and out of the list, about the only ones that could actually be said to “condemn” vaccination date from 1937 or earlier (I couldn’t date the Ari Zuckerman quote – but his name seems to be mentioned only on similar anti-vaccination sites.)
“…we were selfishly choosing to reap the benefits of herd…whilst not…contribut[ing] to the herd.”
“I wonder if woman from the Consultatiebureau has a blog.”
Mmmmmm…
Some really up-to-date sources cited at that site you linked, NPOV:
The end to silly name-calling in political debate??? That’s the end of Timmy Blair then, I dare say
[…] most part, I see something very different. I’ll use for an example today’s edition of Missing Link, the daily all-encompassing Australian political blog carnival, run by Big Blog Club Troppo. We […]