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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
![]() Luvvies, but not Albert Finney playing Hamlet (via Laura) |
The inaugural downunder feminist blog carnival is posted at tigtog and lauredhel’s place.
At the risk of irking KP for linking Henson posts again, Ralph Buttigeg says ‘duh’ to the decision that They aren’t porn or at least not porny enough to lay char ges. Henson not porn. Meanwhile, Marcellous is cynical about the police response to the Henson moral panic, seeing it as AFP Comissioner Mick Keelty “staging his comeback on the child protection bandwagon”, and Alison Croggon lets loose a final flurry of Henson before fleeing overseas. Finally, for those for whom too much Henson is just barely enough, Andrew Frost announces that there’s a Henson symposium(!!!) next Thursday for you lucky Sydneysiders featuring luminaries like Margaret Pomeranz, David Marr, Julian Burnside, Hetty Johnson and Clive Hamilton.
Brian Bahnisch examines Senator Penny Wong’s speech on climate change and whether petrol should be part of an emissions permit scheme, while son Mark detects the inky hand of PJK in recent attacks on Kevin Rudd.
The Pollbludger sees no sign of a FuelWatch fiasco anti-Labor swing in the latest Morgan poll.
International
Harry Clarke cites numbers to support a contention that Iraq has turned a corner.
Krutic A sees Clinton’s angling to be V-P candidate as her “last swing at Obama” (when she should just quietly fade away).
Turcopolier suspects that the US-Iraq agreement currently being negotiated will establish a neo-colonial protectorate over the country:
As in the “good old days,” there are ethnic and religious minorities conveniently to hand who will support the agreements for their own reasons. The Kurds want American protection to continue and the majority of Sunni Arabs have come to understand that at least for a time, the Americans are preferable to Shia Arab rule limited only by the extent of their real coercive power.
Bruce Bawer writes about the life and achievements of Czech politician/playwright Vaclav Havel (highly recommended).
Law
(via Overlawyered) The sort of truth-telling defence lots of lawyers would really like to file in response to bullshit personal injury claims.
Economics
Harry Clarke and Joshua Gans both comment on Paul Krugman’s idea that intellectual property products – music, books, &c – will inevitably become cheaper as business models become more like the Grateful Dead model.
Joshua Gans calls bullshit on an Opposition claim that increasing petrol prices doesn’t put downward pressure on consumption.
Nicholas Gruen struggles to place kid’s games within Hayekian theory.
John Quiggin looks at the implications for Australia from (what he sees as) the current US recession, and doubts the sustainability of “the economic model pursued by the whole English-speaking world for the last couple of decades with large trade and current account deficits and low to zero rates of household savings in traditional terms, offset by capital gains on housing and equity investments.”
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Issues analysis
Mark Richardson wants to make sure that Australian Aboriginal violence against white settlers isn’t forgotten.
Bugger the glass ceiling, Helen “Cast Iron” Smart is more worried about the glass floor.
Jeremy Sear posts about the French marriage annulled because the wife lied to the Muslim husband about her virgin status.
Chris Berg believes the 2am lockout experiment in Melbourne is rigged. Is also trying to hunt down a full list of the exempt establishment.
Sukrit Sabhlok wants more credit for libertarian thinking’s achievements. Is also calling bullshit on the meme that Obama’s candidacy is a triumph over racism. ((In fact, by even knowing that Obama is black, the media and you and I are all filthy racists.~gilmae))
Ken Parish decries hate speech laws. In this case, the one’s being used to harass Mark Steyn. Legal Eagle and skepticlawyer concur.
Will Wilkinson interviews moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt on Bloggingheads TV, and links to his unpublished article on ‘why Democrats should pay more attention to Haidt and less to guys like Lakoff”.
Norman Geras exposes the hypocrisy of Times journo Simon Jenkins on international humanitarian interventions.
Rick Hills plays the George Orwell card in his argument for anti-intellectualism (as he defines it) but Richard Ford is not intimidated.
openDemocracy republishes an article by Islamic history expert Patricia Crone on what is known about Mohammed.
Arts
![]() The Bollardian (from Tim Sterne not taking a sickie because it’s the weekend) |
Alison Croggon gives a resounding Molly Bloom Yes to the OpticNerve Performance Group’s performance of Sally Porter’s Yes.
Decomposing Trees considers the best Australian independent albums in light of the Australian Independent Record’s (AIR) providing a short-list that attempts to smoke out some forgotten musical gems in offering a definitive top ten independent album list. Any interested readers who want to vote for their favorite albums (and this can include albums not included in the short-list) can vote at the AIR website.
Misonou thinks David Williamson has jumped the shark, his new work playing out “like a text written by a computer program.”
The play could instead be called seven characters looking for authorly love. Not to mention mutual respect. As they are, abandoned on stage in a puddle of psychological dead-ends, semi-devised motivations, right turns visible miles ahead, and plotlines with validity set to expire in 2009, they come across as theatrical cripples, interesting more as a self-unaware society reflected in the broken mirror of the unconscious, regurgitating computer program mentioned above, than any attempt at lite forgivemelord comedy.
Michael Magnusson considers the 3 Big Men Productions rendering of Harold Brighouse’s Hobson’s Choice.
Marcellous reviews a SSO concert (Berlioz and Dutoit).
Sport
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Matt at Green and Gold Rugby reviews Australia A v Japan and Australia Under 20s v Canada.
Strangely, none of the soccer blogs on my feed reader have had the heart to review Australia’s return World Cup qualifier loss to Iraq.
Snark, strangeness and charm
Melaleuca continues the Grail Quest Refuting J F Beck campaign.
Meanwhile, the saga of Caroline “Caz” Hamilton and Jamie “The Hack” Duncan continues and has now drawn MSM attention in The Age/SMH, which reveals that Hack has withdrawn his application for an intervention order against a (co-worker?) he erroneously believed to be responsible for the Lulz Starts Here site which first revealed their identities to a gleeful blogosphere. The latter also has some entertaining new pages, including one which begins cataloguing examples of Caz and Hack’s record of vilifying others. Perhaps some of their victims might want to assist, because Caz and Hack have prevailed on the National Library Pandora archive to remove the archives of Spin Starts Here from public access. Fortunately, almost certainly anyone they sued (e.g. the bloke against whom they obtained the now withdrawn interim intevrention order) would be able to obtain discovery of the Pandora archive pages for the purpose of litigation, as would anyone they sued for defamation for telling the truth about their record of vilifying others.
The Worst of Perth on Andre Rieux:
Clayderman isnt even cold in his grave, in fact the c*nt isnt even dead, and yet Andre Reiu is still insists on camping it up on his territory ie elevator music.
(via Andrew Frost) The World’s Worst Album Covers (and they really are – that’s one at right).
The Stumbling Tumblr posts a pretty photo essay on the church at Cobbity, just spitting distance across the paddocks from the erstwhile Camden Islamic school site.
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Helen’s “Glass Floor” post is spectacular, and wretched.
Thanks for top-billing the femmocarnival.
“Finally, for those for whom too much Henson is just barely enough, Andrew Frost announces that theres a Henson symposium(!!!) next Thursday for you lucky Sydneysiders featuring luminaries like Margaret Pomeranz, David Marr, Julian Burnside, Hetty Johnson and Clive Hamilton.”
They should do it in the nude and get Bill Henson to photograph it.
Honnor said:
None of that bunch would seem to have the neccessary physical bloom or adolescent indecision although Clive and Hetty certainly have the adolescent predeliction for the simplistic high moral ground and energetically enforcing it on others.
“although Clive and Hetty certainly have the adolescent predeliction for the simplistic high moral ground and energetically enforcing it on others.”
I see the theme emerging……
Is that a theme or are you just pleased to see me?
I’m a bit disappointed I didn’t get any discussion going with my post on gendered games. I thought the subject was interesting. Perhaps I should have arranged to get monstered for being sexist.
Munns definition of “parallel universe” might need some tweaking; with over 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media you need more than half a dozen posts to prove a point, any point
You can find anything to prove anything on the parallel universe of the internet.
I’ve barely noticed Spin Starts Here until now. I knew they were some sort of pop culture blog and I do recall they once said something snarky about Catallaxy but I thought ‘who cares what they think?’ and ignored it. Who knew they were that big an item?
Bawer’s piece about Vaclav Havel is indeed a very good outline of Havel’s amazing courage and achievements, but it is also rather cartoonish in its desparate efforts to equate the story of Havel’s resistence to totalitarian communism in his own country with lots of cheap shots at those in the West who are allegedly appeasing Islamofacist/jihadists – lots of bogeyman Muslim bagging thrown around without any effort to define what on earth he’s talking about (unless he thinks labelling something Muslim is sufficient to draw an analogy with Communism, which is (a) ludicrous, and (b) not something which would be likely to be consistent with what Havel’s views.
Is it so hard?
The essay may be written about totalitarian Eastern Europe but frankly I could rewrite it about totalitarian islamist regimes with ease, it is not so specific in its message.
Speaking of FuelWatch, has anybody else seen this?
https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/FuelWatch?id=357&dc=430,292818,1
Well yeah…I think they could have squeezed in a mention of better bicycle paths, carpooling and advice on how to drive more efficiently (*), but I’d still love to see it go to air.
(*) I dunno how accurate the fuel usage meter on cars generally are, but I reckon on an average trip I can reduce fuel usage by at least 20% by paying better attention to my speed, the flow of traffic, and even upslopes and downslopes. Unfortunately the single biggest saving seems to come from accelerating hard near the bottom of a hill to minimise the need for acceleration up the next slope – which usually involves exceeding the speed limit considerably!
I have to say – the rate at which GetUp pulls in these donations is mighty impressive – I think it’s gone up by about $20,000 since I first looked at it earlier today.