Tuesday, December 14, 2004
NEWS BRIEFLETS
� I once installed garden sprinklers at John Elliott’s house. By bitter coincidence, the company that bankrupted him is called Water Wheel.
� Howard Dean thinks the Democrats are right on track: “We have a message to sell. I frankly think it’s a better message than the Republicans’; we’ve just got to figure out how to get it out there.” I suggest SHOUTING REALLY LOUDLY. Oh; you tried that already.
� Sam Ward asks: “If you genetically engineered away all the bad things about cats, wouldn’t you just end up with a dog anyway?”
� Arthur Chrenkoff has your latest good news from Afghanistan.
� What kind of sick monster would steal John Quiggin’s posts?
� Pencil sharpeners are now banned in a UK grade school following a bloody calligraphy incident.
� The BBC’s gentle description of Theo van Gogh’s passing is noted by Professor Bunyip.
� Sure, she’s demented and all, but former human shield Donna Mulhearn is actually doing some good in Iraq: “I handed to the children a bag of bright, coloured ribbons and beautiful cards collected by a 95-year-old woman from Sydney as well as some drawings sent from primary-school children in America. The children’s eyes sparkled at the sight of the gifts from people from across the world ... On the footpath outside I told a gathering of staff and neighbours that Australian people care about Iraqi children and want to help.” We cared so much we joined in the effort to depose Saddam, an improvement Mulhearn doesn’t recognise.
BRING ON THE DOZERS
NSW Housing Minister Carl Scully happens upon a universally-applicable guide to social engineering: if you aren’t prepared to live a certain way, you shouldn’t force others to do so:
Housing Minister Carl Scully today wrote off as bizarre the so-called Radburn developments of the 1970s, and announced a $500 million plan to renew high need public housing estates in the west.
“I don’t think anyone should live in a home that I myself wouldn’t live in,” Mr Scully told reporters at the estate today.
Mr Scully said it would show the way forward for bulldozing most of the large-scale public housing estates in western and south-western Sydney.
He said the experiment on which many old housing estates were based was disastrous. The Radburn idea was based on the separation of cars and pedestrians, with houses turned away from the street to focus on open space and walkways.
Consider how many ‘progressive’ social experiments have been instituted over the past century by people who would not for one second consider living under such conditions.
Monday, December 13, 2004
WHOLE CHAINS MUNCHED
Jim Treacher reviews the Washington Post’s guide to good blogging. Depends on what you mean by “good”, I guess, but if it’s traffic you seek, the calculation is something like this:
short + interesting x frequency = hits
Simple, really. The calculation is a little different for academics chasing grants, however, as Andrew Bolt points out:
In 2000, [Professor Elspeth Probyn] received an $11,000 grant from the ARC to study ‘The Making of Mod Oz: the roles of the food media in the construction of contemporary identity’.
In 2001, she won another $137,500 to ruminate over ‘Practices and performances of alimentary identities: a comparative analysis of the food media and their audiences’. And that same year she shared a $118,000 ARC grant to study ‘Girl Cultures: the effect of media on young women’s self-representations’.
Elspeth’s work is neither brief nor interesting, but it is churned out with frightening frequency. Bolt supplies an example:
“The mouth machine registers experiences and then articulates them—utters them. In eating we may munch into whole chains of previously established connotations, just as we may disrupt them.
“For instance, an email arrives, leaving traces of its rhizomatic passage zapping from one part of the world to another, and then to me.
‘Unsolicited, it sets out a statement from a Dr Johannes Van Vugt, in San Francisco, who on October 11, 1999, National Coming Out Day in the US, began an ongoing ‘Fast for Equal Rights for persons who are gay, lesbian and other sexual orientation minorities’.”
gibberish + pretension x academic authority = $266,500 of your taxes.
Sunday, December 12, 2004
DEFEAT TIM BLAIR
I wish to formally disassociate myself from the views of a certain Lewisville, Texas, councilman who opposes a vote to allow the sale of alcohol:
Councilman Tim Blair said he was not happy to be making the call and that he is concerned for the city and its citizens. He said he believes that city has done fine without alcohol and that it should continue as it has for the last 75 years.
Rev. Ben Smith is another alcohol opponent:
Smith expressed his concern over what he fears the sale of beer and wine would do to the Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Old Town. He said he thinks alcohol sales would tempt bums and drunken migrant workers to linger in the area.
“What do liquor stores and bums have in common? They both will destroy your neighborhoods,” Smith said.
The Dallas Morning News, possibly confusing the local Baptist with a representative of Hamas, slightly misinterpreted Smith’s remark:
Mr. Smith said Keep Lewisville Safe will launch a campaign to persuade residents to kill the initiatives at the polls. “What do liquor stores and bombs have in common?” he asked. “Both will destroy the area where you live.”
Bombs notwithstanding, residents will vote on the matter February 5. Tim Blair must be defeated.
PETER DOYLE
Seattle’s Scott Wilcox, in Sydney with wife Paula, phoned yesterday from Doyle�s Restaurant in Watsons Bay. �This place is beautiful,� he said. Turns out Scott visited on an historic, and very sad, day:
The doyen of the Sydney seafood scene, Peter Doyle, died yesterday, aged 72.
Tributes flowed in last night for the Watsons Bay businessman, who turned a humble fish and chip shop into Doyle’s restaurant empire, an institution and international tourist attraction.
Last week we caught up with Scott and Paula for a steak feast and hours of talk. He’s been coming to Australia since he was an aimless youngster in the early ‘70s, and has a powerful bond with this country; for several years Scott worked in the Victorian country town of Shepparton, where he’s now headed. Great to meet the both of them.
UPDATE. In other fish news, this Herald Sun account of a fatal shark attack reports: “The man’s wife and 10-year-old daughter have requested that his name not be released.” Yet in The Australian, it’s nothing but names. Odd.
GARRETT REJECTS PACKAGE
Why did Peter Garrett join the ALP instead of the Greens? Because, as Paul Sheehan writes, the Greens aren’t really Green:
The environment is merely a flag of convenience for a large faction of the party, a mother-earth issue onto which they have parasited their real agenda. That’s why [Senator Bob] Brown and several hectorers on the Green Senate tickets spent so much time talking about everything but the environment during the election campaign. They couldn’t help themselves. They fought the election on the Iraq war. Why? Because while many Greens are dedicated environmentalists, the party is basically a branding exercise, a new package around an old product that most political consumers will never buy.
Unnecessary packaging. Isn’t that something the Greens usually complain about?
CARING FOR CRIMINALS
British attorney-general Lord Goldsmith defends his nation’s besieged thieving underclass:
He said that criminals must also have the right to protection from violence ...
“We must protect victims and law abiding citizens,” he said.
“But we have to recognise that others have some rights as well. They don’t lose all rights because they’re engaged in criminal conduct.”
Maybe (I’m being hopeful) he’s referring to their right to be shot. Meanwhile, Tim Lambert is disgusted:
The London Daily Telegraph has been running a cynical and dishonest campaign in the UK to give people the right to defend themselves against burglars. It’s dishonest because people in the UK already have the right to defend themselves against burglars or anyone else who threatens them. The Daily Telegraph’s campaign is nothing more than a beat up to create an issue to attack the government with. The truly disgraceful thing about their scare campaign is that it could convince people that self-defence is unlawful and frighten them out of defending themselves against an attacker, resulting in injury or even death of a crime victim. I am disgusted.
Supporting links at Tim’s post, presumably written from his home in Tunbridge Wells.
PAPER KNOWS ITS AUDIENCE
The New York Times is concerned about the reckless availability of Hardee’s Thickburger:
If restaurants want to serve food like this, they should print the calories and fat content on the overhead menus.
That�s fine, so far as it goes. But if the NYT�s audience actually requires a fat warning over something called a “thickburger”—there�s a clue in the name—then the paper should campaign for other warnings to be posted throughout the city:
Danger! This taxi cab weighs many thousands of pounds, and may cause injury if it rolls over you.
The administration of the Empire State Building wishes to advise that the observation deck is for observing. Not for the construction of towering 150-man human pyramids.
Do not attempt to mate with the grizzly bears. Repeat: Do NOT attempt to mate with the grizzly bears.
Attention, citizen! Are you walking around Times Square in a Bush/Cheney T-shirt? Do you WANT to be killed?
WELCOME ALL
This is the new site, same as the old site. Well, mostly; this one features an even greater amount of unapproved industrial toxins. You�re breathing the deadly fumes right now!
On the up-side, you must be registered here to comment. This is intended to cut down on insidious anony-trolling. All you need do is provide a genuine e-mail address, a birth certificate, and a vial of spinal fluid. Click on comments for details.
Those fumes kicking in yet? Yes? The trick is to bail out sometime after the desk lamp takes on human form but before blood begins pulsing out of your mouth and ears.
Enjoy!
And brevity fans: this site may also be reached via the less-cumbersome http://timblair.net
UPDATE. Regular posting will resume once people have had a chance to register and become accustomed to this violent change.