Tuesday, June 27, 2006
ROB SMITH
Jack Daniel’s, lobster tails, whole grain bread, pots of raspberry jam, pasta in a sauce of sun-dried tomatoes, bottles of 2003 Cotes du Rhone – these environmentalist types are living like kings! I suppose all the food and booze might make up for the tedious conversation. Possibly.
Rob “Acidman” Smith, on the other hand … a few hours in a bar with Rob would have been an adventure. Farewell, Acidman.
EDITOR NAMED
Just announced: new editor-in-chief of the Bulletin is John Lehmann, late of the Australian and the New York Post.
Monday, June 26, 2006
WORLD CUP - AUSTRALIA v ITALY
Thirty minutes until game time. Tonight’s blog coverage comes to you via a television feed delivered by our friends at the Syrian Broadcasting Service.
* Morris Iemma—his surname is Italian for “insurmountable traffic problems”—is supporting Australia, despite being a member of the ALP.
* Harry Kewell’s withdrawal is confirmed.
* DID YOU KNOW: That “I told you so” is an anagram of “I’d stool you”?
* Did Melbourne’s SBS reporter just say that “all the pizzas were flowing” at Lygon Street?
* Harry Kewell is on crutches. He should hold his damaged leg and scream for a few minutes; seems to cure everybody else.
* Time for Italy’s national anthem (winner of the Eurovision Song Contest, 1892).
* And now Australia’s anthem. Many Australians in the crowd.
* Pictures have dropped out. Either that or SBS didn’t appreciate my Syria gag.
* GAME UNDERWAY.
* Still no pictures. UPDATE: pictures back!
* DID YOU KNOW: That the slowest speed ever recorded on an Italian freeway is 118 mph? Driver Mario Spillotti’s excuse: “I was running early for a doctor’s appointment.” Ha! Tell it to the judge, Mario.
* Italian header misses. Free kick against Italy for shoving, groping, and pinching.
* Score still 0-0. Six of the Italian players’ names end in O. Could be an ... O-men!
* Twelve minutes gone. A “DID YOU KNOW” from the match commentator: the Australian coach is nicknamed Lucky Guus; the Italian coach is known as Paul Newman. Not making this up.
* Not much going on. Three Australian players are smoking cigarettes.
* Goal saved by Australian keeper Shwarzer. Italian corner.
* Italian defence is fierce. So is attack; goal just saved again by Shwarzer.
* Viduka header neatly snared by Italian keeper.
* DID YOU KNOW: That two Italians were on Captain Cook’s Endeavour during its journey to Australia? (This might actually be true. I think I read it somewhere.)
* Yellow card to Italy’s Grosso for sideburn violations.
* Italian keeper Buffon prevents first serious slam at goal by Australia.
* Crucial 32 minute 17 second mark passes without incident.
* Chipperfield defends chiptastically.
* Oh my. That was close. Italy has now had about four substantial runs at goal compared to Australia’s one.
* First knee-grab of the game goes to Italy. Looked legitimate.
* One minute of additional time.
* END OF FIRST HALF
* DID YOU KNOW: That Italy only has one time zone? Just like China!
* SECOND HALF BEGINS
* El scorchio! Hot attack from rapid Italians. Followed by midfield head-smash that downs two players.
* RED CARD FOR MATERAZZI! Italy down to ten men with most of the second half to play.
* Australia in Kookaburra Mode Three.
* Ten minutes played in the second half.
* Two chances for Australia; Italy stunningly composed in defence.
* DID YOU KNOW: That I have removed all weapons from my house due to the presence here of an actual Italian?
* Yellow card to Wiltshire; second yellow to Australia.
* Tim Cahill does the knee dance. Italian advance at goal is ruinous.
* Free kick to Italy. Tipped over by Shwarzer. Corner to Italy is cleared.
* Halfway through the second half. Game still scoreless.
* Ball out of play; not called.
* Del Piero off for Italy, Totti on. Who these people are, I have no idea.
* Italian defence is liquid and artful. Australian defence is more machine-like, but just as effective.
* Australian corner. Over the top of goal.
* John Aloisi on for Australia. Immediately fouls.
* Buffon is one brave keeper. Risks all and prevails.
* Shwarzer isn’t too shabby, either.
* DID YOU KNOW: That Kaiserslautern is German for Woolloongabba?
* Anger erupts. Galluso yellowed—or yellered, for those in Texas.
* Three minutes to go. Another Italian cops the yellow.
* Australian goal-swarm reversed by Italy; cleared by Australia. One minute left.
* PENALTY to Italy with seconds remaining.
* GOOAAALLL to Italy.
* Italy wins 1-0.
* Former Australian coach Rale Rasic, commenting on SBS: “The penalty decision was an absolute disgrace.” At the same time he’s massively impressed by Italy’s defence. Co-commenter Ned Zelic makes the point that the red card for Materazzi was also a poor decision.
* Italian reader LupodiGubbio:
Rules say that if you go for the ball, miss it and instead hit the other’s leg, it is foul.
That’s why Materazzi was kicked out (well, rules say it was yellow, not red card, but speed made it all seem worst), and that’s why we had penalty.
BTW, referee did not see it as a dangerous action (actually it wasn’t), or he would have taken out yellow card, and did not consider the defensive as the last one (red card in this case).
I just think it is a matter of experience. When you are in the last minut and you see an attaccker, you have to shot his legbones out BEFORE he go into the penalty area.
My english sucks, sorry for that.
Gubbio’s beautifully expressive English doesn’t suck. We’re upset here, but we’ll get over having our legbones shot out. Congratulations to Italy, and congratulations to Australia for advancing further than any previous Australian team in the World Cup. Last words to Rasic: “We were gallant. We were best sportsmen.”
UPDATE. I blame gout.
HOURLY HUGH
Hugh Hewitt will be part of a Daily Kos-gnawing webzilla launching next month and building towards the 2008 election:
Should Dems be alarmed? “Absolutely,” says Hewitt. “Unless they don’t mind political exile.” Not everyone is so sure. “Kos can’t be duplicated,” says Salon.com blogwatcher Peter Daou.
It can’t? That’ll be a relief to Hugh, who would prefer not to become a shrieking loser. Meanwhile, things aren’t so kosy in Kossackstan.
(Via Bernie Slattery)
DAME V DON
It’s Aussie against Azzurri and gladioli versus grappa in tonight’s K-town smackdown!
Tune in from 12.30am AEST for live kicking, heading, diving, screaming, blogging action! Alternatively, if soccer isn’t your thing, please enjoy Paris Riots - The Game.
(Via Dylan Kissane)
MOST INFLUENTIAL AUSTRALIAN OF ALL TIME
It’s Rupert Murdoch. Full list of the 100 most influential Australians in this week’s Bulletin.
IRAN INFILTRATED
Take a look at these female Iranian rugby players. More precisely, look at the ball they are using.
It’s an Australian infidel ball! Promoting a brand of evil Australian rum! And displaying the forbidden image of an undrowned polar bear!
(Via sharp-eyed reader Nicholas C.)
UPDATE. Geoff seeks out root causes:
Bundy rum was first mixed with Coca Cola by US servicemen stationed in Queensland during WWII (confirming the locals’ worst suspicions about Americans and triggering riots in Brisbane) and this is now the principle way the beverage is drunk everywhere. The Anglo/American corporate conspiracy was of course reinforced by the Seagrams merger. So now we have this vast trans-Atlantic polluting, ozone-layer raping, global warming, ocean raising, bear drowning behemoth sponsoring both the Wallabies and Iranian women’s rugby.
And the emblem that is used to put a happy face on the iron grip around the throats of both Australian and Iranian sport? The polar bear. The first casualty of corporate greed. As cynical as it gets.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
CONVENIENT JETS
Just a thought, but shouldn’t a serious environmentalist choose not to take charter flights?
FractionAir, which provided charter jet service to people ranging from former Vice President Al Gore to Titans coach Jeff Fisher, is seeking to restructure to avoid bankruptcy.
The Nashville-based company provided corporate travel service to executives and others seeking to avoid commercial flights.
Still, Gore is doing fine with the bookstore community:
There were 22 groups of 25 people at noon.
Gore is more popular than the World Cup!
Shortly after, shrill screams erupted from the crowd. Al Gore was in the building.
An understandable reaction. Gore must be used to it.
The former vice president made his way to the front of the room, receiving handshakes and approving pats on the back from those who gathered in the lower floor of the store to see him.
“The size of the turnout is four or five times greater than I expected,” Gore said, greeting the crowd.
Al can’t even predict crowds at his own book signings, but people take him seriously when he predicts we have only five to ten years to avoid cataclysmic warmenizing.
MATURITY NOT ATTAINED
Biology professor Bruce Charlton identifies why so many academics, teachers, and scientists are total wads:
While the human mind responds to new information over the course of any individual’s lifetime, Charlton argues that past physical environments were more stable and allowed for a state of psychological maturity. In hunter-gatherer societies, that maturity was probably achieved during a person’s late teens or early twenties, he said.
“By contrast, many modern adults fail to attain this maturity, and such failure is common and indeed characteristic of highly educated and, on the whole, effective and socially valuable people,” he said.
“People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact.”
I can think of one or two locals who validate Charlton’s theory.
ANIMALS LIVING
The latest environmental crisis? Animals surviving in the Antarctic. Interestingly, scientists (among others) are blamed for introducing the hardy outsiders:
Scientists are calling for action to prevent foreign species from taking hold in Antarctica and wrecking the continent’s unique ecosystems.
Despite Antarctica’s inhospitable environment, non-native species introduced by tourists, scientists and explorers are gaining a foothold.
In light of this danger to ice-dwelling lifeforms, a planned journey to the Arctic should be cancelled:
On Aug. 5-12, Inuit-owned Cruise North Expeditions has scheduled “A Baffin Adventure,” an educational voyage that will focus on the Arctic’s ecological crisis. The cruise topic is “Polar Bears on Thin Ice.”
Sounds like a Vegas show.
UPDATE. In other migratory creature news, a bird native to Iraq has now turned up in Kenya:
Mr Bush took a similar trip on Thanksgiving Day in 2003 when he held a plastic turkey amid security fears.
It’s one thing to hold a plastic turkey, but only the truly brave hold such a beast “amid security fears.” Thank you, Chege Mbitiru.
UPDATE II. At Maine screenings of An Inconvenient Truth, attendees are treated to the sight of a guy dressed up in a polar bear costume:
He’ll be there as a representative of the Alaska Coalition, which is so worried about global warming’s effect on polar bears that they’ve managed to convince an actual grownup to dress up in the outfit and spend some very hot time in the very small and crowded lobby of the Railroad Square Cinema.
We need pictures.
MURDERS UP
Well, this might end a few arguments:
Labour’s failure on law and order was laid bare last night as it emerged 250 more people are being killed each year in brutal acts of violence than when Tony Blair came to power.
The devastating statistic has been compiled by academics who say it is final proof Britain has become a more dangerous place to live since 1997. It demolishes the Government’s repeated claim that violent crime is falling.
The research, by the respected Crime and Society Foundation, reveals there were a shocking 954 homicides last year - more than 18 every week.
That’s an increase since 1997 of 35%. The report will be made public next week.
UPDATE. The Observer’s Mary Riddell, earlier this month:
The liberal reflex to epidemics of murder and injury is to debunk hysteria and point to falling crime. This time, though, something is going on. Almost every criminologist believes that stranger-stabbing is increasing, despite a woeful lack of data. The British Crime Survey, which recorded almost 2.5 million violent assaults last year, does not include young people, the group most likely to go armed.
UPDATE II. And from May, the Guardian’s David Rose:
Among seasoned practitioners close to the top of the criminal justice system, I found a marked uneasiness at the official state of denial, and concern that the figures truly reveal a rising incidence of personal crime.
Among the most forthright were senior police officers. ‘Of course it’s real,’ said Terry Grange, Chief Constable of Dyfed-Powys in Wales and the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) spokesman on ‘private crime’, which includes domestic violence and sex offences. ‘As far as wounding is concerned, there’s a much greater willingness to use weapons, and a much greater willingness to use violence all round.’
Some of the conviction statistics cited by Rose are stupefying.
UPDATE III. Ex-Labour councillor and academic Dr David Green:
The trouble with the British Crime Survey is that it only covers about half the crime recorded by the police. It misses out murder, rape, drug crime, fraud, all crimes against under-16s, and all commercial crime, including the biggest of all, shoplifting.
To sum up, we can say that crime is down from a peak in the mid-1990s and has now reached a plateau of about 10 times the rate in the 1950s, but violent crime is increasing steadily.
UPDATE IV. Barrister Rehman Chishti quits Labour:
I find it hard to respect a Government which has presided over a rise in gun crime, an increase in drug offences, and almost 600,000 more incidents of violent crime.
UPDATE V. Related claims from Gateway Pundit: “Despite the headlines yesterday, violent crime in the US remains below levels in the 70’s 80’s and 90’s and below that of Europe, Canada and Australia.”
UPDATE VI. Grim figures from Scotland:
Earlier this month, it was revealed that the number of young people in Scotland convicted of carrying knives has more than doubled in a decade.
Figures released by Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson show that in 1994-95, a total of 204 people under 18 were convicted of possessing a knife or other offensive weapon - but by 2004-05, the number had soared to 427.
TOO MUCH WORK
Webdiary unveils its new zero tolerance comments policy:
Any comment that contains anywhere within it any commentary - explicit or implied - on the intelligence or honesty of another Webdiarist, will simply not be published. Following specific complaints, comments that refer to other Webdiarists by nickname or any other name than that which they use themselves will also not be published. Notwithstanding our preference against removing published material, we will also remove anything that slips through that is reasonably complained about by the target of a comment ...
Some of you write stream-of-consciousness stuff that needs a spell-check and extensive repunctuation to make it comprehensible to others: from here on, if it’s too much work, we simply don’t publish it.
Stream-of-consciousness stuff that needs a spell-check and extensive repunctuation? Sounds like Webdiary’s entire archives. Also feeling the pressure, our society-reshaping pals at Daily Kos:
Just a quick reminder as the media nip at our heels —
We didn’t get here because of them.
They can praise us, they can trash us, they can ignore us, and ultimately none of that will matter as long as we keep doing what we’ve been doing.
Whether we succeed or not will depend on our own efforts. Not those of anyone else.
That’s the spirit. Down with infidels!
UPDATE. James Waterton: “Notice the new addition to the sidebar? ‘Webdiary Currently Has Funds In Hand To Keep Going To: 26th July’. Interesting to see how that works out.”
Saturday, June 24, 2006
“THE EARTH HAS A FEVER”
Al Gore—charismatic star of An Inconvenient Truth and its upcoming sequel, An Inconvenient Truth: Tokyo Drift—weeps for little baby Earth:
The Earth has a fever and just like when your child has a fever, maybe that’s a warning of something seriously wrong.
It’s also kind of like when the Earth hammers down a load of booze then hits the road in its carbon-neutral Mustang. Or when the Earth gets baked inside a carbon-neutral Cadillac and sets off on a midnight drive without the aid of headlights (to save energy, probably). Poor Earth!
Meanwhile, global warming has quit molesting polar bears and is now turning alligators into Amway salesmen.
UPDATE. Via Mark Alexander, further childhood insights from Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance:
A developing child in a dysfunctional family searches his parent’s face for signals that he is whole and all is right with the world; when he finds no such approval, he begins to feel that something is wrong inside. And because he doubts his worth and authenticity, he begins controlling his inner experience—smothering spontaneity, masking emotion, diverting creativity into robotic routine, and distracting an awareness of all he is missing with an unconvincing replica of what he might have been.
UPDATE II. Huck Foley: “Ever watched a 10-year-old lying to a five-year-old? There’s Al.”
FEELS RIGHT, DO IT
New York Times editor Bill Keller on his paper’s decision not to publish those Danish Motoons:
Keller told USA Today that publishing the Mohammed cartoons would be “perceived as a particularly deliberate insult” by Muslims, and that, moreover, not publishing them “feels like the right thing to do.”
Seeing as Keller’s feelings are evidently an editorial test, we may assume he felt right about exposing a classified anti-terror program. The Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal also ran pieces on the program—but, like the NYT, had earlier declined to publish newsworthy Danish ’toons. Washington Post executive editor Len Downie, back in February:
This newspaper vigorously exercises its freedom of expression every day. In doing so, we have standards for accuracy, fairness and taste that our readers have come to expect from The Post. We decided that publishing these cartoons would violate our standards.
Here’s a plan: instead of merely classifying its anti-terror programs, the US government should devise a code that renders the programs as Islam-mocking cartoons. Newspapers would never publish them.
ROCKS OF PEACE
Peace gatherings are dangerous:
The Rainbow Family peace gathering turned hostile Tuesday when a group of attendees began hurling rocks and sticks at law enforcement officers, U.S. Forest Service officials said.
And sometimes deadly:
Cameraman shot dead covering peace rally