Tuesday, February 26, 2008
BEST TO BILL
Bill Quick ain’t well and is taking a break to rebuild. If you’re using Lipitor or similar cholesterol-controlling medication, you should hit that link.
GOB OF THE BAY ASTRAY
The mineral-detection abilities of Traceeee’s mouth are called into question.
MISSED BY THAT MUCH
A forecast of doom from Ahmad Moussavi, Tehran’s ambassador to Damascus:
The death of Imad Mugniyeh will lead to an earthquake in the Zionist regime.
Sure enough, the next day a quake rocked ... the Knesset? Sderot? New York City, home of the mysterious New York money people? Not exactly:
An earthquake measuring 5.3 on the Richter scale rocked Lebanon on Friday, injuring 10 people and sending panicked residents out into the streets in the south of the country.
(Via Dan Lewis)
THEY’RE TEARING AMERICA APART
“Prominent and everyday Democrats [are] splitting with spouses, siblings, parents and children,” warned the NYT a few weeks ago. Democrat divisiveness continues:
A US man stabbed his relative after an argument over the presidential credentials of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Brothers-in-law Jose Ortiz and Sean Shurelds were arguing about the fiery contest for the Democratic nomination for president at their Pennsylvania home when the dispute escalated into violence, US broadcaster CBS said.
Interestingly, Ortiz is described as “a registered Republican and Clinton supporter”; not one of the broader demographic groups in the US. The report continues:
The contest between Senator Obama and Senator Clinton has been on a knife edge ...
So it seems.
Monday, February 25, 2008
CAN’T GO WRONG IN THE ‘GONG
Interested in processing a development application around Wollongong way? (Readers: “Who isn’t?”) Then you’ll be needing this handy guide.
PUNDITS AGREE
An expert predicts:
Barack Obama will be assassinated within months if he wins the US presidential election, world champion boxer Bernard Hopkins fears.
Mr Hopkins, known as The Executioner, earns his living getting hit in the head. He joins Doris Lessing (“The Bookinator”), Earl MacRae (“The Unknown Canadian”), Phillip Adams (“The New York Review of Books Subscriber”), Joseph Palermo (“The Assistant Professor”), Fifty Cent (“The Crack Dealer”) and Francisco Martín Moreno (“El Chupa Grande Lucha Loco Águila Sonambulo”) in the Obama Death Club.
UPDATE. The NYT’s Jeff Zeleny:
There is a hushed worry on the minds of many supporters of Senator Barack Obama, echoing in conversations from state to state, rally to rally: Will he be safe?
(Via Imre Salusinszky, who emails: “I love the way this assumes only charismatic Democrats are under threat of assassination. Anyone remember Reagan?”) And Ford.
IF ONLY WE’D LISTENED
Remember the “secret Pentagon report” on global warming from a few years back? The secret report that wasn’t secret? Here’s one of the report’s predictions, as understood by Britain’s Observer newspaper:
As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.
That was written four years ago - before the Great Upheaval of ’05. Caused by the rising.
UPDATE. Those rising seas sure are upheaveling.
SITE LIVES
Environmental Republican has made it to five years. Soon he can expect ... the visit.
(Surviving five years really is something of a blogging achievement; the link-list at left is about to be pruned of Those Who Didn’t Make It. Rest in pixels, offliners.)
WARMENING - THE UFO CONNECTION
“Inhabited islands swallowed whole by the sea and monsters disappearing at an unprecedented rate,” writes Lee M., “all because Shell Oil has ET under lock and key.
“The science is settled. Surely this startling revelation will make believers out of even the dumbest holocaust/warming deniers.”
KEVIN’S NEVER-NEVER LAND
Kevin Rudd’s sorry speech:
For the pain, suffering and hurt of these stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.
To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry ...
This parliament resolves that the injustices of the past must never, never happen again.
“Never, never” turns out not to be a very long time:
Abusive Queensland mums and dads will have one year to become better parents or risk having their children taken away permanently.
STANDARDS MAINTAINED
The SMH’s Paul Sheehan on a 43rd Street disgrace:
And this by the same newspaper that has published more fabrications than any other mainstream newspaper in America - courtesy of one Jayson Blair - yet has still not addressed the underlying flaw in the paper’s culture - a sly partisanship that permeates the appearance of scrupulous journalism ...
On the day the Times published its attack on his character, McCain’s office issued a statement which began: “It is a shame that The New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit-and-run smear campaign.”
The statement is wrong. The New York Times did not lower its standards. These are its standards.
Click for a ten screen shakedown of the NYT’s smear.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
TRACEEEE CAN RELATE
The Age’s Traceeee Hutchison ponders a wayward woman’s plight:
I’m sure I’m not the only Australian who struggled to recognise my country many times during the Howard government’s reign. And one of the many soul-searching moments came after the revelation of the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau.
Who had a few problems of her own when it came to recognising countries. More of which in a moment.
Rau, the German-born Australian resident who was struggling with an undiagnosed mental illness, was held at Brisbane’s women’s prison and later in Adelaide’s Baxter immigration detention centre for 10 months during 2004-05 after authorities assumed she was an illegal immigrant.
Not exactly; Traceeee omits a few details. Leon Ward helps her out:
Do I have this right? A person signs herself out of a psychiatric hospital, gets rid of anything that could identify her, changes her name, moves to a place where no one knows her and refuses to speak English, in which she is fluent.
The authorities investigate and find this woman does not exist, so she is locked up pending further information. While incarcerated, she still refuses to speak English or to give any honest details about herself.
By chance, her identity is discovered and she is released. She is provided with accommodation, support and transport to various venues including French lessons. And now we owe her $2.4 million. I’ve heard much sadder stories.
Among them: Queensland’s Labor government is now considering throwing some cash Cornelia’s way. Brilliantly, Traceeee uses this story of a delusional German woman who made things up and would have perished had she not been taken into care to argue for stolen generation compensation.
UPDATE. Will Rau sue Bob Ellis?
UPDATE II. Rau’s sister Christine claims that, due to “medical and political mistakes”, Cornelia’s “neural pathways are irretrievably altered”. Political mistakes can do that?
DRIVE THE EMITTERS AWAY
A good way to reduce local carbon output might be to avoid making movies here. Australia’s creative classes will surely endorse this symbolic initiative.
UPDATE. Infidel Tiger:
Australia has no prouder export than our film industry. It embiggens our heart everytime we hear of one of these moochers departing our shores.
Keep the film industry off-shore where it belongs. Say “No” to locally produced wank.
UPDATE II. The Toronto Sun’s Angelo Persichilli:
After having contributed to the deterioration of our life for decades through movies filled with gratuitous and mindless violence and sex, I’m glad to see a few [film stars] are finally switching gears.
But please, no lectures about the environment until they and their colleagues stop polluting the skies with private jets, the roads with mega SUVs, plus reduce the consumption of power in their Hollywood mansions, where they use more energy in a day than a Third World country does in a year.
(Via andycanuck)
UPDATE III. Movie people are creepy:
“Let’s hope we can turn this country around, move away from the dark side and go back to the light.”
DISPATCHING OPPOSED
Mexico’s Francisco Martín Moreno finds reason to oppose those who wish Barack Obama assassinated:
A violent dispatching of Obama would leave the road to the White House paved for McCain, with Mexico and the rest of the world having to deal with four more years of Republican nightmare ...
It wouldn’t be too good for Obama, either.
PEOPLE WONDER
Academic superkids Jason, Axel and Barry deal with right-wing criticism:
A few lazy ad hominem attacks, cut and paste some ready-made phrases about ‘left-wing academics’, and voila, we have another blog post to, er, maintain the rage amongst the faithful. Whoopee. And people wonder why the conservative side of Australian politics is intellectually bankrupt?
Jason, Axel and Barry - presumably busy doing research and stuff - didn’t get around to answering some questions implied in my lazy, rage-maintaining post. Being intellectuals, and therefore open to debate, they won’t mind that those questions are submitted again:
Dear Jason, Axel and Barry,
You claim to have pointed out that “Australia’s bloggers are overwhelmingly left-of-centre”. Yet the linked piece identified no such thing, and in fact appeared not to be concerned at all with the political allegiences of Australian bloggers. Could you please indicate a specific section of that piece supporting your claim?
You claim that Australia is home to “equivalents to the left-leaning Daily Kos”. Could you please name these sites? (Note: Daily Kos attracts around one million hits per day. Proportionally, an Australian blog would be pulling in around 60,000 daily hits to be of similar local impact.)
Jason theorised that “the left-of-centre blogosphere has prospered in Australia” because “opinion pages only seem to be open to forthright conservatives”. Would Jason classify Catherine Deveny, Richard Ackland, Traceeee Hutchison, Mike Carlton, Kathy McCabe, Phillip Adams, Sue Dunleavy, Richard Glover, Jill Singer, Alan Ramsey, Kenneth Davidson, Anne Summers, Peter Hartcher, Annabel Crabb, Michael Leunig, Michelle Grattan, Tim Colebatch, Martin Flanagan and Adele Horin as “forthright conservatives”?
You claim that “Tom Switzer’s resignation as the editor of the Oz’s opinion pages” is a “clear sign” that “hard-right columnists [are] looking increasingly isolated”. How did you reach that conclusion?
Yours,
Tim
UPDATE. About Axel Bruns:
Bruns has coined the term produsage to better describe the currently paradigm shift towards user-led forms of content production which are proving to have an increasing impact on media, economy, law, social practices, and democracy itself.
And the English language, evidently.
In 2007, Bruns was a visiting scholar at the University of Leeds and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he further investigated the impact of produsage on democracy, citizenship, and the media.
Please reveal in comments how produsage has impacted on your own lives; try to keep entries below 1000 words.
UPDATE II. Alex tries to answer one question:
In case any of the Blairites are indeed interested in evidence for our claim that the left of the Australian blogosphere is better developed than the right, here’s a study I conducted about a year ago.
And a fine, rollicking read it is, too, if you’re into Technorati cluster-chat. No updates yet on their linking to a piece that provided none of the evidence claimed, local Kos equivalents, the conservative bias of opinion pages, or that “clear sign” of hard-right isolation. Given Alex’s alarm at being visited by “Blairites” - ie, blog readers - isn’t he looking a little isolated?
UPDATE III. “Why stop at produsage?” asks Rich Stadnik:
Bruns coitermed produsage to betscribe the curredigm shiftards usorms of contduction which areving to have an incpact on medeconolaw, soctices, and democracy itself.
That’s some quality Brunschunking there.
UPDATE IV. Huzzah! Jason favours us with a lengthy piece, answering questions and (mostly) clarifying matters. Some minor points in reply:
• Daily Kos is massively popular. It is influential within the Democratic Party, organises conferences, promotes candidates, makes a lot of money and gets a ton of press. Larvatus Prodeo is read by a couple of thousand local lefties and does nothing.
• Alexa is not a serious means of establishing readership; for a start, it is weighed towards US readers. For more accurate data, check my site stats. They’re public. Scroll down.
• Rather than speculate about why someone at The Australian resigned, why not phone them and ask? Works for me.
UPDATE V. Ken Parish makes a good point amidst many good points:
They apparently see commenters at right-leaning blogs as just a rabble of “the faithful” while the left’s audience is a “community”.