The former Dear Leader has received his reward - something a little more prestigious than the weirdly named awards from obscure right wing think tanks he spent some time trotting over to America last year to collect. John Howard will be awarded the “Medal of Freedom” by another soon to be former leader - George W. Bush. Read more »
This report about an article in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, has attracted a bit of attention because of a claim that the oral contraceptive pill was contributing to male infertility: Read more »
Image of a PhD dissertation courtesy of raffyd at flickr - reproduced under a creative commons licence. Read more »
Earlier this year, the price of energy, particularly oil, was one of the biggest issues in world politics, and particularly American politics (climate change has always been a second-order issue there). The spike in the oil price drew mainstream media attention to a theory that had been doing the rounds of the blogosphere - and, later on, the mainstream media - Peak Oil. To recap, the Peak Oil hypothesis states that the level of world oil production will reach an absolute peak, and then start to decline, on a fairly rapid basis. The consequences? Read more »
Commenter Angharad discusses Kevin Rudd’s homelessness white paper which didn’t get much discussion because of its timing, but deserves some because of the importance of the issue. -MB
A few days before Christmas, Kevin Rudd launched a white paper on homelessness The Road Home with far less fan fare than the climate change white paper a few weeks earlier. Read more »
An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Gary Sauer-Thompson has trained an observant eye on an editorial in the Fin:
Yes, the road ahead looks difficult. But this is no time to abandon our faith in the capacity for enterprises and markets free of oppressive state intervention to reinvent ourselves and bounce back. Human ingenuity will prevail, confidence will eventually return and the wheels of commerce will spin again. There is too much evidence that the world, despite periodic setbacks, continues to progress.
Read more »
Image of the State Library of Victoria from avlxyz at flickr reproduced under a creative commons licence. Read more »
They’re everywhere. Lists. Judgements. Retrospectives. Loud condemnations. Paeans of praise. Make your own on this thread!
Probably one of the most laudable steps taken by the Rudd government has been the attention given by Senator John Faulkner as Special Minister of State to cleaning up the electoral system. Admittedly, this isn’t one of the funky and sexy issues the media likes to highlight, but the importance of the Green Paper on Electoral Reform is profound. Read more »
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? And indeed since Christmas Eve? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all! Read more »
An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
Dennis Shanahan, playing with a fairly straight bat for once, pre-reports on the unreleased findings from John Clarke QC’s report into the charging and deportation of Dr. Mohammad Haneef. According to the report: Read more »
Anyone wanting an update on how the federal government’s adventures into the wilds of citizen consultation via blogs [at the Digital Economy Blog hosted under the auspices of DBCDE] are going could do a lot worse than read these two posts from Lyn Calcutt at Public Opinion and Axel Bruns at Read more »
John Quiggin picks up on something that has been bugging me for a while. The idea of the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) as a ‘black swan event’ had some appeal to me. Philosophers have typically approached the problem of induction as a universal one: how do you move from individual observations to general understandings about the operations of complex processes (facts, if you will)? Read more »
Petrol prices are plummeting. This must be the cue for an Australian car manufacturer to announce they’re going to build a small, fuel-efficient car in Australia. Yes, Holden is going to build its first smaller cars in Australia since the Camira of the 1980s. Read more »
Crossposted from No Right Turn Read more »
End of year reflection on the state of politics and the nation type articles can be interesting. They can be tedious rehashes of trivia and reinventions of an already distorted reality to prove punditarian narratives r us and are ace (read any column in the Opposition Organ for an example). They can be quite thoughtful and rise above the usual trivia and actually say something. Or they can be quite weird. Read more »
As I mentioned here, Andrew Norton’s NIMBY watch was a fantastic resource in the leadup to the release of the CPRS. Read more »
I’ve said before that I don’t put too much stock in the quarterly state Newspolls, because they’re taken at such a lengthy interval it’s hard to get a sense of when any movement shown has actually occurred, and it’s more difficult to pick a poll which may be an outlier for various sampling reasons. Read more »
You know we need one. Awful Carols etc. And I think the Brisbane City Council may have just gone a tad over the top with the bus decorations. I assume it’s the all Liberal (or is that LNP?) Campbell Newman council majority. Not wanting to be accused of grinchiness (given how awful they’ve been since Campbell got hold of a floor majority) and/or to fend off teh evil political correctness. But I think my fellow public transported citizens also felt this was more than a bit overdoing it… Read more »
One of the arguments Kevin Rudd has used to deflect criticism of the White Paper is to seize on Ross Garnaut’s per capita calculations and to contend that we will still be cutting emissions further than the EU.
A couple of billion dollars a year. That’s all it would have taken to make the CPRS targets much more attractive. Read more »
Discussion starter:
Blogging is karaoke?
Sing along with me …
Like his previous efforts, Blink and The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, is an entertaining read, with a serious point. It’s a straightforward one too - when you see something that looks like an outlier, such as extraordinary individual success (Bill Gates), or catastrophic and inexplicable disaster (various air crashes), if you look hard enough, you will see that it is the outcome of a particular pattern of events. Read more »
A partial wrap of the protests over the weekend.
Coverage of the Brisbane rally is at Nocensorship.info, and Skribe has uploaded a citizen journalism video report of the Perth event to YouTube: Read more »
Ben Cousins has been drafted by Richmond. Read more »
Yesterday saw simultaneous LP Christmas drinks in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
We Quincelanders had an extremely pleasant and appropriately festive afternoon at Hotel Bravo in the Valley, I thought…
It is of course an internetty tradition to post a thread for post-grogblog reflections, so here it is. Perhaps some of the Sydney and Melbs folk will be along to update. Read more »
Kevin Rudd will be unveiling the most significant structural reform since the 1980s and 1990s when Australia’s economy was opened up. Two major announcements so far: the compensation package for households used from the permit allocation revenue and a fast-tracking of the ‘Renewable Energy Fund’ (which includes CCS, geothermal, solar and wind). The centrepiece is of course the Carbon Pollution Allocation Scheme. Read more »
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all! Read more »
I have no answers about the death of Tyler Cassidy, only questions: Read more »
Those coal eating surrender monkeys1 sure get defensive when cornered. The latest shrill squeaking comes from Heather Ridout of AIG with the plaintive request to cut carbon dioxide later. Ali Moore nailed this duplicitous bullshit argument in an interview, pointing out that we’ll have to deal with it at some point in the cycle. Read more »
One issue upon which I have fairly starkly disagreed with fellow LP bloggers, and commenters, is on the potential for voluntary sacrifice to make any substantial difference to environmental problems, particularly climate change. In my view, strategies that maximise active involvement in emissions reduction schemes is less desireable, not more so. The best emissions reductions methods are, in my view, completely transparent, invisible, and involve the fewest number of people possible. But why such a misanthropic view of the process? Call it a professional mindset. Read more »
Aside from the LP drinks across the length and breadth of the eastern seaboard (well, that may be a slight exaggeration…) summer is here, work is supposedly winding down (though I haven’t noticed) and it’s time to … party! It might be a good time to have an open party experiences thread - share tales of doom from work functions, report on exciting gigs, tell us about your fancy dress themed events, etc, ad infinitum! Read more »
Amnesty International has released a video - You Are Powerful - to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the UDHR. They’re encouraging its widest possible distribution. Kate Allen explains at Comment is Free. Read more »
To great fanfare, the Victorian government has released its transport plan, the culmination of a process including the Eddington Report (see here and here) and steadily growing angst about Melbourne’s continually overcrowded trains, trams and freeways. Read more »
Dave Bath reports that welcome post (which is worth reading in its entirety) explains the idea: Read more »
… of course I am unstimulated, being neither a pensioner nor a family. But for what it’s worth, I bought Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy and Urban Legend at Rocking Horse, contributing to alt.music store sales and the employment prospects of rockers in skinny leg jeans. Read more »
So what just happened with the National Academy of Music?
Tim Hollo – Advisor to Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne Read more »
… and Malcolm Turnbull is approaching Brendan Nelson territory with the PPM at 66-19 in Kevin Rudd’s favour. Read more »
Malcolm Turnbull’s rather hamfisted attempt to bring Barnaby Joyce inside the tent through the offer of a frontbench position was always going to be rebuffed. Turnbull might have tried - just an idea - a little more consultation than implied by last minute shadow cabinet meetings which apparently fail to set the direction for the backbench anyway. Read more »
General Motors teeters at the edge of bankruptcy, with a bailout from the US government about the only thing that can stop it. Even if bankruptcy is avoided, it’s inevitable that the company - Holden’s global parent - will be completely restructured. In the USA, many plants will close. Tens of thousands of employees will be laid off. But it’s not at all clear what will happen to Holden, a tiny, and currently unprofitable, corner of the global GM empire. Read more »
When John Howard’s government announced funding for school chaplains in public schools, then Education Minister Julie Bishop (remember her?) claimed it was all about instilling “values” in the kiddies. Apparently, the fruits of the program have exceeded expectations: Read more »
As a parting gift to the nation, the Coalition majority in the Senate set up an inquiry into academic bias, at the instigation of the Young Liberals. It’s been discussed extensively before at LP on a number of occasions. The Committee has now reported. Read more »
It’s been a shocker of a week for Malcolm Turnbull. Read more »
With the complete collapse in the US property market due to the subprime mess, there’s been a lot of debate in Australia as to whether the same could or would happen here; Steve Keen has gained attention recently for his fairly apocalyptic predictions of a 40% drop in property prices from their peak. As Peter Martin notes, there are rather contrary views: Macquarie Bank’s Rory Robertson has taken a bet with Steve Keen. Read more »
It’s hard to know whether to blame the pollies or the press gallery more for the sorry standard of political and economic debate in this country. Did that golden age Paul Kelly used to talk about when Paul Keating had everyone trained to cross swords on the arcana of economic levers actually ever exist? Read more »
The Jewish-American group Jewish Voice for Peace is campaigning in support of several young Israeli Jewish conscientious objectors to military service - Shministin - who have been imprisoned by Israeli authorities. Details of the campaign can be found here. Read more »
Pirate by ~Loserbabooser on deviantART
I’m not at all so sure that the connection between current crisis and future speculation (or speculative futures) is as straightforward as Felix Gilman suggests at Ecstatic Days, but I find these questions quite the fascinating nevertheless: Read more »
No one would every accuse the LNP leader Lawrence “the Borg” Springborg of being poll driven, would they? I mean… surely it’s a coincidence that the latest Galaxy Poll on state voting intentions found Labor leading strongest on transport and the LNP releasing a transport policy for Brisbane commuters the same day? Read more »
Poznan looks like a rather pleasant city to visit. That’s handy, because there’s a fair chance that Penny Wong and the rest of the Australian delegation might have some time on their hands. As The Guardian notes in this handy Q&A, the negotiations are in somewhat of a holding pattern while George W. Bush waddles off the damn stage:
So what will happen at Poznan?
Read more »
A few months ago, folks might recall that I spoke at the Future of Journalism conference in Brisbane, organised by the MEAA and the Walkley Foundation. Last week, Melbourne took its turn hosting an event in the series, and Margaret Simons was there: Read more »
At the weekend, I was geeking out on episodes of the 1990s sci-fi series Babylon 5, when I made a startling discovery…
…Can you tell which of these characters is a former Leader of the Opposition, and which one was Babylon 5’s security chief Michael Garibaldi?
San Franscisco is indeed truly marvelous city for the visitor. There are innumerable places to eat, drink, look at, and do. But approximately a metric squillion tourists descend on Fisherman’s Wharf, a truly awful collection of overpriced take-away joints and T-shirt shops (parts of Height-Ashbury are not much better, to be honest). I don’t mind; if they’re happy to spend time there, it means that there’s less tourists crowding the interesting spots. Read more »
ABC News reports that the architect of the Sydney Opera House died of a heart attack in his sleep at age 90. Read more »
Maybe I’m easily amused but I really liked this one!
Rules:
* Take the closest book from you
* Open to the page number 56
* Look at the 5th sentence
* Write down this sentence as your status
* Comment on your status and copy these instruction in a comment
* Don’t look for the book you prefer or the coolest but the closest book
Mine is: Read more »
There’s an interesting piece in Crikey today from La Trobe University Professor of Politics Judith Brett reviewing the first year of the Rudd government. As those who’ve followed her writing on politics would expect, she particularly focuses on leadership, and argues that Kevin Rudd has shown some deftness in moving between different leadership styles according to necessity. Read more »
Well it’s been a fortnight so it must be time again to condemn. Here’s a 30th open condemnation thread. What’s getting up your goat this week so far? Which evil political, cultural, social, musical, religious and other phenomena need condemnation? (Or loud denunciation?)
You can condemn anything you like except Hope Waits. Well, actually, maybe you can’t condemn Tom Waits either. Read more »
There’s been a bit of discussion about Arts Minister Peter Garrett’s defunding of the Australian National Academy of Music on another thread, so I think it probably warrants a post of its own. Read more »
I’ve just discovered a new artist - Melody Gardot, an American jazz singer. For anyone interested in music and disability, her story is really interesting. Read more »
Even if you’re not a local, you might have noticed that it’s been raining in Brisba
