I suspect people might have been expecting me to launch some denunciation of columnist Andrew Bolt being done under 1995 amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act. (A useful lay-friendly analysis of the judgement is here.)

Those provisions are bad law: Jonathan Holmes puts the problem nicely:
... this judgment reinforces all the concerns that ( Read more... )

When Donald Horne wrote The Lucky Country, the title was an ironic indictment of mediocrity. And one can point to fortunate things about the land of Oz. The rich resource base. Being settled by the British rather than by, say, the Spanish ( Read more... )

Raising a good question about Kiwiland moving its aid from specialising in scholarships to doing all the fashionable aid causes.

A former staffer to Gordon Brown who is now head of Choice in Oz has quite a few observations about the difference between his new home and his old one.

Suggesting Oz would be improved by moving State governments out of ( Read more... )

Now books have trailers.

Nice reconstruction of ancient Greek lyre music, a hymn to Apollo and a hymn to the muse.

Senior US journalist makes complete fool of himself in 38 seconds.

The UK Tories thought a Labour poster image of the Tory leader was such a great idea, they adapted it.

About The Hurt Locker being concerned with the experience of ( Read more... )

Housework does have a pay-off:
A new study shows that for husbands and wives alike, the more housework you do, the more often you are likely to have sex with your spouse.

A study estimates that Tiger Woods’ car crash and its consequences have cost his sponsoring corporations US$12bn in lost stock value.

“Humbugging” in indigenous communities:
( Read more... )

Paddy wagon as shagging wagon.

A Senator making it clear that he will ask the questions.

About the Left sensibility with links to a series of articles on what it is to be Left in Australia in 2009.

ABC newsreader argues that the burka should be banned. I always have mixed feelings on this one: my libertarian instincts war with revulsion at the ( Read more... )

How people frame things-and what presumptions are behind such framings-can generate a lot of heat in public debate because people can look at the same events so differently. Worse, they can fail to see any legitimate reason for people not seeing things the same way they do. Leading, of course, to presumptions of illegitimate reasons ( Read more... )

Irish Independent columnist Kevin Myers recently wrote three linked piece. First, he expressed scepticism about the value of aid to Ethiopia: For self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa. It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed. He then wrote it was a case of writing about Ethiopia now with much ( Read more... )

Constructing estimates of world GDP over the last million years.

The occurrence of economic “singularities” and predicting another one around the middle of this century. The author’s suggested next singularity I find deeply implausible in both type and alleged effects; it is far more likely to come from another breakthrough in the manipulation of ( Read more... )

Bring a whole lot of folk to talk about their pet peeves and you are bound to get a range of notions expressed. Such as: One idea aired was to strip every Australian of their citizenship and only re-issue it to those people who could prove they were environment-climate friendlyNow, clearly the 2020 summiteers were not representative of anything ( Read more... )