While I favour free speech in all but the most extreme circumstances, that isn’t really the issue here.

The right to free speech means the government shouldn’t be able to punish you for expressing your opinion. It does not mean that anyone is required to provide a platform for publishing your views. That’s a distinction which is often missed.

It’s Andrew’s blog, he pays for it, and he gets to decide what’s on it.

The author of this eminently sensible missive? One Evil Pundit.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111873/

That is so not going to work. The Bond movies are the Busby Berkley spectaculars of the late 20th/early21st century but they also need a solid persona at the centre that connects with the original mythos which is sexy English Byronic snob killer for the Great White Queen.

Daniel Craig was great in Layer Cake but he’s no Connery or Brosnan. In fact I’d judge Brosnan as the best Bond since Goldfinger.

Also Aeon Flux the movie is getting poor reviews which are basically centred around it not having enough action and having too much of a weird confusing narrative (which, let us remember, is a different beast to plot). So, it sounds good.

It’s not a blog he’s got there but a bloody palimpsest.

Mind you - sometimes I burst out laughing when I think of his pogrom against coffee and cake a few months back (not to mention the “dissent into irrelevance”).

Unless it really escalated I would certainly not call it a sign of the failure of multiculturalism, would you?

In other news, the VC at La Trobe University resigned. Questions were being asked in Parliament about the extent and expense of his overseas travel - 22 Asian cities in 2003. Well, that’s kind of what has to happen when the universities are told ot seek their own sources of income, someone has to go spruiking for it. Bill Forwood must be feeling pretty pumped right now.

I’m just glad we got our conference funding commitment from his office - came through yesterday. Though maybe we should have asked for more? Last day of work, sign anything, etc.

All this sydney rioting - should I care?

Is it really a product of race relations and multiculturalism or is it the product of irresponsible inadequate parenting or is it just some youths being territorial attempting to exert their alpha status that turns into what we term ‘gang warfare’ which occurs every 5-10 years?

Isn’t it merely a snapshot in time?

Isn’t it the same as the rockers and the surfers all over again?

Or to be in an American “outsiders” context - greasers and socs?