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FRIST POST I HAZ IT.
People’s opinions on this current series of Newstopia versus the first series late last year? I preferred the first but still love the fake Bunnings ads.
[People’s opinions on this current series of Newstopia versus the first series late last year? I preferred the first but still love the fake Bunnings ads.]
Loved Anton Enus and Karla Grant taking the piss out of their own shows, Anton’s bit about pre-recording the news was a cracker.
Froth!
“Honest, Mistah, I didn’t know he was your pet mouse!”
http://www.mchenrycountyblog.com/uploaded_images/Cat%20tax-cat%20holding%20hands%20up%20gun%20pointing%20at%20him-788789.jpg
Will the best outcome of the 2020 TalkFest be that the nation returns to valuing (and arguing in the best table-thumping style) widely differing views on any topic? Alternative futures even? Better still, free of the Cold War deep-freeze the Culture Wars imposed on debate?
A return to a reality not created by the USA hard right and those enmeshed in its aims and values? An intellectual climate in which basic paradigms / “taken-for-granteds” are (after a decade or more of treating a single one as “the one true religion”) themselves highly contested?
To link the above comment to actions which precipitated Mark’s disturbing “Students against academic freedom” …
Will we return to a culture when students realise that THE ROLE of universities at Undergraduate levels is to analyse knowledge (including all theoretical / critical perspectives) within every possible theoretical / criticial perspective? To evaluate ALL possibilities before forming an opinion? When vigorous argument of one perspective against another is part of the real thrill of a University education? That without this contest there can be no fundamental change in knowledge, only incremental changes in what we already know?
BTW I expect the “Liberals” of MB’s article are the hard Religious Right that has even a Howard-hugger like David Barnett tearing his remaining hair out screaming for reform http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2198213.htm
EC, brilliant. Loved it. Have sent it around Australia and the world (which gave me an opportunity to also give LP a plug).
Now to other things.
Mostly when your’re specialising in the history of a particular topic. the books are mostly interesting, sometimes pretty dry and frequently repetitive, in the sense your reading different interpretations of the same stuff all over again. Now and then, though, you come across a really outstanding book. Well, that happened to me this week. I got myself a copy of Gordon S. Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution,Vintage, New York, 1993.(c. $40 A).This social/political/economic history of the American Revolution is utterly brilliant. Elegantly written, ground-breaking in its subject matter and interpretation,a gripping narrative: the work of a real master.One doesn’t have to be interested in colonial/revolutionary American history to enjoy it. I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Its up there with Cochrane’s Colonial Ambitions and Vol 2 of Alan Atkinson’s The Europeans in Australia so far as I’m concerned.
PS Paul – if you haven’t read it, borrow Thomas Kuhn’s famous articulation of the modern meaning of “Paradigm” – “The Structure of Scientific Revlutions” (Uni Chicago Press). The 1970 ed’s Postscript summarises an eminently readable book.
I was a UQ (external) undergrad history junkie when the 1964 version hit campus. Talk about a “Struck by god on the road to Ephesis” read! It rates as THE most important text I’ve ever read. Originally an examination of why the Inquisition persecuted Galileo, it became a much wider examination of the effects on knowledge of paradigms and those whose reputations are tied to them.
Also brilliant (the first chapter is a good example of how to write an extended executive summary for academics, pollies etc who only read Ch 1 & Conclusions) specially its examination of the ways paradigms, their true believers & the networks & publication vehicles they control “censor” knowledge. Tony Becher,Paul Trowler “Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Discipline” There’s now a 2nd Ed.
The third in my trinity of life changing & “sanity saving” reads is Robert Prestus “The Organisational Society” and it’s “OMG that’s just like… (insert appropriate peple’s names)” chapters on Upward Mobiles, Ambivalents & Indifferents.
PPS: Did you read Robert Fisk’s “The only lesson we ever learn is that we never learn” on the Iraq War? Wish I’d written it! http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/robert-fisk-the-only-lesson-we-ever-learn-is-that-we-never-learn-797816.html
Hi all, for those into strange illusions, have a look at this.
It’s a kid site, but I thought it was sooo cool.
“Struck by god on the road to Ephesis [sic]” … Damascus, surely?
DeeCee,
Loved the Fisk article. Along with Robert Burns [?] of the NY Times he’s probably the best person writing on the Middle East today. The contrasting stats with WW2 are sobering. And indeed these pygmies, Blair, Brown, Bush and our unlamented Howard cannot compare with the flawed geniuses of Churchill, Roosevelt and Curtin, in honesty or anything else. Of all people one would have thought the corporate memory of Afghanistan, and to a lesser extent, Iraq would have at least given the Brits pause. The fall of Kabul and its tragic aftermath after all, is a centrepiece of most British histories of Victorian empire, even today.
I think I might have read Kuhn a long time ago. The name rings a bell, but not the others.Probably the most influential theoretical works for me have been R.G. Collingwood’s Idea of History, Croce’s essay, “All History is Contemporary History’, because its true, we do bring our own times and lives to our reconstructions of the past.And Maurice Cowling with his idea of the practice of politics being a combination of self-interest, principle and passion. History should be full of passsion as well as the application of intellectual rigour.And finally, Namier.
There’s a new book in the bookshops on the US and the Middle East from 1776 to the present. Haven’t got it yet, but I’m thinking of getting it once the current lot of books I’ve ordered from the US on the American Revolution are in my library.
Totally agree with your remarks on what a uni education should be like, btw.If you’re not there to indefinably change how you perceive the world, why bother going?
The kilotalk is also accepting submissions from non-invitees. Dave Bath is rallying ozblogistan. I hope Prodeans will go and submit.
http://balneus.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/goya-gabfest-online-submissions-about-to-close
I watched the current Newstopia today and thought it fantastic. I would watch Micallef dry paint with growing grass as long as it was on television.
Thanks Jacques. I’ll be more explicit and convenient for other readers. There’s too little time to read my post.
Put your 2020 ideas directly in the Official Government 2020 Submissions Online Form (unless you are a delegate or have already submitted). The box shuts by Wednesday.
Don’t waste time or oxygen in other fora unless you are thrashing out ideas with friends that you WILL submit.
Once you’ve done that, feel free to copy and paste your submission – or bits of it -(you get an autoreply of your entire submission from the australia2020.gov.au site) into a blogpost, and maybe add a comment to the post Jacques mentions that points to your copy of your submission.
Bismarck wrote: ““Struck by god on the road to Ephesis [sic]” … Damascus, surely?”
Indeed Otto. I was trying to think of the current adjective, but somehow “Ephesicene” wasn’t making sense. So humble apologies all. Being a “Senior Australian” does have its downsides – like forgetting the correct words & jumbling spelling.
I did say I was an undergrad in 64 (and not a freher by a long shot!) All corrections welcome.
Epitaph on a head stone in Springwood Cemetery……..
“I told you I was sick”.
Jacques [2]: I too love the fake Bunnings ads.
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Today Sat. 5th April. Special commemorative edition [fringed in black] of the ‘Warragul Times Sentinel Express Advocate’.
Headline emblazoned across the top of p.1 ::
“Peter McGauran Announces Resignation. Truss Offers Support.”
Yesterday at Farmworld, former Minister Peter McGauran, announced …..
*********************
Grief counselling has been arranged for several highly distressed rural reporters.
Jacques de Molay [2]:
Great to see you back in one piece again. Really sorry about the fire, mate; it was the king who got Templars mixed up with senior Commonwealth Public Servants. He should have realized no Templar would have given that sort of policy advice, ever.
Anyway, over at Catallaxy, John Stone has been “invited” to take your place at a re-run of the same event http://catallaxyfiles.com/?p=4398#comments [comment No.1].
Jacques Chester [12] and Dave Bath [14]:
Don’t forget the Oz Ideas Wiki 2020 Summit over at http://ozideas.wetpaint.com/?t=anon
Jacques de Molay:
That link didn’t work for the “April Quadant” topic by Rafe Champion on Catallaxy. Try http://catallaxyfiles.com/?p=3498#comment-88856
How much money Larvatus is making by having ads?
Now the Blairites are mocking Mr Bahnisch.
Please, give them a retort.
You can’t have the product of incestuous US relations giving you shit.
Fight back, conrade…
Graham Bell,
No need to apologise about the fire, all good things come to those who wait.
Did anyone else have a “hello sailor” moment over the Rudd salute?
Guido, we won’t have any reliable figures until the end of April. And we won’t see any of it until June.
Life’s too short, THR, really it is. I’ve got much better things to do with my Sunday – been for a walk, going to read a novel.
To the degree that I need to defend my position, I think I’ve done it adequately in comments on the other thread here.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/04/04/students-against-academic-freedom/
In general, I’ve had the view for a long time that inter-blog wars are a waste of time. It’s been a bit sad to see Troppo recently having almost more of blogger v. blogger snark in the comments threads on the missing link posts rather than original content on the blog. I’d much rather we all got on with discussing and analysing the issues.