An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
44 Responses to “Saturday Salon”
Leave a Reply
Please read the comments policy. If you would like an icon beside your comment, please register a Gravatar.
There is a Comments Preview function below the typing box which activates when you start typing.
I could not resist 1st,at least I,m doing better than Costello and his cheer squad at the OZ.
EQUAL LOVE RALLY + MIDWINTA VOWS
SUNDAY AUGUST 3, 1PM
STATE LIBRARY
Cnr SWANSTON & LA TROBE Sts
MELBOURNE.
This is the fourth annual rally for marriage equality and the turn-out gets bigger every year. Please feel free to delete this if I’m out of order posting about the event.
MSN caption next to a pikky of the solar eclipse.
“Crowd pleaser
See last night’s rare total eclipse of the sun”
Regarding the fuss about internet censorship in China, has there been much said about how silly the exercise is on the part of the CCP?
Afterall, are these journalists not going to find out about Falun Gong/Tibet/Dissidents etc until they’re trolling the internet at the games? The censorship wasn’t going to achieve anything, but was simply going to guarantee bad PR outside China.
And really, are people this dumb going to take over the world?
Apparently two members of the Aus Olympic swim team were bumping uglies, but now they’re not. Apparently they “captured our hearts”, so this is big news.
Apparently.
Internet restrictions in China have apparently been removed. Apart from which, apart from surrounding regions China perceives as being part of the Middle Kingdom (eg. Taiwan, Tibet, though I hasten to add I don’t agree wqith Chinese occupation of Tibet, and am a supporter of Amnesty’s efforts over Tibet)China is neither a colonial or imperial power, in the sense the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, Japanese and Russians were, or the Americans are.
What on earth is happening to the ABC. Endless repeats in prime time, that wanky design show being moved to prime time on Tuesday nights, and next Friday a Hercule Poirot repeat for Friday night crime, instead of late at night.Followed by a repeat comedy show, instead of ctime. I love Poirot, especially in his latest incarnation, but … Haven’t they learnt after that terrible sports show a few years ago thsat this is disastrous programming on Friday nights.
Guess I’ll be watching a lot more DVDs.
Internet restrictions in China have apparently been removed. Apart from which, apart from surrounding regions China perceives as being part of the Middle Kingdom (eg. Taiwan, Tibet, though I hasten to add I don’t agree wqith Chinese occupation of Tibet, and am a supporter of Amnesty’s efforts over Tibet)China is neither a colonial or imperial power, in the sense the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, British, Japanese and Russians were, or the Americans are.
What on earth is happening to the ABC. Endless repeats in prime time, that wanky design show being moved to prime time on Tuesday nights, and next Friday a Hercule Poirot repeat for Friday night crime, instead of late at night.Followed by a repeat comedy show, instead of ctime. I love Poirot, especially in his latest incarnation, but … Haven’t they learnt after that terrible sports show a few years ago thsat this is disastrous programming on Friday nights.
Guess I’ll be watching a lot more DVDs.
I have no idea how rhat got posted twice. (Though one of the kids was knbocking on the door to make a phone call.)Maybe I was distracted.
Peter Garrett fights back against the left and right attack over the solar panel means test with evidence that the grants are still going out of the shop like hot chips.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/despite-a-dull-forecast-solar-panel-market-heats-up-20080801-3om3.html
man to man, woman to woman, man to woman, women to man. On any saturday night, the choice of the young,the old,and everyone else lets enjoy the joy, of seeking your thing .
I saw #10 and this popped into my head from way way back in the past:
“man, woman, birth, death, infinity”. Imagine the relevant symbols being chalked on a board as the voice intones the words.
Anybody old enough to remember the source?
It’s from the intro to “Ben Casey” - early sixties TV medical drama.
A Propros of Nothing Dept.:
Here for your dining and dancing pleasure is a link to one of my favorite underground bands, The Debutante Hour, here doing a close-harmony version of an old Sparks song… in my opinion superior to the original, for unexplained reasons. (As Gloucester said to Lady Anne, “For divers unknown reasons I beseech you, Grant me this boon.”) The venue is ‘Barbes,’ possibly the coolest hole-in-the-wall music jernt in Brooklyn USA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCPXYv98GnU&feature=related
If you dug it, other good ones include “The Devil Song” (I recommend starting there, esp. to catch the ingenious tempo change), “A Hammer, A Hatchet, A Chainsaw,” (sez the group, “this next song is about weapons”), “Guitar Hero” (be sure to catch the followup vid, “Guitar Smash,” in which the chanteuse tries to smash a guitar, but very demurely), and my personal favorite, “Croak, Hiss, and Sputter.”
inspirational lyric:
“The archive-dust
Got windexed out
By archive-nerds.”
Doesn’t it always.
Check out this NY Times piece on Trolls. It actually interviews some of the most famous (if ‘fame’ is the right word, maybe ‘notoriety’ suits better), has some interesting ruminations about their motivations (one confesses to being sexually assaulted as a child), is in parts very, very funny, and is overall really well written. Worthy of a link, or ten.
[It’s from the intro to “Ben Casey” - early sixties TV medical drama.]
And here are the opening credits
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Olm2IM52E
Thanks Frank.
Everyone:
Wasn’t Friday 1st August the Horse’s Birthday? So here were all the greetings and presents? Poor Horse.
Hannah’s Dad [3]:
Well, well. There’s probably a Nobel Prize for Astronomy in it for someone.
L-O-L
Paul Burns [6&7]:
You might have been right in mentioning the Portuguese, Spanish, British, Japanese and Russians [you left out the French, Danes and Italians]…. but I’m afraid there are far too many parallels of the Chinese with the Americans to include the Americans in that list ….[oops, not allowed to say anything so politically incorrect - it might upset trade, mightn’t it?].
btw, Friday 1st August, the Horse’s Birthday, was also the birthday of that mighty commercial and military force, the Peoples’ Liberation Army
Didn’t you watch Dr Horrible, Graham? Horse has been Bad.
TimT, that link you gave did not take me to the Trolls that I am looking for. Your Jedi mind skills are formidable indeed.
My comments in moderation for some reason? Anyway, I’ll try and re-re-post the link now…
nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
One of my colleagues is going to America on a Harkness Fellowship for a year on Monday. She has 2 children aged between 6 and 10 (not sure the exact ages).
I am moving into her house on the cheap for a year. So I went to buy her children a present today. I thought, wow! I will do something… novel.
So I made the elder daughter a blog! So she can keep in touch with her friends in the UK while she’s away.
But then I thought… oh. Maybe an 8/10 year old girl can’t use a blog… I’ve seen her play on computers but maybe blogging is too much. I will check with the parents!
And then I thought… but what if some sleazy bastard finds her blog…
… so I have made a blog, but I have to make sure it links to her parents email (so they can check the comments), I have avoided putting her age in the profile, I have stopped it from being accessible to google and the blog world’s searches… and that is without even considering the possibility her friends in the UK might turn nasty halfway through her journey…
… geez the internet is a fucked up place!!!!!
(all of this, of course, had to be checked with the parents too… and, not being Aware of All Internet Traditions, they hadn’t thought of all these nasty possibilities. Now I am worried that I have given the daughters a present which will involve massive parental effort, like a goldfish. I asked the parents, but they are not Aware of All Internet Traditions…).
sg - do you know of any cases where children have been targeted as a result of someone finding them on a blog/photo site?
Putting passwords on those sorts of sites can be a bit of a pain and I’ve been wondering if there is any real risk, or its just speculation. Eg. in comparison is it also prudent to avoid having articles/photos of children in the newspaper in case someone decides to stalk them?
tigtog,
Here’s the droids you are looking for …
Graham @ 17,
You’re part right about the Americans. But what about the annexation of Texas, the 1848 Mexican War, the war with Spain over Cuba, and the neo-colonialism in South America and generally, post 1945. Sorry, but I just don’t buy the argument that America is not a neo-colonial/neo-imperialist country, especially in those areas defined by the Monroe Doctrine. There’s nothing politically correct or incorrect about it, just differing interpretations of history. And in any case, as you would know, the historical definitions of colonialism and imperialism are fraught with all kinds of probably necessary qualifications, about which myriad articles, if not books, have been written by historians of all political persuasions.
(I’m most familiar with the First British Empire, and even the definition/discussion of what that is, is pretty fluid, if I’m not mistaken.)
Oh different chris, I have no evidence but I imagine it does happen, but my bigger concern was with the possibility of bullying by “friends”. I have thought about this in connection with facebook, because in facebook you can’t easily deleted things friends say, so if one of your friends (or their friends) bullies you with nasty comments, etc.youwill have a permanent record of it. Every time you login you will see this record of your own worthlessness. That’s nasty. But blogs give you control over comments, so if you set them up properly the parents can check them pretty easily.
I think I will still have to give the stock warning about weird and nasty people though. I think it’s the sort of thing you feel you have to do because if the kid you gave a present to is the unlucky one in a million who gets tagged, you will feel stupid forever if they weren’t warned. And I want this to encourage the girls to love the internet, travel, writing and blogging, not hate it.
Paul Burns [23}:
You mistook my point …. and why I used the term “parallels” in my comment at [17] …. look at the moves taken to maintain the territorial integrity of the Celestial Empire, at the means taken by the dominant ethnic group to retain and enhance their dominance, at the advancement of Chinese interests outside China by whatever means, etc., etc. Parallels with the Americans abound. China’s record is not quite as sqeaky-clean as fanatical Western sinophiles would have us believe.
My view of China is based on realism - yet even so I still admire the Chinese and respect their country and its culture. I did mention political correctness [which, sadly. is displayed in full measure by some well-meaning people] because the Chinese themselves do despise those who crawl to them as much as they dislike those who are deliberately rude and nasty to them.
TigTog in an obscure pop culture reference mode [18]:
No. Didn’t know about it. Probably wasn’t Horse’s fault?
Graham @ 25,
Ah well, we’ve cleared that up, haven’t we? I like it when we have these sorts of debates.
Cheers,
PB.
Vale Alexander Solzhenitsyn
giant of Russia, towering in memory over that bloodthirsty pygmy Josef Djugashvili (Man of Steel)
RIP
What Ambigulous said.
One doesn’t have to agree with Solzhenitsyn’s political conclusions at all points to recognise the great service he did in exposing the horrors of the Gulag system, and the personal courage with which he carried out this task.
That’s what I meant, Paul N. The body of his work, the work of a lifetime.
Djugashvili had a huge pile of bodies to look back on; did he savour the gore? Apparently not: he probably died fearing plots and poisonings… languished in terror, finally a prisoner in solitary, where he had in better days been the prison governor.
Terror.
Lenin’s harsh question: “Who, whom?” came home to roost. Serve him bloody right.
According to Simon Sebag Montefiore, Djugashvili may well have really died of poisoning, not just whilst fearing it. Beria was the most likely suspect, but other members of the Red Tsar’s court had also discussed doing him in, on the basis of “who, whom?” logic and fear that they had fallen out of his favour.
I found Solzenitsyn’s Gulag books boring, but I did quite enjoy his novels.(The ones I read.) (and if we were to judge every great Russian writer on the rightness or leftness of their politics before reading them, we’d miss out on a lot of great reading experiences.)
Ambigulous [27] and Everyone:
Indeed Vale Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn!
True and troublesome Russian. Patriotic soldier in the Great Patriotic War; patriotic Russian always. Tenacious, honest, upright and fearless. Writer of “One day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich” [which, with Lu Xun’s “True Story Of Ah-Q” form the 20th Century’s greatest pair of stories on how the political forces of the times affect the individual human being].
I am fortunate to have lived at the same time as such a great man.
It’s ONNNNNN
WA State Election expected to be called today for September 6th, no doubt to capitalise on the re-election of former leader Colin Barnett as Opposition Leader.
More info at Pollbludger.
http://www.pollbludger.com/908
I see that Amnesty’s ad agency tried to launch a smear campaign against the PRC. The campaign was timed to spoil the Olympics.
No government in History has made a more rapid evolution towards accountable institutional authority than the post-Mao PRC. And no government in History has done more good for more people in a shorter space of time than the post-Mao PRC. And It is no accident that the former causal process is correlated with the latter effectual progress.
THe Olympics are an event where the Chinese govt and its people take a well-deserved bow for their magnificent economic and ecologic (one child, TG hydro) achievements. Not to mention the extraordinary organizational achievement of putting on the Olympics itself.
Its spiteful and unfair to use this event to define the PRC by its most regrettable social operations. Is AUS to be defined as only an expropriator of primitive tribesmen?
Sure the PRC break a few heads now and then. But who wouldnt given the colossal problems of governing a nation with a history of psycho-dramatic revolutionary nutcases (Taiping, Boxer and Red Guard rebels and revolutionaries to name a few).
Its not as if recent history does not give show plentiful examples of individual autonomies running riot. Freedom too often turns into free for all. Lơok at
the oligarch’s taking over Russia’s mineral wealth, aboriginal’s social breakdown, Iraq’s pluralist vendettas.
Liberalism in its post modern phase is becoming a source of great mischief. An agent of anomie and social entropy. I despise it.
A masterpiece, Jack. I tried to reply with a reductio ad absurdum but found I couldn’t get any further.
You’ve taken authoritarianism to first principles, and I salute you.
And of course the same post-modern liberal push went into full court press against the Catholic Church during World Youth Day. Again, defining a world-historical organization by its (infrequent occasional) worst practice, namely child abuse.
THis is despite the fact that the Church has made at least some effort at redressing grievances and righting wrongs. And turned on an impressive display of force projection for all the happy campers.
Interesting that post-modern liberals instinctively range themselves against the great authority structures of both the Oriental and Occidental worlds. I guess thats what they mean by “equity and diversity”
Its almost as if post-modern liberals have an active preference for anarchy and anomie, right the world over.
Well said Liam.
Nothing further is needed, take a bow.
Agreed, Ambigulous.
Hoges, that’s what I call taking the pith.
Calppity clappity clap clap.
Now that the Pineapple Party has taken over Brisbane City Council, the Liberal Party have lost their only elected civic Leader in any Federal, state or local jurisdiction in Australia.
[CONFUSION reigned in City Hall at yesterday’s council meeting as conservative councillors tried to determine which party they represented.
Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman denied the councillors were members of the new Liberal National Party, saying they were to be referred to as “Administration” or “Liberal” councillors.
However, his views were disputed by Speaker Margaret de Wit who said she thought they were LNP councillors as of July 26.
“I’m not quite sure why he (Cr Newman) said that,” she said.
Further attempts by The Courier-Mail to clarify the situation were made, with Neighbourhood Planning chairwoman Amanda Cooper adamant the new Coalition party was still to be ratified.
It was a sentiment shared by Public Transport chairwoman Jane Prentice.
But Cr Prentice admitted she wasn’t sure because she had been “out of the country” on a trade mission.]
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24136277-3102,00.html
# 35 Liam Aug 7th, 2008 at 4:11 pm
You “couldn’t go any further” because you have nothing to go on to begin with. “Point and titter” is a degeneration from “point and splutter”. But both have two things in common, absence of logical validity or empirical veracity. A freightless vessel, taking water and listing badly to port, is in no position to return fire.
Liam says:
Here are some recent examples of “taking libertarianism to first principles”: The CIS 1990-2000, remote indigenous communities 1970-2007, the Badlands of North West Pakistan for ever and a day, Iraq aprez la regime change, the Grateful Dead fanbase, deregulation of the Banks during the “entrepreneurial“ eighties, the sale of the first tranche of Telstra shares, the people smuggling-and-drowning trade, Wall Street from junk bonds to sub-prime loans, internet porn, the crack trade around Bedford-Stuy, when I lived nearby in the early nineties.
Can you blame the PRC for not pelting hell for leather down that path? Especially remembering their recent catastrophic experiments with free for all, Opium Trade, Taiping Rebellions and Cultural Revolution?
But of course po-mo liberals, whether Left- or Right-, know best. Because we all know that their capacity for ushering in rational social reform is beyond reproach. SO no further embarrassing questions need be asked.
I could go on but I am sure you have heard it all before. And immediately filed under the category of “Thought Crimes”, to be periodically flushed down a memory hole.
Your capacity for double think also deserves salutations, but not the regulation kind.
Does even Jack know what Jack is going on about?
“You “couldn’t go any further” because you have nothing to go on to begin with.”
Well, considering he was talking about taking your argument to its logical conclusion, that’s a damning admission.
And an answer to my question.
FDB Aug 8th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
“Talking about taking [my] argument to its logical conclusion” does not even rise to the level of a response, let alone a withering put-down.
In this blogging caper, as in poker, if I raise the stakes and you can’t match the bet then you are said to have folded. If you pretend to call then you are just bluffing.
And in blogging, just as in rugby, if you want to put some one down you have to, you know, actually make contact. Not just be “talking” about it.
Wimps.
41 FDB Aug 8th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
ONly Jack around here. But the better part of the worlds largest nation is “on the pill”. ANd, right on cue, here is an article by Lijia Zhang, an independent Chinese journalist and former industrial worker without rusty old axes to grind.
Unlike most white liberals, she is not addicted to “being offended”. Its worth quoting her at length, if only to enjoy the process of shoving some hard truths down the throat of oh-so sensisitive po-mo liberals:
Dr Knopfelmacher used to say that you could tell a Communist country was getting better by the fact that liberal intellectuals would tend to start criticising it instead of uncritical adulation of power-maniacs. Thus liberal intellectuals were all over the USSR and PRC in the time of Stalin and Mao, when those societies were drowning in blood. But liberal intellectuals started to go cold on them when they started getting a bit better, muttering about “state capitalism” and the like.
SO it does not surprise me that Larva Prodders are piling onto the PRC now that is becoming a relatively humane and progressive society.
They are just conforming to type.
I think you mean very large L Liberals, Jack. Evidently you missed Bronwyn Bishop on Q&A last night reminding everyone about how China is a COMMUNIST nation and warning sententiously about teh evils of the ChiComms.