An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
24 Responses to “Saturday Salon”
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Everyone:
It’s already dawn here and it looks like I’m First.
What? Did everyone go to bed early or party on or stay up late so as to save the world economy?
Yeh I was wondering that too, perhaps it’s a sign. When highly-codified phatic group behaviour rituals start to break down, you know something’s happening
I’d been up till 3′ish catching up on what happened in the world while I was away for a week in the signal-free wilderness, every now and then checking the SatSal thread to see if an interesting subject turned up, and no, not even the frist fetish got an airing.
Kim had posted a link to a bailout bill live blogging site, but no-one followed that up, which I thought a bit strange. ( It passed BTW, at around ~3.30 am our time).
Then it hit me, something I’d seen out of the corner of my eye on my way in, which I didn’t process at the time, but which says it all about the portent of doom for Australia’s most influential blog, the last refuge of civilised balanced rational leftishness: a cat blog was topping the comment charts, way above anything political, except for what couldn’t but be helped but be mirrored from the MSM, the palin-tology thing.
It’s all downhill from there.
The Salon is meant to be a thread to discuss issues that we don’t have other active threads happening on, Danny. If people are more engaged with the other threads at midnight Friday, I don’t see that as a bad thing (particularly as, even though I’ve played the game myself here at LP, I’m not much of a fan of the whole frist thing on blogs, and actively avoid it anywhere else).
As for the bailout thread, there were so many links posted earlier in the week that I think folks might be TARPed out!
David Hill’s book on the first fleet not well-received. Can see why. Bought it and started reading it and was appalled at his sloppy reductionism of late 18 C English history. (And some-one should tell him Hogarth flourished in the 1740s, not the 1780s. There were considerable changes in the intervening years, like the end of the Whig hegenomy, an interventionist king, the clash between a libertine secularism and the rise of the new evangelism, etc., etc.,)
Went back to Ferling’s Almost A Miracle, which I’ve nearly finished. Also dipping into what at this point appears to be an excellent biography of Wilberforce by William Hague. Hope I’m not as apalled by Wilberforce as I was after I read Pollock’s biography. (And Pollock was, I think, a Xtan Minister. Hague is a Conservative pollie, but he writes like an angel so he can be forgiven. (And he’s a bloody good historian, by the looks of it, as well.)
Yes- quick to the barricades Bat-Tigotg. I’m sure Liam will be along soon with his jaunty head gear and a ready quip.
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Danny I hope is wrong and it is all a question of fatigue - but then again this the blog where not knowing anything is no impediment to long diatribes condemning whatever the group has identified as the problem.
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The paucity of debate here about the economic woes around the globe contrasts sadly with the abundunce of discussion about Sarah Palin’s eyelashes and hairdo.
Or wild assertions that Americans are mostly unintelligent
and have been conditioned to expect soap opera endings in day to day life.beret tip to Ozymandias for that gem.
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Oh and phatic this message may not be but debates tinkering about with the spoils when spoils are all illusions just don’t cut it.
I want some of whatever M.T.Surph is on.
And TT, I take your point, and agree: the fact there were enough threads extant to satisfy urges without extra salon spawn is a testament to the skills of the thread makers. I also note, and appreciate, that i could have used the salon mechanism myself if i thought there was something terribly important or interesting.
On the terribly important subject of FristTM: wasn’t that the name of a brand/flavour of
soft drinkrotgut of the 70’s, perhaps earlier? I remember it as impersonating a soda squash, but having no natural products or flavors being used in it’s manufacture, possibly one of the first to use cyclamates?Of course I googledfristbefore asking here, but there’s a diablo ex machina in google that knows better than I, that what I’m really looking for is first, and have mispelled it. Anyway I/google can’t find anything to support my memory, and that is worrisome, incipient dementia and all that - we all know if google doesn’t know about it, it doesn’t exist, it didn’t happen.Does anyone else remember FRIST as a soft drink?
Just to to let y’all know that a couple of the regulars from Tim Dunlop’s sadly-deceased Blogocracy - Joni and Stuntreb - have started a new blog called Blogocrats. Already some of the old hands have found their way there, and hopefully more will follow. If you see any homeless blogocrats around on the intertubes, please point them in this direction:
http://blogocrats.wordpress.com/
Thanks for that link, Rx, that’s an interesting development.
Danny, I’m not sure why you would think that the apocalypse has come because people aren’t around after midnight to debate the bailout bill.
We’ve always had a mix of serious and less serious posts, and I don’t think that enthusiasm for catblogging implies a lack of enthusiasm for political discussion!
And contra murph, there’s been lots of informed and informative commentary about the economic crisis - which as I said in my post can be accessed at this link:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/?s=bailout
I’d also point out that this is the last weekend of school holidays, and our stats show (as mentioned in the past), a big falling off of blog readership during such periods. People have lives. And people aren’t full time commenters, nor obliged to respond to the issues of the day unless they want to. We’ll keep posting about them though!
To all the pollies here & abroad who supported the screwing of THE PEOPLE from go to woe…& that goes for the slimebag media, including many TRICKY DICK bloggers…know YOU are one or some or perhaps ALL of the following:
traitor
n.
betrayer, traducer, Judas, quisling, Benedict Arnold, Brutus, fifth columnist, informant, informer, intriguer, spy, double agent, counterspy, collaborator, collaborationist, hypocrite, imposter, plotter, conspirator, turncoat, sneak, recreant, backslider, double-crosser*, wolf in sheep’s clothing*, fink*, rat*, stool pigeon*, two-timer*
—
Enjoy your power & money. As it SUCKS you dry.
I’m surprised that Obama can look people in the eyes. I’m sure McCain stopped doing that for quite awhile now. They just GLAZE over.
There will be a RECKONING.
N’
danny:
I think it’s contaminating the water, danny!
Tigtog:
The Firrrrst!- Twenty Ninth! thing is harmless enough.
Its the game you are having when you’re not having a game …. and it’s a bit of levity in the wee small hours of Saturday, especially if you’ve just popped into Larvatus Prodeo after slogging though someone’s arcane, convoluted mumbo-jumbo pretending to be analysis oe whatever.
Eleventh? Maybe?
Graham, I agree that it’s a harmless enough game here at LP, which is why I sometimes participate here. We only do it on the Salon threads, and it tends to be over within half a dozen comments at most.
On some other blogs it happens almost every single thread, and on blogs that typically attract a couple of hundred comments to every single post, you often end up with the first 20-30 comments all being people who are trying to be “First!” before any substantive discussion happens at all. Yuk.
Games are a good thing, in balance. Games that spread all over the non-game threads are not so good. Proportionality, that’s the key.
Fark, why??
… after slogging though someone’s arcane, convoluted mumbo-jumbo pretending to be analysis …
Word, Graham. Word squared.
My blockquote skills: let me show you them.
Not.
My last week of Sudeten crisis post-blogging. The Munich agreement has been signed and everyone is greatly relieved that they didn’t have to test out their air-raid precautions. Time for an annual public holiday in Chamberlain’s honour?
http://airminded.org/2008/10/04/tuesday-4-october-1938/
Also, 15th!
Can’t stick around, sorry murph & tt.
Have to get to Sydney FC vs. Queensland.
Quip-deficiencies can be rectified here.
Tigtog [12]:
Fair enough.
Pavlov’s Cat [13]:
?? In a single word do you mean? ” …. after slogging through somebody’s [a]Balderdash? [b] Codswallop? [c] Piffle? [d] Garbage/Verbage? [e] B***Sh**? [f] {Post-doctoral] Thesis? [[isn’t the Australian sense of irony and the ridiculous wonderful?]] [g] Can-of-worms?
Brett [15}:
See, I told you that Sudeten Crisis was only a storm in a teacup; Germany’s in no position to go to war with anyone for years and years to come.
Doesn’t Herr Hitler look tired? Wouldn’t be surprised if he retired within the next couple of years. Wonder who will succeed him as as Fuehrer …. or whether they will restore the monarchy with Crown Prince Willi as Kaiser Wilhelm III; there’s no way his father could ever get back on the throne.
Maybe, just maybe, on the very off chance anyone here is remotely interested in anything as boring as mainstream Australian parliamentary politics, and on Mark’s advice that this would be the appropriate place to post, I note:
There’s an event about to happen, in 15 mins or so, that may result in Queensland, the last straggler, finally, getting a Green up:
You see, what was going to make it well nigh impossible for queensland to get a green up in the usual, elected-from-an-inner-city-soy-milk-eco-chino-belt-seat, way are the facts that we don’t have an upper house, and those demographic seats ( we have the highest installed solar PV panel rate in the country) are currently held by the Premier and the Prime Minister, so there was an unsurmountable encumbency factor, except in a Bennelong scenario.
That could all be about to change, via a Julian McGauran-ish switch.
It’s almost 4pm and I still can’t see anything on News.com.au or the ABC confirming that Lee’s switch has been made.
Dennis Atkins is reporting that he has switched, Sam. Link in my post here:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/10/05/indooroopilly-labor-mp-ronan-lee-joins-greens/
So you’ve got your wish, danny. But I’d also join the chorus here suggesting that inferring anything from the number of comments on the weekend and during school holidays is drawing a really long bow. It’s also a long weekend in NSW, and in general, as stated, fewer people visit blogs during school holidays, and even fewer on weekends. There’s something to be said for allowing some of these things to digest rather than engaging in insta-commentary and discussion, and something also to be said for not being constantly immersed in political minutiae at the cost of other things in life.
Speaking of which, I’m getting back to my thesis polishing.
I just talked to Ian Gittus and apparently it has happened, Queensland indeed has a Green Representative in the House.
There was a meeting at the Greens West-side branch, and Bob did a press call up on Mt Cootha.
Obviously Ian didn’t have time to chat, but that’s my understanding.
Sam, how about you call someone from that branch to get the good green oil?
Oh, and congratulations as a party member.
Perhaps you could take it to the thread about it, now, danny?
My mouth hurts!… it really, really hurts..
Went to the dentist on Friday, he pulled one(kept the old metal filling cos it can be recycled apparently!) and filled another
My mouth hurts… What a crappy weekend!
Further to 20, it’s also a long weekend in the ACT and SA.
Happy Labour Day folks!