An open thread, where at your weekend leisure, you can discuss anything you like.
And a great big happy new year from all at LP!
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
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Uber frist!
Just thought I’d re-post this from the condemn thread.
Some other interesting viewing on TV over the next week:
Labor In Power, Sat night on ABC News 24
Burn Up (part 1) Mon night on ABC 2 (not Wed night)
The Late Session (hosted by Waleed Aly) Tues night on SBS 1
Curtin (the ’07 tele-movie starring William McInnes as John Curtin and Noni from Play School) Late Tues night on ABC 1
The Truth About Climate Change Wed night on SBS 2
Conspiracy Files: Lockerbie Wed night on SBS 2
Monty Python: Almost The Truth Wed night on ABC 2
FRIST!!!!
Happy 2011, everyone!
Oh no, unfrist!
Curses, foiled again.
Happy New Year, you-all.
Happy New Year, every-one.
Now, as you all know at midnight on 31 December every year or thereabouts our National Archives release Cabinet papers etc of the government 30 years before. And this year we get a glimpse into the workings of the last Fraser Government.
One ABC reportis actually quite good, and doesn’t try to ignore or gloss over some uncomfortable policy issues -
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/01/01/3104656.htm?section=justin
Having read it, have you noticed anything distinctly odd? I did. I was appalled that Australian, repeat Australian defence and foreign policy decisions were being made, actually being made (this is no assertion of some kind of left wing propaganda) in a city called Washington, and try as I might I have not been able to find that large city on a map of Australia. Its not in Australia. Its in a separate sovereign country for whose leaders Australian citizens don’t vote. Now my real worry for the present is, if it was like this in 1980, what the hell is it like now with the successive bum-crawling to the US being carried out by Howard, Rudd and Gillard? Pretty bloody terrible, I’d suspect. Who, in fact is currentlty running our defence and foreign policy, us or the US?
Odd, too, so far asa I can work out, Paul Kelly never mentions this aspect of our history in his assessment of the 1980 docs. Instead he seems to spend a fair biy of time slagging off at Fraser, for not being a great economic “reformer’ like Hawke or Keating. Jesus! what has this country come to.
Perhaps, PB, but here is Defence Minister Killen:
“Supporting common interests with so large a power as the US risks involvement beyond, and perhaps in conflict with national interests.”
It’s clear that the Cabinet was debating making a symbolic military commitment similar to the disastrous one made by Menzies to Vietnam in 1965. Once bitten, twice shy, Killen argued against a similar commitment.
Killen deserves an Elephant Stamp for this effort.
To bring the story up to date:
Hawke committed to GWI, but this was a UN initiative.
Ratty ignored Killen’s dictum and embroiled Australia in TWO Vietnams redux.
Rudd sidled out of Iraq.
Rudd/Gillard have done nothing to correct Howard’s Afghanistan toadyism. They were/are toadies by proxy.
You mean, the intuitive function of whatever my lefthandedness is in not voting, accept to vote out John Cain. Is actually more than the schizoid state of being brainwashed from outer space by possibly some new laser or light hiding function that penetrates buildings!?I thought it was the Echelon Project updated, that only allowed me to think well, that the ABC is a wellhead of Conformists, get your pay and don’t research too much, otherwise ,you will not be able to see the wildlife of Australia disappear via government smugglers!?And all along our country was being run by Washington except for the Killen time.Must run that through a anagram generator…should do it to wikileaks too.Any Leaks about Defence under Killen!
Happy New Year all. Once again, despite best efforts, it appears we have failed to blow up the bridge. Perhaps we’ll have better luck next year.
I agree with you. Katz, but its the bit that comes before Killen’s reservations that disturbed me. Clearly this wasn’t the biginning of the rot; that probably started with Menzies’ decision to commit to Vietnam (and, from memory there were some very peculiar goings on over that reveled in Menzies’ last Cabinet papers)but here, the rot was setting in.
Its more than Afghanistan and Iraq. In what other areas of foregn policy are we just unquestionably doing the bidding of another country, whose interests are not necessarily the same as our own?
Sort of makes you despair. Does me, anyway.
One day, Guy, the Bridge won’t just be blown up. It will melt. It will all have to do with some kind of firework that hadsn’t been invented yet.
twill be a spectacular Mew Year’s Eve, thay one!
I don’t know Paul Burns.Reading Peter Singers address in the Sydney Morning Herald of who are the babyboomers means that my father and mother escaped Germany,I went to University,had a full time job at 22years of age and a superannuation salesman spoke to me about this year retiring.Hell!Even another brother of mine from a family of six kids from a railway fettler background of Irish Scottish descent ,finds he just has to trust who administers the super duper.And Singer has been working all this time,as what is in accordance with the Tax Act!?I might be related to Singer in the sense my mother use to use a foot pedalled Singer sewing machine and all the times I have typed Assange means my DNA must be changing!Can Paul Burns write a critique of Singer from his own unfortunate problems!?And Princeton University is where our favourite son of our wonderful leader Murdoch got educated.
If the Bridge were to melt, Paul Byrnes, I wonder who would call for a cost benefit analysis before agreeing to its reconstruction?
Happy New Year to all.
As more of a lurker these days than contributor I should mention my appreciation of interesting/challenging ideas and writing here. LP is one of the first blogs I check out practically daily.
It must take dedication to keep it all ‘running’ so thanks to those who keep up the effort.
The people suffering through the floods are in my thoughts and the long term problems that will result. I really respect the people who work together, the SES, Red Cross and all the others.
Local ABC radio seems to have done a great job of informing people and keeping up morale. There must be a lot of exhausted folk around by now.
Life is not necessarily easy but I think we can all give at least a little (and hopefully some can be generous). Collectively we can give a boost to those in need.
On another tack if Mr Abbott can’t keep from mentioning ‘stopping boats and strengthening borders’ for five minutes it will be time to take to the streets.
akemashite omedeto! I have to go to a shrine today, to burn an arrow. It’s snowing outside and I’d much rather stay home and play The Witcher, or read Psychic Detective Yakumo, but one can’t risk the wrath of the gods for a whole year. That arrow has to burn, baby!
I went to a crap new year’s party at a local bar last night, and now i have a really weird hangover. There were so many people sending happy new year messages from their phones that mine took 30 minutes to send. crazy!
I cooked a Chinese dinner for friends, which we ate in the roof garden, enjoying a cooling breeze, despite the fact that it wafted pyrotechnic smoke from a prolonged, probably very expensive, but strangely static, fireworks display.
To the rate-payers of the City of Melbourne: you should demand more for your cracker dollar in future.
Cleaning up after a party is much preferable to waking up to the mess.
Crackers in Armidale – at the Showground which is some distance from where I live. Before Bunnings was built I could see them from my back door which was always a nice way to spend New Year’s Eve, sort of fireworks without the crowds. One New Year’s Eve some years ago it too me half an hour to buy a packet of cigarette papers from acrooss the bar in a pub it was so crowded, Anyway, about 12 30 am last night, right at the end of the fireworks display, it was like a rocket had gone right over the top of my roof just a few feet above it, and landed next door. Qjite a remarkable phenomenon.
I’m working on some thesis proposals and I’m looking for reviewers. Please email me: jacques@chester.id.au.
J d M @ 1..You missed “A Fine Madness” a Connery cracker.
I farewelled my baby boy at Sydney Airport last night. The plane was supposed to leave at 9.20, but at 10 was still there (per the airport webite did not go until 10.50 so hope he made his connection in Hawaii).
Then to Double Bay to sit in the foreshore park with my other son and his girlfriend, and see what fireworks could be seen from there. It was a beautiful night, but tinged with sadness.
Double Bay is a scream though – it was cheaper to stay there last night than near the airport but I had fun earlier in the day checking out the locals not being able to reverse parallel park their Beemers/Jags/Mercs/Porsches etc. And I had to physically restrain my Mum in Sportscraft when I told her that Michael Parkinson was in the shop.
Fraser’s response to release of 1980 Cabinet documents.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/cabinet-papers/afghan-war-cant-be-won-malcolm-fraser/story-fn7f6f9t-1225979603947
But will people who should, like Gillard and Abbott, take notice? My bet is they won’t.
A friend of mine is flying east across the International Date Line to San Francisco, and thus is celebrating New Years twice!
Handy gadget, that Date Line. Although less so when you’re going to the USA and only 18.
Happy New Year to all LPers (lurkers and posters!). A big thanks to Brian for all his climate postings.
As I always hated the term ‘naughties’ I’ve decided to get in early this decade and promote a term I can live with. Join the call to name this decade the onezies/onesies !
You have transported me back more decades than I care to admit, to the summer when I went with my good friend Jayne, sadly no longer with us, up to Renmark for a few weeks of fruit-picking between the end of school and the beginning of university. We drove across the border at 11.30 pm, said Happy New Year in Victoria, and then drove back into SA and said it again half an hour later.
Sorry Jane – it’s going to be the teens.
I have seen jokes in the media about the past decade being 11 years long. Because this one is (by popular agreement) just starting now, whereas most commentators were most anxious to start the new millienium in 2000 and not 2001.
Each to his own I guess.
2000. Ah, memories.
The world was going nuts over the Millennium Bug Damp Squib.
At the very same time George W. Bush slipped into the Oval Office via the back stairs of the US Supreme Court…
… and Chief Justice William Rehnquist, while handing Bush the keys to the White House, reminded the world that the US is a republic, not a democracy.
Looks like the Millennium Bug was in the US Constitution all along.
I never commented here before, but I just wanted to wish everyone a happy new year, and thank everyone for a great site; it is great for someone like me who now lives in Canada but is often quite homesick for dear old Oz.
I am on safe ground when I say that none of us will see the start of another millennium so the the beginning of this decade is a bit of a fizzer. But about “decades” later. With centuries, I’m partial to the view of Eric Hobsbawm that they are delineated by huge events which totally alter the mindset of the people living through it, rather than them being a set of numbers. Just as the Hobsbawmian “short” 20th century was bookended by WWI (1914) and the fall of the Soviet empire (1991), so the 19th century was a long one, from 1789 to 1913.
If this were some sort of pendulum, we’d be due for a long century this time around, but I reckon these Hobsbawmian centuries are going to get much shorter still because of the information revolution we’re living through. The WikiLeaks events of 2010 will be seen just as important in historical hindsight as the dropping of the atom bomb in 1945.
Numerical decades are even less congruent with our notional decades than centuries. The 50s started in 1945 with Hiroshima and the end of WWII; the 60s began in January 1956 with the release of “Heartbreak Hotel” and ending, conveniently, in December 1969 at Altamont Speedway – a long decade; the 70s disappeared up their own arsehole in 1978; the 80s began in 1978 with Cardinal Karol Wojtyla becoming Pope John Paul II and the oil tanker Amoco Cadiz running aground on the coast of Brittany. causing a massive ecological disaster – two events that would resonate for the next 30 years – with the 80s ending in 1985; the 90s start in 1985 with the launch of the Tommy Hilfiger brand and end somewhere around 1989-1991 with the disintegration of the Soviet bloc.
I invite other blogistas to unravel the skein of hstory until the present…
Happy New Year. My new year’s resolution lasted exactly 2 hours. I won’t tell you what it was as it no longer exists. I do hope you all had some better luck than me. Btw I saw The Tourist last night. Now Johnny Depp was smoking a cigarette that had some water vapour smoke, so no smell or odour, and you know nicotine in it. Is that real? Having given up smoking 10 years ago Imma try that if there’s no like draw backs. Does that cigarette exist? I never willingly gave up and let me tell you this. You never forget the cigarette. Never.
Though, er, children, don’t smoke. It vewy bad for you.
omg
it exists
http://www.smartfixx.com/vapor-cigarette.php
Everyone relax. it exists Nifty product placement on The Tourish eh?
http://www.smartfixx.com/vapor-cigarette.php
Sir Henry, I don’t mean to be rude to Mr. Assange, dear chap that he is, but I rather think that his pet chick magnet project is not quite as important as the bombing of Hiroshima, and we shouldn’t get our waistcoats in so much of a bnuch over it. Hiroshima ended major wars between technologically-advanced states; wikileaks just gave us a small hint of proof of what everyone already knew.
Sir Hank, with respect, I think your 60s are too music-oriented.
My 60s start with the Cuban Missile Crisis and end with the close-down of the Church Committee in 1976.
My 70s begin with The Partridge Family and end with Carter’s Moral Malaise Speech.
My 80s begin with the election of Thatcher in 1979 and end with the 1987 meltdown.
My 90s begin with the fall of the Berlin Wall and end with 9/11.
My noughties begin with Nixon floating the dollar in 1974. The end of the noughties is unforeseeable. They may end with China doing something dramatic with US government paper.
Thus, it possible to have overlapping decades, wherein the tone of the decade may be set by events that do not fall within the decade and may not even be temporally contiguous with the notional decade.
I would like to skip the eighties altogether.
Fashion – crap
Music – mostly crap (apart from New Wave)
Reagan/Thatcher – don’t get me started
Daggy as the 70s were at least there were some real rock gods (Robert Plant this means you!) and some amazing guitarists still had something to give.
Well, Sir Henry, I’ll go back to the Long Eighteenth Century – 1660-1815; then the almost exact 19th century – 1815 -1914; then the short 20th century – 1914-1991; and the present age, 1991- ????.
As for 20th century decades. well, 1914-1945; a very long decade indeed.
1945-c.1963. Exactly when the fifties ends is difficult to pick, but I’m being arbitrary and ending it with Kennedy’s Assassination.
Its also difficult to work out where the 60s begin. Most places it was somewhere between 1966 and 68 and probably goes through to somewhere between 1972 or 1975. here the constitutional crisis provides a very definite break. In the UK, it probably lasts till the election of the horrible Thatcher who ushers in the horrible eighties in 1977 , horrible for all sorts of reasons.
The Nineties begins with the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and goes through to 9/11.
Anyway, that’s my pick.
Katz, it’s not about music, it’s about the integration of what used to be called “race music” quarantined to the black radio stations and melding into mass-market white mainstream Top 40. Black r&b fusion of electric blues revved up into rock and roll totally changed the world. It was rightly seen as a threat to the WASP status quo. That is why the pioneering promoters of black music into the white radio mainstream at the time like disc jockey Alan Freed were metaphorically lynched and put out of action. But by then the hepcat was out of the bag.
Epochs, is it?
Culturally, I think a good argument can be made that, pace P.K. Dick, “the Sixties never ended.” (I’d date the advent of the sixties as: labor pangs began at the debut of the first James Bond movie, “Dr. No”, and full delivery occurred when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.)
We can consider the 70s and 80s as basically sub-categories of the 60s; perhaps the usefulness of this taxonomy dribbles to a close by say 1989…
As for the 90s, I think you have to break it down by category…
Politically, the 90s began with the fall of the Berlin Wall, and ended with the fall of the Twin Towers.
Socially, (at least in the US), the 90s began in the late 80s with reluctant public recognition that the crack wars and the AIDS epidemic were undeniable reality; socially I’m not convinced that the 90s have really ended yet, but one might ascribe a date slightly before the full-on advent of Web 2.0 (say, 1999-2002 or thereabouts).
In the literary world, the 90s began rather early, in the mid-1980s, with the publication of “Neuromancer” and “White Noise”. They ended at some indeterminate point when people finally stopped paying attention to anything in the literary world. I guess you could argue that some new cultural era began with the publication of “The Corrections,” “White Teeth,” McSweeney’s, and “Infinite Jest,” but I’d be hard-pressed to say what that era might signify, other than “we’re even more confused now than we were back in the recently-ended Golden Age of Confusion”.
In the pop-culture world, the 90s began in secret in the late 80s, with the making of Sinead O’Connor’s “The Lion and the Cobra,” Sonic Youth’s “Daydream Nation,” Public Enemy’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions…” and the Pixies’ “Surfer Rosa.” The 90s debuted for the general public with the near-simultaneous unveiling of “I Do Not Want What I Have Not Got,” “Do the Right Thing,” “The Simpsons,” and “Twin Peaks”.
Culturally the 90s ended at some indeterminate point in the late 1990s, when everybody in the Anglosphere finally knew who Britney Spears was…
No, I’ve got it. The 90s officially ended, and some new horrible unnamable era began, when it became possible in public to refer to Jennifer Lopez as “J-Lo” without giggling, or being giggled at.
Q: Knock knock.
A: Who’s there?
Q: Jennifer Lopez.
A: Jennifer Lopez who?
Q: That’s show-biz!
I’m reminded of the story that Sonic Youth were originally going to give “Daydream Nation” the title Tonight’s the Day. Truer words, etc etc. If they had gone and done that, then you could officially start the whole 90s from there.
j_p_z,
I was so far off-base in the nineties, i’m going to take your word for it. Anyway, who can resist such a beautiful account. Britney reminds me somehow of Tom Cruise II and I’m still tormented by what became of Michelle Griffith. Tortured, then. That should be censored. Anyway, techno came and went, button that onto neuromancer.
Knock Knock
Who’s there?
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven who?
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
Some of you have probably noticed I’m not a big fan of Nick Xenophon, but he seems to be talking sense here.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/industry-sectors/blanket-online-gst-an-administrative-nightmare-says-nick-xenophon/story-e6frg9h6-1225981704746
OTOH,
it seems the Greens (a) have a death wish.
(b) have forgotten what the GST did to Meg Lees and the Democrats
(c) Don’t realise Bob Brown is having another brain fart similar to the one he had about Telstra privatisation and haven’t got round to telling him to pull his head in yet.
http://www.news.com.au/business/breaking-news/greens-back-retailers-internet-gst-bid/story-e6frfkur-1225981757942
If they do thuis I’ll be voting informal on purpose at all federal elections. As with Lees and the Democrats, I will not forget.
I don’t think I’ll be alone.
Just in case some of you on LP haven’t noticed it, these characters are not going away. In fact they seem to be bringing in the big guns.
http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/online-gst-fracas-tax-revolt-swells-20110105-19fdd.html
But even the Libs haven’t been so stupid as to support them, despite the fact that what is really going on here could very well be a push to reduce Australian wages to Asian levels. But there is not the slightest sign that retail rentiers have the slightest interest in lowering rents to aid the reduction in Australian retail prices.
And the Greens think this pack of capitalist giants are a good thing? God help us.
Note to Bob Brown: The only books I ever pay over $100 for are books it is impossible to get in an Australian bookshop that one has no alternative but to purchase on line because they are out of print or on rare occasions, rare.
Can one of you lot out there who actually belong to the Greens get on the phone to Bob Brown and point out exactly how foolish he is being by supporting these extortionist capos? Pleeeze.
@Paul I suspect that Bob Brown asking for more GST is not really a stupid thing here. If they do start charging GST for internet shopping it won’t make much differences to the difference in price that you can get overseas vs here.
Gerald Harvey just needs to learn that he can’t charge a 50% markup on an item that is available online sans markup. He and the other majors are just pegging it on GST, and if they think that this will solve their problem then they are incredibly stupid. They are loosing their retail oligopoly, slowly but surely.
Nevermind Hardly Normal learning that he can’t add 50% markup, he is on the way out anyway with his hoplessly outdated business and marketing strategy. Just watch his advertising, does it make you buying stuff there? Crassness may work for a short period, but to insist on being an A$$hole!
I do not frequent his stores out of principle and welcome any help, including internet competition, to remove such infantile crap being aired on public broadcasting. For the time being I also stopped watching SBS until it is clear of such insults to ones intelligence and sanity.
Yes, well clearly some people like being yelled at Ootz… I would support any proposition to remove all those annoying ads from the air. Wasn’t there a campaign to make tv stations turn down the volume of advertising breaks a couple of years back as well? Doesn’t seem to have worked because I still have to mute the ads if I want any peace.
Gerry Rafferty has died, aged 63. Very sad, another young’un.
Help! I have inadvertently stuffed up my microwave. (This has happened before but I’ve been able to fix it.)
The Initial problem was I pressed the Stop buttonnear the end of a defrost yesterday and forgot to reset. I was able to make a coffee this morning but since then I’ve had to use the jug.
Pressing clear, stop, timer, cook etc does not at this stage seem to get it going again and I’ve probably pressed all of them too many times. (It does not have reset button, or, at least one I recognise.
Any step by step advice to get the contraption going again would be greatly appreciated. It can be done asa I’ve done it in the past but forgotten how, and, in any case I stuffed it and got it going by accident.
Or should I give it to Vinniues and buy a new one somewhere?
Paul: before you do anything else;, unplug it, then plug it back in again.
PB, further to Liam’s suggestion, make sure you leave it unplugged for at least 10 seconds.
Liam, DI (nr),
Have unplugged the microwave. Will get back to you on the result before I go off LP unless there’s a thunderstorm. (we’ve been having intermittent heavy showers in Armidale this afternoon.)
“WA grain farmer Steve Marsh was stripped of his organic certification this week after GM canola seeds allegedly blew 1.5km over his boundary from a neighbouring property at Kojonup, southeast of Perth. He is now setting an Australian precedent by threatening to sue for damages.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/industry-sectors/gm-strain-blows-organic-status-away/story-e6frg95o-1225975191363
Wasn’t there something wierd in Wikileaks about GM crops and the American government? Vaguely remember reading something and only in the past few days.
Found it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/03/wikileaks-us-eu-gm-crops
Bloody disgraceful. If I want to eat poison, I’ll decide to, not some bloody foreign government, thank you.
I hadn’t seen anything about that Paul, but did a quick search and turned up lot of interesting stuff.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=GM+crops+wikileaks&hl=en&safe=off&prmd=ivnsu&source=univ&tbs=nws:1&tbo=u&ei=m_4jTefTM4O3cOCsucUK&sa=X&oi=news_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CCQQqAIwAA
Unfortunately,unplugging the microwave and leaving it unplugged for a while has had no effect. Any other suggestions gratefully accepted. Thanks anyway, fellas.
PB, try pressing stop, then clear a bunch of times. That might reset it to a usable state. (Basically a variation on blindly pressing buttons. Sometimes it works.)
DI (nr)
Will do. Think that’s more or less how I fixed it last time. Just a matter of finding half an hour to sit down in front of the machine and fiddle around.Thought there might be a quicker way I didn’t know about.
In the meantime, instead of buying microwave dinners etc, will get ingredients for ham, tuna, salmon,herrings, chicken, cheese etc salads for the next fortnight, boil water in the jug, have me usual stock pot, stir frys, without totally defrosting the chicken. I should survive; in fact probably eating healthier and cheaper food.
Thanks anyway.
This is political correctness gone mad.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12126700