August 24, 2010 – 5:06 am
A friend and I went to see magician and comic Pete Firman on the weekend (part of the Edinburgh Comedy Festival). I don’t usually have a great deal of time for magicians, in part because they so often take themselves so bloody seriously, when you and I know that the whole caper is a scam [...]
August 13, 2010 – 3:47 am
I’ve always found the various attempts to argue for the burqa or niqab as liberating rather than constricting and deeply misogynistic to be a steaming pile. Clearly the people at newsbiscuit agree. Some highlights: New laws in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will require that every Blackberry user dress their phone a miniature [...]
August 11, 2010 – 5:03 pm
Those of you who are my facebook friends will know that last night, I was the victim of a serious assault. That piece of legalese doesn’t, however, quite do justice to the experience of having a bottle smashed over one’s head. If it’s a ned, then it must be Buckfast. In short, two persons — [...]
As the election campaign gets into top gear, it’s becoming clear (from afar, at any rate) that immigration has somehow turned into a live issue again. I honestly thought it was pretty much dead and buried after Howard and Rudd’s efforts, but apparently not. You could call it the ultimate policy zombie. If nothing else, [...]
I am not going to link to anyone making ‘dog whistling’ claims this election campaign; there are too many of them. Instead, I am going to make a few requests. 1. Before using this phrase, please take some care to find out what it means. 2. When claiming that this or that politician is ‘dog [...]
Posted in Economics, Media, Politics
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Tagged ALP, dog whistle, dog whistling, Federal Election 2010, Julia Gillard, LNP, rational voter, statistical vote values, Tony Abbott
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We’re not in the habit of handling shout-outs on behalf of third parties, but we happen to think that this one is worthwhile and serious, and it wouldn’t be here if we hadn’t engaged in considerable vetting before hand (one reason why skepticlawyer in particular hasn’t been around much lately, quite apart from my encounter [...]
Legal Eagle’s post on screaming children and deafened passengers on a long-haul flight put me in mind of an interesting (offline) conversation I had with Lorenzo a month or so ago. On LE’s post, I made this comment: I do think we have taken social disapproval of parents disciplining their children in public too far, [...]
I’ve long admired cycling photographs that feature the racing cyclist as a blur of movement against what appears to be a stationary background, and wondered if it were possible (one day) for me to take a similar shot. I have a reasonable quality digital camera but nothing out of this world; it does have — [...]
Henry Kissinger once said of Saddam that ‘we knew he was a son of a bitch, but we thought he was our son of a bitch’. I think it’s fair to say that Saddam ruled his country with spectacular nastiness, but that he also did enough to garner the support of a significant chunk of [...]
Posted in Economics, Law, Popular culture, Public Policy, Religion, scotland
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Tagged Anthony Shaffer, Charter Cities, Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward, Henry Kissinger, Highland Clearances, Paul Romer, Robin Hardy, Saddam, The Wicker Man, Tradition
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I am watching all this unfold from afar, with a special kind of awe. My understanding — even though Kevin Rudd had tanked personally in the polls — was that he’d still win against the (equally unpopular) Tony Abbott on Green preferences. Clearly I was wrong. I can’t imagine Labor’s Sussex St Minions (insert BWAHAHAHA [...]
