fun links to keep the masses occupied

Gah, it looks like I may have called an end to my hiatus too early. But we did have a good couple of weeks up-til now, so I’ll count that as a blessing.

Until I have time to pull together all the notes scattered through my several Moleskines (I try to be organised, but I think I am a scatterbrain at heart) into real blog posts, here are some fun things for y’all to read:

• On the US Election front, Marc Ambinder tells us about the physics breakthrough that the Grand Old Party may have discovered — a tear in the space-time continuum that allows one to separate The Real, Pro-American America from The Fake, Anti-American America (Which is Still, Geographically, In America. Maybe):

If you think that’s special, then think about this. Pfotenhauer said that she lives in a place called Oakton, Va. Oakton is located in Fairfax County. Pfotenhauer implied that the country was part of “real America” because it was open to the possibility of electing John McCain. Here’s the problem: Fairfax County, like its neighbors, are in the process of turning colors. (We can detect this with a special version of a mass spectrometer called a “ballot box.”)

• Stephen Fry is Twittering! He’s currently filming a new doco series in deepest, darkest Africa; but apparently they have good Asian food there. Win-Win. He also signs off every post with a kiss (x)!
• Also new on Twitter in the last few days are TurnbullMalcolm, who unfortunately did not beat MalcolmTurnbull (who is much funner) to the better username, and my darling Brit-Brit (we are on nickname-basis).
• The New Yorker‘s Cartoon Lounge had a cartoon-off between TNY’s Farley Katz and XKCD‘s Randall Munroe. Hilarity!
• Speaking of cartoons — if you guys haven’t seen G-G (that’s Garfield Minus Garfield) yet, you mustmustmustmust go check it out.
• The Senate’s Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee is currently doing a review into the levels of bias, plurality and fair-and-balancedness (™ Fox News) in high school and tertiary education.  Dr Peter Slezak, a senior lecturer at the school of history and philosophy of science, University of NSW, has written a great op-ed, pleading guilty to the charge of encouraging his students to challenge society’s doctrinal mores:

Like regular charges of left-wing bias against the ABC, the moral panic evident in submissions to the Senate inquiry rests on a certain implicit, though questionable, assumption – namely, that only deviation from prevailing orthodoxy constitutes bias.

Conventional views are presumed neutral, and the possibility is never entertained they may be invisibly, systematically biased in the other direction. It follows that the regular complaints of bias and proposed remedies are a form of harassment designed to maintain doctrinal conformity.

…

However, the highest educational ideals require precisely the reverse attitude – that is, encouraging the exploration of alternatives to preferred, taken-for-granted views. As Bertrand Russell remarked, education should make students think, not to think what their teacher (or government) thinks.

Found any good web-treats recently? Please share!

Love,
Sunili xoxo

Rupe’s Troops Rally for the Cause

So I gave up reading news.com.au because it is like 99.6% tabloid crap, but The Australian is starting to piss me off again.  I can’t remember why I quit it last time, and I don’t know why I went back again this morning. A ‘comment’ piece in the flashing Opinion widget at the top of the site got my attention, though:

To what extent is the Democratic presidential nominee still in thrall to extremist friends, asks Mervyn Bendle?

The online copy editors @ News Ltd really need to get off the crack and actually read the articles before writing the subhead/dek.

One assuming this piece is going to be a considered analysis of the totally ridiculous (and totally refuted) claims about Obes Pallin’ Around With Terrorists, which one should expect in a country in which there are unlikely to be many swing/undecided voters, would in all likelihood be confused to find themselves reading propagandist drivel that reads like a stump speech delivered to rednecks who will respond with “Terrorist!” and “Kill Him”.

Merv, who is apparently a “senior lecturer in history and communications at James Cook University”, apparently also wants a job as She Who Will Not Be Named’s speechwriter.

Because why else will some bogan from a Queensland uni care to spout out random facts and 40-year old soundbites about The Weathermen, select snippets from Obama’s books about his influences and then make ominous warnings about What American Voters Really Need to Think About (dun dun dun):

The question that the American people may have to ask themselves is how much this extremist milieu still drives Obama’s political outlook and how much it will guide his decisions, policies and appointments throughout the federal government system as the next president of the US.

Don’t it just fill you with fear and trepidation? Don’t you hear the call to arms to ring up your friends Nelly-May and Billy-John who live in some Red State and warn them of the imminent danger of That Radical Extremist*?

Aside from the lame/misleading technicalities, why the eff is this article even in The AUSTRALIAN?

Yeah, ok, people are allowed to have their opinions, and WTF-ever, Rupert’s editorial cronies are allowed to print whoever’s opinions they want, but seriously, how is propaganda for the US election worthy of publication in this country’s national paper?

Sigh. I don’t know why I even bother.

Aside: not to get too nit-picky, or nothin’, but do you think McCain knows that a press release listing big donors who support him includes Leonore Annenberg, chief of protocol in the Reagan White House, the president/chair of the Pennsylvania-based Annenberg Foundation and the widow of Walter H Annenberg, the late publisher, philanthropist, ambassador, and founder of the  Chicago Annenberg Challenge (that being the nasty “radical” organisation that indelibly taints Obama with horrible, evil, lefty-terrorist-scumness)? The Republicans are a fricking joke.

* From the Devil’s Republican’s Dictionary/Thesaurus —

“Radical Extremist“: (n) 1. generally, a coloured person; or a white person who may like coloured persons. 2. Terrorist. See also: Socialist; Gun-Hater (But Bombthrower); Baby Killer.

Olbermann: It’s Palin doing the pallin’ around with terrorists

This is my last and final post on Sarah Palin. I mean it.

Because MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann has set out everything that ever needs to be explained about the Republicans’ Vice Presidential candidate role in the 2008 US Presidential election.

This is “the be all and end all”.  This is it.

The video is some 11 minutes long (the transcript is 2 pages), but bear with it.

Because after that, there is nothing more to be said (or read) about the distraction that is Governor Sarah Palin, and everyone can get back to the real issues that matter to America (and the rest of us…).

read more | digg story

women in “power”

Following up from my anti-affirmative action rambles, just a quick thought about how the glass ceiling is so totally *not* broken…

There was an interesting op-ed from Michelle Gratton in the Sydney Morning Herald over the weekend which pointed out that, like Palin, both Julia Gillard and Julie Bishop are the Deputies in their respective parties.

I wish to comment on just this little bit for now:

While Julia Gillard apparently made a no-comment on her personal opinions on Sarah Palin, Julie Bishop said she watched the debate and was rather impressed:

“She’s [Palin] succeeded in life with strength while retaining her femininity. But she doesn’t trade on her challenges in life or on her femininity,” Bishop said.

I am not surprised Bishop reckons Palin’s femininity makes up for the fact the Alaskan Governor comes across as a complete airhead.

But let me try to figure out what the Shadow Treasurer meant… she likes that Palin succeeded through bullying, while staying “hot”?

And, even though she didn’t trade her lipstick and pitbull behaviour, she did trade, judging by her performances over the last, “what, like, five weeks?” *wink”, all reason, rationality, intelligence, logic, and other such qualities we no longer need in our leaders?

Psh.

(See this excellent Newsweek story: “Yes, she won the debate by not imploding. But governing requires knowledge, and mindless populism is just that—mindless.“)

While I don’t have a problem with femininity, I seriously have a problem with “women in power” who use that trait, instead of brains and good ideas and reasoned arguments, in order to get where they are.

But, on the other hand, Gratten included an observation that “Gillard can mix it with the boys. Bishop can’t. Gillard can cope in a man’s world. Bishop is operating in a man’s world”.

Most will probably know about the brouhaha over Gillard’s boring suits/haircut and lack of children/flowers on her kitchen table.  Does that make her more suited to cut it in a “man’s word”?

I long for the day when women can succeed in a “man’s world” without having to either be:

1. an air-head pretty-girl/hockey-mom;
2. knocked for not having flowers on one’s kitchen table; or
3. the daughter/wife of an assassinated sub-continental leader.

Because until then, it’s still a man’s world, and until it stops being a man’s world, we’re still suffocating in the glass house.

But at least there’re pretty flowers in here, right? Right? We need those for the kitchen table…