News
Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard had an exciting Australia Day, after Abbott's call for the Aboriginal Tent Embassy to be disbanded after forty years led to said Tent Embassy protesting the restaurant both of them were at, which led to their security detail hustling them out, which led to Gillard tripping and losing her shoe, which led to this not particularly flattering photo of our Prime Minister being dragged to a waiting car.
The protesters are now holding her shoe hostage and threatening to auction it for charity.
Good news for Craig Thomson AKA Gillard's sole remaining buffer against the Coalition, with reports that an inquiry into his actions while national secretary of the Health Services Union will be
making adverse findings against him in regards to the $100 000 he mysteriously withdrew on his company credit card. However, short of spontaneous death or high end arrest, I can tell you now that there is no chance in hell that Craig Thomson is leaving this Parliament. Gillard will pretty much make him sit in his seat, keep his mouth shut and vote when called upon until he can be quietly evicted at the next election, because that's the game right now. And isn't it fun?
Another small step in the right direction for gay marriage in Australia, with the Government today to announce that
from February 1 they will no longer actively impede gay Australians looking to get married in one of the ever increasing number of countries that has legalised it. While the current political setup (and high chance of a Coalition whitewash at the next election) means gay marriage in Australia could be more than half a decade off, every little bit counts y'know. And hey, getting married in New York is totally better than getting married in boring old Australia.
It's National Awards Day! Geoffrey Rush won Australian of the Year for being like heaps good at acting and stuff, Marita Cheng won Young Australian of the Year for trying to get women into engineering, Laurie Baymarrwangga won Senior Australian of the Year for trying to keep her culture alive, Lynne Sawyers won Local Hero of the Year for having looked after over 200 foster children in the last 15 years, and I won nothing although I did have a beer in the park with my friends and isn't that what true heroism is all about?
Papua New Guinea continues its slow motion meltdown, with
a retired colonel launching an unsuccessful coup attempt, which led to further stand-offs between the country's two purported Prime Ministers. It's just like Australia, but with more soldiers on the streets...
An enduring message of the Obama Presidency: don't mess with US citizens. As Obama was delivering his State of the Union address, the Navy SEAL team responsible for taking down Osama Bin Laden were
busy rescuing two aid workers held hostage by Somali pirates and killing all nine of those Somali pirates. A bad day for piracy.
Well, you certainly can't fault Newt Gingrich for lacking ambition. In the lead up to the Florida primary, Gingrich has outlined one of his medium term projects:
a permanent base on the moon by 2020. This does seem bold considering that America has basically spent the last half a decade slowly dismantling its space program and barely has enough money to pay its employees, but what are Presidential races except exercises in impossible ambition? (see also Obama, Barack)
Features
Martin Mckenzie-Murray with a thoughtful and well-written Australia Day call for a more civil polity. Also,
Peter Craven on the importance of cultural nationalism.
The New York Review of Books on Newt Gingrich and the Republican nightmare. And while we're here:
And:
Oddities/Curiosities
Why yes, Apple is taking over the world. And here's the stat to prove it:
there are now more iPhones being bought than children being born. Because you can't play Words With Friends with children. Well, you can, but you absolutely destroy them. And then they start crying and it's booooooring.
From the "God has a sick sense of humour" box: a student in America died on her 21st birthday,
dropping dead hours after tweeting “Thank you God for another year of life.” The Lord giveth, etc.
A sequence of haunting photos of abandoned houses and urban decay across America. Sweet, delicious architectural ruin porn.
Video
I don't think I've ever heard the C-bomb more times in two minutes, but "Australia Day, Yeah C**t" still really made me laugh... I probably wouldn't play this around prospective employers.