News
Times have changed for a royal visit.
The Queen arrived in Canberra yesterday to be greeted by our female Prime Minister and female Governer-General. The men stood back and presumably talked about cricket or meat or darkies (for Prince Phillip) or something. More to the point, a grand total of about 400 people turned out to welcome her, 200 of whom were schoolkids presumably there on excursion, which does perhaps suggest something about our passion for the monarchy at this point in our national evolution.
Ha! Well, the Herald Sun has been ordered to print
a 500 word apology for and retraction of the column that got Andrew Bolt done for racial vilification. It must appear twice, two weeks apart, and directly adjacent to his regular column, both online and in print. Which I'm sure will have the effect of spontaneously convincing all his regular readers that the man is, in fact, a mendacious villian. I really think they should open the comments section underneath the online version.
Rush Limbaugh, a man who makes Andrew Bolt look like a commentator for the New York Times, is in a certain amount of strife after
he criticised Obama's choice to send 100 US troops to Central Africa to combat the violent and cult-like Lord's Resistance Army. His rationale being that these guys were Christians, who were fighting Muslims in Sudan, ergo we should be supporting them, not trying to destroy them. A characterisation that seems to be cheerfully blind to the endless tide of rape, murder, amputation, child slavery and slaughter that is a day out for the LRA. But don't believe me, believe
a woman who was stolen from her home as a child to be used as a sex slave for these goodly Christians.
There was another goddamn GOP Presidential debate yesterday, the last, blessedly, for a month, a fiery affair that showed all the candidates in true fighting form. Which given the general intellectual standing of most of the people trying to make their way to the White House next year sounded nothing so much like a horde of lab chimps fighting over food. Or, in this case, immigration policy AKA "I hate Mexicans more than you".
An interview with some of the otherwise generally faceless Palestinian men released in exchange for Gilad Shalit. Meanwhile, Shalit's own interview, wherein he seemed to endorse the release of more Palestinians, has been the subject of some controversy, after it was revealed
the interview was conducted pretty much minutes after his release, while Hamas militants still surrounded him. They do anything for the story on Egyptian TV.
A woman in the UK stands accused of being a Russian spy, after it was revealed that over four years she became embroiled in affairs with a Lib Dem MP, a NATO official, a Dutch diplomat and a senior United Nations official. Or maybe she's just really, really attracted to mid-range political power.
In quite astounding news, it appears that a commercially viable, effective malaria vaccine may be just around the corner. Recent results from a broad study of children in Northern Africa has shown that a particular vaccine cuts rates of malaria infection by roughly half. While obviously not total protection by any means, even at that stage we'd be talking hundreds of thousands of lives saved every year. It's still early days yet, but we could be on the cusp of one of the most significant medical events of the last half century.
Features
Greg Jericho has short shrift for the Occupy Melbourne/Sydney/Brisbane protesters and I tend to agree with him. The commenters are up in arms that he would dare to draw conceptual links with such other august protest movements as the Convoy of No Confidence, but in their uncanny mix of inefficacy and intellectual blandness, I find the comparison rather compelling.
A provocative but I think in many ways on point look at problems with the drinking culture in the UK (and, by extension, the US and Australia) as more a symptom of a particular cultural attitude towards alcohol rather than to alcohol per se. Which strikes me as reasonably self-evident to anyone who has travelled or had contact with people from both the UK and continental Europe – to paraphrase Martin Amis from his book 'Money', "You know how they say the French drink to live? Well, we drink to die".
Oddities/Curiosities
This guy was arrested after forcing his daughter sword fight with him until she collapsed from exhaustion. Why yes, he is a ye olde medieval enthusiast. Why no, I'm not entirely sure how he ever convinced anyone to sleep with him.
This woman was arrested and charged with domestic battery after she assaulted her husband with cupcakes. According to the news report, "When police arrived, they found Arturo Monesdeoca with icing smeared on his head and clothes". Police think Arturo was about to dessert her, but she extracted the sweetest revenge. The criminal charge was just the icing on the c– yeah, I'm done.
Video
Leigh Sales interviewing Alan Jones on the 730 Report. Like staring into the abyss and hearing it ramble and self-justify for ten minutes.
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