Why staffers shouldn't use social media

That Jason Wilson in The Guardian wrote at length about how Lefties can't trust libertarians (rather obvious, really), but he did do us a service by linking to a site showing a twitter exchange which shows Helen Dale being upfront about the cynical use of "wind turbine sickness" by her boss to attack the wind energy sector.

Here is part of the relevant sequence:

Of course, everyone sensible knew that this is the motivating factor behind Leyonhjelm and his adviser's interest in wind turbines and infrasound.

But it's funny to see his staffer confirming it....
 

Appeal

I know little of defamation law, but it is rather odd that, apparently, you can be defamed by a headline on a poster when the newspaper article itself does not defame.  Who believes that newspaper headlines are always literally true?   Are Gillard and Rudd now free to cast their eyes back over 5 years of stupid Daily Tele and Herald posters to see which are defamatory?

I hope there are grounds for appeal on the Hockey case.

Even if there are not, unless this dud of a Treasurer declares that he is giving his damages to charity, the win is not actually likely to improve the public's poor perception of the guy.

Update:  having watched 7.30's explanation last night, the most interesting thing is the way the case found that the tweet with a link to the story (with the story itself not defamatory) was still defamatory.   The logic was that the hundreds of thousands who saw the tweet but did not follow the link had been given the defamatory claim without checking the detail which would have set them straight.

But surely the fact that so few people who got the tweet clicked on the link can be used to argue that people know not to trust headlines, and the fact they didn't follow the link shows they did not interpret the headline to be literally true.   I mean, if they thought the tweet meant that the Treasurer had literally changed policy due to a bribe, then many more would surely have wanted to follow the link to the story.

I can't see why the judge made law shouldn't be aligned with what people actually expect from the media:  attention grabbing headlines that are given proper explanation in the article.   

Not allowed to take comedy seriously?

Manohla Dargis gave a detailed, serious minded critical review of the latest crude movie by the wealthy, but tragically stuck as a permanent 14 year old, Seth MacFarlane (the move being the not particularly well performing Ted2), and people (including Steve Sailer) are mocking her for it.

I dunno.  When a movie features an attempt at humour described as this:

Mr. MacFarlane’s fixation on anatomy is especially striking and reaches its nadir in a scene at a sperm bank. There, John accidentally knocks over a shelving unit and ends up splashed with ejaculate that, a nurse explains, has been excluded because the donors have sickle cell anemia. As John writhes, Ted laughs. “You’re covered in rejected black guys’ sperm,” Ted says. “You’re like a Kardashian.” Mr. Wahlberg plays the moment with the right level of desperation, but Ted’s lines are depressing and desperate. 

I don't see at all what is wrong with some serious discussion of what is meant to make comedy funny.  This section by Dargis is spot on:

In “Ted 2,” he generates squirms, largely because his humor is so tone deaf. A Freudian might enjoy trying to figure out if his repeated references to black male genitalia represents a fear of black (male) power or something a wee more personal. And Mr. MacFarlane may believe that mechanically reciting words will drain them of their force, which superficially recalls Lenny Bruce’s idealistic claim that the repetitive use of a familiar racial slur would do the same. “The word’s suppression gives it the power,” Bruce said in 1962, “the violence, the viciousness.” History has proved otherwise, and the word, its violence and viciousness are still with us. I think that Mr. MacFarlane knows this, and that’s why he cast a few well-known black actors in authority roles, as if to signal, wink-wink, that the race stuff is just all in good fun.

She talks a lot more about the race aspects of the attempted jokes.

There is nothing wrong with a review of this kind.

The party line fails

What, so I don't get a fresh Newspoll after all?  Disappointing.

But what wasn't disappointing was Media Watch and Q&A last night, which made it perfectly clear (if it wasn't already) that the Abbott government massive over-reaction to the Mallah appearance on Q&A was ridiculous from the get-go and utterly fails to bear calm scrutiny.

It was hard to pick who came out looking stupidest last night - bloviating, needs-to-retire bore Paul Kelly, fumbling his way around trying to explain why his paper could do an article painting Mallah as a reformed jihadist but Q&A was the worst show in the world for having him ask a specific question about how proposed citizenship rules could affect him; or Tim Wilson getting upset that people laughed at him when Jones had a silent dig at his selective take on when we can hear free speech on the ABC and when we can't.  

The most absurd thing about all of this Abbott hypersensitivity to his government being asked pointed questions is that, in fact, the Australian media (including the ABC) has collectively  let his government get away with unjustified secrecy and cover up of a major issue of national interest (boat turn backs, lock ups on the high seas, and what goes on in Manus Island and Naru) to a disgraceful extent.

But Abbott, being the dumbest Prime Minister of at least the last 50 years, doesn't realise the soft glove treatment he's received on this. 

Update:  am amused to read that the readers of Catallaxy seem to think Wilson and Kelly came out looking good last night.  It's like a public service now, that blog:  it lets the dumb, the blind, the immature and the offensive who can't get a gig on Bolt's threads comfort and support each other in one little corner of the 'net that's safely cordoned off for people who don't want to hear from them.

Weekend movies reviewed

Far From the Madding Crowd:  unfamiliar with the source material, or the 1967 version which seems to be held in pretty high regard, I was quite satisfied with this beautifully shot romantic melodrama.  I should really write melodrama with a capital "M":  I didn't realise that Victorian authors other than Dickens were so much into co-incidence as a plot driver, but Hardy certainly was.  As reviewers have noted, the movie makes the story feel modern, but now having read a bit about Hardy's work more generally, I see he tended to upset quite a few with his take on marriage, women and sexuality.  (And he wasn't gay - something that the 1990's run of Merchant Ivory films has sort of conditioned me to expect for the source material of period drama.)

There's a very enthusiastic review of the film in Salon which I pretty much agree with, as well as fascinating article in The Conversation about some real life women who managed agricultural estates in that period.

The movie is well worth seeing - but if you are male, be prepared to be in an audience that is about 80% not of your gender, and to look out of place if you are there alone...

Noah Goes Psycho:   That's what they should have called that Noah movie from last year.  What a disaster, from concept to execution.   I just can't get my head around the point of it all:  reinventing a Bible story to make it a modern eco parable and in the process attempting to make some of it more "plausible" to modern minds (by the "drugging the animals" bit, so they don't eat each other) while making other bits more bizarrely improbable (rock encrusted angels - apparently the "giants in the earth" - but of somewhat uncertain allegiance; the Tolkien-esque CGI fighting off the hoards; not to mention the glowing Adam and Eve.)   In this movie, God sure has an oblique way of passing on messages to Noah, so much so that he seems not to understand the ultimate point at all and starts to go all serial killer.   And while the issue of God and "natural evil" may be one that a modern agnostic Greenie does not fret about in his or her love of all animals not human, surely any sensible post-Fall Old Testament figure would have worked out that nature as it is around them is not the same as it was meant to have been in the Garden of Eden?  

Look, getting into the mind of the authors of some of the Old Testament is a challenge as it is*; but I hardly see the point of making odd myth even stranger than it was originally.   None of this movie made sense at any level.  If you want a detailed explanation of where it invents things for no clear reason, you can check out  this article in Slate.

* Eg, no one seems to have a clue what the whole Noah getting drunk and being seen naked was all about, but the movie keeps it in, and indicates it's mere prudery.  So something that deserves some creative explanation doesn't get tackled at all.)

Jurassic World:   a lot of fun and a very worthy sequel; in fact, probably what should have been the only sequel to the original movie.  (I consider Lost World to be a one of Spielberg's worst, perhaps second only to Always, which I think is at the bottom by a country mile.  I haven't ever watched the whole of JP3, but it didn't seem too bad.)

The movie looks fantastic from the very start (that's one realistic dinosaur hatching that alone indicates how special effects have improved since the original) and the theme park setting as a whole looks completely convincing, no doubt due to the wonders of modern CGI when used to make realistic looking sets as opposed to gloomy, fantasy landscape.   (It also looks like it has a budget significantly bigger than the first film - but with the way they can fake crowds and buildings these days, who knows?)  The dinosaurs all look great and all, to my mind, significantly better than in the first film.  The least realistic looking thing - the oversized mosasaur - was still fun to watch.

The movie reminded me somewhat of the disaster films of the late 70's but with some mild modern skewering (the near kiss of the co-workers was quite witty), and it was about ten times better than any of Emmerich's awful films. 

Sure, it's not perfect, but well directed, likeable enough actors and moves with a pleasing amount of mayhem.

I really don't think they should try to re-visit it, but the huge success means they inevitably will. 

It's the vibe

I'm curious to see what Newspoll says tomorrow (even if one poll is never entirely trustworthy, especially when the company is changing its polling methods) to see whether it reflects what the nation's political commentators have already decided.

It seems to me that we're in one of those weird bits of self fulfilling punditry you see overwhelm the Australian media from time to time.  They've all decided, whether from the soft Left or the tabloid right, that Tony Abbott is looking in "winning" form again, and Shorten is on the skids.   And all this despite nearly all polls being stuck for a very lengthy period on a Labor winning 52/48 TPP, not to mention the latest polling appearing to boost the Greens to 13%.  And also despite the fact that, as even a cursory look at social media show,  Abbott's performance last week on "national security" bombast has confirmed him in the minds of a huge number as the biggest numbnut of a Prime Minister in a lifetime.

We've seen odd periods like this before, and I'm not sure how it happens.  Gillard had terrible runs with media commentary too, when Labor polling was behind but not necessarily disastrously so.    I guess it could be that they (Canberra journalists) get the inside mood from the dissatisfied in the parties, and then that colours their own views; but it always strikes me as having a enormous amount of seemingly unrealised self fulfilling prophesy to it, yet they keep at it.  

Inappropriate, alright

Today's Saturday Paper alerts me to Helen Dale's 14 June Facebook post which is, indeed, completely inappropriate for a Senator's staffer to be writing with respect to a person her boss wants called to give evidence before his committee.  In full:

Okay, this is a message for those skeptics friends of mine in Australia who are into Public Health.
You need to pull the likes of Simon Chapman and Nathan Lee into line. First, you need to teach both of them to stop with the ad hominem. Then you need to teach the former statistics and how to read them. Then you need to teach both of them how to argue and clarify their thoughts.
David and I can turn both of them into mince on Twitter - yes Twitter - without much effort. This should not happen. I'm a lawyer with a finance major and David's a vet with an MBA.

Now while it's very nice to win arguments all the time, that's not the same as being right. And I'd rather be right than feel smug about my own argumentative aptitude.
My suspicion is - like many people on the left - they live in a bubble and get neither their arguments nor their evidence tested severely or regularly (the very opposite of this Facebook page, for starters).
I'm relying on you to fix this. And if it isn't fixed, I will take great pleasure in ensuring the individuals in question aren't just minced on Twitter.
Getting minced by a Senate Committee is a lot less fun, I assure you.

It also shows her tenuous relationship with sound judgement in that it is extremely unlikely that in a Committee match up between Chapman and Leyonhjelm that it's Chapman who will come out looking bad.

Dale doesn't seem to realise that outside of her small circle, most of the public already consider Leyonhjelm an eccentric kook.

Conspiracies considered

Why Conspiracy Theories Aren’t Harmless Fun

Not a bad article here, arguing that conspiracy-think is not the harmless, funny thing that some like to think.

Not that they get a mention in the article, but this is particularly true when it comes to the gullibility of large parts of the Muslim world, and climate change deniers.

Weekend movie plans

I am planning on going to see the rather Merchant Ivory-ish sounding, but well reviewed,  Far From the Madding Crowd tonight (I have a cinema gift voucher to finish using, and frankly, I would prefer to see it over ugly Australian Mad Max violence), and Jurassic World tomorrow.   My wife will only be accompanying me to the latter.  My gender reassignment surgery is booked in for the end of the year.*

*  not really.  The waiting period is 12 months.**

** none of the above is to be taken seriously, unless you are a reader from Catallaxy, in which you are free to believe this along with all the other nonsense filling your head.

Leyonhjelm and his "look at me" enquiry

So the Bald One with interests in seriously minority views on anthropology, inaudible sounds,  climate change, compulsory voting and gun control is now wanting to hold an enquiry that will include the following topics in bold that the Commonwealth doesn't even legislate about?

So we'll be looking at the sale and service of alcohol, smoking and e-cigarettes, bicycle helmets I've already mentioned, classification of films and video games. That sort of stuff.

OK, the Commonwealth taxes alcohol, but AFAIK it doesn't legislate about opening hours and who it can be served to.   Bicycle helmets probably have a national standard, but that's it for the Commonwealth.

Even most smoking laws are State based, no?  

But anything to have an attempted "look at me" moment, hey?; pretty much like the way the Republicans call pointless committee meetings that invite that handful of climate change contrarian scientists to give evidence again and again each year while their actual reputation in mainstream science diminishes.

Leyonhjelm and anthropology

Apparently, David Leyonhjelm is up on anthropology to a much greater extent than the average person who has a fair idea that aborigines as a group who looked pretty much like the ones when the First Fleet arrived had been here for some thousands of years previously.

He's quite the woo-meister, hey Jason?

I'm interested in his views on UFOs too.

The worst thing about the ABC...

...is listening to them being enthusiastic about women's team sports.

It's unnatural and there ought to be a government inquiry into it.

(Even allowing for the fact that I can barely muster interest into men's teams sports more than 3 times a year, I still have my doubts more than perhaps 10% of the total population have any interest at all in women's team sports.*  And every single one of them apparently listens to the ABC.)    

*  women who do well at individual sports like swimming or running - that's different.

Grow up, media

A minor kerfuffle going on about Bill Shorten lying about the leadership situation.

Come on, media morons.  Everyone knows politicians on all sides of politics lie to the media in the lead up to a spill.  It's unfortunate, but routine. 

California drought charts

CA H2O | Open Mind

I'm not sure if El Nino is likely to put a sudden end to it, but here are some worrying graphs about the current state of the Californian drought.

What an absurd, glass jawed, posturing government we have

I was reminded on Radio National this morning that on Q&A years ago, John Howard had a shoe thrown at him, was offered immediate and sincere apologies by a clearly upset host, and he (Howard) reasssured Jones not to beat himself up about it.

Fast forward to the obnoxious Abbott government, and a posturing minor figure in it gets to tell someone that he deserves to be booted out of Australia under laws which in fact will not apply to him (assuming the reports I read are correct that the guy in question is not a duel citizen, just an Australian citizen.)    The ex-crim in question, who has appeared on other shows without the hosts being in fear that he was going to knife them live on screen, then says that this sort of talk encourages some to go join ISIS. 

Well, according to the Murdoch press, this is the biggest outrage to have ever occurred in the history of the ABC.

This government is a clown act supported by a clown press.

How do the "middle of the road" Murdoch journalists live with themselves?

Malcolm putting on a show?

The Coalition's reaction to Mallah's appearance on Q&A is completely over the top, with our proto fascist  PM delivering his obnoxious "you're either with us or agin us, ABC" line again today.



But not only that, in what one suspects is a bit of Malcolm turning it on to placate the idiots in his own party, we get this:

Politics Live: June 23, 2015: 3:03pm: Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull is asked about Zaky Mallah's appearance on Q and A.

Mr Turnbull essentially asks what would have happened had Mr Mallah threatened the safety of guests and audience and crew members present for the filming.

"Mr Mallah was a known quantity....It beggars belief that he was included in a live audience. Surely we have learned to take threats of this kind, people of this kind, extremely seriously. The idea that there were no physical security checks on this audience or that this man was allowed in is extraordinary."

 I presume he hasn't read what appeared on the News.com website today:

Back home he has spoken out against clashes between the Islamic
community and police and actively discouraged radicalised Australian
Muslims from joining the Islamic State.

“Young people in Sydney
and Melbourne who are considering joining ISIS, you don’t know what
you’re doing to your family,” he told The Project.

“You are harming yourself, you are harming the Islamic community.”

He called young Australians fighting in Iraq and Syria “idiots and wankers who are giving Islam and the Muslim world a bad name.

“I hope ASIO is on to you, I hope your passport is refused and I hope you’re arrested and locked up.”....

Mr Mallah said: “The Islamic community in Australia is one of the worst communities in the world.

“Every
time I jump on Facebook, all I see is negativity ... Look at what we
have become. I don’t care if you follow a specific ideology or school of
thought, the Islamic community has dropped to a new low.”

Sure, the Mallah's still an idiot for his temper tantrum too, but it sure doesn't sound like he's someone who's a threat to a studio audience.  Can everyone calm down?

 

Victoria gone thoroughly Labor

Wow.  Even with the total cost of the cancellation of the East West link now known, Victorians appear completely happy with their new Labor State government:

Matthew Guy shrugs off Newspoll gloom on Victorians voting Liberal | The Australian: Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has shrugged off polling showing less than one third of Victorians would vote Liberal if a state election were held now.

Responding to the latest Newspoll in Victoria — the first major published poll since the election — Mr Guy said today it was early days and his personal numbers were strong.

The poll put Daniel Andrews’ Labor government in a commanding position with a 58 to 42 lead after preferences that would translate to a landslide victory if replicated in an election.

Judith Sloan must be contemplating a permanent move to Queensland.   Oh wait - Labor seems pretty settled here too.  New South Wales then, which might be the main place where Liberals are looking strong(ish).   

As noticed on Landline

I forget to watch it most weeks, but Landline remains a quality show (and of the kind a commercial TV network is never likely to make.)

Two interesting things in last Sunday's episode.  First, this commentary on free trade agreements:

The Australia-America freed trade agreement signed in 2005 is a classic example of how hype rarely matches reality.

Australia was promised an el-dorado - but as far as benefits go, we've ended up in that well-known proverbial street.

The figures don't lie - the bilateral trade gap between the United States and Australia continues to grow - in America's favour.

American goods exports to Australia in 2013 - 26 billion dollars - Australia's exports to the U.S. - 9.3 billion.

So the lesson is - when politicians talk about the Australia-China free trade agreement meaning an 18 billion dollar boost over ten years - take that advice with a cupful of salt - and remember what was said about the deal with America.

However, on the plus side - farmers and graziers should be happy - in fact Chinese dairy farmers are said to be very unhappy - which can only be a good thing for our dairy farmers.

 And second, this fascinating story (you must watch the video) about cave diving beneath farms in South Australia.  Wish I could embed the video...

Gravity and that Cat

I strongly suspected that there was some poor science reporting going on with that story in Nature News "How gravity kills Schrodinger's Cat".  And I was right.

Go read Bee's explanation of the matter to understand it properly.

Quite a range

Charles Aznavour: 'I wanted to break every taboo' | Music | The Guardian

Well, who knew this guy was still out there, making music?  

In truth, I know little about him, but am kind of amused to read about the topics of his songs:

When Aznavour began writing in the 1940s, sex was something that
happened with the light off. It was OK for women singers to howl over
their broken hearts, but men didn’t sing about their own emotional
despair – and later their dodgy prostates. Aznavour shone a spotlight on
masculinity and libido, singing about depression, sex, prejudice and
rape. His hits ranged from the 1970s story of a gay transvestite in What
Makes a Man, to the once-banned ballad of muggy, post-coital
exhaustion, Après l’Amour, and the controversial You’ve Let Yourself Go –
the plea of a man whose wife has grown dowdy and fat (“I gaze at you in
sheer despair and see your mother standing there”).

Apart from what must be a poor reputation amongst feminists, he's written a song referencing prostate problems?