January 2012
24 posts
“You are not a communist, and you are not a Czechoslovakian. You are a dirty Jew,...”
– The Slansky trials: the chilling anti-Semitism of post-war Stalinism.
“There were no minutes or seconds for the ancients. Neither the postman nor the...”
– Paul Valery (via thebronzemedal)
I think about this a lot, how silent the ancient world must have been.
(via oversets)
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We need to stop thinking of shareholders as... →
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How the “Right” to Cheap Parking Makes Streets... →
In this, as in so much else, the sense of entitlement from haves (I already have a car that makes it easy for me; why aren’t public funds making things easier still?) is overwhelming. It reminds me of luxury restaurant owners who complain about how hard it is to sack their staff.
i-am-vampire:
“Some people might question why you would want to remove race from the constitution and then replace it with a power to legislate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I would say we have to get away from this 19th-century idea that Aboriginal people are members of a “race”. Their identity is based on ancestry, ethnicity and belief systems, not race. We need to have laws...
“Some people might question why you would want to remove race from the...”
– Mark Leibler, The Age
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It's complicated: Melinda Tankard-Reist by Anna... →
Easily the most sensible thing I have read about MTR in quite some time. Highly recommended.
Twitter bio generator →
This is hilariously/chillingly accurate, but it misses out on ‘these views are my own and do not reflect those of my employer’
4 tags
“When governments seek to protect the rich from the poor, they act swiftly and...”
– George Monbiot: Making Democracy Safe for Business: The Guardian.
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“New electoral boundaries and three tropical cyclones also framed the context for...”
– Those were good times. Queensland election 2009
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Cricket was once widely played and popular in the... →
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“These findings show far more than a simple “bias.” They show a stunningly...”
– ThinkProgress on the Murdoch anti carbon price campaign (h/t Damarasaurusrex)
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That Michael Clarke. What a guy. I won't hear a...
Cricket is the stupidest sport I've ever seen.
kiamatthews:
Jack is watching it and trying to explain to me all this nonsense happening and I’m just like “why are there two batters why are they just running back and forth I hate everything about this.”
UNCULTURED SWINE
The Discovery of Vitamins
science:
The concept of vitamins is a hundred years old this year.
During the late 19th century, there were outbreaks of fatal beriberi in East Asia. The study of this disease would lead to the discovery of vitamins. Kanehiro Takaki, a doctor in the Japanese navy, took a special interest in the disease. The navy was plagued by illness: between 1878 and 1881, in a sample of a thousand men, each...
Resolutions
Move house! Should be an easy one, surely.
Get my driver’s license.
Ride my bike on the road.
Languages: I’m not sure what I want to do on this one. I’ll probably re-enrol in Portuguese but I want to do a non-Indo-European language as well. Possibly Mandarin or Korean, since they will likely be the biggest classes at the UQ IML.
Start another blog (I have a few different...
December 2011
22 posts
2 tags
natashavc:
The Morning News, a FANTASTIC site filled with gorgeous essays and reporting, asked me and bunch of smart people what the most important news story of 2011 was. Click and you can also read what heros Julie Klausner, Matthew Gallaway and Matt Langer had to say!! <3
2 tags
The Secret Vice is not a waste of time.
setavulos:
monkeytypist:
It’s good to see that Language log is addressing the anti-constructed language sentiment that is out there; in particular the reflex idea espoused (especially by qualified linguists who should know better) that creating fake languages while real ones exist that are poorly documented is somehow a sinful waste of resources. This strikes me as silly for a number of...
3 tags
2011 was great, no doubt. But there was no Batman...
3 tags
The Secret Vice is not a waste of time.
It’s good to see that Language log is addressing the anti-constructed language sentiment that is out there; in particular the reflex idea espoused (especially by qualified linguists who should know better) that creating fake languages while real ones exist that are poorly documented is somehow a sinful waste of resources. This strikes me as silly for a number of reasons.
Firstly, as the...
So much for the man who thought enlightenment best...
I’m not sad. Sorry.
1 tag
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I don't know what makes me angrier; UQ's continued... →
Belgium has just ended 589 days without a...
Not gonna lie, I’m disappointed that they couldn’t keep it going longer.
monsterpussy:
“It is December 6th, and I remember. I was 13 years old when Marc Lépine opened fire and murdered 14 women for being at engineering school when he wasn’t. He blamed feminism for the situation he was in, and murdered these women for being in non-traditional jobs, for being there. Every year, the memorials I go to are different. Some are quiet - I remember several winters in the snow,...
4 tags
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Jim Green on idiocy and uranium →
The flabbergastingly wrong assertions about nuclear proliferation, the trashing of well-reasoned, entirely sensible opponents, and just the sheer boneheaded determination to implement an idiotic and quite objectively dangerous policy (selling Australian uranium to India) were to me the worst moments of the ALP National Conference.
“I take pride in my work. Sure, there are good days and bad days. Nobody gives...”
– This Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit: Theory and Event
“As leftist parties reorientated themselves toward gaining political support and...”
– Sheri Berman, The Primacy of Politics: Social Democracy and the Making of Europe’s 20th Century, p.188 (via redrabbleroz
)
November 2011
22 posts
Things in popular culture that feel like a bad...
dpdsprings:
These things, to varying degrees and for disparate reasons, feel like they came from a rushed novel about celebrities in 2011:
A glamorous British actress disappearing from the spotlight for a while, returning with a movie about the psychosexual rivalry between Freud and Jung
A “sweetheart” American actress disappearing for two years after winning an Oscar and getting embroiled in...
“A landmark 2006 study, analyzing data from a large survey of Americans, found...”
– Why are people still so afraid of Atheists? churchandstate.org.uk
