If only he could have lasted a little longer

The brilliant and irreplaceable Christopher Hitchens died a few days too soon. Not that we’d wish him to suffer any more discomfort but, selfishly, we’d have relished his eulogy of Vaclav Havel and his bidding good riddance to Kim Jong-il.

Hilarys wank

While some Hollywood celebrities preach about world affairs, others don’t know much at all about the world. Or, it seems, technology. For, if the star of Million Dollar Baby had heard of the series of connected data networks (a network of networks, if you will, AKA the “internet”) or of a company called Google, she may have avoided her recent brush with unsavoury Chechens.

Instead, Misss Wank, outsourced her life to managers who booked her for the gig, which she apparently accepted without question and for which she took payment - until word leaked out. Then, of course, it was time to donate the money to charity and fire all involved.

Swank’s new management represents Kim Kardashian – a team with a proven track record of landing gigs on terms which permit you to make a deal, dupe the public, break the deal and keep the $.

Role model lets down youngsters (again)

Is there no end to misbehaving celebrity role models trashing the dreams of youngsters who hope to emulate their glorious success?

Now we must add to the long list of celebrity shockers that begin with “C” (Carney, Carey, er…) the name Cullen.

Aspiring artists across the country were appalled to learn that Adam Cullen has been caught by police driving while intoxicated and heavily armed.

Parents collecting their children from pre-school today were questioning whether “artistic” “activities” like finger painting and pasta gluing were sufficiently structured for young minds. Some parents openly worried whether a blank bit of card really was a gateway to self-expression or a seductive portal to anarchy, alcohol and firearms.

In thrilling entertainment news…

INXS has just announced…

Sorry, what was that? INXS. IN–X-S. Yes, just like “in excess”, indeed I think it’s a play on those words. Yes. A band. No, more a kind of soft rock. From the 1980s. Well, early 80s.

INXS has just announced a new lead singer just in time for Grand Final Season! In case one of the other “popular music” performers booked by the AFL and NRL, Sherbet and The Little River Band, respectively, nap through their 10 minute call, INXS will be free to step into the frame.

Andrew Farris, guitarist, said “I haven’t been this excited since we announced our last new singer. Or maybe even since the one before that one”.

Donny Sutherland said the announcement was thrilling news, adding that he'd heard the Ted Mulry Gang was in rehearsal.

Molly Meldrum was literally unable to comment.

The Italian solution

In a surprise move Italians have floated and, in some cases, decided to resolve their financial woes by getting others to do it.

It’d be too inconvenient to give up their second salary and pension from the job they don’t often attend or for them to pay even some property or income tax. And for the state to enforce tax laws? What a bother.

It’s far more sensible to require foreign visitors or foreign states to pay money to government - a brilliant and quintessential Italian solution.

Dear Mr Albanese

11 August 2011

The Hon Anthony Albanese
334A Marrickville Road
Marrickville
NSW 2204




Dear Mr Albanese,

Thank you for your letter.

I apologise for not recalling when we met. I assume we’ve met as you used my given name in your salutation. Mind you, if we’ve been introduced, it’s more likely you’d have employed the common abbreviation of my given name.

Anyway, thanks for the invitation to hear you and Mr Combet discuss the carbon tax. Regrettably, I was unable to attend, though I do have a few questions for you.

In your letter, you say the carbon tax won’t be a tax paid by “ordinary Australians”. I was wondering if you could tell me the criterion by which you determine which of us is ordinary and which of us is extraordinary?

If some of us are not considered ordinary, will we be paying the tax?

What do you say to the proposition that Australians, regardless of their ordinariness, are less concerned about who’ll be paying the tax directly to your government than with whether they’ll be paying for it indirectly?

Can you provide an assurance that even “ordinary Australians” won’t face increased costs and charges as a result of the tax? I’m happy to pay my share, but I’d just like you to be straight with me.

Finally, though I applaud you getting young people involved in the democratic process, it does seem a bit tough to have primary school children signing your letters for you.*

I look forward your reply.

Yours sincerely,



Merely Being


* Oh, sorry, it’s just been pointed out to me that’s what your signature looks like. Suddenly, things are becoming clearer.

Well that’s a relief, Commissioner

It’s not been a good few weeks for Police Commissioners.

Adrian Handstock, the Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, said, “We kept a dignified response to that to allow that protest to take place. However, once that extreme violence - and it was violence that could not be anticipated on that scale – occurred, we moved the appropriate level of resources in”.

Dignified? How heartening for those who were beaten, robbed or had their homes destroyed. Fuck dignity, where’re the water cannon? At least if they didn’t use them on the rioters they could have put out some fires.

But more ridiculous was his defence of the police response. Wouldn’t an appropriate level of resources have snuffed out the rioting?

What would Aussie cops do? Not much better - unless the rioting was confined to a single mentally ill person, preferably a teenager. Then we’ve no doubt they’d show great bravery in shooting the poor kid to death from a safe distance.

No shame? She ate it.

Gliberty thought there was a whiff of fatty bashing going on with the outrage concerning Nibbles Nixon’s pie eating during the Victorian bushfires. She ate dinner? But people were dying!!

But Nibbles made a super goose of herself on the 7.30 Report last night when she said (with a straight face, while promoting her autobiography on national television) that she wasn’t a person interested in protecting her reputation.

No doubt every one the 320 pages she’s just written about herself is a scorching indictment of her life and career.

Wadafuggineejit!

Why Australia sucks at cricket

If England wins the current test cricket series against India, it’ll be the undisputed number 1 test nation.

Australia has been beaten at cricket by England a lot in recent years and yet many Australians won’t face up to the fact that there’s only one reason for this. It’s the same reason Australia hasn’t done very well in the football World Cup or at rugby union: Our teams are not as good at cricket/football/rugby as the other teams.

Got it? No? The other teams have better and more skilful players than our teams*.

The common Australian delusion that our players automatically possess the greatest natural gifts and physical prowess on the planet and, therefore, deserve to win is insular as it’s adolescent. It’s also demonstrably not the case. Worse, it holds us back.

As Mr C. Evans has recently demonstrated, success comes from guts, determination, skills (natural and acquired) and bloody hard work. When we face the truth that it’s not bad luck but lack of talent that’s seen us bested in the test arena we will begin to win again.


* Messrs Genia and Cooper excepted.

Leading physicist backs Gliberty

Well, not explicitly…

A while back Carlin Romano used The Chronicle of Higher Education to give Stephen Hawking a kicking. This was in retaliation to Hawking’s provocation that philosophy was dead as it hadn’t kept pace with science, which alone can explain the universe, and that it isn’t necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going.

Gliberty couldn’t see the point of that debate, other than as spectator sport as the confrontation became increasingly spiteful. It caused us to ask – Science Vs Religion. Why bother?

Now Rolf-Dieter Heuer, director of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, who oversees the CERN laboratories in Switzerland, wherein lies the Large Hadron Collider, has neatly sketched the distinction between the two to The European and, blow us down, if he doesn’t concur with Gliberty.

Here are some extracts.

The European: The Higgs Boson has been described as the “God particle”. Many scientists dislike the name. Why?
Heuer: It is too flamboyant and misleading. Why should it be a “God particle”? It is one of the building blocks of the Standard Model, the cornerstone without which the model would not be valid. But there is nothing divine to it. I think the name primarily serves as a publicity tool to attract the attention of publishers.

The European: Let us talk about the idea of the divine. For much of human history, religion and science were deeply intertwined. Galileo was expelled from the church for questioning those links. How would you separate the two realms?
Heuer: We separate knowledge from belief. Particle physics is asking the question of how did things develop? Religion or philosophy ask about why things develop. But the boundary between the two is very interesting. I call it the interface of knowledge. People start asking questions like “if there was a Big Bang, why was it there?” For us physicists, time begins with the Big Bang. But the question remains whether anything existed before that moment. And was there something even before the thing that was before the Big Bang? Those are questions where knowledge becomes exhausted and belief starts to become important.

The European: What is the difference between justified opinion and belief?
Heuer: Justified opinion or knowledge is something that you can at least partially prove. Belief or philosophical thought cannot be examined through experiments.

The European: For Aristotle, physics was the primary science that could tell us almost anything about the cosmos. But he also thought that all things had an innate capacity – the telos – to develop to their full potential.
And so it fell to philosophy to investigate the nature of things.
Heuer: At the edge of physics, it becomes linked to philosophy. But in the case of particle physics, it is really not a question of “believing” but of deducing something from a larger theoretical framework or from experimental data. Once you can prove something, it is no longer a question of philosophy.

To know them is not always to love them

There’s been a lot of bollocks written about Julia Gillard’s cringe making appearance on 60 Minutes. The usually estimable Annabel Crab blithers, “Surely she has earned the right not to endure infantilising questions about whether she really loves her boyfriend”.

But the real question is - surely the PM should have exercised better judgment than to submit herself and her office to such a tawdry, vulgar and undignified encounter?

Not since a former Governor-General, desperate to keep his job, appeared on Australian Story has a senior Australian figure been so poorly advised or exercised such appalling judgment.

As those who’ve endured lengthy encounters with celebrities or politicians know, it’s uncommon for the experience to leave you with a better impression of them.

While we’re at it, we deliberately chose our words when drawing a distinction between celebrities and politicians. They’re not the same, though you’d be forgiven for thinking they were, what with Clooney lecturing us on foreign policy and Costello dancing on Mornings.

The dignity and power of high office is preserved by appropriate distance. But the PM let us come too close to her - close enough for our vomit to splash her boots.

We should be confident that our leaders are of sound judgement. Clearly, this one is not.

Henry Ergas and Gliberty – fine judges of character

Gliberty has long admired Henry Ergas’ elegant turn of phrase and forensic demolition of sloppy policy. Today he shows himself to be fine judge of character with his acute observations concerning Professor Ross Garnaut's “I-ism”.

Of course, you read it here first.

Gliberty loves Charlotte

Charlotte Rampling sums up a familiar visceral burn when she says, "Ever since I was a small child I've had this feeling – it's in my nature, and so it's not even pretentious – that if everyone's going one way I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance. That's how I can keep myself alive and interested and my emotions going".

In fact, the love is so great she’s even forgiven for saying, "I could have been a superstar in America".

Fulfilment

Geoff Robertson, who knows a thing or two about how get your mug on the box (e.g. marry a slapper), reckons America played into Bin Laden’s hands by shooting him.

According to Geoff, Bin Laden’s vaulting ambition was to be shot in the face in a scuzzy bedroom while wearing (very recently) soiled PJs.

I am sure we can share Geoff’s telepathic certainty that the last thing the Big Bin thought before his face spouted a leak was, “I’ve won!”.

The NSW Election. What really happened.

Seriously. What happened? Naturally, last night chez Gliberty was lit only by natural bees’ wax candles in observance of Earth Hour.


Note: Inspired by the, err..., glittering example of Earth Hour, this post is being written and uploaded using power generated by four local tabbies chasing each other on the household treadmill.

There, but for the good fortune, goes you

If you were single, cashed up, attractive to your preferred sex and had a predilection for all intoxicants and a lot of spare time, what would you do?

Charlie’s chosen porn stars, liquor and the drug which shares his name.

Out of control? Troubled? Honest and fortunate, perhaps.

Gives pause for thought, hey Julia? Anna?

Lucky all these Queenslanders were in Christchurch holidaying or there’d have been no volunteer rescuers.