Aaaaggh. I heard this on the radio a few days ago, but thought ''it cannot be true...'. Shannon Noll and Natalie Bassingthwaighe (or whatever) covering the immortal Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush duet, Don't Give Up. We truly live in the nation of the inauthentic copy. I am speechless. This just distills everything bad about everything.

Unlike Clinton, Bush sees Hanoi in a Bit of a Hurry (NY Times)

Ever wondered what makes Sam from Sam and the City an "exciting young Australian writer", as she claims in her presumably self penned bio?

"Luv ‘n txt is the first ever published guide to the new phenomenon of text dating, a witty and edgy romp through the love-crazed world of SMS messaging. The book covers everything from how to use text to get a D8, using text to keep a D8, and even how to use txt to ditch a D8. A dictionary of common SMS terms and abbreviations as well as a comprehensive guide to the use and creation of emoticons is included. Covering the txt slip-ups of celebrities Kate Moss, Paris Hilton, Shane Warne and David Beckham and describing the tragically hilarious situations such slip-ups have created, advice is given on how to avoid common txt slip-ups like the drunken txt and txting to the wrong number ... oops! ;-P"

Note that she also incorrectly uses 'lieu':

"Yet despite being a generation who flits from relationship to relationship and delays marriage in lieu of fast hookups and casual sex, it seems we're all still striving for one common goal: to love and be loved. As the age old axiom goes, "The heart wants what the heart wants".

I'm not normally interested in grammar myself, but she irritates me so...

This man has children...

Possibly after watching that Ashley Judd movie, OJ milks that whole double jeopardy thing and writes a book titled "if I DID IT: this is how I did it"... It's gonna take a lot of family counselling to explain that to the kiddies.

More Rage...

Howard, quoted in today's Age, responding to an online poll suggesting the public is worried about climate change:

"...it is natural, with all the focus of the last few days on climate change, everybody says 'oh yes, we've got to do more'.
"We are doing a lot and it's very important that we don't overreact to the Stern report."

"I agree that the science says that the globe is getting warmer, I agree that over time we've got to take measures in order to tackle that problem..."

"I respect Professor McKibbin a great deal but the difficulty as I see it with that approach [a carbon emissions trading scheme] is that, in order to preserve our comparative advantage, we'd have to in some way exempt our coal exports and our other resource exports," he said.
"If we did that we might run the risk of imposing a disproportionately heavy burden on our domestic consumers, which could result in even higher electricity prices."

Aaaagh! I find it very difficult to not throw things at computer screens, etc., when I hear Howard consistently framing anxiety about climate change as a fad, and then presenting his own non-solutions as practical, real-world steps. And then this rhetoric of "practical" steps comes up, with H. using the example of his "practical" handling of reconciliation -- we know what that means.

1. Bull-shitty little $8 million dollars here, $5 million dollars there solutions are not solutions. eg Reducing the emissions of 1 Hazelwood generator by something like 1/3 is doing the environment no favours. What it does do is present the illusion that the government is interested in climate change.
2. "Competitive advantage" should be considered, but is not really the point, and not an excuse for inaction. Surely our romp with carbon-energy over the last century has given us a slight competitive advantage against emerging industrial nations?
3. Is all this talk of putting our minds towards the "New Kyoto" just a deferral technique?

Underlining the crazed state of the spin-infused US democratic system, John Kerry has handed the Republicans a sweet, sweet gift ahead of the polls next week. Playing into the image of Democrats as elite, patronising and secretly loathesome of your average Joe citizen, he implied that an average academic record could land school-leavers in Iraq. While I'm sure this is true, we're not really in the sphere of facts here, and it was a pretty idiotic thing to say, particularly at a political rally: "Kerry disprespects US troops", etc. As expected, shock-jocks the country over have gone into hyper-drive, and finally Bush can go on the attack, and ignore complicate questions re real issues like the war itself, and climate change. Kerry!! No! Have you gone and messed it all up?