You are currently viewing the archive for December 2002.
To do: finish the archives, “about” page, “links” page, Quickies archive layout, search templates, find out if I can use cron, install MT-RssFeed, Christmas shopping, eat dinner, watch the Bill, watch Night & Day, sleep. In no particular order.
This mini-blog idea was shamelessly stolen from Neale Talbot and Bright Cold Matt. The shortcut icon was nicked from Neale, Graham Freeman and Grant Williamson. Cheers, fellas.
A bit of confusion over Tim Blair and here/hear. I’ve updated accordingly.
I don’t know how long my results have been available, but I checked them today.
Good news — I somehow managed to pull off a credit in Property Law. I must have done reasonably well in the exam, despite the fact that I went to about three classes in Semester Two and spent just three days revising for it. (”Revising.” I don’t think I can use that word here… perhaps “vising” would be more appropriate.) The best thing is, I’m not doing any Law next year!
I scored high distinctions for Politics & The Media, and Aboriginal People in Contemporary Australia. I’m still waiting on The Politics & History of Genocide, having submitted my major assignment (pdf) only a couple of days ago, but I’m pretty confident of at least a distinction.
Now I’ve got to settle down and find myself an honours topic. The Battye Library will be getting a workout in the new year. Why did they put it on the top floor?
Tim Blair hints that his high school reports were littered with Fs. We also know that his high-school English teacher is no stranger to failure, either. Put two and two together, and you get a strong hint that Tim should avoid being too picky over grammar:
Former Labor front bencher Carmen Lawrence has joined Margo Kingston at Webdiary. To which I can only say, “here, here.”
Which is as Ms. Lawrence renders “hear, hear.”
Ooh, you are clever, aren’t you, Tim? Actually, no:
The correct term is, “hear, hear!” It is an abbreviation for “hear, all ye good people, hear what this brilliant and eloquent speaker has to say!”
Of course, if the speaker is actually asking a question, such as “and just where do you think we should open the new strip club?” it’s not hard to imagine that at least one yahoo in attendance might yell, “here, here!” But this would be the exception that proves the rule.
Oh well. At least he can claim consistency. As the old saying goes, “Show me the boy at seven, and I will show you the man.”
UPDATE: It was Carmen who was wrong, not Tim. The phrase “which is as Ms Lawrence renders ‘hear, hear’”, combined with the fact that Margo had fixed the spelling before I read the piece, meant that I wedged my foot neatly in my mouth. Oh well, chalk one up for Blair.
The following entry was written about a week ago, before I lost everything. I did a bit of research for it, and I don’t think people had a chance to read it, so I’m posting it again.
Gareth Parker thinks I’m “being stupid” by defending the principle of equal pay for equal work:
Specifically, he believes children should be paid the same as adults, and he doesn’t accept that this situation would result in a huge downturn in youth employment.
In fact, I don’t think children should be paid as much as adults. I don’t think children should be working at all — my complaint is about discrimination against “young adults” or “youths”. I tried to point this out to Gareth, saying, “If you’re old enough to leave school and enter the workforce, you’re not a child any more.” He replied:
Last time I checked (could be wrong) if you are under the age of 18, you are a child.
Unfortunately, at least in the context of this debate, you are wrong. (In fact, so was I, because my original post [no longer available] referred to people under 18 years.)
When the House of Reps looked at the issue, they didn’t talk about “children”:
For the purposes of the inquiry the Committee has defined young people as those within the age range from 15 to 24 years old. This is consistent with the definition of youth recognised by the United Nations, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA) and the majority of submissions to the inquiry.
[pdf]
You would hardly describe the age range of 15-24 as “childhood”. Youth wages apply up to the age of 21, but the point is the same — we’re not talking about children. That is why the terms in use here are “junior” or “youth” — not “child” — wages. By using that terminology, Gareth was attempting to present my views as something they plainly were not. I don’t think a six-year-old should be earning the same as an adult: I don’t think a six-year-old should be working at all.
Still, I’m just being pedantic. The real issue is whether youth wages are justifiable, and I don’t think they are. As I’ve repeatedly stated, the overarching principle that should be applied is “equal pay for equal work”. The Howard Government’s support for youth wages contradicts its opposition to age-based discrimination (and they know this, which is why youth wages are an express exception from anti-discrimination legislation). This exception is, in my opinion, indefensible.
Read the rest of this entry…
Windschuttle’s new book, The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, has been doing the blogging rounds.
Scott Wickstein kicked off with an interesting post on the nature of history. For Scott (and Lyndall Ryan) there is room for different histories of the same event. I would tend to agree. However, I always get pissed off when people say “all opinions are equal”, and I’m sure Scott does too. An opinion is only worth as much as the information and logic on which it is based.
That’s why I think Windschuttle’s argument is a load of bollocks. While it’s important to scrutinise claims made by other historians, it is ludicrous to suggest that only documented events occurred. Windschuttle pretends that when people murder other people, they immediately dob themselves in to police. He also pretends that because Aborigines didn’t keep written records, their version of events can be ignored.
Most bizarrely of all, he finds all kinds of reasons to ignore documentary evidence that contradicts his view. A frequent excuse is that the diarist is a Christian nutbag with a vested interest in massacres of Aborigines being larger than they really were. This doesn’t sit well with his other claim — that the fundamental Christian morality of the invaders precluded them from violence against the Aborigines.
Windschuttle is a nitpicker. He questions the methods of the so-called “orthodox school” of historians, but his own methods are even more dubious. He has certainly done nothing to convince me that genocide did not occur in Australia. In fact, while researching a paper on his claims (pdf) I was thoroughly convinced of the opposite.
Well, here goes.
After the Ranters Network was hacked, and Mentalspace was taken out as collateral damage, I took the time to put the finishing touches to this new design.
I’m starting the site from scratch. My databases were gone, and so were all the archive files, so I couldn’t put things together anyway. (That’ll learn me to do a regular backup.) I decided to delete everything else, too. The Political Blogmap, Bias in the Blogosphere, a bunch of essays (there obviously isn’t a whole heap of info on the WA gold rush on the internet — people were downloading my first-year paper constantly). All gone.
But it’s all over now. I’ve still got some little adjustments to make, but I’m back in business. So’s Gareth Parker, albeit in temporary Blogspot digs.
Oh, and how can I forget the beautiful Manas, who is also restored to her former glory, minus all her posts. Three, to be exact. But that’ll change in no time, as she’s slowly being sucked into the vortex that is the blogosphere…
Actually, the time away from the blog was good. I finally finished my overdue assignments…
