Saturday, April 19, 2008

Interview question of the week

Friday night on Lateline, Virginia Trioli interviewed John Hartigan, chairman and CEO of News Limited, regarding his participation in the Rudd Government’s 2020 Summit.

Andrew Bolt [a News Limited columnist] described the 2020 summit this way — those who are taking part in it: “These 1,000 leftists, rent seekers, courtiers, string-pullers, patsies and token tamed conservatives...

Now, John Hartigan, which one are you?

Neat...

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Names and shades

Whilst sorting through a pile of old VHS tapes, I came across a rockumentary called The Story of Rock and Roll, produced by the Nine Network and screened in November 1995.

The opening credits announced the appearance of a Pete Towshend...

Among the luminaries interviewed for the production was a certain Al Kopper...

Mr Kopper bore a striking resemblance to a later interviewee, Al Kooper...

Kooper was one of several rock-legends who evidently require dark glasses when being interviewed indoors, including Eric Burdon...

... and Eddie Van Halen...

... and Barnsey...

Bono, in contrast to his more recent custom, was interviewed sans shades — perhaps because he was outdoors in broad daylight...

A more recent indoors pic shows how Bono has matured as a human being ...

On Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope in 2006, Bono explained his dark-glasses fetish thus:

BONO: I mean, I’ve got a — there’s many reasons for the glasses — posing, I’m sure, right up there, privacy, and I do like having one step of a remove, actually. I don’t think I have — I don’t think when I’m singing I hold anything back and I don’t think when I’m writing I hold anything back. But I think I’m allowed to hold something back in this kind of a set-up, and, as honest a man that you are and as honest as I’m trying to be, there is a natural insincerity in the kind of — in the set-up, and I’m trying to be much better at it, but I just need one step removed.

ANDREW DENTON: That’s a good answer...

Good as any.

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Friday, April 18, 2008

Goat Friday

Legal and epistemological minefield predicted

After a long hard week, here’s the kind of story that makes life sweet:

The United Kingdom’s fortune-tellers, mediums and spiritual healers will march on Downing Street to protest against new laws they fear will lead to them being “persecuted and prosecuted”.

Organisers say that replacing the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951 with new consumer protection rules will remove key legal protection for “genuine” mediums.

They think sceptics might bring malicious prosecutions to force spiritualists to prove in court that they can heal people, see into the future or talk to the dead.

Psychics also fear they will have to give disclaimers describing their services as entertainment or as scientific experiments with unpredictable results.

In my humble opinion those “genuine” guys should be seizing this opportunity to prove, once and for all, that their’s is a legitimate field of scientific endeavour. As a bonus, they could tip the bucket on those malicious sceptics.

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