On the Sydney Morning Herald website, an ad for flights to Hawaii beside a story about an Australian man who died flying a plane to Hawaii. Classy. Plus, other media news for the day.
November, 2010
Political snippets: Baillieu’s lower-case administration
If Ted Baillieu does appoint the recently retired federal MP Petro Georgiou as his chief of staff we can be sure that this will be a small “l” administration.
Video of the Day: Cancun chat with the climate change ambassador
Phillip Ireland — who’ll be blogging for Crikey’s Rooted blog while in Cancun — interviews Louise Hand, Australia’s ambassador for climate change on the Cancun conference, which kicks off today. What countries are the most likely to block change?
Tips and rumours: Tips and rumours
Christmas party watch: The SA Police Star Force Christmas show at Intercontinental Hotel on Friday night was a pretty lively affair. So much so that the wines were removed on no less than two occasions — and the second time it was for good. It seems that the cream of the force could not handle the fruit […]
Crikey Says: Protecting power from embarrassment
WikiLeaks is at it again. Doing what, exactly?
Vale Leslie Nielsen
Leslie Nielsen has passed away, aged 84. While best known for movies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun, Nielsen made a significant contribution to television including a corker performance in Police Squad, writes Dan Barrett.
travel Karaoke + $412 in bar tabs = missed flights
The fact that Rafiq Copeland was at a karaoke bar singing Africa by Toto will testify to his drunkness. Yet it came as a shock to wake up and realise he’d missed his flight to Johannesburg. God bless Ian from the Qantas customer call centre.
How to succeed online by abusing your customers
Online entrepreneur Vitaly Borker has refined a bizarre and reportedly effective strategy for his internet eyeglasses biz: he abuses his customers so that they leave bad reviews on other websites, then sits back and watches his Google rank climb.
Mungo MacCallum: Gillard’s welcome show of strength on Telstra
It was a fitting climax to Labor’s tumultuous parliamentary year. Julia Gillard finally brought off a big win with the passage of the Telstra legislation, but hostile commentators were still able to spin it as a defeat.
Ambivalence at the ballot box: polling station observations from a regular voter
Joseph Dunstan is an average 19-year-old kid who decided to spend a full day lending a hand at his local polling booth. This is his story.
Australia’s parliament the worst in the world
The outsider-looking-in article makes for great reading and this Financial Times article dissing Australia’s farcical Question Time, the factional warlords running the two parties and this year’s riotous prime ministerial spill is a beauty.
travel Warriors against silence: reading at the San Francisco public library
As the plan of the main library in San Francisco is open, with no full separation between floors, one gets the sense of a theatre where the confessional is aired. Binoy Kampmark listens to the library secrets, told amongst piles of books.
Prepping for war: tensions rise in Korea
North and South Korean are reportedly preparing rocket launching systems on their borders as tension between the two countries escalates. Senator John McCain has called for a “regime change” in North Korea writes Andrew Gilligan.
Plugging the many myths about Australian irrigation water
The ABC recently published a revealing story disproving seven of the top myths associated with water systems in Australia. This story and others compiled by Larvatus Prodeo should be considered required reading for those interested in the subject.
cricket The Ashes Open Thread: Brisbane Day 5
Join Lethal Leigh and Tom Cowie to discuss the fifth day of the Ashes.
interviews Discussing book trailers with specialist Paul Murphy
Australian Paul Murphy has been making book trailers since before the days of YouTube. Book blogger Angela Meyer discusses the range and quality of his work in this emerging field.
Pure Poison open thread
Is WikiLeaks a reputable organisation? Is there a public right to know all the sordid details of how governments talk with each other, or will this just unnecessarily harm diplomatic relations for little gain? Discuss this and other current affairs issues in this week’s Pure Poison open thread.
Digital addiction: going cold turkey for charity
Gaga and Justin Timberlake are among celebrities who have pledged to give up social networking platforms for World AIDS day and not sign back on until they’ve raised a million big ones for charity. Bizarrely, other celebs such as Elijah Wood have represented their “digital deaths” by lying in coffins.
film reviews Red Hill — ferocious neo-western Australiana
With a clop of hooves and a few thousand rounds of ammunition writer/director Patrick Hughes charters a violent path straight into the pool room of the seldom visited, inherently political genre of the indigenous Australian revenge drama with this scorching neo-western, writes Luke Buckmaster.
Wikileaks 
The Dagestan wedding of the year
Amongst all the incriminating WikiLeaks embassy cable news lies a a fascinating tale of a rural Russian wedding, which included a “perpetually tipsy” Olympic wrestler named Vakha and a performance by Benya the Accordion King.
Bug of the week: Golden Drummer Cicada
After quite a few summers of his aimless suburban youth spent chasing Cicadas, Bob Gosford enjoys a glorious crop of Golden Drummer cicadas in Alice Springs, after a wonderfully wet year that has seen record rain,
Demanding default: the anger of the Irish
A new opinion poll showing a majority of Irish people support the state defaulting on debts to bondholders is the latest in a string of events that suggest the Irish are revolting against the world’s money-men, writes Richard Farmer.
people A yarn with journalist Michael Coggan
While sitting a car munching down on a couple of sausage rolls, Bob Gosford had a chat with journalist Michael Coggan, who recently returned to the Northern Territory after spending a year working in India.
