On top of that, whatever reputation Quadrant may once have had, it is now a rather squalid sandpit for tory wannabes and ratbag deniers of various ilks. In quality and content it is showing a certain level of convergence with a certain blog.

I haven’t got my mind around the ethics of the hoax, but I have got my mind around a couple of things:

1. Windschuttle built a reputation on examining the accuracy of other peoples’ footnotes and making absolutely scathing judgements on the footnotes and on the historians who used them.
2. While I will put this as delicately and as fairly as I can, the gist of Windscuttle’s views about Tasmanian Aborigines was that they more or less deserved what they got because of their primitive morality, and that they were fortunate to be colonized by the British, because the British were the best colonizers. (I think I have that about right – happy to be corrected.) Imagine today’s Tasmanian Aborigines reading Windschuttles’ attacks?

This sort of stuff became part of the warp and weft of the OO headlines leading up to the HowBroughian NT Intervention. Indigenous people, men in particular, were just about bricked for being the most evil people on earth. The states and territories were similary smacked around. (Remember that Textor had told Howard that he needed to create a bit of tension with the states?) Howard also needed an explanation for why he had done nothing for Indigenous people in ten years of so-called ‘practical reconciliation’. (Don’t you just love ‘practical’ and ‘balanced’ policies?)

Howard’s chosen explanation: the states were useless and Indigenous people in remote communities were more or less evil incarnate. They had to be saved from themselves and from the territories and states. Enter the very white knights, Howard and Brough. You start seeing the reasons why Howard was a vocal supporter of Windschuttle.

So, for me, the debating points around the hoax are interesting, but not at the heart of the issue. It doesn’t overmuch bother me what people call the article – hoax or fraud, whether it was 5% or 15% rubbish, whether Windschuttle published it uncritically because it fit his ideological bent, or even whether the central point of the article, the so-called ‘decision’ by CSIRO not to proceed with human/cross species GMOs, is a total crock.

To me the central issue is this. Howard received his richly-deserved humiliation at the last election and Windschuttle has now also received just a very little taste of the humiliations formerly meted out to Indigenous people by the Howard Government, by the British colonizers (excellent though they were) and by a certain historian.

“Meanwhile, LNP candidate Michael Palmer has booked three billboards in a row along Sandgate Rd in the seat of Nudgee, which Labor holds by a margin of 18 per cent.”

I speed read earlier your Joe th plumber , now I’ve read th lot and feel he is as “balansed” in his reporting as he is smart quote “I have thousands of questions but I can’t think of the right one.”

Diog
Reading that Sokal guys effort , geez that was a class hoax And i liked your definition “to be a vacuous load of crap with almost no intellectual merit but a lot of meaningless intellectual BS, ie fashionable nonsense.” So now I know there is just plain ordinary nonsense and “fashionable nonsense” (like sort of upper class nonsense reely

THE prospect of an early state election has arisen again after Labor began letterbox dropping households in battleground seats at the weekend.

Residents in several marginal seats received flyers from Premier Anna Bligh introducing them to the ALP candidates in their electorates.

The seats included the non-Labor seats of Clayfield, Bundaberg, Gladstone, Mirani and Burdekin, and the newly created seat of Coomera.

ALP state secretary Anthony Chisholm yesterday denied suggestions the manoeuvring was a sign of an early poll.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24903409-3102,00.html

Another story today about Satyam in Age paper , and ‘authorativly this time saying there were 1700 existing australian jobs , but no attribution to you as oz news breaker on Satyam having oz employees and right here as a news exclusive

Intersting they hav 53, 000 worldwide staff in this outsoursing bit with 2/3 in India but what caught my eye is 1/3 of Fortune top 500 companies use them , so lots of local jobs in local Countrys got out soursed to India , retenched by multi nats as a number And if its later cheaper to outsouse it in Greenland then retranchments then in India , but will that going to happen now anyway without a takover

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/12/2463424.htm

Lucky Kev gave all the oldies a Xmas bonus.

Well that wuld be for ‘name recognition’ , like better than John smith , Reporter

but this Reporter has Michael Willessie invetigative skills :

“The people of …. “can’t do normal things day to day” like get soap in their eyes in the shower , …”

Why would you put soap in your eyes for having a shower , how can you tell where to clean your dirty toes if you cann’t see them

Actually, I suspect he’s fulfilling some kind of deal he signed up to at the height of his fame. Originally, his commitment might have involved writing a book or some kind of serialised account of his emergence during the campaign.

But with a bit of pressure* he baulked (despite his straight-shootin’ pick-up-drivin’ persona), explaining to his agent that “I can’t write a book. I fix taps.”

* Due mostly to the fact that he’ll be forgotten in a year or two.