With new legislation about dismissal in the workplace, the actual behaviour of management and staff is in hot contention. Hard line liberals live in a world where kind owners provide opportunities for workers to feed their families; hard line critics would say that Australian culture creates and condones arbitrary, defensive and ego-bound managers fighting for [...]

“Westhusing, 44, was no ordinary officer. He was one of the Army’s leading scholars of military ethics, a full professor at West Point who volunteered to serve in Iraq to be able to better teach his students. He had a doctorate in philosophy; his dissertation was an extended meditation on the meaning of honor.”
A dedicated [...]

A small strange headturning touch: I went to see Rolf de Heer give a lecture, followed by a screening of The Quiet Room.
He talked about Ten Canoes, a film he is making in Arnhem land with the indigenous people in the same community as David Gulpilil. He said he found it a strange experience because [...]

To watch the whole of the AFI awards on television, I outlasted a hideous line of ads for swimming pools and country lawnmower suppliers, and a complete short infomercial about zit cream. There were probably two people watching in the entire country who were not related to filmmakers.
Russell Crowe demonstrated why he is a [...]

I’ve had a few emails (thanks in particular to Ron and Suki) and a note at Eat at Joe’s which says the comments system is turning increasingly feral. It keeps banning people.
MT Blacklist has gained a few mistakes, probably because I was hitting buttons late at night. I know it won’t accept any content [...]

Four things that made me grin today:
1. The Proposition won a heap of craft awards at the preliminary AFI thing tonight, at which a whole lot of large and/or intense people normally seen bent over computers, sewing stuff or up to their knees in sludge with cameras scrubbed up like a herd of bouncers. The [...]

A well known Australian has been out and about.

al-Jazeerah covering the attack on Kabul
Plenty of blogs have noted that Bush and Blair have allegedly discussed blowing up al-Jazeerah in Qatar.
Unfortunately, the five page memo went back to Downing Street, so we can’t have the pleasure of reading a piece of raw history.
The best coverage I have seen is on Booman Tribune. [...]

For one seventh of a second – four frames in film terms – a computer X appeared on the face of Dick Cheney in a CNN broadcast. Probably inspired by the Condi Rice devil eyes persecution, the company has grovelled..
“CNN, a unit of Time Warner Inc., later issued a mea culpa saying an investigation by [...]

Sam, the world’s ugliest dog, is dead, and his website is now a memorial.
CNN has prepared a tasteful obituary, complete with video.
Since the animal is a purebred Chinese Hairless Dog, we will let The China Daily tell the tale:
“Lockheed said she initially was terrified of Sam when she agreed to take him in [...]