Author Archives

writer, singer, webwrangler, blogger, comedy tragic | about.me/vivsmythe

• DCI Peter Fox calls for Royal Commission into paedophilia within the Catholic Church

  By tigtog on 2012-11-09 • ( 15 )

  

  For people to sit back and say it’s not going on, they’ve got their head in the sand. The greatest frustration is that there is so much power and organisation behind the scenes that police don’t have the powers to be able to go in and seize documents and have them disclose things to us.

• Conroy backs down on internet filter

  By tigtog on 2012-11-09 • ( 20 )

  

  It’s good to see Stephen Conroy finally face the facts: his filter proposal was about as clever as equipping a blue whale to pursue a vulture.

• Whimsy: Ook! Ook? Where is the Librarian?

  By tigtog on 2012-11-07 • ( 23 )

  

  Please share anything that has recently surprised, delighted, intrigued or otherwise positively engaged you: think of these threads as a brain-bleach repository.

• Media Circus: 1st Tuesday in November edition

  By tigtog on 2012-11-05 • ( 33 )

  

  Racing around the track in Melbourne and to the polls in the USA, Budget projections, the expanding Jimmy Savile investigation and more. What else has piqued your media interests lately?

• Toxic culture in university colleges

  By tigtog on 2012-11-04 • ( 57 )

  

  A 2009 post from Mary (almost exactly three years ago) is getting a lot of hits today, and I’m deducing that it’s because of searching on St Johns college at the University of Sydney due to this SMH story: Culture of anarchy at a college in crisis.

• Argument is the human condition, but public argument is not (until the Internet arrived)

  By tigtog on 2012-11-04 • ( 2 )

  

  A fascinating long post from Clay Shirky on the information age’s transformation of the media landscape, via @Colvinius who referenced it as part of his 2012 Andrew Olle Media Lecture.

• Media Circus: read my memoirs edition

  By tigtog on 2012-10-30 • ( 18 )

  

  Memoirs, asylum seekers, hurricanes and sexual harassment. What else has piqued your media interests lately?

• Frankenstorm

  By tigtog on 2012-10-30 • ( 11 )

  

  Like many folks with online friends in the North-East of the USA, I’ve been watching the weather reports with great big saucer eyes.

  Keep safe, and if you feel like it, please drop a comment here telling us how you’re going.

• Racebending and Cloud Atlas

  By tigtog on 2012-10-28 • ( 23 )

  

  Variety described the notion of white actors playing Asians as “exciting,” suggesting that the Wachowskis “put the lie to the notion that casting — an inherently discriminatory art — cannot be adapted to a more enlightened standard of performance over mere appearance.” The irony of this declaration is overwhelming — praising a film for “enlightened” casting choices that merely replay old discriminatory practices.

• Fallacy Watch: No True Klansman

  By tigtog on 2012-10-26 • ( 5 )

  

  I may have contributed to a new term for a rhetorical ploy we see more and more. Here’s how it happened – I’m rather proud of this coinage, but wonder whether we may be reinventing the fallacious wheel. Is there an already apt term in rhetorical jargon?