law & order

The law locks up the man who steals the goose from the common, but leaves the greater criminal loose who steals the common from the goose – Australian convict saying

Quickhit: a test case for decriminalisation of abortion in QLD

Tegan Simone Leach, 19, is believed to be the first woman charged in Queensland in nearly 50 years for organising her own miscarriage and is facing up to 14 years in jail.

Medical practitioners in Queensland who apply for a special license can legally prescribe the exact same drug that Ms Leach used to abort her pregnancy, but the old laws against abortion have not been reformed to take note of the reality that people can obtain the same drug for themselves.

Political speech and PR cleanup: the AAP squirms at the DigitalNow conference

You can download the full video of Amber McArthur’s keynote here, but I’ve picked out the part of interest to me, because it is right at the end.

Why is it of interest? It’s a chap from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in this video called only “John”, quietly panicking about the organisation’s latest public relations disaster: Jay Gordon’s April Fool press release stating that the AAP would no longer accept sponsorship from infant formula companies.

Sub-editing fail

AKA How the addition of a single word results in a headline that doesn’t provoke the Laura Norder crowd to clutch their pearls.

Assuming, of course, that one doesn’t want to confect a controversy via a plausibly deniable misrepresentation.