21 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  4. Labour party insider Dan Hodges on the reasons why the Labour Party, whose deputy leader insisted as recently as last January that she supported freedom of the press, is now demanding the imposition – by statute – of the Leveson recommendations in their entirety:

    First, it’s a chance for payback. It may not have been the Sun wot won it in 1992, but many on the Left believe it to have been.
    Second, it’s a chance for control. The Left wants the press, especially the Right-wing papers, to feel fear. The knock on the door, the phone call late at night. The same fear that Labour politicians and supporters felt when they found themselves under scrutiny. They want the tables turned. Or, at a minimum, they want the press to know that the tables could be turned if the Left chose to do so.

    The third reason will sound familiar to anyone who’s been watching the left in the US and Canada in the last twenty years so:

    Those aspects of New Labour that first attracted me, the singularity of purpose, the benign authoritarianism, the belief that the ends justified the means, have – unwittingly – seeped into the broader Left’s psyche. The politics may have changed, but the techniques are the same. In pursuit of the new politics, anything goes. No principle is sacrosanct. No ideal immutable. For the revolution to succeed, there will have to be sacrifices. And if three centuries of press independence are the price of that victory, so be it.

    The whole thing here.

  5. Re: California Rambers
    Great tune? I work as a volunteer tour guide, one museum I host has a Victrola 78 (Circa 1926) in great shape. Once it`s wound up–you have to adjust the speed. Very hard to do when one is not familiar with the tune.
    Thanks

  7. Charle’s Murray’s “Why aren’t Asians Republicans?”
    Excerpt:

    Asians who became successful because everyone in the family worked two or three jobs (a common strategy behind Asian success) are likely to be offended by the liberal “You didn’t build that” mentality. Unlike every other minority group, Asians owe nothing to the Democrats for affirmative action. On the contrary, Asians are penalized by affirmative action, especially in the universities, where discrimination against Asian applicants (relative to their superb academic qualifications) has been documented in the technical literature.
    And yet something has happened to define conservatism in the minds of Asians as deeply unattractive, despite all the reasons that should naturally lead them to vote for a party that is identified with liberty, opportunity to get ahead, and economic growth. I propose that the explanation is simple. Those are not the themes that define the Republican Party in the public mind. Republicans are seen by Asians—as they are by Latinos, blacks, and some large proportion of whites—as the party of Bible-thumping, anti-gay, anti-abortion creationists. Factually, that’s ludicrously inaccurate. In the public mind, except among Republicans, that image is taken for reality.

  8. Pretty brutal failure by the highways department in SK these past couple days. Long story short 15+ semis hit the ditch around whitewood, big wrecker comes out and I tell them they have to sand/salt before doing anything. They don’t listen and they hit the ditch, deeper than the semis. Loader comes and he hits the ditch, luckily he can drive through it. RCMP comes and they hit the ditch too.
    It was an unbelievable scene, and not a sand truck in sight until this morning! I guess we get what we pay for right? Can’t spare any of that sky high fuel tax rate for plowing operations.

  10. EBD, 10:37p.m. and 11:10p.m. —
    As you well know, I am not in any way a critic of what goes on here. And, both of these links are, as usual, topical, more than interesting, thought-provoking and discriminating. Nevertheless, I find the presentation a bit discursive (this from me!) — I would like to comment on both, and have a bit of a discussion on the topic of each.
    I know you have a bit of an in with the boss lady, so I’d put forward the suggestion of the development of a bit more of a fragmented approach — “threads” or “topics” or “buckets”.
    All of the topics that happen here are extremely important, and more than a few are critical, but many require development into a common understanding of stuff through the exchange of more specific/specialized information. Which would make the site into an even more effective source of information.
    For what it’s worth.

  12. “Hungry China Turns to Grave Robbery”
    “Two weeks ago, Chu Jixue, an investigator with the Propaganda Department at Beijing’s Municipal Communist Party Committee, received a panicked call from a cousin in his rural hometown. The local government, Chu was told, had demanded that the family relocate the ancestral burial plot, and all of its earthly remains, or the plot would be razed.
    The government would make no exceptions, offer no chance for appeal, and provide just a small subsidy of 200 yuan (less than $35) for each flattened tomb and free cremation of any extracted remains. The occasion was a practical one: Zhoukou, one of China’s oldest cities, in the heart of Henan, one of China’s poorest provinces, had decided to free up farmland by razing the estimated 3.5 million graves that dot the municipality’s rural landscape.
    There is no underestimating what a great affront this threat posed to the Chu family. In contemporary China, as in ancient China, respect for elders is the most deeply felt moral imperative, and veneration of dead ancestors is its purest expression.”
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-28/hungry-china-turns-to-grave-robbery.html

  13. “Snow and icy conditions expected across UK as temperatures plunge”
    “Met Office issues low-level severe weather warning across most of Scotland, north and east England, and north Wales”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/02/snow-icy-conditions-temperatures-plunge
    …-
    “Motor Mouth: U.S. gas boom could kill eco cars”
    “If the automotive revolution — EVs, hybrids and four-cylinder econoboxes — they have been promising is to occur, it will be promoted on pump prices, not saving the environment”
    “The problem is that, in the U.S. at least, the window of opportunity for convincing consumers that more economical transportation is a necessity may be closing.”
    http://life.nationalpost.com/2012/12/01/motor-mouth-u-s-gas-boom-could-kill-eco-cars/

  15. Indian Aboriginal Native First Nations News.
    “the reserve next door has only narrowly averted a similar crisis.”
    Leftist MSM filters the Monkey-See;Monkey-Do shakedown news.
    You are shocked, no?
    …-
    “Neighbouring reserve to Attawapiskat declares fuel, housing emergency
    CTV News – ‎7 minutes ago‎
    OTTAWA — A year after the northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat jarred the country’s conscience with its deplorable housing conditions, the reserve next door has only narrowly averted a similar crisis.”

  17. David (5:08):
    Reader Tips threads are obviously inherently – unavoidably – discursive by nature, inasmuch as the tips hop from one subject to another with no consistent subject matter. I do take your point that the provision of excerpts from linked-to Tips might invite/provoke further discussion of the topics contained in the excerpts (I have this same impulse to comment when I read other commenters’ tips/links), and that in the presentation of my own tips I could obviate/reduce this torment/temptation by tightening it up, i.e. by simply presenting a link and a short description sans excerpt. I’d like to point out, though – and this would be an opportune time – that although Reader Tips threads certainly aren’t the place for extended debates/discussions, there is a certain amount of room for comments on/responses to other tips, particularly late in the thread or when a new Reader Tips thread has been posted further up the page, and that there’s room at any time for the posting of links (accompanied perhaps by your own comments on those links) that are related to the subject matter of the excerpted passages.
    Also, if you have an urge to comment on or discuss the subject matter raised in an excerpted passage – I know I often do – many or most of the linked-to articles do have a dedicated comments section underneath in which the specific subject matter is open for discussion.
    Re: topics or “buckets”, I don’t speak for Kate but I’ve always found that, although I can appreciate the utility of such a format in theory, websites that use it are invariably kind of unfocused, or diffuse, for lack of a better word, in part because the fragmentation limits the possibility of tying together somewhat related subjects that are, in that particular format, only referenced on other threads. It’s kinda like having a sixty-person get-together in a house with thirty-five rooms, in the sense that there’s a lot less….communion.

  19. Global warmingski? doha!
    …-
    “Are we there? Nyet! Russians stuck in traffic jam for two days”
    “Thousands of cars and trucks stranded in 35-mile tailback after heavy snow hits Moscow-St Petersburg motorway”
    “Thousands of lorries and cars have been stuck, some for more than two days, in a traffic jam dozens of miles long caused by heavy snow north-west of Moscow, Russian media have reported.
    Police in the Tver region said field kitchens were operating on the road, but many drivers complained supplies never reached them and they were running out of fuel to keep their engines running and heating on in subzero temperatures.
    “Drivers help one another and that’s it, the problems are on the side of the authorities. There are no fuel tankers, no water, nothing, we are just stuck here,” a truck driver told Rossiya 24 TV. Another man told the state broadcaster he had advanced less than a mile in 24 hours. Reports put the length of the jam at between 25 and 120 miles at different times. Police on Sunday evening said it was no more than 35 miles.”
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/02/russians-stuck-traffic-jam-two-days

  20. The blog is already loading slowly as a result of outdated software and spam attack.
    What I’d prefer to see is EBD use the main page for these good finds. (Please!) Not so that readers can comment, but because they deserve wider readership and only a fraction of the traffic to the site reads this thread.

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