Media Dragon is on the hunt, unmasking and honouring bloggers who are serving, for better or for worse, the virtual Antipodean world. The blogscroll was stolen in the middle of the day from the local Parish. (as @ July 2003 AD)
My bohemian licence really just wanted to create something speculation-provoking and perhaps useful and fun.

Presenting Antipodean Bloggers (#5 September 2003 AD)

What kinds of personae do we make? What relation do these have to what we have traditionally thought of as the 'whole' person? Are they experienced as an expanded self or as separate from the self? Do our real-life selves learn lessons from our virtual personae? Are these virtual personae fragments of a coherent real-life personality?
-Sherry Turkle

media & the net: Paging Bargarz Fisking from the belly

Are Weblogs one more tool in the arsenal used by writers to define the undefinable?
The value of blogs like Bargarz is that they are sharp, chatty and seem to undertake in depth research and do that extra mile of legwork. Bargarz is one of those bloggers who post extensively on depleted uranium. My reading about North Korea or Iraq and other issues of international importance would not be the same without it.
· Bargarz[Bargarz]

EXTRACT from 22 September 2002:

Tim Dunlop comments on ideological profiling.
Although I indulge in the practice myself, I must admit I find all the labelling--and the knee-jerk pidgeon-holing that tends to go with it--tedious. When the put-down becomes an end in itself, it ceases to have much value.
Agreed. Several Oz bloggers have recently admitted to have leftish tendencies (Jason Soon, Gareth Parker, me) while still supporting current US policies. Does this mean we are right wing? No. Does this mean we always support US policy? Also no.
Nice ideas and I agree with much of it but there is a sting in the tail.
For starters John Quiggin states and Dunlop repeats a highly selective definition of Fisking;
So maybe John Quiggin is onto something in using 'left-brain' and 'right-brain' as the pertinent distinction:
The blogs I think of as left-brain are analytical, rational and linguistically complex. Right-brain blogs are mostly emotive, irrational or anti-rational, and based on sharp putdowns (Fisking) rather than logical critiques.


Patriotism
I haven't checked the news yet but the crowds at the dawn service and the march seemed bigger this year. The crowds lining the length of the march were very deep and it seems that as the numbers of older veterans dwindle, the crowds get bigger and bigger. For the march, we bagged a great perch on a pedestrian overpass overlooking Adelaide St (it soon filled up). We had an excellent view of the entire length of the march and the experience of seeing the servicemen and womens' faces light up and wave up at us was unforgettable. Of course, we all waved, cheered and thanked them back.
And if that wasn't prize enough, I copped quite a few air kisses from some old nurses, God bless 'em. Mrs Bargarz and I, along with many others in our area, cheered and yelled ourselves hoarse thanking and geeing up the marchers and they lapped it up, even the oldest and frailest diggers. For awhile, the barriers seemed to go away and all marchers received rousing cheers. Aussies, Poms, Yanks, Vietnamese, Serbs, Greeks, Poles, Dutch and yes, even the French got some cheers. One particular stand out moment for me was when I gave my Aussie flag to a child next to me who was perched on his dad's shoulders. They were both delighted and the kid was soon waving that flag like a manic mini semophorist. They were Chinese-Aussies and they were just as enthusiastic as any white-bread Aussie could be because that's exactly what they were - Aussies.

Bargarz on some predictions:
Ship of Fools
Remember the dire predictions and scenarios that were trafficked so wide and far before (and also during) hostilities? I'll admit that I've been less than flawless in my predictions but then again, I'm not too proud to admit mistakes and I also don't have to stoop as far as some of the pundits and "experts" who had received media attention out of all proportion to their predictive prowess.
People such as failed MP Carmen Lawrence who recycled from a grab bag of tired and discredited arguments in order to make a scattergun and emotional case against the use of force in Iraq. It's too much to extract but Lawrence's claims were comprehensively debunked by John Nicolay here.
Or Labor MP "heavyweight" Laurie Brereton who seemed to believe his own party's PR releases rather than the plummetting popularity of his own leader;
Federal Labor heavyweight Laurie Brereton said if Prime Minister John Howard did not listen to those opposed to war, it would be political suicide.
"If he's not prepared to listen then he's on the path to the end of his political career," Mr Brereton told AAP.
Or actress Judy Davis who protested the decision to send our bloodthirsty troops;
"Definitely those young people should not have left the other day at Woolloomooloo to kill, to massacre, potentially to massacre Iraqis, 50 per cent of whom are children under 18."
Or actor John Howard who decided to cast the issue as a fight against children;
"What has Iraq done to Australia apart from buying a great deal of our wheat ?" Howard asked. "What is our fight with the Iraqi people? What is our fight with Iraqi children?
"We are partly responsible for the deaths of half a million Iraqi children because we are part of the blockade of that country that is denying them medicines and equipment."
Or MAPW (Medical Association for Prevention of War - Australia) who released a report with much fanfare here and overseas of its "credible estimates" that there would be truly massive casualties in Iraq.
Andrew Stephen, New Statesman, Mar 31: And they thought it was going to be so easy. They really did believe it: that troops would be welcomed in Iraq, with flowers and hugs and kisses, as liberators for whom they had been waiting so long.
· Foolish? [ Google]
Language:
So, here is the proper use of A or An: Use an in place of a when it precedes a vowel sound, not just a vowel. That means it's "an honor" (the h is silent), but "a URL" (because it's pronounced yoo arr ell). This confuses people most often with acronyms and other abbreviations: some people think it's wrong to use "an" in front of an abbreviation (like "MRI") because "an" can only go before vowels. Poppycock: the sound is what matters. It's "an MRI," assuming you pronounce it "em ar eye." Example an apple ; an hour.