Change of direction for the University of Sydney?

Saw this article in today's Herald - where the Vice Chancellor of the Uni of Sydney, has suggested reducing the student intake and refocussing resources to help make USYD a leading research institute.

I think this is a fantastic, and long overdue revue - USYD has seemed to lose it way over the last few years, becoming more of a degree factory (and in my opinion, with far too many international students).

The other universities seem to have long lost their role of places of new thought, and rather - turned to churning out 1000's of grads with no real passion for their area of study and no real commitment to their work. And its mightily frustrating doing coursework/groupwork with people who are just going through the motions.

Great news that the Vice Chancellor wants to define USYD's purpose in Australia's education sphere:


''Australia needs an institution which has a critical thinker as a cultural hero,'' Dr Spence said. ''For a long time we [the university] have tried to do all things for all people by providing all manner of courses. We have grown without a particularly coherent mission. There needs to be a return to our traditional mission. We now need to take control.''

Fiji ejected from the Commonwealth

After refusing to hold elections until 2014, the Fijian military leadership pushed the UN to suspend Fiji from the Commonwealth. This comes as quite a blow for the population, I believe - but hopefully continued dialogue (and maybe a return to common sense by Bainimarama) might make this a short period in the 'wilderness'.

I think one of the things that will really hurt is not being able to participate in the Commonwealth games, which is held this year in India. With its large ethnic Indian population, I suspect many would have been looking forward to Fiji competing in India.

Public Enemies

Saw the new Johnny Depp movie - Public Enemies on the weekend. Not a bad movie, but not as good as I'd hoped.

Depp played his role in a very subdued manner - i'd have expected more panache for his character in this movie (he plays notorious bank-robber, John Dillinger). Christian Bale plays the Chicago head of J. Edgar Hoover's Federal unit. I used to think Bale was quite a good actor, but i'm now seeing him as one dimensional. Honestly, I couldn't tell the difference between his role in this, and his role in Terminator.

It was a nice long movie, and had a good story... but it just seemed like it jumped too quickly from event to event, without taking the opportunity to build suspense. For example, we see him charge in a rob a bank, but with next to no treatment of the planning or lead up to it.

3 Tommy guns out of 5.

2Day Debacle

A 12 year old girl was forced to admin to being raped on live radio yesterday, in what I can only describe as a shocking and sad indictment of what passes as entertainment these days.

Kyle and Jackie 0 maintain a consistent stream of trash - but putting a minor on radio and asking them highly personal questions is just terrible. And describing the whole incident as 'weird' as in the above article, just shows how callous these guys are.

Having said that - the mother in question provides a strong argument for some people not being allowed to have children. What kind of MORON, knowing full well that their daughter was raped, puts them live on radio, strapped to a lie detector, and asks them questions like this.

Unfortunately, I was listening to some professor of childhood ethics or somesuch from Monash - and she studiously avoided criticing the mother. I don't get it - its not the radio station that should cop the brunt of this - but the mother.

Obviously after her two minutes of fame, she put her daughter in a terribe position, and, as far as I'm concerned, deserves public humiliation. I'd say she should be charged with child abuse.

Armadillo's in the wet

Well, it poured yesterday, and I'm happy to report that the Armadillo tires performed magnificently. At no point did they seem to be squirm or slide, even going through fairly deep puddles.

Still highly recommendended!

Liberal Rule

Thanks to Gerard Henderson's article, I was alerted to a 3-part series documenting the Liberal's years under Howard. He had a good old whinge that the series was strongly biased against Howard and conservatism in general.

I agree that it did not necessarily paint a flattering picture of the Howard era - but then, one could say they were calling it like they saw it. They managed to get access to Peter Costello, Downer, Arthur Sinodinos and a host of other Liberal commentators. But I think the most telling comments were made by Ross Gittens who essential made the point that Howard encouraged rampant consumerism, and made no effort to grow the public good. Debt was essentially privatised by Costello, by running down Government debt, but fuelling private debt. And that we are paying for it now.

To be fair, they did select excerpts that showed the Liberals in a less than ideal light, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Parts 2 and 3 are probably worth a watch too -22/7 and 23/7.

Something's brewing....

I saw John Brodgen this morning on the way into work, and Tony Abbott when going between buildings.

I wonder if there is some Liberal conference on at the moment? Although, i remember Broggers quitting Politics (whether he quit the Liberal party... not so sure). People Skills might be in town for his new book launch - "Battlelines" - which argues forcefully for a return to conservative (like, really conservative) roots in the Party. Apparently, he also calls for a return to pre-1980 legal reasons for divorce (insanity, drunkeness, etc). It was interesting watching Julie Bishop on Insiders this weekend, give a less-than-ringing endorsement of Abbott's ideas. She was relatively emphatic that he was 'entitled to his own opinion'.

Some commentators have noted combination of Malcolm Turnbull's misfortune, Tony Abbott's book - and his endorsement of Turnbull: "He has my full support". Could People Skills be lined up for a tilt at the leadership?

Personally, i think this would be disasterous for the Liberal Party. Tony represents the hard core centre of conservative support - a constituency that never has and never will, vote Labor. I suspect he turns off most moderates - the swinging voters who actually decide the election.