Lunartic

With Andrew Bolt still on holiday, Bolt obsessed Crikey media analyst Jeremy Sear searches the media to find an earth-shatteringly important matter of contention: did NASA first deliver humans to the moon in 1968 (the Apollo 8 lunar orbit mission) or 1969 (the Apollo 11 moon landing)?

Reliably wrong, Jeremy insists 1969 is the correct answer. By the way, the offending Age article is about a Saturn V rocket built entirely of Lego. Now there's a story worth analyzing.

Pinched

Crikey media analyst Jeremy Sear is obsessed by someone anonymously posting items and updates on Wikipedia. Apparently this is a bad thing, although Jeremy himself has an extensive history of anonymous online activity.

There is a slight problem with Jeremy's post, however: Jeremy decided to illustrate his paranoid piece with three cartoons simply lifted from the website of a US artist. No attribution, no credit, no payment, no nothing.

Reader Nick calls him on it:

Um, speaking of references and attribution, shouldn’t you at have given attribution to the author of the cartoons you are using in this article? Looking at XKCD’s website, these images are not free for use by commercial organisations.

Jeremy testily replies:

Well, I linked straight to them on xkcd. I’ve now added a reference underneath describing what they are, although I suspect that it’s kind of redundant. If you have other suggestions on that off-topic subject, please send them via email.

Here’s a suggestion, although it shouldn’t be necessary for a lawyer who fancies himself to be an expert on intellectual property (with a special interest in copyright): how about not pinching the work of others in the first place? Or if that’s too much trouble, you could always read the artist’s website, which clearly states:

You are welcome to reprint occasional comics pretty much anywhere (presentations, papers, blogs with ads, etc). If you're not outright merchandizing, you're probably fine. Just be sure to attribute the comic to xkcd.com.

Rather than do a little research Jeremy just takes what he wants and hopes for the best.

Strangely, Jeremy is not at all understanding when his work is borrowed:

Copyright in this image is owned by me. No-one is entitled to reproduce it without my express permission.

Although, of course, I didn't need to actually write those words. They go without saying. Because - as most people with even the most basic understanding of copyright are aware - copyright exists from the moment the work is created. It doesn't need to be registered. It doesn't need to be announced. It doesn't need a little "c" in a circle stuck on it. Simply, the copyright in the image automatically belongs to the person who created it, immediately. And it continues to do so for a fairly long time. Works don't enter the "public domain" until seventy years after the death of person who created the work or, if the work is published anonymously, seventy years after it is published.

Theft of such an image is, of course, covered by the Copyright Act 1968. Those who claim their theft is "fair use" might want to read sections 40-42 of the Act. Simply copying a photograph of someone's cat is extremely unlikely to qualify as "fair dealing for purpose of research or study" (s40), "fair dealing for purpose of criticism or review" (s41) or "fair dealing for purpose of reporting news" (s42).

Copyright is indeed a complex and evolving area of the law, but as it relates to photographs, it's well-established - certainly as to the question of whether people can just take others' photographs and reproduce them, particularly where the owner has notified that person, declared ownership in the photographs and requested that those photographs be removed. (The answer is, "no".)

If you happen to be stealing any works of mine, text or images, (and I know of at least one person who is), please stop it immediately.

Quite the little ranter is Jeremy.

Hypocrite lawyer

Crikey media analyst and lawyer Jeremy Sear had a big sad back in August over the Herald Sun's exposing of a public employee's Twittering:

I’m just glad we have a prominent tabloid digging through private citizens’ online opinions in order to find people who should be silenced, punished and thrown on the dole. That’s what free speech and freedom of the press are all about.

But just the other day Jeremy objected to journalist Miranda Devine listing private citizen correllio as someone she follows.

Jeremy has, since becoming a Crikey-paid professional blogger, gone all respectable and sanctimonious, losing his past appreciation for crude language, here applied to Andrew Bolt:

What a horridly opportunistic, cheap little low-life cunt.

And here's a Jeremy-approved  Tim Blair and Andrew Bolt post tagged "cunts".

Now that's some classy hypocrisy, no?

It's in a movie so it's Okay

Barrister Jeremy Sear employs the Mean Girls defense, a variation of the apocryphal Johnnie Cochran Chewbaca defense, in hope of exonerating the Triple J presenters who sledged Julia Gillard and her partner. According to Jeremy, it's Okay to call the Prime Minitser a whore because a character in a movie referred to another character as a whore.

Given his logic, Jeremy's status in the legal fraternity is understandable.

Crikey, that's crap

Crikey follows up its less than informative initial investigative detention centre report with two more efforts (here and here), the three totaling over 3,300 precisely chosen words. Just a few of the revelations in the two latest pieces:

• The road from Broome to Derby passes through a "surprisingly green desert". (It's green because it's not a desert, moron.)
• The Willare roadhouse near Derby has a bain marie that "looks like it has survived the apocalypse".
• Curtin detainees who have access to TV, the internet and telephones were "pleased to see a friendly face and hear news from the outside world." No doubt detainees were entranced by the tale of the Willare roadhouse bain marie.
• It's hot in the Kimberley.
• The Curtin gate guard wears "khaki shorts, shirt and felt khaki hat".
• The gate guard communicates with management via a walkie-talkie.
• "The Serco contract with the Australian government" was "recently revealed with colleague Paul Farrell in New Matilda". (Paul Farrell is quite the hunk.)
• "Expansion plans appear imminent, with empty spaces for more compounds on the way." Yep, empty spaces say lots about imminent expansion plans.
• FIFO stands for "fit in or f-ck pff".
• "When they arrived on Christmas Island, volunteers taught [detainees] about the White Australia policy, Ned Kelly, multiculturalism, Australia Day, the Stolen Generations and the Kevin Rudd apology to indigenous people." (And how to field-strip, clean and reassemble an AK-47.)
• Asylum seekers are "dubbed the 'Sandpit'".
• Christmas Island is an "Australian satellite".
• Like Australia as a whole, it's multi-cultural.
• Only Virgin flies to Christmas Island.
• An unknown number of Serco staff can neither read nor write, giving them much in common with the author of this Crikey tripe.
• A Christmas Island hill has a "vista" that's "expansive and revealing".
• Sister Joan Kelleher, is "seeing" some of the male detainees.
• "Although Sally said there were problems, she said Serco was an essential partner because the public service simply wasn’t capable of handling security, “intel gathering” and other services unless “we hire many more people”. The part about the public service hiring more people makes no sense at all. Anyway, Sally is the "head case manager" which explains why she was speaking with the Crikey head-case who wrote this tripe.
• Detainee Mohammed – not his real name – takes "six different anti-depressants daily". That little "fact" is as real as Mohammed's name.

Jeez, with revelations like this it's no surprise Crikey is a giant amongst Australia's media outlets.

Crikey, Crikey needs an editor

Interesting news from the northwest of Western Australia:

Crikey recently visited the area...

Crikey, or a semi-literate "journalist" in its employ, might have visited the Kimberley region but this doesn't prevent it being incorrectly described as "an expanse of desert". That's enough for a great big fail for this "investigation".

The "investigation" is littered with lots more errors and is very poorly written, at one point referring to an "evasion of privacy".

The investigative journalist who wrote this near-gibberish should do himself and the obviously editorless Crikey a favour by investigating the possibility of taking remedial English lessons.

Jeremy's special relationship

News Ltd obsessed Crikey media analyst Jeremy Sear takes exception to a News.com piece titled THE AUDACITY OF GROPE: Julia and Barack's special relationship.

No word from Jeremy on the Fairfax video True Love showing Gillard and Obama at a drive-in doing a lot more than groping.

Something different

Crikey media analyst Jeremy Sear deviates from the norm with today's post on a Sydney Morning Herald piece by Gerard Henderson. What makes Sear's post different is that it's not about News Ltd: all of the Pure Poison "analysis" and "elsewhere" posts by both Jeremy and sidekick Dave Gaukroger going all the way back to 9 September are News Ltd related.

That's ten days of anti-News sniping from media "analysts" whose stated mission is to "expose the intellectual dishonesty, the flimsy arguments and the distorted data wherever they appear in the mainstream media." Pure Poison's predominantly Left-wing commenters are, being equally News-obsessed, delighted, of course.

Defamation Discontinued

Yesterday I wrote about Marilyn Shepherd's typically unhinged comment at Crikey's Pure Poison blog.

In a comment to PP, I observed that Marilyn was slagging off "Entitled brats" despite feeling entitled to collect the dole herself.

My comment was edited by Jeremy Sear, who wrote:

we don’t publish defamatory smears about people on our site. -Jeremy

This will of course come as pleasant news to certain people who have been well and truly defamed by Crikey/Pure Poison in the past.

By the way, the Crikey apology linked to by this post, seems to have been conveniently disappeared. Fortunately an archive is here.

It's nice to see Jeremy ensuring Crikey isn't sued by a dole bludging Holocaust Denier like Marilyn Shepherd.

Shepherd previously wrote:

Official figures for the Jewish populations of Germany in 1933 were 450,000, two thirds whom fled before the holocaust.

IN Austria it was only 180,000 and two thirds of them escaped. Where the 6 million comes from is obviously another load of bunkum.

What the US would do is take propoganda pictures with dead bodies, but they were the ones keeping them locked up by then and they were dying at the rate of 200 per day.

Posted by Marilyn Shepherd, Saturday, 31 May 2008 2:43:26 AM

Jeremy will protect her feelings. More sensible bloggers have sent her packing.

Is James actually Jeremy?

On MTR radio this morning Andrew Bolt fielded a call from "James in Reservoir", who Bolt almost immediately identifies not as "James" but rather as "Jeremy". Could it be that Crikey blogger Jeremy Sear – aka Jeff, aka anonymous – has again opted to challenge Bolt using an assumed name?

Considering this lame non-denial from Jeremy it is indeed possible:

“Andrew Bolt seemed to think a talkback caller named “James from Reservoir” was actually called “Jeremy”. I’m guessing he meant you, though not sure.”

LOL. I’ll have a listen. I’M EVERYWHERE.

Not "everywhere", just everywhere Bolt is, obsessing over every word he speaks and writes.

Julia Heart Bolta

I previously noted the delightful Twitter comments being aimed at Andrew Bolt about his new TV show, by people who mostly claimed not to have actually watched it (hey, why should that stop them having an opinion on it?)

Someone has even set up a Twitter account named @BoltIsACunt. No big deal and it only has 11 followers. Although one certainly stands out. (Click to embiggen).



Someone at the Prime Minister's Office has a lot of explaining to do.

Someone at Jonathan Green's Crikey office probably needn't bother.

Update:Gavin Atkins notes that the Prime Minister also follows @Faggotface.

The PM has 99,285 people following her but is only following 56,245 people. So it's not the case that she is simply following people back, to be polite. Similarly, I know that merely following a person doesn't imply approval. For example, it's entirely understandable that the PM would follow her political opponents, and potentially enemies of this country, as an information gathering exercise. There can't possibly be any benefit to following these two accounts though. Seriously, what is going on at the PM's Office?

Update 2: Anonymous comments to this post smell a grand conspiracy!

Bolt aside, this is a pretty sick setup of the PM.

I'll warrant, once they were followed they changed their username/profile settings.

Nice try. Except @BoltIsACunt's very first tweet, said exactly that about Bolt.

Apparently it is inconceivable to consider that:
a) There actually are people who hate Andrew Bolt and would say that, and
b) The Prime Minister would ever do something wrong, incompetent, embarrassing...

No. It's all a conspiracy. I await my cheque, for my small part.

Others suggest it's all a big accident:

Gillard's choice of followers is probably done by a computer program - recall this story about Kevin Rudd following porn accounts.

When that happened, the technology was blamed for automatically selecting accounts to follow. Fair enough. But the second time it happens...

The PM's Office has been following the account since 1 November, when they would have received this tweet:

Thanks @JuliaGillard for following! You are totes not a cunt (but I am aware that your genitalia could be crudely called that).

Classy.

Update 3: It's been almost 2 days since I posted this. Since then, Andrew Bolt has noticed it too, briefly mentioning it on one of Australia's most popular blogs. However the PM still 'follows' the aforesaid Twitter account. Maybe she hasn't been briefed yet? I wonder how much taxpayer money is going to the PM's media monitoring agencies.

Crikey blogger "fundamentally misleading"

Jeremy Sear today truncates a quote so as to embarrass Victorian Education Minister Martin Dixon:

What I think young people need to be more aware of is bananas…

The quote in context:

The Victorian Government has scrapped an idea to create a new drink to improve the concentration of secondary school students.

A Government department had called on businesses to submit proposals for a drink that was "pleasant tasting, low priced and attention sustaining."

Education Minister Martin Dixon has told ABC Local Radio the plan came from a group of students who were seeking an alternative to caffeine-based energy drinks.

"We haven't put any Education Department money into it because that's not the sort of thing that we do," he said.

"But good on the kids for coming up with an innovative idea and tackling the issue."

He says the students were referred to the Department of Industry's innovation arm, which advertised to see if there was any interest in developing such a product.

Mr Dixon categorically denies that any such drink will be manufactured by the Victorian Government.

"What I think young people need to be more aware of is bananas, rest and getting up and walking around," he said.

"We should be spending our efforts on more natural ways of keeping our kids healthy and safe."

Regardless of the merits of the student-proposed drink, Jeremy only just the other day condemned those who view Larissa Behrendt's Bess Price tweet as worthy of condemnation:

Taking tweets out of context is fundamentally misleading, because the 140 character limit means that most tweets assume that the reader is aware of to what they’re replying. So, obviously, the tweet does not mean the same thing to its original audience as when it is displayed without context.

Do I really need to start randomly picking 140 character strings from News Ltd articles to demonstrate why taking them out of context is not a fair reflection of their authors ‘meaning?

Yet hypocrite Jeremy reduces Dixon's comments to 13 words and uses them as the basis for a blog post. The Left wants to make the rules but not abide by them.

Research too difficult for Crikey blogger

Climate non-expert Tim Flannery speculates on the possible effect of reducing emissions:

If we cut emissions today, global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years.

Flannery later refines his speculation:

If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years because the system is overburdened with CO2 that has to be absorbed and that only happens slowly.

And yet more Flannery speculation:

In his letter to The Australian, Professor Flannery wrote that if all major emitters adopted a similar level of effort to reach a 5 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020, and continued to "decarbonise" after that date, the global temperature rise would be capped at 2C later this century and that temperatures would begin to drop by the end of the century.

It's obvious that Flannery's position on the benefits of emissions reductions is fluid, at best.

In the midst of this confusion Tony Abbott seizes on Flannery's 1,000 year prediction:

But yesterday, as the role of the carbon tax in Labor's massive loss in the NSW election dominated federal political exchanges, Mr Abbott quoted Professor Flannery as he ridiculed the tax as "the ultimate millenium bug".

"It will not make a difference for 1000 years," the Opposition Leader told parliament. "So this is a government which is proposing to put at risk our manufacturing industry, to penalise struggling families, to make a tough situation worse for millions of households right around Australia. And for what? To make not a scrap of difference to the environment any time in the next 1000 years."

PP boy Jeremy Sear ignores Flannery's contradictory statements, instead homing in on Abbott:

What Flannery actually said:

If the world as a whole cut all emissions tomorrow the average temperature of the planet is not going to drop in several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years.

“Not going to drop” is clearly not the same as “make not a scrap of difference”. Nor is “several hundred years, perhaps as much as a thousand years” the same as “not… any time in the next 1000 years”.

Had Jeremy researched this he'd know that Flannery did say that "global temperatures are not likely to drop for about a thousand years" yet contradicted himself by saying, in the words of The Australian, "that if all major emitters adopted a similar level of effort to reach a 5 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020, and continued to 'decarbonise' after that date, the global temperature rise would be capped at 2C later this century and that temperatures would begin to drop by the end of the century."

If Jeremy truly seeks to debunk "intellectual dishonesty" he should be attacking Flannery for making contradictory pronouncements on the benefits of emissions reductions rather than concentrating solely on Abbott's attempt to score political points. After all, Flannery has been put forward as an authority, whereas Abbott is merely a politician.

Stalked and hacked, really

PP boy Jeremy Sear is really copping it lately: I needle him constantly, as do my commenters; Alene Composta publishes embarrassing emails from both Jeremy and his betrothed; and Andrew Bolt ridicules him.

Even worse, "somebody" – obviously a foaming-at-the-mouth but technically savvy ideological opponent – hacked Jeremy's personal blog over the weekend. Jeremy can perhaps take comfort in the fact that his is not the only Lefty blog hacked over the weekend. It seems to be something of an epidemic of hacking, or maybe not.

Update Excerpt from an email dated 19 March 2011:

Everyone's favourite blogging barrister has a link at his personal blog to Blair/Bolt Watch but the dolt got the address wrong – he has it as blairboltwatchproject.wordpress.com rather than blairboltwatch.wordpress.com.

So Jeremy, were you hacked or did you screw up?

Jeremy Sear: purveyor of crazy, implausible and flat-out-wrong assertions

PP boy Jeremy Sear, Crikey's exposer of intellectual dishonesty and media bias, today complains about "a national media where 'balance' is defined as giving equal space to a crazy, implausible, flat-out-wrong assertion by someone on one side, as to a sensible, backed-up, provable assertion by someone on the other."

Yet Jeremy is very much inclined to make crazy, implausible and flat-out-wrong assertions on his personal blog.

Jeremy either totally lacks scruples or is not self-aware, or both.

Crikey blogger Jeremy Sear posts complete bullshit as justification for his indiscretions

Obviously feeling the pressure resulting from his assorted indiscretions, Crikey's blogging barrister goes on the offensive:

My long-term pseudonymous stalker and the two News Ltd bloggers for whom he/she/it acts as a shameless smearer of critics, are amusingly fairly excited today about what they apparently think are two excellent “gotchas” of, well, me.

1. Using a pseudonym. If you believe the attack, apparently the three Bs now think there’s something wrong with using a pseudonym – if you’re not them. My accusers have all either used (or still use) pseudonyms themselves (even when they wrote for a paid site) or regularly publish and link to people who do. So is it wrong or not?

Now since Jeremy some time ago, via his Victorian Bar email account, demanded my contact details for the service of legal documents – that never arrived – and my details were duly provided, Jeremy has to know that I blog under my real name. Thus Jeremy is accusing either Bolt or Blair, or both, of publishing under an assumed name. Good luck proving that one, barrister-boy.

Then there's Jeremy's last-resort "stalker" nonsense. Everything I know about Jeremy is readily available online. He and his intimates really should be more careful in revealing information about him for all to read if he's going to be all embarrassed and cranky when people refer to it.

But Jeremy insists on compounding his errors:

The first [point, above] should remind readers just how much they get away with using pseudonyms themselves, or by linking to cowardly, creepy attack dogs hiding behind pseudonyms doing their dirty work for them.

As I've already stated, and Jeremy well knows, I blog using my real name.

And just to round out Jeremy's persecution delusions, there this:

And Andrew Bolt thinks publicly attacking my fiancee on news.com.au for a private email is legitimate, does he?

This is more of Jeremy's victimisation bullshit: he and his betrothed like to operate as a team, so Keri James is fair game for criticism.

According to Jeremy's commenters his anonymous comments in support of himself, and use of a fake name on talkback radio, are insignificant when compared to years old comments at Tim Blair's personal blog. The Left really does operate in an alternative reality.

Jeremy Sear's use of a fake name is no big deal, really

Crikey blogger Jeremy Sear tacitly admits to assuming a false identity when speaking with Andrew Bolt on talk-back radio:

LOL. Apparently asking a question of a polemicist on talkback radio is "hassling" them.

Jeremy is obviously keen to divert attention away from his clandestine activities.

It just doesn't seem to have clicked with Jeremy that he is no longer "just some guy with a blog" but that he writes for a media powerhouse and can "now actually ring the subject of a piece and say 'it’s Jeremy from Crikey' and they’ll answer the phone." Or as he writes on his personal blog:

When you're a blogger, and you're criticising something a journalist has published, you don't email or call them first - partly because you don't think it really matters, but also because you've little confidence they'd reply to you if you did, so why bother? However, when you have a professional organisation to name when you contact the person - when you can say "It's Jeremy from Crikey" - then it seems that you actually have a duty to do so. Because you can.

It didn't immediately click that I suddenly had the ability to do that, and therefore should. I don't think of myself as a journalist - I'm not trained as a journalist, and this blogging thing is merely a hobby. I'm a lawyer, and a blogger, not a journo. But Crikey is a professional media organisation, and the standards required are higher.

The point has been made, and for anything in Crikey I will henceforth play the journalism game - particularly if I could arguably be seen to be drawing implications about what a journalist has done from their piece, rather than simply commenting on the opinion they've expressed. (Historically that hasn't been a problem, since previous subjects have pretty much exclusively been publishing their mere opinions.)

Still, after almost five years of amateur blogging, it's a bit of a culture shock.

Jeremy should therefore endeavour to meet the high standards he set for himself and use his real name when lodging blog comments and when phoning talkback radio. Then again, Jeremy's anonymous comments and use of false identities no doubt makes him unique amongst Australia's blogging elites. That's no badge of distinction, however.

Jeremy and his Pure Poison cohorts once lodged apparently earth shatteringly important but false charges that Tim Blair commented using a false identity. Yet when Jeremy assumes a false identity, it's no big deal. Hypocrite.

Update Jeremy has been bad-mouthing me in emails to Alene Composta:

I am very sorry to see what those utter pr*cks, Beck, Blair and Bolt, have done with their repulsive horde of monkeys. Bullies and thugs, the lot of them.

Fiancée Keri joins in:

I noticed that the usual suspects like J F Beck and Tim Blair have been attacking you (no doubt partly because you showed public support for Jeremy). I just wanted to let you know that I thought the post you wrote in response was very brave, and the only reason I'm not posting this on your blog is because I'm conscious that would make things worse.

Also, I'm fairly sure that "Spot the Dog", one of your followers, is J F Beck. I'd suggest you block him if you can. I know you can't stop him from reading, but if he knows that you're on to him, it might give him pause. I can't prove that it's him, but we're fairly sure it is.

Nice try Kerimy; I'm not Spot the Dog and never have been. Leftards are nothing if not entertaining; duplicitous yes, but oh so entertaining:

You can tell from the note that Jeremy believed in me, a faith that gave strength to my blogging and stiffened my conviction. But it didn't last. By the time he had published that Pure Poison post, this is what he was saying about my blogging. It was an "assinine gotcha".

Thus Jeremy is caught in a gotcha of his own making.

Update II Alene demands natural justice:

For 24 hours this blog was the destination for visitors following links that Jeremy Sear posted at his site. Then the trouble began, the abusive avalanche commenced, and the link was gone.

How can we stand together, Jeremy, if we are not prepared to be hanged together?

I know I said I would not blog again, but I can no longer stand by that promise. I have been betrayed by so many people. Now I demand that the guilty to explain themselves.

What say you Jeremy?

Crikey blogger adopts assumed identity to hassle Andrew Bolt

Crikey blogger Jeremy Sear not only comments here anonymously in support of himself, he also pops up under an assumed name – Jeff of Mulgrave – to hassle Andrew Bolt on the radio.

Compare "Jeff's" comments on the situation in Libya here (at 32:30) to Sear's commentary in the latest Pure Poison podcast to confirm that the voice does indeed belong to Jeremy. Also, "Jeff" makes the same points on air made by Jeremy in writing at his personal blog.

Anonymous commenting and using an assumed identity are underhanded ways for a contributor to a "news" site with mainstream aspirations – Crikey – to attack ideological opponents. What's going on here, Jeremy?

Update For the latest, go here.

What did Bolt know, and when did he know it?

The Alene Composta brouhaha refuses to die with moose authority Jeremy Sear, in a surprise move, today taking Andrew Bolt to task for... damn near everything other than the Vietnam war.

Hell, it's been an eventful week at work so I'm tired and ready to unwind and have already downed a few beers so Jeremy's latest hyperbolic rant sort of has me stumped.

Perhaps because Jonathan Green was the editor when Crikey took the PP boyz on board, Jeremy totally ignores Green's decision to publish and later stealthily remove Alene Composta's nonsensical rubbish.

Andrew Bolt, on the other hand, is accused of:

• "abusing his power to bully the hell out of some vulnerable woman who wrote a personal political blog"
• participating in an "orgy of self-congratulation"
• "Fooling his own readers"
• "Engaging in political debate by bashing a straw-person version of his political opponents."
• "sending his keyboard warriors to mock and bully this apparently vulnerable woman"
• "Bolt revels in the deceit"
• And "when confronted with (apparently) a real person who has been misrepresented and (apparently) a victim of “identity theft”, what does he do? He mocks the victim.
  

Jeremy might want to have a nice calming cup of peppermint tea, pet the cats, practice his moose calls, play some video games and calm the hell down.

Apology

I owe ABC online editor Jonathan Green an apology after yesterday criticising him for promoting Alene Composta's nonsensical smear article but then failing to note the article's steathy removal. Green is obviously a very busy man as his Twitter activity indicates:

for the first time since 2003 RT @s_bridges: I no longer have avocado in my beard.

I mean, a spurious attack on Liberal politicians, replete with sexual innuendo, later unceremoniously consigned to oblivion by Green, is nowhere near as important as the food residue, or lack thereof, in the beard of former PP boy Scott Bridges, hired by Green during his editing tenure at Crikey.