Nine days in, and the 2010 election campaign is as dismal as any I've witnessed in the past four decades. Tony Abbott defies serious appraisal, while Julia Gillard's entire first month as Prime Minister has been a massive disappointment.

"Thank you to those who arranged the Leaders debate to avoid clashing with the finale of Master chef."

- NSW attorney-general John Hatzistergos on Twitter, 21.7.10

If you consider the continuity errors in Tony Abbott's glib slogan proclaiming that Workchoices is "Dead. Buried. Cremated.", then maybe you are looking for an "Exhumed" to be inserted into that sequence - at least once, maybe more often. Abbott's serial non sequiteurs on the talk-radio circuit on Monday suggest that neo-liberal IR reform, whether named Workchoices or some other moniker, is not about to disappear from the tory agenda. Where's Freddy Krueger when you need him?

"...today I seek my own mandate to move Australia forward.
...this election is about the choice as to whether we move Australia forward or go back. Our great nation, our very great nation, has been built by generations of men and women who had the courage to move forward.

Moving forward, of course, requires conviction, it requires confidence...

Moving forward with confidence also requires a strong set of convictions...

I will be asking Australians for their trust so that we can move forward together.

If all the rumours tonight are true, then tomorrow morning Australia's first female Prime Minister will pay a visit to Australia's first female Governor-General to prorogue Federal Parliament and call for a general election (including half-senate election) on either August 21 or August 28.

The knifing of Rudd by his Labor Party confreres was totally unnecessary and an act of panic in the face of opinion poll figures that were not as overwhelmingly supportive as before.

Following last December's stunning revelation of graphic footage of a coconut-carrying octopus comes the news that an Oberhausen cephalopod by the name of Paul has correctly predicted the outcome of every match Germany has played in the current FIFA World Cup. Including their semi-final loss to Spain this morning, of which El Pais reported, "El pulpo acertó."

Yesterday was the 234th anniversary of the collective breakaway of thirteen British colonies from King George III's empire. On New York's Coney Island they know how to celebrate. With the help of that responsible sporting powerhouse Major League Eating.

John Howard was always going to be a bad choice for the ICC presidency. But with his nomination collapsing at the first hurdle, no one could have understood how bad it would get.

I have decided to deprecate the use of Newsvine as the clippings service on rickeyre.com from 1 July 2010. Any new clippings that I bookmark from that date will be held on delicious.

The reasons include delicious' greater flexibility, configurability, wider user base, and (important) the existence of an API. Delicious is owned these days by Yahoo!, while Newsvine is part the new-media extension of old-media behemoths NBC and the Washington Post.