The Danish winner of this most recent Eurovision struck me as, well, Abba-esque. Except not as good.

Australia has been the salvation of a couple of groups over the years. Abba amongst them. The Swedes apparently considered commercial pop,  regardless of its considerable musical merit, beneath them and so disdained Abba. I kind of went off Abba when 'Fernando' was number one on the Australian charts for fourteen bloody weeks in a row! It became a bit tedious. Apparently the single sold 720,000 copies in Australia, which must be some kind of international record. That would mean that some 5.2% of the population bought a copy.

Everyone is entitled to natural justice. That Ariel Castro guy will, in due course, be entitled to challenge what witnesses say about him in his trial. Even though he is the lowest of lowlifes we  don't dispute this right.

Holder was accused of something. Regardless of what we think about him, even if we think that every word he utters is a lie, he should share that right to respond. Issa did not permit that.

Had Holder not responded, the record could have been read as him acquiescing in Issa's characterisation.

As always, reverse the situation. A Republican administration official is being grilled by a Democrat in a House Hearing. The Democrat assigns objectionable motives to the official. The official should be entitled to respond. 

I'm with Tom Kirkwold on this one. In these kinds of inquisitions the inquisitor is the one with the power. It behoves them not to put words into a witness' mouth, not to lay a charge without allowing the witness to respond.

After Holder's answer, Issa accused him of having nefarious purpose and then tried to move on. Perhaps his accusation was right, but how can it be just to label the man in public, before lawmakers and the TV cameras, and then use your power to stop him from responding to the accusation?

Issa was the unfair, unjust one in this case. Just because Holder may as Attorney General make a great partisan hack doesn't justify Issa's actions.

Blues Brothers: 'We got both kinds [of music]: country and western!'

Most polygamous families are motivated by religious faith, such as fundamentalist Mormonism or Islam, and as long as all parties involved are adults, legally able to sign marriage contracts, there is no constitutional reason why they shouldn’t be able to express that faith in their marriages. (My emphasis.)

Would that not suggest that the State should recognise marriage contracts as they are entered into? That would involve respecting the 'till death do us part' bit, rather than the State, as it has, arbitrarily overriding wholesale the terms these contracts.

Hmmpphhh. I got 9/10 on the grammar one ... intentionally. The first question was about putting the stop inside or outside the quotation marks, and I insist that it belongs inside only if you know that the stop was there in the original. Convention be damned when it leads to inaccuracy!

This is a graphic I made twenty years ago for my letterhead paper (ah, back when we used paper!), primarily because I was reviewing some graphics software and a real-world project made a decent test.

That software was Micrografx Designer, which for a long time was the oldest software on my system (the version I was using was Copyright 1995 -- I upgraded a couple of times after doing the review.)

Sadly, when I upgraded to Win7 this year from WinXP, it proved to be no longer compatible. (Likewise, my ancient Adobe PageMaker carked it under Windows 7, but the amazing CoolEdit 2000 still works!). I had to pull out a very elderly Toshiba notebook which has XP installed, loaded up Designer and export the graphic at high res to a couple of different formats so I can continue to use it in the future.

I thought it was a sketch of George Harrison, circa Sgt Pepper's days.

Pretty much anything by the Doug Anthony All-Stars (they names themselves after a conservative Australian politician). Extremely talented. Much is not compliant with Ricochet standards.

And, of course, Stairway to Heaven as performed by many groups at the instigation of the Australian TV show 'The Money or the Gun'. Harris' version, complete with wobble board and didgeridoo, actually charted (number 7!) in the UK in 1993.

Jake the Peg by Rolf Harris. Given the recent arrest, perhaps Harris should have exercised more control over that third leg.

Tie Me Kangaroo Down, also by Harris. Note the use of the wobble board, and the extreme political incorrectness (this is the 1963 version).

Then, for me, there is the question of country and western music ('both kinds of music', as the bar maid memorably said in The Blues Brothers).

The more pure it is in these genres, the more I find it not just bland, but positively irritating. I'd like to blame that on a degree of snobbishness, but that's difficult for one who loves early Alice Cooper.

Meanwhile, consider the case of William M Briggs, statistician, who runs an impeccably conservative and erudite blog. I agree with him on nearly everything, except for his predilection for hats, and his detestation of The Beatles.

The very first recording I ever purchased -- and I must have been just eleven at the time, but my savings extended to a single and I was seized by the emotion of the song playing in the shop -- was 'Something' by said Beatles (with 'Come Together' on the flip side; combined they constitute a fairly broad musical education).

Soon after my grandmother, a great lover of classical music, passed on to me an LP of Bach's organ pieces (with the sublime Passacaglia), saying it was too heavy for her.

All this is objective?

Pigboy, I don't think you've been dismissive. As you ably outline in this comment, it is a big question with which bigger minds than mine have been struggling for many a year.

The fact is, I would really love it were there a proof that my preferences in art could be rated objectively. I'm arrogant enough to think that they would score highly.

But it doesn't seem that it could.

My brother enjoys modern minimalist composers (Phillip Glass, Steve Reich) and he says that he gains emotional satisfaction from their works. That, with music, is an important standard for me. I am utterly immune to their charms (Glass is, for me, all introduction, no resolution). So is my brother a poseur or honest? I'll go for the latter.

I conclude that in failing to perceive their merits, it may be something lacking within me. Recently I've been forcibly subjecting myself to Japanese Anime movies, another thing to which I've been indifferent. And gradually I've been coming to see their merit. Starting, indeed, to feel it. This suggests to me a process of acculturation, not an objective scale of merit.

Barbara, Spengler's rant is entertaining, but it is merely his judgement. It proves nothing.

Hey, a couple of comments might do the trick. Can you outline the proof? I'm unlikely to read the books referenced, and in that admission I grant you complete absolution if you decide that I'm not someone on whom it is worth spending any more time.

(Sorry, my Ctrl-S automaton won the day, and posted this before I'd finished.)

Still, can you perhaps outline this proof by which objective superiority in a work of art can be achieved? I've already suggested a reason why it must be relative (ie. it is hard for someone to appreciate an artwork that strays too far from the paradigms with which they are familiar.)

How's this for some relativity: people are no stupider, and possibly smarter, than they used to be. The appearance to the contrary is only due to the stupid having greater opportunities in today's world to widely display it.

As my kids have grown up and I've had the chance to interact with their peers, I've been heartened by the promise of the future.

Thanks for the book titles. I shan't read them. Two hundred words might not be enough to prove the point, but should suffice to make_me_doubt.