Greg Sheridan, a horde of Murdoch media pundits, and a call for dexterous flexibility ...

(Above: here at the pond, we like to see things double).

Okay, I have to admit it.

I've been playing with an iPad, and like all toys, it exercises a peculiar fascination, like an iPhone or iPod on steroids.

Load it up with an avi (which you have to convert to an iTunes friendly standard) or use an app like Handbrake to convert a Video_TS file (drm free natch) to a file transfer friendly format, and bob's your uncle.

Suddenly you have your own portable private screen, better for inflight entertainment than any current airline offering, and unnervingly sharp. I swear that the avi of an old movie from 1973 that I dug up was transformed the moment it hit the iPad, and it wasn't just due to the groovy small screen presentation. It was actually a better defined image, as if there was a mini upscaler at work. Better than the image to be had on a very sharp 23" screen hooked up to my box, and still managing to be better than the very sharp screen on my Mac portable.

What next? Well 3D obviously, as connectivity via 3G and then soon enough through 4G/LTE is already coming.

Doubt me on the 3D? Why not trot off to Apple Foresees 3D Glasses That Use Your iPhone for your futurist hit, and take it in, along with a hit of the breakfast bran needed to calm the nerves at the thought of incessant gadget change. Always with the changes Mr. Jobs and the leeching of the early adopters.

Now if you're in the entertainment industry, you might be wondering what all this means. And I think it's safe to say that the iPad will do for movies what the iPod did for mp3s and drm and free music on the internet.

You see, provided that you convert your file to an iTunes friendly format, the platform is agnostic about where it came from. You might, for example, have ripped a copy of Avatar - purchased for your own private use, natch, just as your ripper is only for private domestic fair use purposes - and then downloaded it to your iPad so you could inhabit the alien blue world wherever you roam. Or you might simply have taken a short cut and downloaded one of the many rips roaming the full to overflowing intertubes. Meh, we're agnostic at the pond.

End result? Piratez have their perfect tool, piratez rulez. The industry better hope that iSpecs work because that's the only logical step to upgrade in a way that sidesteps the pirates, at least for a little while ... until the piratez work out the game on that one.

But why this side step down the futurist technology path when the pond is dedicated to loons?

Well it was because I clicked on The Australian this morning and I was awestruck by the fair and balanced coverage on view in the opinion pages.

First up there was Greg Sheridan endorsing Kevin Rudd's sit on his bum do nothing about climate change policies, under the craven header, No need to lead from the front on ETS action, and as if startled by the horses, or having been caught out praising complete inertia as a strategy, Sheridan then rounds out his piece by finding mystical comfort in Abbott's obfuscation over immigration:

Abbott's speech dwelled too much on opinion polls - one reason it was under-reported - and gave the impression the Coalition would be happier with 29 million rather than 36 million Australians, but did so with such dexterous flexibility that an Abbott government could pursue growth, surely a bedrock value of the Liberal Party, as energetically as the Howard government did.

Dexterous flexibility! Has there ever been a more felicitous phrase for talking out your arse? Why you might counter with "economical with the truth", but I think I have a new phrase, right up with "that's a very courageous decision Minister".

Not only can you talk gobbledegook, but Sheridan will become part of a conga line of journalists endorsing you for being the very model of a model politician. You fools that think politicians should say what they mean and mean what they say simply don't have a clue. Think dexterous flexibility, and nothing is but what is not ...

Next on the list was Henry Ergas, doing what has become a standard bleat about the mining tax, as we all suddenly forget small business and Howard's battlers and the middle class, to don sackcloth and ashes for the long suffering mining industry, who at this minute are preparing to pack their bags for Canada.

This tax won't win any respect, Henry opines, clearly of the view that once you've got into bed with the mining industry, you should marry them by morning, or you'll lose all respect. Henry evokes Aretha Franklin to explain why the rich should go on getting rich, because otherwise we all face a brown out, or deja vu all over again. Better to be in California or Nevada perhaps where nobody gets taxed at a government sustaining level, and everything is falling apart.

But hey ho, nonny no, on we go, and next up is Tony Makin explaining how Rudd hits flat note with unfinished symphony. He explains how we're all better off living abroad, like the million Australians in the dinkum diaspora, and how nearly all taxes confer a net loss of economic welfare. Yep, it's better to live in California or Nevada perhaps, where the punters have stopped politicians devising new forms of taxation, and everything is falling apart.

Makin's immediately followed by Justine Ferrari, who explains how Post-crisis, PM should have lifted sights, which is to say that the BER scheme failed to deliver value for money, and it's all Chairman Rudd's fault, or perhaps a teensy bit Gillard's too.

By now I was beginning to reel in a drunken way, but taking a deep breath I plunged into Dennis Shanahan's Julia's Teflon wearing a bit thin, wherein he does another beat up on the BER, and does his best to bring out the worst in the recent audit report.

I could barely summon up the strength to reach Samantha Maiden's report from the despatch box, on how Gillard has in fact managed to avoid the heat coming from the BER and somehow, whatever Shanahan alleges, by a Lourdes miracle perhaps, the header magically becomes Deputy sidesteps heat from kitchen. Yep, it was the kitchen cabinet that done it, that and a lack of cabinet scrutiny, and Gillard rolling the critics like a carrot-topped steamroller.

I began - dimly - to understand that Australia was in utter ruin, the kitchen cabinet a disaster, Teflon flaking off like a space shuttle losing tiles, Aretha Franklin brooding about a loss of respect, and the only way forward a hearty dose of dexterous flexibility.

By the time I got to Barry Cohen's Let's not beat about the bush, there's room aplenty, I began to get metal fatigue - or is that mental? Bazza wants a big Australia, and he wants new Australians to go bush. It seems Bazza lives in Bungedore, and he comes out with this beauty:

"Ah," I hear you say, "but that's all very well for you, you live outside Canberra." That's true but similar lifestyles are available close to Sydney, Wollongong, Newcastle, Gosford, Armidale, Tamworth, Wagga and numerous towns in the other states.

Tamworth? Armidale? Wash out your mouth Bazza, it's full of summer flies and the twang of country music.

At this point I began to convulse and get the shakes. Whenever anyone transports me more than five kilometres from the centre of Sydney - unless it's to Paris, Rome or New York - I begin to get the shakes.

Relax, I muttered, it's just another day with Murdoch media, and what joy there will be, in a post-Avatar world, when the fiscal news about News Ltd suddenly turns sour. How long can this Murdoch ponzi scheme go on, propped up as it is by Fox News and blue indigenous environmentally aware mystical spiritual pagan creatures, while the rest of the empire bleeds red ink?

Which reminds me, I must get back to my iPad and have a little more of a play with Avatar.

(Below: pick Chairman Rupert. You want a clue? He's the one on the right, except he's not the one on the right).