Rowan Dean, and the pond a clearing house for ideas before the rapture strikes ...

(Above: irrefutable evidence that everything ends in "na", found at the laughing squid).

Naturally the news that Sydney schoolteacher Sean Castle allegedly plies his trade at the Toongabbie Christian School sent the pond rushing to the school's web site like a lemming (the similarity between loons and lemmings has long fascinated anthropologists).

For those who came in late, Castle is alleged to be one and the same as Michael Rattner, who allegedly provided false information to the alleged legal team claiming the alleged Pauline Hanson was allegedly defrauded of her opportunity to serve the people of NSW (as outlined in Hanson hoax: how did the Rattner case ever get to court?)

Hanson will be remembered by some as an excellent televisual dancer and the subject of a cruel nude photo hoax by the minions of Murdoch.

Naturally the pond honed in on the school's statement of faith. It provided us with a deeper understanding of the whole affair:

The Sinfulness of People
We believe that people were made in the image of God and for fellowship with God. By transgression of God’s command humankind fell from fellowship with God and their nature was corrupted. As a consequence all people are spiritually dead under Satan’s dominion and control and subject to God’s wrath and condemnation. Therefore, apart from God’s grace, people are helpless and hopeless.

Oh dear, this sounds serious. Do go on:

Rewards and Punishments In A Future State
We believe God has appointed a day of final judgment for the world. At that time Jesus Christ will judge every person and each will receive reward or punishment according to their deeds. Those judged righteous, in their resurrected and glorified bodies, will receive their reward and will dwell forever in Heaven with the Lord. The unrighteous will be consigned to Hell, the place of everlasting punishment.

Oh sweet long absent lord, not the hellfire for all eternity.

There's more, much much more, some might think too much more, and how pleasing it is to see that in the Commonwealth's targeted programs grant funding for 2010, the Toongabbie Christian school received a grand total of $86,808.44 and the Toongabbie Christian School (Primary) some $57,734.61 for special learning needs and languages. Surely there must be plenty of special learning needs for those yearning for the rapture and terrified of an eternity of hellfire, and we're not just talking literacy and numeracy.

The school also received a whack of grant funding in the 2007 Australian government targeted programmes, and if we could be bothered, we could find a lot more, but if you want to cut to a simpler chase, you can simply revert to this data (opens as pdf) to see the hearty whacks of funding the school has received in recent years, in the Other schools more than $1m category, and growing at a cheerful 21.1%. So the students can be reassured that there are temporal earthly rewards as well as a longer term future:

The Resurrection Of The Dead
We believe at the end of the age, there is to be a resurrection both of the righteous and the unrighteous. After death the bodies return to dust, but their spirits return immediately to God – the righteous to be with Him and the unrighteous to be reserved for the judgment.

Yes, it's another great example of your secular tax dollars at work in the educational system. Whither Sean Castle in this world? Who knows, but it makes for a grand flurry of righteousness in an obscure corner of the pond.

Meanwhile, in another part of the pond, it's just another day out for The Australian and climate change science.

Today features the thoughts of Rowan Dean, in Here comes the evil denier monster on the matter, and it's pleasing to see Dean's scientific credentials include being a panellist on The Gruen Transfer as well as an advertising creative director.

You can get an idea of Dean's calm call for rationality and scientific debate by his opening use of toilet cleaning advertisements, and the paranoid sense that somehow denialists have been cast as bacteria:

The climate change denier has become the Left's favourite bogeyman, pursued with all the zeal of a witch hunt in 17th century Salem. Stupid, vain, ugly and mendacious, the climate change denier monster ...

And so on and so forth. Dean spends much of his time berating liberal columnists, and then celebrating the acuity of shock jocks like Alan Jones, seemingly unaware of, or incapable of defending Jones' recent outburst as portrayed on Media Watch (and if you want to be reminded of what Dean is apparently defending, on the basis that Jones is Australia's highest rating broadcaster, head off to Lessons in hyperbolic gestures).

Well Glenn Beck is (was) a high rating broadcaster, and Charles Coughlin was a high rating radio broadcaster in the United States, which surely suggests that being high rating doesn't stop you from being a high rating loon.

Dean even finds it in his heart to support all those who dared question the credibility of Cate Blanchett, while at the same time supporting Cardinal Pell's right to speak out, without once murmuring a thought bubble about the actual credibility of Pell's credentials or scientific thoughts on climate change, muddied more than a little by thoughts of bread turning into actual flesh.

It all builds to this:

By all means, counter every argument the climate change deniers, sceptics, carbon tax opponents and the rest put forward, and attack their opinions with passion and verve, or even better, with proven facts and irrefutable rebuttals.

Dean's application of this formula to himself is to quote Lord Turnbull about climate scientists farting a toxic message into the world, and William Happer of Princeton University, who apparently has been mistaken as a creature from a septic tank.

Uh huh. What an excellent contribution to calm insightful debate. Do go on:

But hysterically and repeatedly portraying them as ugly, stupid trolls, toads and ferals threatening life on earth as we know it, is intellectually (and morally) dubious at best.

Worthy of a toilet cleaning ad, perhaps ...

Worthy of a toilet ad?

At this point, the pond's reaction to Dean's mindless provocations and trollings was to suggest that he take a large toilet brush and shove the handle up his arse. It seemed the only calm, rational scientific way to respond to his impeccably scientific points and observations.

Alternatively why doesn't he just stick to offering insights into advertisements on The Gruen Transfer, since the notion that somehow he gives a toss about the future economic and environmental health of our country seems like just so much comic relief.

And if that isn't enough, then you can always feast on Greg Sheridan's Truth is that Garnaut is partisan as another example of The Australian's unbiassed, unpartisan coverage (well if you believe that, have we talked recently about how you're heading to hell?)

Sheridan's calm measured response to Garnaut is to suggest ...

... a disturbing slide into egomania, with a Kim Jong-il-like introduction about how in one meeting he brought a smile, a lifting of the spirits and a recognition of the truth to the Prime Minister and associated politicians. This is really slightly nutty.

Yep, there's nothing like a comparison to a tin pot North Korean dictator (perhaps singing I'm so ronery) to establish a considered tone, and to dismiss Garnaut as part of an evangelical elite divorced from the suburbs.

We hastily add that Garnaut is not part of the evangelical elite schooled at Toongabbie Christian school, lurking as it does on Metella Road, somewhere out Blacktown Seven Hills way, beyond Parramatta, where a few intrepid travellers have reported that dragons do indeed lurk and love to feast on coffee-rich inner urban elitists (apparently it's the coffee flavouring).

As for Sheridan's understanding of the world?

Like the US, we understand that wealth is not a given but has to be created, whereas Europeans assume national wealth can always be further taxed and regulated in the interests of some allegedly moralistic cause.

Yes, yes, that applies only too well to the moralistic Silvio Berlusconi! Talk about hunga bunga bunga moralism ...

Or were we talking about Nicolas Sarkozy and his bunga bunga wives?

Or should we be talking about Greg Sheridan's mindless, simplistic, trivial view of the world, and of Europe?

Well at least he didn't use 'cheese eating surrender monkeys' in the sentence, and so conforms to Dean's plea for an elevated debate.

Is there anything more? Well of course there's always the anonymous editorialist at The Australian, and as usual they're shocked to their core, in Fairfax shows how not to run a serious newspaper.

Yes the gherkins who ran a piece by Dean on the climate change debate are out to lecture Fairfax on how to run a serious newspaper, and of course what gets them agitated was the conflation of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch's stand on a carbon tax, and climate science, and the price of Mars bars.

The Australian strikes a pose against political pamphleteering, surely one of the most wondrous sights in a rag which has descended into the most blatant forms of political pamphleteering these past few years.

By the end of the froth and spittle filled rant - clearly Fairfax struck a nerve or tickled the funny bone - The Australian's anon edit concludes thusly:

A newspaper which aspires to play a constructive role in civic society cannot afford such conceit, or such contempt for its readers. Its pages should be a clearing house for ideas that stimulate rather than suppress debate and play a part in the development of sound public policy. The vast majority of Australians have open minds and are willing to change them when presented with new evidence or fresh information.

This from the rag that the very same day published a piece of froth and bubble from Rowan Dean blathering about climate science politics in the context of toilet cleaning advertisements.

Talk about a clearing house for ideas ...

By any reckoning, some of Sydney's best ideas must end up at the Malabar Wastewater Treatment plant, where thankfully there's an odour management plan in place.

Okay Toongabbie Christian school, the pond gives up.

Bring on the rapture, and the sooner the better, or at least pray that there's some signs of intelligent life somewhere up in space, because there's bugger all down here on earth ...

(Below: and if conclusive scientific proof wasn't enough, then here's even more scientific proof that everything ends in 'na'. More xkcd here).