In which the pond mixes up sniffer dogs, jolly Joe Hockey, the United Nations, climate science, and a little Orwellian stupidity from the AFR ...

(Above: found here in a good photo blog for those of an inner west state of mind).

The pond watched as one of those little inner west cameos unfolded last night during peak hour.

A couple of sniffer dog police, armed with their sniffers, were returning from supervising peak hour commuters at the railway station. They came across a woman who was clearly wired out of her brain, slumped against the rear of the Neighbourhood Centre.

What to do? One made a gesture as if to do something, the other waived away the possibility. Too hard, too much paperwork. Walk on by. So they kept on walking, tugging away the sniffers.

Most likely the correct decision - what to do, think of the effort, think of the interaction with a smacked-out junkie - but what to make of the ostentatious hypocrisy, the stern display of sniffer dogs ready to spot a wayward stash, on any recalcitrant commuter coming home in peak hour on a Friday night?

So it goes amongst the police and the policed, and denizens of the darkest inner west.

Meanwhile, the pond has been most impressed with the response of the coalition to Australia getting a temporary seat on the Security Council.

No churlish behaviour, no sulking, no lack of grace under fire, no selfishness, just an astonishing breadth of vision. Take it away Joe Hockey, show us how it's done:

JOE HOCKEY: I, like everyone else, welcome Australia getting a seat for the fifth time on the United Nations Security Council. Maybe now the United Nations will help us stop the boats.
JOURNALIST: So it's a worthy investment then? 
 JOE HOCKEY: Well, we'll see. If the United Nations helps us to stop the boats then it's a worthy investment. 
 JOURNALIST: Do you think that stopping the boats is the only useful thing that having a seat on the Security Council can do? 
 JOE HOCKEY: Oh, well it's the most obvious thing now and it's the one at the forefront of the minds of everyday Australians. (Gillard congratulates Rudd on UN win)

Yes indeed. What's in it for us? Go on UN, do something bloody useful, instead of all this arguing and debating, stop the bloody boats.

What's that you say? You're having a hard enough time stopping people getting slaughtered in Syria and Afghanistan, and you haven't been able to stop the drug wars in Mexico because of the conspicuous consumption of drugs by United States citizens, and getting the world organised to think about possibly calamitous outcomes arising from climate change is proving a little tricky?

Sheesh how selfish of you. What about a helping hand for jolly Joe and stopping the boats? Is that too much to ask? It's all that's on our minds, seeing as how our minds are about the same as a dinosaur's pea brain.

What's that you say? There are countries with way bigger problems in relation to the movement of people than the minor amount of traffic down under, never mind the alarmist rhetoric and fear mongering of the likes of jolly Joe?

At the end of 2009, there were some 43.3 million people worldwide displaced as a result of conflict and persecution, and there were 15.2 million refugees and 27.1 million internally displaced persons and close to 1 million individuals waiting on asylum applications (and more more data here)?

The United States had some 11.5 million people they cared to call illegals, while in 2010-11, Australia suffered 4,940 boat people, including crew, which had grown to a frightening 7,983 excluding crew.

By golly, at that rate, it won't be long before we hit that 11.5 million mark ... so what are you going to do for us UN? What's in it for us, now we've agreed to spare you a little of our precious time.

Not that we're being selfish or canny. Explain it Julie Bishop:

JULIE BISHOP: The ultimate test of success will be the benefits that flow to the Australian people and we'll be able to judge that after the two year stint. 

Yes, bugger off world, what's in it for us. I mean, having to listen to all that bickering and too'ing and fro'ing on the world stage, caught inexorably between China and the United States, it's just too much for a eucalyptus gum chewer to bear.

Now come on Julie, show us how to dance around Joe Hockey sounding like a right, total, complete and utter dork:

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Joe Hockey, your colleague, has today said that maybe now the United Nations will help us stop the boats. Is that a view that you share? 
 JULIE BISHOP: That's a matter that is an ongoing issue for Australia and for nations in our region. SAMANTHA HAWLEY: And an issue, as Joe Hockey says, for the United Nations Security Council? 
 JULIE BISHOP: Well the United Nations is involved in any event. Already the UNHCR (United Nations Human Rights Commission) is involved. We are concerned that the Government's weak border protection laws are drawing boatloads of people to Australia. That is causing major problems for countries in our regions. 
 SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Joe Hockey seemed to think if the boats don't stop then it's not really a worthy investment going into the United Nations Security Council. His words are, "If the United Nations helps us to stop the boats then it's a worthy investment." 
 JULIE BISHOP: Well that's a sensible thing to say. Obviously it's a regional issue. (link above)

Actually Ms Bishop, it was a totally stupid thing to say, but no doubt Joe appreciates your support.

Just another day in the inner west, with gormless politicians managing to sound like infantile children who should never have been allowed out of their potty training pants.

Talk about breadth of vision and engagement in the world ...

Meanwhile, The Australian's war on climate science continues apace. Take this completely meaningless header, which generalises from a very specific study of temperatures in Scandinavia in the past two thousand years. One of the key points arising from the paper is the difficulty of generalising. Not for the lizard Oz:

Then if you can be bothered to skip past the paywall blockage on Temperatures were higher 2000 years ago, you're greeted by a nifty graph thoughtfully taken from the Global Warming Fundation. And they are?

The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is a think tank in the United Kingdom, whose stated aims are to challenge "extremely damaging and harmful policies" envisaged by governments to mitigate anthropogenic global warming. (wiki them here)

It's hard to know what paper Graham Lloyd is referring to in his report. There's only talk of "authors" and publication in Global and Planetary Change, and a few loose quotes of a generally meaningless kind, with some added commentary from David Jones of the ABM.

Who knows? Here's a quote from Lloyd:

"Expert teams were needed to assess existing records and to reduce uncertainties associated with millennium-length temperature reconstructions, before we can usefully constrain future climate scenarios," the paper says.

Uh huh. Bottom line is that the authors want more money spent on expert teams to assess climate history, based on their own efforts in Scandinavia. Don't they understand that climate science is only an excuse for scientists to chase government bucks for more research teams?

This ground-breaking report was first published on the 24th January, 2012, and you can find it here, but it has only now begun to circulate in denialist circles, where it was featured here.

Naturally it then landed in The Australian today with a front page splash and skew, as you'd expect for the home of a rag conducting a war on science. But at least we know where Lloyd does his reading and gets his scoops from.

Sensibly there's no description of Lloyd as an environment editor or some such thing in the piece. That would be too insulting to the environment, but it does remind the pond of Deltoid on Lloyd back when Deltoid was contemplating The Australian's War on Science 53; Graham Lloyd's passion.

What a wretched tawdry rag.

And now for a closer -  you might have missed an epic editorial rant, perhaps because you don't get the Australian Financial Review tossed on to your verandah for free, because they don't know how else to get rid of it.

Yesterday a reader provided a delightful reference to it, but the pond forgot to provide a link, so here it is under the header Misogyny debate ignores reality (oh frabjous day, callooh, callay, it's outside the paywall).

First comes this:

It is troubling that Australia’s first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, should indulge in this post-1960s tradition by labelling Mr Abbott a misogynist and that our national dictionary should so readily follow the diktat to conflate the centuries-old idea of a pathological hatred of women with modern feminist notions of sexism.

Indeed. And it's troubling that the port-imbibing editor should be furiously scribbling this at the same time that Susan Butler is writing this letter to The Australian, here:

It is galling to be accused in one of the letters to your paper (19/10) of lying about the Oxford dictionary expanding its definition of misogyny to cover prejudice, while at the same time I am being gently teased by John Simpson, editor of the Oxford, for being so slow to make the change. 
 He made it in 2002 and we are just catching up. Anyone who claims to report what is in a dictionary should make sure that they are consulting the most recent edition of that dictionary. Otherwise they can be accused of sloppy research. 
 Your correspondents have also not caught up with the fact that the Oxford has the following definition of decimate: to destroy or remove a large proportion of; to subject to severe loss, slaughter, or mortality. The editorial comment is that this is a rhetorical or loose use of the word but the meaning is covered by an added definition, nonetheless. 
 The Macquarie also comments that, despite its frequency of use, this meaning of decimate has not won acceptance. In our own ways we have achieved the same result -- a description of what has happened to this word and a comment on the attitudes to this change. 
 Fact-checking has been in the news recently. Isn't it up to the newspaper to check facts even if the paper's correspondents are unwilling to do so? Susan Butler, publisher and editor, Macquarie Dictionary.

Galling? Fact checking?

Say what? So here's why the AFR's splenetic piece is wonderfully stupid and silly:

Rather than using outlandish claims and Orwellian word manipulation to exaggerate differences between people, politicians and thought leaders should encourage all Australians to make the most of the abundant opportunities this privileged society provides, whatever their gender, race or social background.

Orwellian word manipulation!! In response to current events, somehow predicted by the Oxford Dictionary in 2002?

Yes, give that rag the golden Orwellian gong for the most stupid invocation and chanting of Orwell's name for the year.

Is there any wonder that sometimes the pond forgets that the AFR sits on the verandah for days until sometimes a thief relieves us of its unhappily free presence?

Is it possible for something free not to be worth the cost?

(Below: the original Orwellian?)