With the whole world gone mad, it must be mad Friday. No NRL footballers need apply... ...

(Above: oh Bill you sleazy old heartbreaker you).


Seriously, for a moment. In teenage days, the pond was regaled with terrible tales of crime and punishment, and not just from Dostoyevsky.

The price for stealing a loaf of bread could either be hanging or transportation far away to a prison colony.

Inflation doesn't seem to have caught up with this tradition. The going rate for crime and savage punishment in NSW seems to be stealing a couple of packets of biscuits.

What a depressing tale has unfolded in recent weeks ('There was such a level of brutality on that night that it cannot be ignored' - forced video at end of link).

As a distraction and in search of uplift, the pond turned to other news, including the splendid result for network Ten, which proves what can happen to the bottom line when you give a business over to the tender care of a Murdoch and a Rinehart.

Poor old James Warburton has been sold a spectacular pup, and amazingly while the network indulges in low-rating political commentary of the most wretched kind (the Bolter and the breakfast show for starters), state-based bulletins are alleged to be under threat. But how to run an ambulance-chasing news service on a national basis? (Tough time for boss in the Ten hat).

Will Ten ever return to the successful alternative strategy of targeting and delivering a key young demographic desired by advertisers? Only with great difficulty because the last few years of Murdochisation with a twinge of Rinehartisation has seen a great bastardisation of programming.

Even better, after her spectacular success as a poet, Gina Rinehart is about to give unto the world a book (Rinehart book bound to reveal all - or not). Naturally the launch will be conducted at the Institute of Public Affairs. Can it get any better?

Yes, it can, what with the news that the parrot is going to be sent off to science class, and learn a few things. (Jones ordered told to get 'factual accuracy' training - forced video at end of link).

Can a parrot learn more than to say "polly is crackers"?

The lad is congenitally, wilfully deaf, and while Lenore Taylor might fulminate in Dear 2GB, Here are a few "facts" you might like to check - forced video at end of link - nothing will change the incorrigible wretch. It won't even ruffle his feathers.

Taylor gets upset about Jones claiming scientists are doing it for the cash, but since Jones loves to do it for the cash, how can you explain to him - get him to understand - that other people have different motivations? Impossible. He'll keep on thinking cash for science is just the same as cash for comments until the cash cows come home ...

But it is a prime reminder of what that serial sexist and misogynist Tony Abbott gained with his dog whistling about climate science:

In his discussion with Mr Booker about how politicians around the world had been duped by the ''hoax'' of global warming, Mr Jones said of Coalition leader Mr Abbott that he was ''the hope of the side, the hope of the side...he said it was crap.'' 

This gets Taylor agitated:

Is he disputing Mr Abbott's own statements that he accepts the science of global warming, which is why the Coalition is proposing an alternative $10 billion policy to address it? 

Not really because it's clear that Abbott's policy initiatives - appoint a green army, plant a few trees, hand out the money to the private sector to buy favours - isn't an actual policy, it's just a handy bit of government socialism of an exceptionally bureaucratic kind.

By the way, you might be wondering - or maybe not - why the pond keeps typing "forced video at end of link"?

Well because the Fairfax videos presented in such a forceful way are generally woeful, just a cheaply made and dire attempt to flog a forced advertisement which forces the advertiser to pay up. The one on Jones is just an easy assembly of Jones looking silly in various photographs, and since the parrot is adept at playing the theatrical ham, there are squillions of them available. Think of them as another kind of insufferable cash for comment.

Meanwhile, if you want an indication of how a country can turn crypto-fascist in a pen stroke, and abandon any notion that people should be given a fair hearing and a fair trial, cop this headline:

Thank the absent lord the exclusive story is hidden behind the gold bar fickle finger of fate.

Oh wait, it's not an exclusive, it's all over the place.

Is there any sign of consternation or of outrage? No, not about claiming an exclusive. About locking up people for five years without recourse.

Does anyone think it will have a different outcome to the turmoil and suffering last inflicted on people in remote regional prisons in the Howard years? It will turn into a canker and a curse for Abbott, but should people suffer just to please his perverse populism and wilful rejection of domestic and international rule of law?

Well you can't expect a coherent, intelligent response in The Australian. The rag's idea of a leading opinion maker?

Indeed. What if Pauline Hanson returns? What if John Pasquarelli turns up regurgitating his usual tosh in a newspaper that once positioned itself as a guiding light to intellectuals, helping them to "think. again"?

They'd be brain dead by now, unless the gold bar fickle finger of fate has saved them.

Can it get any worse? Why yes, a media with nothing meaningful to do has been all over former chairman Rudd's mini-comeback, and he sounded so dismal, such a self-regarding ponce, that the pond began to ask What if Rudd returns?

And at that moment the pond woke up in a sweat, great trickles of perspiration rolling from the forehead, at the thought of turning into John Pasquarelli ...

Meanwhile, it's business as usual at the rag, with this offering from Michael Asten:

It's been noted by many people many times that The Australian is the parrot of print journalism with its war on science, and in particular its war on climate science. (Cyclical patterns raise no reason for climate pessimism - saved by the paywall again).

Others have written about Asten, who turns up in the rag with a regularity that's surprising:

A quick check of Asten’s peer-reviewed publications shows that while he appears to be your go-to guy if you have electromagnetic interference problems with your fluxgate magnetometer, he hasn’t published anything remotely related to climate science. He is, however, well-connected with the mining and coal industries. 
 In his first OpEd (“Climate claims fail science test”, December 9, 2009), Asten wrote “recent results published by top scientists cast doubt on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s theory” and he showcased the work that Pearson et al published in the top journal Nature. 
 But Asten misrepresented the findings in the Nature paper. Don’t just take my word for it— Paul Pearson and his co-authors wrote to The Australian saying “Professor Michael Asten has misrepresented our recent research by suggesting that it casts doubt on the link between atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming”. (and a lot more here at Event horizon: the black hole in The Australian's climate change coverage)

So why does the rag keep publishing Asten? Could it be that editor Chris Mitchell is the parrot of print media?

No doubt someone will tackle Asten's assertions - which amount to saying that everything is just part of a natural cycle, and forget all this talk of an anthropogenic impact - though it seems Deltoid has tired of late of the herculean task of tackling the relentless war on science conducted by the Oz, compared to when he was fired up back in August 2011 in The Australian's War on Science 69: Michael Asten.

The rag can't even get the credit for Asten right. It lists him as "professor of geophysics at Monash University" when at the University he's described as a "professorial fellow", who incidentally shares his time between Monash and Flagstaff GeoConsultants, who provide, so the blurb assures the world, a world class integrated service to the minerals industry.

Why no mention of this in the declaration of interests and prestige at the bottom of the page? Is it too hard for the rag to provide us with background that informs us Asten spent eighteen years with BHP Minerals? (so Flagstaff assures us at its site).

 Is it impossible for the rag to provide a link to Asten's Flagstaff profile, so we can check on his climate science credentials?

Will his expertise in airborne gravity gradiometers prove handy and useful when it comes to interpreting the state of Arctic ice?

Who knows, except that Chris Mitchell is as bad as the parrot and as unlikely to change his stripes or his feathers ...

And with that bah humbug, it's time for an internet meme, and as everyone in the world now knows the theme for the week has been women in binders, thanks to the Mittster, who picked up where Tony Abbott left off.

Thanks Mittster. At least there's a little bit of joy this frantic mad Friday ...