Surely it's better that the geeks shall inherit the earth ... anything, anyone other than Murdoch hacks ...

The pond couldn't resist recycling this image, discovered thanks to mUmBRELLA, who credit it to No Fibs Geek (@Geeksrulz) (Twitter reminds media moguls about stones in glass houses).

Well played oh Geek god.

Without your image, the pond wouldn't have been able to get through the day, astonished while listening to the absurd Kim Williams defend the absurdly indefensible.

Speaking of geeks, the pond has a disproportionate affection for the species, and yesterday was equally astonished to see Julia Gillard launch an assault on the industry.

Here's a suggestion for a T-shirt for her to wear next time she speaks about the IT sector:

Now the pond has many fingers in many pies and was amazed at the fury Gillard managed to produce amongst senior industry figures, many usually favourable to the government, and some with a direct line to Conroy.

And it might well be that Gina Rinehart and the mining industry have misused and abused 457 visas, though a little hard evidence wouldn't go astray. But as for IT? One correspondent ranted:

Just show me someone, anyone who can do .NET programming, and not think recursive programming is the way forward. For the sake of the industry let the Poles and the Russians roam wild and free in Australia.

Oh okay, the pond helped with the wording. Trying to get a geek to put down anything that's not a 1 or a 0 or a series of indecipherable codes is extremely difficult.

But it was a heartfelt rant, along the lines that what the federal government says makes no sense from a policy or practical point of view, only from an electoral, shore up the unions, cater to the special interests and the base point of view.

The federal government might well take steps to explore why the quality of training in the sector is so abysmal, and why other countries do it better, and why there's so little take-up of educational opportunities and why no-one sees the sector as a desirable place to work (here's a few obvious reasons - long hours, low pay, and if you're any good head off to the United States).

Unlike politics, IT is clear cut. Either you can program or code or otherwise get down and dirty amongst the digits, or you can't pass the tests most employers use these days to sort the genuine grunt monkey wheat from the geek chaff.

The industry - always intimidated by international competition in a very competitive sector - is having its big industry awards ceremony tonight.

The pond predicts that there will be an enormous amount of grumbling about the federal government at the AIMIA Awards, and all of it completely unnecessary, arising as it does from Gillard and her advisers putting their unthinking, unheeding foot in it. With friends like this, who needs enemies?

Meanwhile, the Daily Terror goes on in its surreal way, this time comparing Senator Conroy to Fiji - Load of bula as Fiji praises Conroy is the "exclusive" at the top of the digital page.

Yes it's another epic work by that lickspittle Murdoch lackey Emma Jones offering up the full header Load of bula as Fiji's Frank Bainimarama praises Stephen Conroy's media controls.

It's a shameless beat-up but how wonderful that there's a hack at the Terror willing to get down in the gutter of absurdity. 

Here's the accompanying illustration, which puts Conroy in gay pose:

It's as childish and as petulant you can get, and it makes the pond regret it has no meaningful Photoshop skills because what fun it would be to see Emma Jones done up as Eva Braun, with Kim Williams as Göring ... only in the cause of productive rational debate, it goes without saying ...

Now you can't blame the pond for any of this. The pond never ever buys the Daily Terror.

Even if offered it for free, there's no way the pond would use it to light a barbecue, for fear of tainting the sausages and chops; it's impossible to use as cocky cage liner, because the birds immediately get shocking cases of diarrhea; and you can't even use it for papier-mâché because scientific tests suggest that playing with it for a mere half hour can reduce a child's IQ by twenty points ...

Conroy understands that the only response to lunatics frothing and foaming at the mouth is to treat it as low bumpkin rustic comedy of the cretinous kind:

Senator Conroy's spokesman said last night: "Trying to compare the situation in Fiji with the government's media reforms says more about those making the comparisons than it does about the government." 
 Senator Conroy is so pleased with the response to his media reforms that he is offering to autograph copies of The Daily Telegraph depicting him as a despot who wants to control the press, The Australian reports today.

It is indeed a huge joke, and Kim Williams - who once fancied himself as an intellectual and an incisive debater - is the biggest joke of all (lickspittle lackey Emma Jones excepted).

Naturally the Terror has wheeled out its biggest paranoid hysterics:

Good old Akker Dakker, still sounding as if he gave up drug-sniffing only yesterday, wired for noise and fury.

The pond for years had fun comparing Akker Dakker to Billy Bunter. Surely you can see the family resemblance?

Oh okay, it's childish, but this is a blog, not the ostensible mainstream print media source of information for the people of New South Wales, currently acting more like a pack of yowling rabid dogs than journalists.

Now if you want to read the righteous twit, you can head off to Tyrants, and temporary PMs, fear a free press, which really should have been headed ordinary readers fear having their head fucked by reading Akker Dakker.

The pond can only stand so much, and there was an absurd set of illogical canards at the end of Akker Dakker's piece:

With the federal ALP locked in a leadership struggle and with rumours of an imminent coup sweeping parliament yesterday, it was argued that this attack on the press was designed as an elaborate diversion to protect Gillard's leadership through this week and the next, the last sitting week before the May Budget session. 
 One Labor MP said Gillard was only saved this week by the slight lift in Tuesday's Newspoll numbers. "Now the newspapers will be full of the new pope and this media legislation, she has lived through another near-death experience," he said. 
 "This legislation may not pass - but it has already served its political purpose." 

Now there's a few things to unpack here. First and most notably is the way Gillard and her minders have managed to arrange the election of a new pope to help save her leadership

Second, there's the astonishing news that an actual Labor MP would talk to Akker Dakker. Do they have conversations with the rattlesnakes they see in the zoo?

But do go on:

If this threat to the Australian democratic system has been orchestrated to distract those stalking the prime minister, her protectors have gone too far. 

Notice that big "if". It's how you raise an idle speculation to the sinister level of common gossip, and make it sound respectable.

Like this:

If this threat to the integrity of Australian journalists has been orchestrated by Rupert's minions as part of their ongoing never-ending attempt to bring down the Labor government, then Rupert's crusading minions have gone too far.

Oh hang on a tic. That sentence didn't need an "if" at all.

This threat to the integrity of Australian journalists has been orchestrated by Rupert's minions as part of their ongoing never-ending attempt to bring down the Labor government, and in this case Rupert's crusading minions, headed by the craven, cowardly Kim Williams have gone too far into absurdist surrealist comedy, such that Conroy can treat it all as a joke.

Let's wrap it up with another rhetorical Akker Dakker "if" riff:

If the cost of Gillard's political survival is the shackling of the Australian media - it is far too high a price.

You see? That's how you can reduce any policy issue to a childish paranoid leadership issue ...

Fix the Murray Darling basin? Oh that's a distraction from leadership issues... Seal the borders? An idle attempt to divert attention from leadership issues... Global warming? A scientific conspiracy and fraud designed to avoid leadership tensions... Elect a pope? What a handy distraction from leadership concerns ...

And so on and so forth, for ever and ever ...

But, but, billy goat but, if it's all an idle distraction without a chance of passing, where's the harm? Conroy's signed a few front pages, and the billy goats at the Daily Terror have had a little childish petulant fun and the concentrated abuse of media power in Australia continues unabated, as shown by the Daily Terror's outrageously juvenile tabloid behaviour ...

How did Kipling put it? Didn't he have something to say about "If"?

If you can lose your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can't trust yourself when all around doubt your journalism too,
And don't make make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can post silly pictures and idle speculation
And not be tired by silly pictures and idle speculation,
Or not being lied about, make sure to deal deal in lies,
Or being hated, feared and loathed, make sure to give way to hating, fear and loathing
And so don't look too good, nor talk too wise ...

etc etc yadda yadda until we build to the punchline:

If you can harangue the crowds and make sure to lose your virtue and intelligence, 
And be servile to Kings, Emperors and Chairman Rupert, 
And thereby lose the common touch, 
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, 
Because brain death is preferable to thinking,
If all men and women think like you by thinking none too much,
Unless they happen to be the dictator of Fiji; 
If you can fill the unforgiving minute, 
With sixty seconds' worth of pure drivel and low rent copy, 
And wretched digitally altered images,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, 
And - which is more - you'll be a Murdoch hack, my son or daughter
A harlot of the first water,
Or Emma Jones or Akker Dakker! (apologies to Rudyard, original poem here)

And that's how you spend all your time preening and looking at yourself in the mirror, and the geeks of the earth can gather without notice from the Murdoch hacks ...

(Below: okay, a shout out to the geeks, enjoy the night, and if you want to know about that address head off to the urban dictionary here)