The jellyfish are on the move ...

(Above: portrait of Greg Sheridan, with some friends).


Item for the day: jellyfish.

No, that's not code for Australian politicians of the constantly changing Abbott kind, or the jellyfish hagiographers of fortress Murdoch, or even a bright eyed bushy tailed piece by Bjorn Lomborg reassuring us all is well and a few bucks in R and D will fix everything.

Rather, it's a reference to a review in the NYRB of Lisa-Ann Gerswhin's book Stung! On Jellyfish Blooms and the Future of the Ocean, which proposes that jellyfish plagues around the world herald deeper structural changes to the oceans ...

The review, They're Taking Over!, (outside the paywall for the moment) is by the great Satanist, Tim Flannery, which ensures it will be ignored by Fortress Murdoch, but it isn't Flannery who writes these words, but rather quotes them:

Gershwin leaves us with a disturbing final rumination: 
When I began writing this book,… I had a naive gut feeling that all was still salvageable…. But I think I underestimated how severely we have damaged our oceans and their inhabitants. I now think that we have pushed them too far, past some mysterious tipping point that came and went without fanfare, with no red circle on the calendar and without us knowing the precise moment it all became irreversible. I now sincerely believe that it is only a matter of time before the oceans as we know them and need them to be become very different places indeed. No coral reefs teeming with life. No more mighty whales or wobbling penguins. No lobsters or oysters. Sushi without fish. 
Her final word to her readers: “Adapt.”

One of the ways Gershwin proposes we adapt is by learning to eat jellyfish. The pond agrees, provided the reptiles at the lizard Oz and the Bolter are force fed the stuff first, in the hope that it will give them a little spine ...

While on the subject of reading matter, can the pond be bold and recommend that Nick Cater - he of the Soviet gumboot joke - take a moment of his time to read Mariana Mazzucato's book The Entrepreneurial State.

The pond happened to catch Ms Mazzucato on the BBC - you can hear it here - noting that all the key structural innovative elements in the iPhone - touch screen, connectivity - were developed by innovative government programs, though some might be disturbed by the key role defence played in the funding.

No matter, and with quibbles aside, even The Economist gives her book a fair hearing, as in this review by Schumpeter here. Will Cater set aside his silliness and his feeble Soviet gumboot caricatures for a moment?

Only if you believe jellyfish don't sting ...

But enough of the intelligent reading.

Let's see how the jellyfish hagiographers are doing.

Splendidly, it turns out:

A brilliant trip? Splendid efforts with Malaysia?

You mean insult the shit out of someone, and then spend time providing a smirking, smarmy apology saying you didn't mean to be so rancorous? It was just a little collateral damage, a little friendly fire ...?

In the pond's world that establishes you as untrustworthy, expedient, and creepy crawly. Waiter, we need some of the kool aid that Mr Sheridan is drinking, it looks like brilliant stuff ...

No link, the pond is too tired, tired of Sheridan and tired of fortress Murdoch. Will Sheridan be able to keep up this relentless hagiographic pace for the next few years? Sadly, the pond suspects he will, and sadly it will be difficult to balance competing bouts of nausea and laughing until we cry ...

Meanwhile, what a pity the Ernies are done and dusted for the year, though the mainstream media seems a little reluctant to publish the details of the winners.

Otherwise the pond would have nominated Barry Cohen's delightful entry in Why Shorten's quota is not worth an iota (apparently outside the paywall because not even the reptiles at the lizard Oz have the cheek to charge for this one):

What those who rabbit on about men keeping women out of politics ignore is that in the 1950s and 60s most women were not interested and active in politics. There were a handful who played a role, but most seemed satisfied to take the minutes and make the tea.

And don't forget the lamingtons and the scones, women were immensely satisfied to do a good bake, oh they were good little biddies, ever so happy, knowing their place, and pleased to stay in it.

Yep, we've moved from jellyfish to silly old farts, and it's well worth remembering that Cohen's only, and very modest claim to fame was that he served as environment minister in the Hawke government (he might have also managed to do nothing about the arts for a period of time), and Bob himself was up for an Ernie with this effort:

"I don't think she's a candidate for the leadership - she has a three-year-old child - the most that Tanya would be interested in would be, as I say, Deputy.'' - Bob Hawke on Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek's leadership prospects. (here)

Yes, poor Bob has also become a silly old bugger, and all the more poignant as people rushed to point out that Bill Shorten had a three year old daughter.

Never mind, there are deeper questions afoot here, which is why Fortress Murdoch only feels comfortable publishing the opinions of old Labor renegades, silly recalcitrant conservative old farts of the Gary Johns and Barry Cohen kind?

It's a sure indication that their key demographic is aging, angry, embittered old white males ... not the best demographic to have as your tree-killer business model goes down the gurgler and you beg young people to take out a digital subscription.

There's a lot more that's delightful in Cohen's epic effort. The pond was particularly beguiled by this:

Gay marriage is silly enough, but these latest proposals are a step too far. 

Yes, that's a classic silly old fart line, harumphing into his keyboard as he pounded away with glee. Or was it a typewriter? Or perhaps, Bob Ellis style, he sports a fountain pen, and dictates to the copy girl when she's not busy making the tea and getting the scones?

 Ever notice how the gay-marriage enthusiasts become quiet whenever a referendum is suggested? With only 4 per cent of the population ranking gay marriage of any concern to them, they are aware of the defeat they would face if the matter were put to a vote. They know how bodgie their polls are, which is why they never call for a referendum.

There's no small irony in this, because Cohen is always ready to bang on about the rights of the Jews, and hark back to his Polish Jewish grandparents escaping Russian-occupied Poland in the 1890s ...

It's easy to slag off minorities and dismiss their concerns and accept that the bigotry of the majority is fine. That notion was popular in Germany in the 1930s. Is it remiss of the pond to note that only 0.4% of the Australian population in the 2006 census identified as Jewish, and that on Cohen's logic, no one should give a flying fuck about their rights and interests, save for that 0.4%?

But wait, thus far we've only done over women and gays, surely we have a line for the blacks ...

I am opposed to a lot of the gobbledygook that is enacted at every public gathering, but there is a strong case for a quota of two Aborigines in the reps and the Senate. New Zealand introduced special seats for Maoris. The fun would start once the parliament had the job of deciding who was an Aborigine and who wasn't. 

Ah gobbledygook ... yep, it's all Yiddish to the pond ...

As for working out who might be black, wise words. After all, as Andrew Bolt keeps pointing out incessantly, you can get filthy rich pretending to be a black in Australia, what with living on the dole in your Toorak mansion, cashing the cheques on a fortnightly basis to keep you in champers and caviare ... just think what those whities would do with a couple of quota seats.

But by now you might be wondering how you can pick a silly old fart about to spring into verbal action. You might, for some strange reason, not have a silly old fart as a parent.

Well here's a sure guide.

Look how Cohen starts his piece:

When I first read that aspiring Labor leadership candidate Bill Shorten had suggested that quotas be extended to include a range of minority groups with different sexual proclivities - lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex communities (whatever they are) - I assumed he was exercising his quirky sense of humour or he had taken leave of his senses.

Yes, never mind the question of the narcissist Bill Shorten's suggestion regarding quotas, designed mainly to get himself a little leverage in the leadership race, it's the way Cohen tags the debate that tells you where he's coming from.

Sexual proclivities ...

Intersex communities (whatever they are) ...

Truth to tell, it made the pond deeply nostalgic for the 1950s, for the whiff of plum-flavoured smoke coming from grandfather's pipe, the smell of grandmother's 4711 cologne as she plumped her purple (or rose) tinted hair into shape, before wiping our faces clean of any dirt with her embroidered handkerchief smelling of lavender and naphthalene...

The old world is rapidly changing, and it's amusing to see Cohen, a defender of a particular minority, rail at other minorities with exactly the same blinkered bilious prejudice as is still sometimes doled out to Jews for their proclivities, whatever they are...

More importantly, however for the lizard Oz, is why he continues as a guest columnist, and why therefore the rag reeks of the 1950s, plum tobacco and 4711 cologne, perhaps with a whiff of mothballs ...

It's probably a silly question, because all they want is a little padding, between all the articles scribbled by hagiographic jellyfish busily going about their work ...

(Below: Pryor doing over Barry Cohen in the trees in 1985, courtesy David Attenborough, and in the Daintree in 1986. Some things never change, as the jellyfish keep on the march).