Say what? Surely not ...

Surely not?

The house of mouse with a hundred years of copyright?

Wikileaks Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)

Surely not?

Surely Paul Krugman didn't write in 1998:

"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's ... Ten years from now the phrase information economy will sound silly."

But that's what it says in Sue Halpern's review of assorted books on the intertubes in Are We Puppets in a Wired World? at the NYRB, currently outside the paywall.

Who'd have thought a liberal like Krugman would be perfectly poised for a position in Tony Abbott's cabinet, or as technology writer for the Murdochians, or perhaps as a climate science advisor for Greg Hunt.

Surely not ...

Speaking of the loons, they are of course at it again today:

Yes, yes, and the pond's EXCLUSIVE is that the NBN will have no greater impact on the economy than the fax machine.

Of course in her piece Halpern went on to note the immense impact the Internet had had on many fields of human activity and behaviour - not least Big Brother - and cited Cisco as projecting the Internet - if you can quantify the beast - would be worth $14.1 trillion by 2022 ...

But why on earth would you expect the trolls at the lizard Oz to stop their trolling? Surely not ...

What else? Well Hedley Thomas for a moment lifted his gaze from staring at the fluff in Clive Palmer's navel to come up with this for the weekend:

No, Hedley, it isn't "our" media, it isn't even my media, it isn't even yours.

When we come down to the dominant voice in the fading print media, it's Rupert Murdoch's and Kerry Stoke's media.

It gets even worse when you read the actual header How Julia Gillard was ready to censor our free media.(inside the paywall because free ain't free)

Uh huh. But the media isn't free, especially not the fading, flailing, failing dominant voices in the print media.

Let's not call two bucks for access to the Daily Terror free ... why the pond can ferret through its household garbage for nothing.

As for the rest of Hedley's piece, it's a shameless exhibition of preening righteousness and paranoia, which concludes:

Perhaps those who still don't get it - who still lampoon The Australian, Milne, Smith, Baker and other journalists, including this one, who have been involved in exposing these issues - should explain to the fraud squad detectives and the police lawyers why they, too, are barking up the wrong tree.

And what alleged tree is that?

Why, it's the alleged tree of Wilson, and not a single new thing to say or reveal about the alleged tree of Gillard.

Never mind, the entire piece is a hoot to read. We wuz right, I tells ya, just you wait and see, we wuz silenced and bullied and harassed and intimidated and humiliated and done down and had the dirt dished on us, and we're all a bloody bunch of choir boys, and just you wait and see, and assorted other petulant pouts and stamping of feet ...

They really are a world apart in the lizard insular, paranoid world of Oz castle. What was that illustration a reader kindly offered up to the pond evoking the reptiles at the lizard Oz?

Oh dear, more foot stamping and sulking about the lampooning ...

Meanwhile, on another planet, the pond was yesterday taken on a charming trip in time.

The trigger happened to be the very recent, but no doubt soon forgotten story, World's oceans being hit by 'silent storm' of acidification, study finds.

In the usual way, the Fairfaxians wrote up the report, but didn't provide a link to it, but the actual report - based on the research presented at the third symposium on the ocean in September 2012 - can be found here as a pdf. Please Fairfaxians, don't fear the link ...

At the link, there's a couple of high res projections of the kind that sends the Bolter wild, and must therefore be a good thing:

But you'll have to head off to the high res images to read the fine print.

The 'silent storm' in the header reminded the pond of Carol Turley, who has been banging on about ocean acidification for years, and the pond wonders who might prefer the Bolter's insights to those of Turley, who works at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

The Bolter doesn't have much of a clue about oceans and their acidification. (There are those who'd say he doesn't have much of a clue about anything).

For example, not so long ago, while celebrating the mouthings of David Murray in I am an Australian with freedom of speech and say the climate problem is overstated, he ran the rantings of a reader going by the name of Viperous.

Viperous? Is that the Bolter's pen name?

Never mind, the viperish Viperous denounced scientists for daring to use the word "acid" when they should be saying "less basic" or some other viperish gibberish, which would come as news to Turley, who doesn't seem to have any problem describing what happens:

Carol Turley: It’s important for us all to realize that the CO2 that we’re putting up into the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels and things like that, a lot of that is being absorbed by the ocean. And while it’s been buffering climate change – without the oceans it would be far higher than it is now, so climate change would be even worse – we now realize that the amount going into the oceans, which is about 25-30 percent over the last 200 years since the industrial revolution, has had an impact on the ocean chemistry. Because when you add CO2, carbon dioxide, to sea water, it forms a weak acid, carbonic acid. And that is making the oceans more acidic. It’s already 30 percent more acidic than it was 200 years ago. If we keep on emitting CO2 into the atmosphere, then ocean acidification will get worse and worse. So we need to urgently reduce the amount of CO2 emissions in order to stop the ocean chemistry changing in the way that I told you. (here)

But what would a scientist know up against an anonymous scribbler published by the Bolter in a tabloid blog, where you stand in the mud and you don't look up at the stars, you aspire to reaching the gutter.

Anyway, one thing led to another, and the next thing you know the pond was at news.com.au reading 10 simple points about climate change.

The illustrations and the language suggested the piece was being pitched at the level of primary school children, but perhaps the Murdochians have a keen, canny understanding of the mental level of their demographic (does that explain the kindergarten approach of the Bolter?).

However the piece did do a service for humanity, because it sent the Bolter into a frenzy in Fighting the global warming religion.

The more the Bolter talks about religion, it becomes clear that he is himself a crazed, absolutely unscientific, basically ignorant, wilfully distorting fundamentalist.

Even then he ducked the ocean acid challenge:

Look, there’s more I should tackle - about “more acidic” oceans and the like. 
But you get the picture. And remember: this is just a standard piece of alarmism of the kind the media pumps out almost every day.

Actually, it would be really excellent if the Bolter tackled the question of more acidic oceans. Otherwise who knows what Greg Hunt might find out by reading a wiki ... or by reading the viperish Viperous.

Never mind, the pond can only take so much of this nonsense on any day of the week, and especially on a Saturday.

If you really want to maintain a watch on the Bolter's routine stupidities, there are hard workers who rise to the challenge. The story about Bolt v. News can be found here, for example, in Watching the Deniers.

It's all too much for the pond, so let us simply make a prediction:

"By 2015 or so, it will become clear that the impact of the ocean's acidification on the economy will be no greater than the fax machine's ... Ten years from now the phrase Andrew Bolt climate scientist will sound really amazing."

Yep, for once, the Bolter, the pond, Rupert Murdoch and Paul Krugman are united together in the cause of zealtory and fundamentalism ...

Now take it away Daily Terror, with Emissions rise 12pct under Abbott: report:

An analysis of the coalition's direct action climate change policy suggests it will result in Australia substantially increasing its carbon emissions by 2020 rather than reducing them below 2000 levels. 
A Climate Action Tracker policy brief suggests while Labor's emissions trading scheme would enable Australia to cut emissions by five per cent on 2000 levels, the Abbott government's policy won't meet the Kyoto target.

Uh huh. And the NBN is a waste of money too ...

(Below: and now, because the pond is still seething and too furious about those two alleged Xians, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, and their Xian approach to a woman being with her child, we'll settle for a First Dog, with more First Dog here. They used to say you could pick a genuine authentic Xian by their compassion. Shows how fucking useless 'they' are).