In which the pond deploys matchsticks for Ned Kelly and has a maths lesson with Dame Slap ...

Every so often the pond has a twinge of sympathy for Malware.

Imagine your advisor bringing you press clippings of a morning and saying "you should read this Prime Minister", only to see that it's just another screed from that pompous, portentous prattler Paul "Ned" Kelly, and worse that it's a stale and reheated piece where even google suggests an unfortunate borrowing, or at best a homage ...

Break free or contain the populists? Who knows what to do?

And then imagine the compounding horror when ferreting through the clippings, the advisor produces another piece full of reptile wisdom, this time from Dame Slap ... threatening to turn him into a former chairperson ...

Well the pond must do what Malware must surely do, and that's trudge through the learned sages to see if any wisdom can be gleaned ...

Hmm, that last sentence has the resounding ring of the founding fathers of the United States. We hold these truths to be self-evident and all that, or perhaps it's just solemn righteous portentousness cranked up to eleven.

It's around this point that Malware is probably wondering how to stay awake and finish the job, and the pond can recommend wholeheartedly the device employed by Tom ...

Besides, blissfully, the last gobbet is short ...

Phew, what a relief, duty done and dusted.

Now at that point most people, and Tom, would give up, but not poor Malware.

Pausing only for a coffee and a cartoon, and more Broelman here ...

... he must now plunge into Dame Slap's advice...

Indeed, indeed. The pond loves to remember those heady days of P(A|B) may or may not be equal to P(A) (the unconditional probability of A). If P(A|B) = P(A), then events A and B are said to be independent. In such a case, having learned about the event B does not change our knowledge about the event A. Also, in general, P(A|B) (the conditional probability of A given B) is not equal to P(B|A). (and there's probably more here but that's conditional).

If ever there was a way to ensure that the country was well run, it's attending Dame Slap's maths school, where the slow students are often given a rap on the knuckles with a ruler.

Somehow the pond was reminded of a recent cartoon series that began this way ... and the rest of the series here.

Oh okay, it doesn't have much to do with the matter at hand, but wouldn't it have been simpler if Dame Slap had brought her maths class to a quick close, with a "You know, I really don't like Malcolm Turnbull. He has the sort of head that invites a head butt. Or at the least a dunce's hat and a rap on the knuckles." 

Instead the hapless lad, deep in the land of memes ...

... cops a comparison to former Chairman Rudd ...

Poor Malware. And not a mention in Dame Slap's piece of one of his key problems ... his own party ... with Abbott already beginning to stoke the factional wars, helped along by Four Corners and those reprehensible ABC types, and the usual suspects out and about and ready to perform a mugging ...

And so to a couple of cartoons because anyone that's made it this far needs a break ... with more Wilcox here and more David here ...