In which the pond resumes its Caterist habit, but worries about whether the Department of Finance will help maintain the fix ...

The pond knows little about sport or the Olympics and cares less - there's a good Sydney public transport system tucked away in Bob Carr's bread and circus - so all that needs to be noted this day is that Dame Slap has dragged John Coates into her classroom for a good walloping with the ruler ...

Who knows why, and others might care ...

Meanwhile, other reptiles continue the Leaking mourning process. The pond understands the keening, the grieving and the wailing might, if certain customs are adopted, last a year or a lifetime ... the pond's German grandmother, of peasant stock, took to black on the death of her partner, and in good Phillip Adams style, never wore anything else until the day of her own demise ...

Will nattering "Ned" follow suit?

Meanwhile, the dog botherer maintained the rage, and got agitated that someone dared to call a cartoonist, who turned racist in his dotage, a racist ...

So much for freedom of speech, reptile style ... you can tread on the graves of others, you can call gays the Waffen, but you can't tread on a passing reptile without feeling the fury...

As a result, it was a relief to celebrate the return of the Caterists, thoughtfully funded by federal government grant, and a hearty bout of climate denialism ...

The splashes promised much ...

Of  course the pond accepts that science and politics don't tell us the future, not when we have the the futurist Caterist on hand to explain the future, predict doom and gloom, run around like a headless chook and generally do his Chicken Little act.

Whenever the pond wants a seer it turns to the Caterist in fortune teller, mode, adept in all the arts of crystal-gazing, tea-leaf reading, Tarot card clairvoyance, rune deciphering, entrail analysis of the much esteemed Haruspex kind (do the Caterists specialise in the liver of sacrificed sheep and poultry?),  and other forms of scientific prophecy and divination ...

Now it is important to stop here, so that it might be remembered that there is no actual need for the Caterists to consider the actual science.

The science is long settled. It's all a fraud and a conspiracy, designed, no doubt, as Dame Slap and the Lordish Monckton have explained at length, to create world government by stealth.

The pond has every hope that the Caterist will make this eminently scientific point in the next gobbet - it's quite possible that Marxists are involved - but in the interim, here's a few cartoons which endorse and explain the Caterist grasp of science ... 

Okay, it's time to move back to the politicisation of science.

What's the bet Marx and Engels will be mentioned? The pond had them on short odds ...

Well talking of Marx is as scientific as the Donald making it all a Chinese conspiracy ...

On a personal note, the pond understands that Leak had to get into the act somehow.

As for the science, we've been here many times before, and will no doubt end up there again ... so many distractions, so little time ...

It takes some considerable skill and chutzpah to talk about all this without once seriously engaging in the current state of climate science ... while also bemoaning the way "politics provided the grants that sent science heading off along a single track."

It reminded the pond of how the Department of Finance provided the grants that allowed fuckwits of the first water to head off down a single track ...

Oh indeed, indeed, but what of 2017?

Where are the list of grants made for this year's survival, this year's tracts about science and politics? Are the reptiles guaranteed their columnist for another year? Is the fix in to help maintain the pond's deadly diet?

Fortunately, there's a Rowe today which invokes religion and the city of churches ... with more Rowe here ...

It made the pond quite nostalgic for the land of the crow eaters. Buck up crows, the grants going to the Caterists are doing splendid climate science work, so there's no need for the feds to help you out with your petty problems... thought of a wing and a prayer instead?

Remember you're in the grip of a safe pair of hands, as admiring eyes goggle at the mastery and dexterity and forward-looking nature of the feds ...