The pond is always delighted when others share in its love of the reptiles, and Amanda Meade is as good a reptile enthusiast and herpetologist as any doing the rounds …
The pond was reminded of this when checking up on the Graudian's Weekly Beast, which sadly at time of writing hadn't produced a new edition, but which in its 20th April incarnation here, celebrated Lloydie and the octopi from outer space …
Meade had kindly provided a link to the Lloydie yarn, but of course anyone clicking on it immediately hits the lizard Oz paywall … and it occurred to the pond that it hadn't actually put up Lloydie's latest contribution to the advancement of science …
Of course there were also the windmill stories mentioned by Meade …
… but in the TGIF spirit, here's Lloydie redux, as a community service, because the pond can do things that Meade must, in the spirit of fair play, not do …
Pure genius, and up there with Lloydie's many befuddling contributions to climate science …
Speaking of befuddling, one of the reasons that the pond reverted to Lloydie - apart from its interest in spreading objective scientific reptile studies far and wide - is the ongoing disappointment that Speccie mob represents.
The pond fossicked through the rubble like a panner hunting for gold at Bowling Alley Point and came away with not even a speck of the real deal. There's a lot of iron pyrites in the Speccie mob - the pond blames the Caterists - and this effort by one Simon Collins was typical …
It began well enough ...
While the pond is currently in the middle of The Square, it enjoyed The Death of Stalin, and citing Robert Conquest is good old-fashioned old school Spectator … so the pond carried on to the next gobbet, celebrating the battle to the death of the onion muncher and Malware ...
And allowing that talk of hits and hit lists in Australian politics is designed for comic effect, then things got a little funny …in the peculiar sense ...
Whoa?!
How did we end up there?
One minute the pond was grooving along to the berating of Lenin and Stalin - it's hard to stick up for a mass murderer like Uncle Joe - and the next we're supposed to take a fancy to the Russian people for their refusal to feel any guilt or self-loathing, but rather regard them with affection for their yearning for good old-fashioned Stalinism, and its reincarnation in good new-fashioned Putinism?
"People, in short, who are proud of their nationality."
And then it's used as a stick to berate un-Australian, un-patriotic, un-national Australians?
Talk about befuddling. Not that the pond thinks much of any form of any nationalism, anytime, anywhere, but since when did being proud of harbouring mass murderers or dictators become a decent form of nationalism? Especially as Australians are generally proud of their ancestors and the way they did a proper, decent invasion, and dished it out to the blacks …and almost managed a genocide in Tasmania and now have inspired the world with their very own gulags ...
Or some such thing …
It's always a little weird and provocative to stumble on the Spectator going into RT mode …a bit like the shock the reptiles experience when Fox News has a close encounter of the weird kind with the Donald …
At that point they have to revert to AFP to handle the cognitive dissonance …
Barking mad, and Avenatti was tweeting with delight, and the prosecutors were off to court with the news, and so on and so forth …
It's a treat to see the Fox mob when they realise that they've unleashed the kraken, and it slowly dawns on them … and speaking of hits, the head mobster was ready to slip his Fixer under the bus ...
Oh well said Hughie baby, why soon enough you can write for the Speccie mob about your love for Putin.
Lordy lordy lah di day, up against this circus, what chance do Lloydie and the Speccie mob have?
About the only thing that can distract might be a miracle of the turning water into wine, or wine into blood kind …
... or perhaps ScoMo's astonishing transformation, as noted by Rowe, with more Rowe here …
It's not just Dr Strangelove, you know, the ones that can walk ...
Lloydie: "...Russian scientists that found cosmic dust taken in swabs from the outside of the international space station contained DNA sequences ..."
ReplyDeleteI wonder how they did that ? Just opened a window and leaned out and took a swab, maybe ? And how did they swab - with a damp cloth, maybe ? And when, and how, did they do the DNA analysis ? On the International Space Station (and caps for such a 'proper name' please, Lloydie) ? No advice from Lloydie on any of that, of course.
Note that Lloydie is happy to give an actual reference to the paper and its authors for the 'Cause of the Cambrian Explosion', but not for the Russian DNA swabs - why not, I wonder.
But the main thing is that just spouting "we came from space" means nothing at all - where in space did we come from ? Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Kuiper Belt and/or Oort Cloud, another star system ? Interstellar 'comets' ? Interplanetary comets ? Where ? Is Steele and his apologists saying that there's only ever been one place in the universe where life originated ? Or did it originate in many places, and why would Planet Earth be excluded from the list ?
Sheesh. Nonsense and more nonsense, especially the Hoyle/Wickramasinghe wiffle piffle which has been 'debunked' many times by now.
“Is there anyone amongst us who can honestly say they’ve never filled five minutes of a long train journey or sleepless night compiling a list of the people they wish dead?”
ReplyDeleteWell - yes. I never have, and I suspect that the same could be said for most people.
Mind you, most people don’t write for the Speccie......
PZ Myers has a post on the octopi, at https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2018/04/19/squids-from-spaaaaaaaaace/ . The comments are good, too.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, but PZee is a genuinely skeptical scientist - I don't think Lloydie would be caught dead reading such as he.
DeleteThat octopus story seems like LLyodie's Order of Lenin moment. Not that there was much credibility to start with, but best to put it beyond all doubt.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Collins kiddie - Eh?