The pond must do a bait and switch for a rare lunchtime posting.
You see, the Major was rabbiting on about Fairfax this day, when the real problem for the reptiles is the loss of the name.
The deviants and heretics "at Fairfax and the ABC" rolled trippingly off the reptile tongue, but with Fairfax no longer allowed, with the very name gone, what will the reptiles do?
There was one Major comedy highlight …
It turned out, thanks to a pond reader, that the lizard Oz paywall is as porous as a colander … which is how the pond came to the switch, and settled for a meal of dashing Donners' mind spaghetti …
Right away the pond was entranced.
Did dashing Donners just show how up to date he was … by referencing a 1979 Pink Floyd song, while seemingly entirely missing the point of the song, though speaking of colanders and spaghetti and hammers …
Well the pond is certain of one thing. As soon as a strident voice shouts "alarmist" as in "alarmist edifice", that paranoid reptile will raise the alarm, and produce as much "alarmist" gibberish, fear and hysteria as is needed to fill a column ...
Now the pond is aware that some think that dashing Donners is a repetitive old bore, with only a couple of gigantic bees buzzing around in an empty old noggin … but every so often, he produces a quintessential summary of assorted buzzing bees, and it entrances the pond …
So let the hunt for quintessential Donners begin ...
Now all this is fine and good …it's wonderful that a man, who manages somehow to profess the Catholic faith and thereby believe in transubstantiation, miracles and other metaphysical nonsense and superstitions should blather on about ideology and emotion replacing reason and objectivity, and talk of fake science …(you know, because the burning bush showed the climate is always changing).
And it's also wonderful, after his many field trips and research work and peer-reviewed publications, that dashing Donners should be able to assert that "the science regarding anthropogenic global warming is far from settled", and thereby establish himself as a Trumpian scientist of the first water …
But all this was a mere trifle, because in the very next par, Donners came up with a joining together of strands of spaghetti thought that the pond felt was quintessential Donners …
There really should have been a fireworks display to go with it ...
Phew, what a joy. What a ripper. It was distilled essence of Donners, packed into one short par of peeved paranoia …
But the pond knew that Donners had even more in him.
For a start, it turns out he was a supporter of the stunningly successful Iraq adventure … why the country is even now experiencing good times - booze is back - arising from the adventure …
Yes, there's nothing like an old fashioned war monger and armchair warrior to show how it's done ...
Um, how can the pond explain to dashing Donners that there was never a balanced and impartial way to the truth, at least when the pond spent time in the Catholic education system, and these days we're all post-modernist relativists with French structuralist and semiotic leanings…
Never mind, it wouldn't be a dashing Donners without a reference to the Long March - the bees are few in the noggin, but they are mighty.
The Long March that haunts the bees in Donners' addled alternative noggin has already turned up in the text, but here it is again …
And there, you see, is the Major's dilemma. See how trippingly "Fairfax and the ABC and the left-wing commentariat" trips off the tongue, or the keyboard, of dashing Donners …
What to do, what to do? The pond humbly suggests that the Graudian might have to step up and take the place of the Fairfaxians, though there's also a case for female journalists being referred to as feminazi news hounds … so soon Donners might scribble furiously about "the ABC, the left-wing commentariat and the feminnazi feminists ruining politics and journalism and the education system and climate science and the entire world …"
In the meantime, the pond is pleased that dashing Donners has short cuts programmed into his keyboard so that at the striking of a key, "neo-Marxism", "orientalist post colonialism" (ah, what a fine name for the yellow peril), and a "new world order" can turn up …
Will Donners ever do a shortcut for "barking mad climate science denialist war monger Catholic fundamentalist"?
Possibly not …perhaps because he sees this as the natural order of things, perhaps because he can't see any point in liberation or emancipation, perhaps because the bees in the old noggin keep him hooked on simple mindless chants as opaque and as meaningless as the Latin mass …
And so to a few cartoons celebrating all that's good and fine in western civilisation …
Diddling Donners: "the power generated by wind and solar energy is both costly and unreliable."
ReplyDeleteThere he goes, repeating one of his favourite lies over and over again. The thing is, do the Donners and Goosebumps (et al) of this world really think that anybody but their own most brainlessly welded on believers accept a single word of what they say ?
So, for instance: "Never presented in the classroom is the view that the science regarding anthropogenic warming is far from settled ..."
And that, Donners old mate, is because "the science regarding anthropogenic warning" is absolutely settled, to the point that nowadays, the only question is just how much more accurate the model projections can be made In short, the paradigm is dominant and the articulation is ongoing (which I say because you won't understand a word of that since you were too busy swallowing the dogmatic tenets of your "religion" to pay any attention to what your academic teachers tried to tell you).
And please note, Donners, that the Club of Rome predictions largely did not eventuate because of some "technology advances" of which a major one was the Green Revolution which has mainly had the effect of accelerating human population explosions (see China, India, Nigeria etc) which in turn has accelerated the destruction of the environment with the end result that in just a few more decades, the consequences of anthropogenic global warming will result in the death of billions of humans and a total of tens of billions of other life forms.
A huge triumph, Donners, of which you must be heroically proud.
And like this "when Howard was re-elected prime minister in 2004 ... English teachers had failed to teach "critical literacy" because so many young voters supported Howard."
And tell us, Donners, how many "young voters supported Howard" in 2007 when he (1) lost 20 seats and (2) lost his own seat too. Musta been heaps of 'em, yeah ?
Ah but " these days we're all post-modernist relativists with French structuralist and semiotic leanings"
Beautifully put, DP. And absolutely none of us believe in "orientalist postcolonialism". And a lovely afternoon read too, but please don't overdo things - there's always going to be much more rubbish in our forest than we can ever rake away.
Tsk tsk, GB, you must rake the forests if there is to be a spring and growth in the garden ...
DeleteGB, there is a much better reason for why the CoR predictions did not eventuate, one which is commonly ignored in this ... er ... debate: the horizon for their forecast was 100 years into the future, meaning their overall forecasts don't fall due for another 54 years. If the BOM say there'll be rain on Friday, you can't say they're wrong, just because it's sunny on Wednesday...
DeleteClimate deniers do this all the time (quite apart from more mundane lies and general bullshittery):
"James Hansen predicted the West Side Highway would be underwater! It isn't! Fake News!" (Actual prediction, that doubling CO2, which will take another 40 odd years, would see the WSH underwater). Call again in 2058...
Arctic Sea Ice, Tropical Storms, Sea Level, Temperature, and, yes the CoR...it's always the same, someone makes a comment about what might be the case in 50 or 100 years, and deniers wave it around like it was tomorrow's weather forecast.
Yes, point taken FD; it was really the much more dire, and proximate, scenarios of Paul Ehrlich that were confounded by the likes of the Green Revolution. But he went out of fashion some time ago, so has Donners even heard of Ehrlich ? And has he ever really read and absorbed anything about CoR ?
DeleteHowever, the CoR predictions did apply across a time range that includes now. There's a good summary in The Guardian from back in 2014:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse
When I wrote in 2004 that "left wing education academics..."
ReplyDeleteHas he ever written anything else?
He's just establishing primacy, Anony. Who else but the brilliantly perceptive Donners understood the role of "left wing education academics" as far back in the dim past as 2004 ?
Delete