The pond awoke this Monday with a great sense of relief - intellectual property theft, piracy, torrents, breaches of copyright and all that jazz, an onerous crime attracting civil and criminal penalties?
No, no, no, it's just a "tome" that sprung an "ultimate leak" from the heart of the federal government, the PMO …
All the pond's usual clutching at the straws of' information just wants to be free' and the educational need for critical review and study were forever after not needed …
All the pond is doing is a bit of leaking, and if it's good enough for the nation's PMO, why then it's good enough for all of us …
Curiously there was a complete lack of outrage at the piracy amongst the reptiles. Where there might have been shock and horror in the days of Twentieth Century Fox, or perhaps someone had pirated the onion muncher - but why pirate mindless mud when it's freely available after a shower - there seemed to be more concern that there might have been some copying by the errant publisher …
Pathetic really, since it's hard to design wildly different covers for people determined to be portentous, pompous bores. The pond prefers to think of it as an "homage", though it's a problem that there wasn't enough space for the standard acknowledgement and disclaimer, "after a previous goose's cover."
But that sighting of "Ned" next to the "controversy" lathered up by the reptiles is a good way to remind readers that Monday poses cruel dilemmas when it comes to choosing the reptiles to study for educational purposes and critical review on a Monday.
All the best examples, the most educational, are on parade, and seems cruel to limit students to only two, but it must be done, and "Ned" blathering on about the joys of government intervention for benefit of the Chairman - what a socialist paradise we now live in - was simply too satirical …
Second to go was the Major …
That seemed an obvious enough outing to ignore, since there had been an actual trial, with actual evidence, and without noticeable left-wing bias, and the Major's usual idea of a trial is to accuse a man of wearing a Russian medal without a scintilla of evidence …
But then what a range of choices confronted the carnivorous reptile follower …
There was the bromancer, fresh from achieving the amazing feat of making The Insiders no longer interesting viewing, though to be fair, Marise Payne's imitation of an Easter island statue was an even better reason.
While exemplary art - a bit like those buskers who pose in still life in period or exotic gear without a quiver of a muscle - it even managed to cast into shade the pompous, portentous posing of Peter Hartcher, sounding so up himself in such an effortless way that the pond switched off the TV and ran wild and free in the garden … only to return in time to catch the infallible Pope … the one redeeming moment in a program which, it can safely say, has now been Murdochised to the point of complete pointlessness … The Insiders is now dead to the pond, another area of bleached coral in a widespread bleaching event that shows little sign of ending …(anyone wanting a complete mind bleach should swallow one minute of Michael Rowland Lisa Millar on breakfast).
But what of today? Who to chose in the hunger games? The usual rage at China, mutterings about Malware, or the Caterist, expert in flood movements, and pretty much everything else? Luckily there was a quick and easy answer …
Yes, the Caterist had scored the gold stamp of the cult master, and so the pond had to acknowledge that the reptiles had determined he was the most useful offering for research and study, criticism and review, parody and satire, misreporting of the news and whatever else you've got, and so on and so forth …
Naturally at the heart of it, not being content with fucking the ABC, there had to be more fucking of the ABC … and what do you know, the Caterist himself began with what might be construed as an attempt at parody and satire, providing the reader had absolutely fucking no sense of humour, unless it was to imagine the Caterist as the cat in Bad Boy Bubby ...
It's always the wearisome way, isn't it, to suggest measures taken to avoid a calamity might have actually helped to avoid a calamity, especially reasonably tough ones? Apparently, in the Caterist's delusional mind, these haven't been tough, and everything has gone swimmingly, apart from reptile complaints about living in a fascist Orwellian state of the most oppressive kind ...
It's why the man who so famously explained the movement of flood waters in quarries never really had the first clue about climate science, while news about ideas to save the reef are becoming more desperate and unlikely …
A cloud-brightening experiment? That's what it's come to?
Never mind, the Caterist will always be on hand to talk about exaggerated claims and alarmism and such like …
Each week the pond has its own private contest as to who is the most thick-headed of the reptiles, and the self-satisfied Caterist usually wins by a canter, or by the size of the defamation payout awarded against him …
No offence to the Caterist as modeller, or commentator on modelling, but the dimwit couldn't even model the movement of floodwaters in quarries correctly … which is why, Lobbecke or no, the pond is really pleased to reach the last gobbet ...
So that's what a complete stay at home response has now become? A proportionate and incremental stroll in the park.
What a fuckwit, armed with a pacifier, and allowed to role out the dummy for any that need to suckle on it …a News Corp service, saved by government intervention, because we are all socialists now, at least when it comes to the losses … and to the cash in the paw …
And so to the cruellest of choices, because two shall be the number of reptiles, and the number shall be two …
The pond realised it had to acknowledge the existence of Malware's "tome", but which reptile to study?
Sure the dog botherer is always top of the class in any pond outing, and his astonishing work in Utegate gives him an inside running … but the defensive, paranoid tone of the splash, in which the paranoid, weirdly defensive denialism about a News Corp conspiracy - when even a blind dog humping the dog botherer's leg could see that News Corp was out to get Malware - was enough to confirm him as a quality loon …
Rather than pick such an obvious imp (and celebrate his status as minor war criminal), the pond decided to turn to the recovering, reformed Oreo … who herself knows all about property theft …
The reformed feminist, who has left her feminist legacy behind, also knows how to deliver with subtle spin …
Yes, the Oreo will surely deliver for lefties angry with Malware for a host of reasons, not least the NBN.
Let's face it, Malware isn't in much need of the money when it comes to a pirated book. His biggest irritation, the ego slap, must be that the pirated copies eagerly devoured by Malware devotees for free won't show up on official sales, and so his book might not be a number one best seller, an all-time winner, and gasp, might slump into the remaindered sales section by next Wednesday …
And with that in mind, let us turn to a feminist without a feminist legacy denouncing a rich man without a hint of comprehension of how ego can get in the road of pretty much everything …
Say what? A cheap, gossipy culture and leaks are gone? In the land of the mutton Dutton? In the world of reptile reporting? It was Malware that arranged the leak of his book from the PMO, apparently with a snarky "ha hah" attached to the email?
And somehow Malware behaved worse than the onion muncher when it came to that ongoing battle to the death?
Well it's all a hoot … and outsiders look on, because it's just another stage in the endless Liberal party hunger games …
Sorry, you'll need to be inside Crikey to get the hot links, but outside the Oreo bubble, there'll still be a gorgeous George representing another country and Barners representing the electorate named after famous successful politician Dr Delusion, and always ready to embrace government policies …
How did the Oreo put it? " ...More unified, determined and dignified …" Uh huh, a bit like the Donald, perhaps …unified, dignified and completely coherent ...
But back to the Oreo, doing the sensible thing, attacking the man, and shedding a tear for the long-suffering onion muncher, and his most brutal murder by a pack of knights and dames attending a barbie ...
Hang on, hang on, that last par reads in a most suspicious way, as if the Oreo thinks there's still time to get her blurb plastered on to Malware's book as a sticker …
Well, we all have regrets …
… but the pond has no regrets with the Oreo, who has performed in every way to be expected, with her usual recovering feminist skill …
Oops, but the pond just invited its small band of readers to waste time on petty vengeance and mean-girl gossip by queen bitch Oreo … and so must apologise for the lack of edifying material.
But then anyone who thinks a Liberal party still containing the mutton Dutton, and Angus "beef" Taylor - more dinkum Oz coal please - is worth defending must have often imagined the joy of being Heather Chandler in Heathers …or perhaps Tracy Flick in Election, it being somewhat political …
And as this is all short weight for those stuck in News Corp coventry, why not a Rowe to wrap things up, with more Rowe here …
… and whenever the pond gets on a Donald roll, the pond always feels more-ish …
"Leonard E Read's famous essay on the pencil". Pshaw! Henry Petroski wrote a 448 page book "The Pencil". You can get a copy at The Pencil Museum in Keswick.
ReplyDeleteThank you Joe. Not that any part of his life or writings would appeal to a pseudo-sociologist like the Executive Director of an illustrious research centre - but he might have given a nod, if only on grounds of precedence, to Henry David Thoreau. For much of his sadly short adult life, Thoreau’s day job involved making pencils, in the family factory. But more than just making them, he was a significant innovator in the technology and process, a full century before Read’s otherwise interesting writing.
DeleteInnovation, progress in in what was then an important tool for communication in ‘the productive economy’? - something that we might expect a Menzies Research Centre to approve of?
The reference to Excel spreadsheets leads nowhere. Again, the Executive Director, with that deep interest in modelling, might have referenced an Australian scholar of world prominence - Robert May, now Baron May of Oxford, sometime President of the Royal Society etc. - who has published several papers showing the range of possible trajectories of biological systems, and so displaying the difficulty of making precise predictions - while showing the more likely outcomes.
Those papers are readily accessible, and easy to understand. Based on the logistic, May’s formulae could be set up by the average high school maths student, and run in any way the student wished, remembering that the logistic is also the basis of the classic Lotka-Volterra equations which are more specifically directed at projections of disease. Some acquaintance with those works might have given the Executive Director a sense of direction for his, er - ‘observations’ for today.
Perhaps, in parallel, the Executive Director is hoping to be dubbed Baron Cater of Billericay, when the Boris government assesses his awesome research output. Until then, evidence of some actual scholarship might help.
Other Anonymous
I dunno, OA, Cater is already talking over the heads of his paying, baying audience; for him to actually display scholarship would make him totally incomprehensible to them. And to his fellow reptiles too (possibly excepting Dame Groan).
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOne of the very few benefits of seeing fuckwits get their way is that they sometimes shred their own credibility in the process. I say "sometimes" because that never seems to happens in the herpetarium. No statement is too stupid, no falsehood too obvious and, it would seem, no damages payout too large to get you sacked. However hard Cater gets hit, he keeps popping back up like some inflatable penguin with lead in it's base.
ReplyDeleteThe problem in this case is that failure will be measured in bodies not dollars.
I assume that even a sociology graduate would be taught about exponential growth, but it seems that linear growth was all that lodged in his brain.
Most of us seem to understand intuitively that this thing would get out of hand really quickly if restrictions are lifted too early but, oddly, conservative minded people don't seem to see it. The twitter comment with this link read "Remarkable new MIT machine learning system determines that removing your parachute at 2000 feet is a bad idea— even if it has already slowed you down."
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.03.20052084v1
The more detailed explanation "We further demonstrate that relaxing or reversing quarantine measures right now will lead to an exponential explosion in the infected case count, thus nullifying the role played by all measures implemented in the US since mid March 2020."
Over at Crikey, Grundle is pondering the same questions as the Pond - stupid or sociopathic?
https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/04/16/the-rights-way-of-thinking-about-lockdown-shows-it-is-a-death-cult/?utm_campaign=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&ins=SUlFWWVFTmxGNFBkQ0FxeFlxSDc5Zz09
"It’s impossible to tell whether, in concluding that it’s been a beat-up and “no worse than the flu” they are being (dimwittedly) honest, or if they do understand it and are being duplicitous to a cynical and nihilistic degree almost beyond belief."
I still have trouble coming to terms with people who would willing risk such damage for nothing more than ego or a few coins from Murdoch.
Err, not stupid or sociopathic, Bef: it's stupid and sociopathic.
DeleteYou would think I would learn, wouldn't you?
DeleteI have a neighbour who thinks I am a bit of a conspiracy theorist because I suggested that Murdoch white-anted the nbn in an attempt to protect his commercial interests.
His underlying reasoning seems to be "how could anyone do such a thing?"
If stuffing bandwith seems like a stretch to him, how could he accommodate the idea of letting old folk die in order to protect a commercial interest?
My point is that most (well adjusted) people simply wouldn't believe that someone could be that uncaring and venal, but I will try harder in future.
Yes, I guess we've all had "neighbours" that seem to come from a different species and live on a different planet.
DeleteBefuddled - some of the rare moments of fun, back when I was being paid for my thoughts, was when something we had worked on required supporting legislation. First up - learning that probably the most powerful people in the Westminster System are 'Parliamentary Counsel'. Anyway, we would wait for PC's draft to come back to us, take a good lunch, with the odd glass, then retire to an isolated room, orders not to be disturbed, while we went through the draft. The purpose was, as much as we were capable of doing, to imagine ourselves as devious, venal persons, seeking a way to profit from what was before us, but which PC believed would prevent all and any such response.
DeleteIdeally, if we could recruit a few former poachers and make them honorary gamekeepers, so much the more productive, but I learned that some otherwise mild, innocuous persons had hidden talents as potential grifters, in the right company.
The regular response from Parliamentary Counsel was much as you wrote - 'nobody could be that uncaring and venal' as to use our exposed loopholes. But, in most cases, care for their own reputation did persuade PCs of my experience to redraft. The legislation was the better for it, always. And I don't recall that any of the mid-level clericals, having realised their hidden talents for grifting, ever tried their hand at it as a profession.
I was privileged to know quite a few such people who were genuinely devoted to delivering good public administration.
Other Anonymous.
Then again, OA, even Winston Smith was "genuinely devoted to delivering good public administration."
DeleteThough I guess "set a thief ..." is time-honoured advice.
The Cater is a genuine joy today. Talking about what was done in Australia, he avers that "...these were reasonable steps to stop the infection." Well, ok, I guess we did have some actual observations of the rate of infection growth so we weren't relying on "predictions", but then he says "Neither should they be lightly abandoned so long as the threat of a second wave remains."
ReplyDeleteRightho, but, butt pray tell, how do we know if "the threat of a second wave remains" ? That's not something we can actually observe until it actually turns up on our doorstep, can we. So how do we know ? Oh yeah, we have 'models' that tell us such things, don't we.
And that's about as much Cater as I can put up with today. So on we plunge into the depths of the Oreo. Today she says about Malware that "Instead of retiring from public life with dignity as many former PMs have done, he has written a tell-all memoir ..."
Wau, a "tell-all memoir" indeed. Malcontent isn't the only ex-PM to have written some memoirs, of course. Even R G Menzies published a couple ('Afternoon Light' and 'The Measure if the Years'). But Mal's 704 pages will just join all the rest for me: nothing to waste my shortening time on.
But I guess we should remember 'Battlelines', shouldn't we. How many copies of that have been sold ?
GB - the Oreo did make a good catch, in referring to 'reported excerpts'. Must not admit to profiting in any way from intellectual piracy, particularly when the distributor has 'fessed up. The equivalent of the sitcom writer ending the embarrassing disclosure with 'I hear'.
ReplyDeleteOther Anonymous
Ah yes, OA, that bit where she indulges in some truly classical reptile attributed projection by pronouncing it as "a caricature of envy obsessed with the trivial pursuits of petty men."
DeleteTo be honest OA that was a whooshies for me until you brought attention to it, too used to those good old fashioned 'teasers' used to try to gin up some interest in an otherwise enervating pile. But point taken, I guess.
I did enjoy her closing self-accusation though: "Life is too short to waste on petty vengeance and mean-girl gossip." Spot on, Oreo.
“The Menzies Research Centre is the think tank for the Liberal Party of Australia”. That’s probably honest, except for the ‘research’ and ‘think’ parts. That is the intro to their website, but I couldn’t find any research at all. There are six books on Robert Menzies, and a collection T Abbotts best speeches ($60). There are 5 reports ($15 ea) but you can’t look inside or even find out how many pages there are. Topics include union-bashing and opposing property taxes.
ReplyDeleteThe Grattan Institute which Cater presumably sees as a rival, has about 180 reports which are free. They are more than reports – the one on traffic congestion for example is 108 pages and includes a detailed section on whether GPS works better than automatic number plate recognition. They are open minded - they often give the evidence on both sides without coming to a conclusion. At this level I think it can be called research. They have 28 staff including doctors and scientists.
MRC has 5 staff one of whom has a PhD in history which he has used to write histories of Menzies and Howard ($60). No evidence of any knowledge of computer modelling. Cater even says he is not sure whether it is maths or magic. Forget about the last 50 years of science and engineering then.
NH - the last 50 years of science and engineering just about covers the time since Menzies stood down as Prime Minister. Perhaps the eponymous research centre feels that no real progress appeared in those areas since January 20 1966. Which would help explain the miserly output that you have listed for us.
DeleteOther Anonymous
Dunno if it's the Grattan Institute that Cater would see as the Menzies Research Centre's rival, NH, I think it's more likely to be the Chifley Research Centre [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chifley_Research_Centre ]
DeleteOn the other hand, Cater does have a developed sense of self aggrandizement so maybe.
I was going to comment on today’s humdrum Lobbecke, but the sheer idiocy of the Caterist’s opening sentence triggered much higher voltages across my synapses.
ReplyDeleteChoosing Isolation
Oh cripes!
It’s bigger
It’s big in the news
And it is not good
The strength that it has grown to
The bigness of the curve
And it’s not flattening out
It’s been trumped up!
Motionless in a corner
That’s me wrapped in glad wrap
Choosing isolation
Trying to keep out of view
And I don’t know if I can undo it
Because I used too much
I got all tangled up!
I thought that I heard some coughing
I thought that I heard a sneeze
I thought I ought to stay inside
Every zombie
And every raving doubter
Those goons with MAGA caps on
Trying to keep up with you know who
Those perverted and blinded tools who
Believe and spread his stuff
They’re breaking out!
Consider this
Calamitous
Disease of the century
Consider this thing
That brought us to our knees pale
If vaccines are fantasies
And a cure can’t be found
That would mean
We’re fucked!
I thought that I heard some coughing
I thought that I heard a sneeze
I thought I ought to stay inside
Maybe it’s a dream…
If I hadn't already lost my religion, that would do it. Nice one, Kez.
DeleteA hearty thanks to all the contributors. The pond is so pleased that the Caterist was a tremendous winner, at least in producing winning comments ...
DeleteCheers GB and DP!
Delete