The pond decided to get the Lobbecke out of the way early, what with the cult master trying to go arty farty, and therefore completely against the reptile spirit …what that red daub in lieu of nose signifies, the pond must leave to others ...
Perhaps the cue was there in the splash …
Yes, it seems the arts are an industry, so perhaps the red daub signifies a return to good solid Marxist-Leninist principles.
Forget all that talk about fey wan poets with lanky hair wandering amongst fields of daffodils. These artists are but humble workers in the Satanic steel mills of expressionist despair (surrealists are specifically forbidden from the arts industry because of their tendency to wander off with melting clocks).
Meanwhile, the pond also decided this day that would continue to write off Dame Slap, who continues her fixation on matters legal…
Until Dame Slap's school returns to things that matter and batter - such as the benefits of wearing a MAGA cap and taking Donald-prescribed drugs, or warning about the UN using climate science to establish a world government - the pond will turn to others for instruction and edification.
Besides the pond had wrongly claimed the war on China was over, with just a few minor casualties, farmers and what not, and yet in the past few days many more reptiles have rushed to the front, including brave lads like the oscillating fan, and the stout-hearted, reliable bromancer …
Sorry, why did the pond leave in that reference to decades old code similar to that used by the video game Fortran?
The pond just wanted to note that it knows of many video games written in Fortran - GitHub has a list of resurrected and modern ones here, and is aware of complaints such as Why isn't Fortrain used more often for game programming?, but damned if it could remember a video game called Fortran.
Perhaps a reader could help, perhaps the lizard Oz reptiles could help by naming and shaming the game …
And so to the bromancer bravely keeping the war with China going …
When the reptiles are under pressure, they frequently resort to insulting cartoons full of propaganda … see if you can spot an example ...
A clique of gangsters? Not likely … better to save that sort of language for the clique of reptiles … but the bromancer always provides a learning opportunity for the pond, and so it came to pass in the next gobbet ...
Yes, the pond learned that Lincoln Financial places ads with the reptiles, and so is dead to the pond.
And also doesn't the bromancer sound a bit like a sook and a cry baby in this war with China?
What did the reptiles expect to happen? Shots were fired, bold stands were taken, and there were a few casualties, hapless farmers and beef exporters and such like, but there was no damage done to the reptiles, and so no unpleasant conclusion was reached … though it seemed to the pond that the bromancer had trouble coming to terms with this, and so his piece was stuffed with video filler ...
Yes, that's logical - the consolation for Beijing not keeping to its agreement is that it might break other agreements, and so the more agreements it might break, the better off we might be …
And then came another shock for the pond, thanks to the video filler that littered the bromancer's piece like a field of unharvested barley.
It's old news that brave Fox News warriors are following an order to keep working from home until mid-June, in shocking defiance of the Donald's order to get the country back to work … but it seems, from this glimpse of work practices, that the local warriors are also doing some social distancing ...
Hmm, that doesn't sound like the bromancer is very confident … but it does mean there's going to be plenty more time for the reptiles to stamp their feet and sound off and show off Leake cartoons of the lesser kind, and allow the pond to run cartoons by the immortal Rowe, with more Rowe here …
Meanwhile, it goes without saying that when dashing Donners turns up in the lizard Oz, the pond drops everything …
Et tu, dashing Donners, et tu against Malware? The pond reckons with some certainty that the beef isn't about a dud curriculum, the real complaint is about cash for Catholics. What's in it for the Catholics, surely that's the real game…
Yes, not much mention of the curriculum in all that, but a lot about the size of the cash in paw, though the pond wouldn't expect dashing Donners to mention how the Catholics spend their cash in paw, and why they might well favour prestigious schools within their system without anyone having a clue about the how and why of that ...
“I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if that happens… It’s very hard — and I say this as a former minister — to see what non-government schools spend their money on,” he said.
“I was always astounded that we [the NSW government] gave the Catholic system $800 million a year and, basically, they filled out a one-page form to verify that they’d spent the money appropriately.”
Embed: Half of independent schools spent more than $3.9m between 2013 and 2017
With recurrent funding, the authorities that administer public funding on behalf of Catholic and independent schools can choose to redistribute these funds to individual schools according to their own needs-based formulas. Similar entities, known as Block Grant Authorities, allocate capital grants on behalf of non-government schools. Capital grants cannot be redistributed.
“The public do have a right to know where public money is going and why” but in the Catholic system, for example, there’s very little transparency about how the funds are split between dioceses and schools, and then how individual schools are spending their share, Professor Piccoli said.
“And until we know that in any kind of detail, you can’t be confident they’re not using it for capital.” (much more here).
But now back to dashing Donners talking about the curriculum of cash in the paw ...
Indeed, indeed, the United States is definitely an education model to follow, because who knows, some day we too might have an idiot for a President …
Oh it's an old song, but a good one, and the pond thought it might wrap things up at that point, but what about "Ned"?
It isn't fair, he deserves his share, he's always going on and on, and the whole point of the pond is to be a torture test …
Step forward, ancient mariner, and bore the socks off the wedding guests …
A worthy topic. It is a conventional wisdom that the world cannot revert to the pre-COVID-19 ways of doing things, but that is mere sophistry - the reptiles will keep on with the old divides and loyalties until hell freezes over, or at least until the Chairman dies, and the lizard Oz folds ...
Um, didn't Fox News escape the bottle? Weren't they the carefully cultivated genie, and the Donald the result of their first wish?
Didn't the Chairman unleash the Donald on the world so we might see the genie at the height of its powers?
Oh well, no reason to think the world will be any better, so long as the Murdochians do their best to keep the man child running things (the pond uses the words loosely) in the White House … but do go on, because alarmingly, it seems there might be some who have learned a lesson about sharing and caring a little more for the poor and the helpless, and that will never do, we certainly don't need any FRD attitudes gaining ground during the great depression we're going to endure ...
What purpose does it serve? Is there any point in pushing the Tories into accepting gay marriage, and pretending to do something about climate science, and responding to the current virus like a Labor government?
Who knows, though that seems to suggest some sort of purpose to hand … even if it gets the reptiles agitated on a daily basis, and perhaps that's purpose enough ...
His record suggests a problem-solving pragmatist?
That's why the pond loves nattering "Ned". He would never talk of SloMo's record suggesting that he talks in tongues to imaginary friends, and at the beginning of the crisis, was blathering about heading to the footy, and would have kept on going, except that a couple of big state premiers managed to pull him into line, and warned him and his medical advisor off shaking hands …
But there's a silver lining to "Ned's" standard bout mixing worry-wart handwringing and anxiety with incipient triumphalism at the next electoral victory … it provides a segue into an infallible Pope cartoon, and that's surely enough, and no, the pond doesn't keep a copy of the Thorn Brids handy for its segues …
Dunno, DP, but I reckon maybe why FORmula TRANslation isn't used for games programming is that it's a language created by IBM back in 1954 (yes, even way before COBOL in 1959) by John Backus (yes, of Backus Naur notation - supposedly inspired by Chomsky - and the Algol 60 report).
ReplyDeleteAnd mainly because, like the Quora response sensibly says, it really isn't very good at dealing with objects, and games are all about objects.
I used to program in Algol, Fortran and COBOL once upon a long-gone time
ReplyDeleteAh - Befuddled moment - just realised what the Slappy war on lawfare is all about. Does facepalm.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/may/18/robodebt-centrelink-to-issue-hundreds-of-thousands-of-class-action-notices-for-trial
Even the ABC this morning was running the Bromancer line that a craven and beaten China was running up the white flag and supporting an enquiry "which in substance is what the Morrison government called for".
This looks nothing like Morrison's proposal
https://apps.who.int/gb/ebwha/pdf_files/WHA73/A73_CONF1Rev1-en.pdf
Do a quick word search and see if you can find a specific reference to China (apart from as a signatory to the resolution). The WHO will not be investigated by an independent body, they will do their normal self evaluation that follows any response (SARS, MERS etc)
A more informed assessment can be found here
https://johnmenadue.com/mack-williams-cost-benefit-analysis-of-the-morrison-covid19-proposal/
But there are lots more saying basically the same things.
Re the robodebt, I imagine that the reptiles in general, and Dame Slap in particular, would definitely be on the government's side in this. So indeed they would be very much against large class actions, especially if they are likely to succeed.
DeleteTook a raincheck on the WHO resolution, I'll leave it to folks with much greater remaining lifetime than mine to sort through that.
Re Mack Williiams and "What have we actually achieved by our inept handling of the Morrison call for an “independent international review” of China and the WHO’s management of the origins of the virus ?"
Like you say, "lots more saying basically the same things" and when all of those things are said and done, nothing will happen and nothing will change. Especially under the reign of ScottyfromMarketing.
"I'll leave it to folks with much greater remaining lifetime than mine to sort through that." Ah - CTRL + F is a great boon to the lazy man! Doesn't hurt to check a source document occasionally to avoid being like the reptiles and just repeating things that seem to suit your argument.
DeleteAs you no doubt can see, ScottyfromMarketting really irks me. The combination of ignorance and bluster reminds me too much of some of the management types I have run into over the years.
Oddly, he has done quite well recently by actually taking informed advice for a change, but seems to have reverted to form with the China enquiry brainfart. I suspect Australia will be the whipping boy for the US' indiscretions (note that China will be filling the barley shortfall from the USA) in this case.
So, nothing will change for Scotty, but some things will change for Australian exporters at a very inconvenient time.
PS One of the kids had to write a simple program in Fortran as part of an engineering course – seemed like decrypting the Rosetta stone to me.
"Doesn't hurt to check a source document occasionally ...". Maybe so. Bef, but what am I going to make of this: "PP5 Recalling the Constitution of WHO, which defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, and declares that the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being, without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition;"
DeleteWhat possible meaning can that have ?
Comparing Fortran to the Rosetta stone ? Maybe. But I do recall from back in the days of punched cards - yes I do still have a few 80 column IBM126 card reader/punch cards as irreplaceable memorials to a long gone age - when programs were punched onto cards, and large bundles of cards could occasionally be dropped or otherwise randomly rearranged, that one guy included two Fortran statements plus a beginning label on each card which would look like this:
1234 A=B+C; GOTO 1235
That way, as long as he could find the very first card - which was suitably flagged to be very visible - he could read the cards into the computer in any random order at all and the program would still execute correctly. But when the cards were printed out in the order in which they'd been read in, well, that really was a Rosetta stone.
"better to save that sort of language for the clique of reptiles …"
ReplyDeleteBut are the reptiles really a clique, DP, or are they a claque ?
Ah, the acute understanding of the Bromancer: "With luck this latest episode [of Chinese troubles] may now pass. But don't think there is not enormous scope for more trouble in the months ahead."
This too shall pass ? But come again some time in the months, years, decades, centuries, millenia and myrietes (or should that be myriads ?) ahead. Will Australia still be trying to sell barley to China in 10,000 years time ?
Not a lot can be said of the Done Donnelly's little brain fart. When he says "The review ignored findings by the National Research Council in the US in the acclaimed publication, How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School ...".
Acclaimed by whom ? And why would we want to follow America in any way at all ? Because, as you say DP, "...some day we too might have an idiot for a President …" And an idiot's "base" and Fox News and the GOP and the NRA and the whole furshlugginer mess ? Pass.
As for Noodle-nutted Ned, well there's this: [Labor] "never understood why John Howard was so successful and it cannot comprehend why Morrison won last year, putting it down to a scare campaign and Bill Shorten's unpopularity."
But, butt, did Noodle-nut Ned ever comprehend why Howard lost an election in a landslide, including his own Liberal very safe seat ? Nup, no, never, ever mention that!
But the reptiles, Ned in particular, clearly want to pretend that Palmer's $80million assault on Shorten never happened, or if it did, then it had absolutely no effect on the election. In which Miraculous Morrison won the grand total of one, repeat one, seat and saw the LNP preferential vote drop by 0.6 percentage points.
Thank you Befuddled. I had wondered if the Dame was simply yearning for those good old days, of conservative myth, when so many legal proceedings involving the great unwashed were directed from a bench of local squire, someone from the church (which was in squire's 'gift') and possible a third, who might even have had some qualification in the law.
ReplyDeleteBut then the Dame might have been aware that that system had the unintended effect of helping Edwin Chadwick's restructure of the Poor Laws through Parliament in the 1830s. While many of the deserving poor were 'sentenced' to assisting in 'works' within the parish, the emerging classes of miners, manufacturers, people in 'trade', and a more prosperous kind of farmer, noticed that those works always seemed to be done on squire's estate, under squire's managers.
That growing middle class, which was paying its 'tithe' for the poor, informed the new members, who were appearing after the several Reform Acts, of their doubts that the national interest was entirely the preserve of those who had inherited titles. It wasn't the only factor in the Reform Bills, or in the revision of the Poor Laws, but it helped to swing a previously obdurate House, particularly as those who owed their seats directly to squire were winnowed out by that dreadful 'reform'.
Oh, and Chadwick's further activities reduced the numbers of the great unwashed, particularly in London, by providing them with a proper water supply.
Other Anonymous
"But then the Dame might have been aware..." I do so appreciate a sense of humour OA.
DeleteChadwick "providing them with a proper water supply." Especially those near Broad Street in 1854.
What is a 'clique of gangsters'? Maybe a group that uses money and power to give money to themselves and their mates, and sets up systems using lies and corruption so that they can continue their evil ways. Sounds like the Morrison government to me.
ReplyDeleteIt took a while but after staring dumbly at the CM’s graphic it suddenly appeared to me like one of those hidden 3D hologram images. It’s nothing more than a dollar sign composed of semi-naked Cro-Magnon art droids.
ReplyDeleteAs usual Lobbecke has simply glanced at the headline and the first par in order to knock up this somewhat disturbing illustration on his iPad. The dollar sign of course signifies the economy while the convoluted body sculpture possibly represents the mind-numbing contortions artists need to go through when applying for government grants.
The question is - are these entwined pale beings asleep, dying, or on Hydroxychloroquine? As for the red nose I am as mystified as you are DP. It’s yet another obscure “artistic” device whose meaning is known only to the cult master himself.
Thank you Kez - yes, when you put it like that - it almost makes sense, except, as you say, for what has put the pale beings into the state they are in.
DeleteOther Anonymous
I'll add that to my collection of things that are bleedin' bloody obvious once somebody has kindly pointed them out. Thanks, Kez.
DeleteAnother challenge today!
DeleteCheers all!
Delete