How dismal an experience it is to contemplate the reptile commentary section on an average Tuesday …
Dame Groan blathering away, the original Adam berating people who work from home and purporting to care about the poor while no doubt filing his copy from home, the Salt peppering his splash with saline clichés about green shoots, the lizard Oz editorialist demanding fresh ideas in a paper than ran out of ideas decades ago …
Is it any wonder the pond looked further down the page, only to be struck by another triptych of terror ...
Well yes, Joel is as good a reason as any not to vote for the Labor party - how the reptiles love him and his love of coal - and the Corona deniers are always good for loon comedy, though once upon a time the reptiles would have been most upset at flinging around the term 'denialist', but apparently that only applies to climate science ...
In the end, the pond had to go with the bromancer, because the pond understands that the male mind and the Donald always wants to get a grip ...
Say what? What blogs? Oh the pond is mortified, the bromancer is probably referring to the scurrilous content that has regularly turned up on the pond … you know …
Yes the virus wouldn't have the first clue as to what to make of that pathetic stock illustration or the words by Killer Creighton that followed ...
Oops, there the pond goes again, featuring Killer Creighton when it should have been focussed on the bromancer ...
Of late the reptiles have taken to putting in a lot of videos - useless in a screen cap - and lots of links, no doubt to crank up their numbers, but again useless in a screen cap and so deleted by the pond …
And besides, the pond can go back just a little bit in time thanks to its own time machine, back to the very days that the bromancer deplored, when Killer Creighton stalked the lizard Oz, and so the pond…
The pond promises to stop quoting our original Adam, Killer Creighton as he's fondly known - there's so much more and so little time - and instead turn back to the bromancer ...
The reptiles were kind enough to source a graph, which no doubt the bromancer has shared with Killer Creighton ...
How weird can it get? No, it's not the stark contrast between Killer Creighton and the bromancer, and the bromancer's apparent complete lack of awareness of the work and deeds of News Corp - think the Bolter's contributions to the science, and the Major's advanced degree in epidemiology. Was it only yesterday that the Major opened up with …
No, no, it's none of that.
It's that somehow Barners gets dragged into the bromancer's story, and once the pond sights Barners, it gets lost and confused ...
Part of the madness of this debate?
Is that code for "Killer Creighton is barking mad"? And "the Major's not far behind"? And "if the Bolter is on a planet, it isn't planet earth"?
And so to the other bad smell hanging around in the air, because it seems the reptiles have turned Burke and Hare, and keep wanting to disinter ancient bones ...
What the fuck?
Still with the onion muncher? And as usual the reptiles loaded the piece up with links and videos and even blessed it with an illustration, though not by the cult master ...
Now the pond was already suffering from a surfeit of reptile irony, and being assured it was just a four minute read was no reassurance at all ...
Ah, it's relevance deprivation syndrome. When it comes to China's appalling behaviour, the pond would prefer to watch John Oliver on the appalling treatment of the Uighurs, as noted in the Graudian here …
Of course it suits the onion muncher to ominously talk of war and the 1930s - no doubt he once had his own difficulties with bone spurs - but when these days he gets on a war footing and goes into an aggressive posture, the pond's eyes glaze over from the surfeit of irony and the lavish doses of cynicism …
Even if the link worked in that cap of a story found here - it didn't - the pond was still anxious to use the google machine to find that awesome welcoming speech, and sure enough it could still be found in the parliamentary record here …
Please allow the pond to take a swig or two, even if the pond abandoned the drinking of rich reds and hypocrisy some time ago …
And so on and on and on, and now back in the time machine to the present ...
It was an article of faith? Oh yes … and there's so much more of the rotting carcass of irrelevance at the ABC here...
And so on and on, and much more to be found thanks to the google machine if anyone wanted to waste precious hours, or even nanoseconds … but hey ho, on we go ...
Around this time, the pond tired of the onion muncher movie, and wished it was watching another one.
The infallible Pope had a recommendation that appealed to the pond - always rely on word of mouth rather than advertising or reviewers …
It's a pity that the gallery format sometimes mangles papal pleasures, but the pond should just mention the chance of seeing the Pope at work on a cartoon at YouTube here …
Yes, it's old, but we're in the company of an ancient mariner, brined to the gills with hypocrisy and a fading memory as to what he did when the doing of it had some meaning ...
Donald Trump has a brain? Donald Trump is concerned? Let's see if the pond can get that test right ...
And what do you know, just to end on an up note amongst bromancer despair and onion munching irony, it seems Scottie from marketing can't understand fountain sculptures, at least if the immortal Rowe is any guide, with more Rowe here ...
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the reptiles do understand themselves, it's just that they always sincerely believe that their interpretations only apply to "others". So, consider what the Bromancer enunciated: "Part of the madness of this debate is that there is always a suggestive study somewhere or other which can be used to bolster any favoured conclusion."
ReplyDeleteNow is that not an accurate description of the Doggy Bov's article on coronavirus yesterday ? And is it not a very accurate description of the reptiles pronouncements on climate change - and on just about everything that they scribble ? But would any of the reptiles ever see it or admit it ?
But not absolutely everything they scribble: consider this prime instance of Dunning-Kruger syndrome from the original Adam: "Why trust the experts to forecast the climate decades into the future when they were so wrong about a disease related to the common cold."
Oh why indeed, when we've got the original Adam, the Doggy Bov, Holely Henry and sundry other reptiles to impart total accuracy about the past, present and future to us. Like Brian, they tell us "everything we need to know".
There are two basic elements to predicting effects of an infectious agent - its capacity to reproduce and spread, and its biological interaction with its host.
ReplyDeleteFormulae to estimate reproduction and spread are derived from one of the most fundamental elements of biology - the logistic. The recently-deceased Australian, who became Baron May of Oxford, sometime President of the Royal Society, has shown, in papers that the simplest mind could understand if they took the time to read them, that reproduction and spread can show a very wide range of rates of propagation. May has even shown how one might prove these effects for oneself, initially with a programmable calculator, later on a laptop computer.
Of course, the ‘simple minds’ have to have an inclination to read, and a capacity for elementary algebra. I have commented before, in a response to an article from the Executive Director of the Menzies Research Centre, that his writing showed that he lacked one or the other of these attributes. Given that he claims a degree from an actual university in the UK, presumably he is able to do elementary algebra.
Given that ‘Killer’ Creighton claims even more impressive academic qualifications, he also should be able to test the range of the basic equations in epidemiology for himself, and so assure himself that they are as real as the add-ups and take-aways that he uses to keep track of his household accounts; his personal ‘economics’. There is no evidence that he has. There is no evidence that he understands that they are entirely different from the equations used in modelling Earth’s climate.
Nor does he make any distinction between basic epidemiology of Covid 19, and its physiological effects. A practising economist might be excused for not readily understanding the physiology - there is a lot of it; and understanding comes easier if the reader has some mental familiarity with - oh, the angiotensin cycle, to pluck an example at random.
I think both mighty scholars qualify for Wolfgang Pauli’s objection that ‘it is not even wrong’.
Chadwick.
Nicely written Chad, but I rather feel that you are granting way too much leeway to people who do not merit it. The very most complementary I could manage is to not assume ignorant stupidity, but to think Upton Sinclair:
Delete"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it".
Just for its entertainment value, here's a readable essay on suppression versus eradication versus pretend nothing is happening and some pithy commentary on economists and their cost/benefit "models".
DeleteNon-linearities, risk, policy and administration
https://clubtroppo.com.au/2020/07/27/non-linearities-risk-policy-and-administration/#more-34138
GB - thank you for the 'clubtroppo' link. A good site, but needs time. I wasted some with iView of 'Q'n'A' after someone said it had been better than other recent attempts. Well, it was up to a point. My 'someone' did not tell me that it would include the standard Birmingham reading from the standard script, and otherwise running his 'I don't accept that' response as his way of leading into the standard script.
DeleteGigi Foster was offering a counterpoint, until she invoked the trolley dilemma. For an economist this is not being able to see the wood for the trees. Economics should look to the information contained in the question, and every specification of the trolley dilemma is implicitly loaded (no pun intended) with information.
Chadwick
Ah yes the "trolley problem". I don't think the human race will ever be able to get away from that one now. But it is a very basic counter to simplistic 'Utility Theory' moralising.
DeleteBack when I first took any notice of such things there was basically only two 'moral theories": Mill's utilitarianism and Kant's deontologicalism. Now just doing a quick look and the web came up with these:
Theories of Morality
Cultural Relativism.
Ethical Egoism.
Divine Command Theory.
Virtue Ethics.
Feminist Ethics.
Utilitarianism.
Kantian Theory.
Rights-based Theories.
I wonder if any of them solve the trolley problem - or perhaps all of them do.
On first glance I got a good chuckle out of Pope's "Gone With The Pandemic", but
ReplyDeletethen on second glance, Jesus Jumping Christ it is unspeakable.
I always assumed Pope was out of the Ralph Steadman School, but from what deep
recess of his brain did he pull out this one?
It's, it's, just, so foul. The horror, the horror.
I gotta party with this man, if he ever makes it to McSorleys Ale House in The
Village the shouts are on me. But I am keeping a weather eye on him at all times.