As expected, right on cue, Dame Slap of Gina's mob turned up on Saturday bitterly aggrieved, though the pond was surprised at Twitter being dragged into her schoolroom …
After all, Twitter is a lifestyle choice, easy to live without.
The pond isn't on Twitter, and the pond isn't on Facebook, never has been, never will be, and anyone who uses these monstrous creations does so at their own peril …
Sure, the pond can't help gazing at the reptiles at their herpetarium, which is no better than the Donald looking at the sun, but should we be blind to the way that this too is a choice, freely made, even if with leaden, mind-numbing consequences?
But enough of philosophising - with the reptiles it's like the talk on a cereal box, or a walk on slippery rocks, choke the pond in the shallow waters before it gets too deep - and on with Gina's mob ...
Now Gina's mob has been given free and unfettered space to do a mighty rant, what was the pond to do?
Well in the spirit of the law, it called in another lawyer, because we can never have enough lawyers.
Sure this was a rogue Crikey lawyer, and the pond thinks punters should respect the paywall and help out the poor sods, but this was a Slappian emergency, and the pond thought a juxtaposition might be piquant, and so for once it took Crikey up above the faraway tree to meet with Dame Slap in her somewhat severe school ...
Well yes, that's true enough. How the reptiles loved Ridd, and how Ridd loved being loved by the reptiles. How they egged each other on, how they romped through the fields of denialism together, what a picture of denialist bliss it made …
And now how bitter is the gnashing of teeth at the betrayal, though how the IPA ended up involved in the matter is one of those mysterious bits of deep statism only a Dame Slap might explain ...
Ah dear, good old cancel culture, and the joys of denialism … but what sayeth the rival lawyer? Crikey … it doesn't seem quite so clear cut all of a sudden ...
Indeed, indeed. Has anyone done a carbon dating on when the good old-fashioned concept of an 'Orwellian in nature' went out of date and became dinkum clean Oz coal beneath the ground, while 'cancel culture' oozed out like crude carboniferous period oil to dominate the debate?
Who knows, but the pond must get back to Dame Slap, who loves a smart-arse, being not above a bit of smart-arsery herself ...
What's so hugely funny in that final outburst?
Why surely the comparison of climate science denialism to that debate between the bishop and the Huxter, and the notion that it's all about intellectual freedom, when we all know the real standard of Dame Slap's notion of the science … a conspiracy theory or three ...
Enough already, conspiracies are everywhere, and the pond almost forgot the final summary from the Dame's learned rival …
Please, it's just a short burst, and it won't stop the pond slaking its thirst on IPA tears ...
Crikey, there you go, instead of Orwellian cancel culture, it seems we scored a lemon, though the pond gives full marks to the children it just the other day saw attempting to make money from a lemonade stand in these virus-laden times …
And now for something completely different.
Sure Killer Creighton was out and about this day, and so was the dog botherer, and they were both whining and moaning at the way that they weren't allowed to kill old farts so the economy might thrive, and yes nattering "Ned" bestrode the lizard Oz, determined to bore old farts to death by rambling on at interminable length in imitable "Ned" style, but the pond yearned for a change of pace.
Of late the pond has taken to running endless cartoons about the Murdochian American experiment and the bumbling Donald, but what of that other Murdochian experiment, the bumbling Boris pig in a poke?
Thankfully the bromancer decided to look to the mother country, to the heart of empire, and then to return with good news ...
At last a chance to run some Boris cartoons …
But what of that pdf, the pond can hear a rhetorical reader asking?
No biggie …
Seeing as how it stops at June 30, and bumbling Boris has blithered, and babbled and bumbled a lot more since then, it's really just a bit more padding, a bit more space filler, before running another cartoon …
It would of course be remiss and wrong of the pond to remind the bromancer and sundry other reptiles that at one point Boris was a reptile favourite. How they loved him, how they doted on him, why he was the Riddster of British politics, Cummings and goings how he liked, without let or hindrance ...
Ah yes, he was invincible … he had the right braveheart stuff …
But then came the nipping at the flanks, the sense of a few vulnerabilities …
Even the bromancer tries to join in this comedy hour in his next gobbet, though sadly he's forced to use a cartoonist's bootlace for his illustration ...
What's this? The bromancer quoting a Labor MP? Surely this is madness? Surely this is a sign of some grotesque failing by Boris?
And suddenly the dam broke, and the bromancer began to pile on in full gloomster mode ...
Did you spot it?
A classic bromancer gem …
"The cleverest cabinet member, Jacob Rees-Mogg …"
The Moggie is the cleverest? Why if that's the case, the moggie next door is a mastermind Macavity …
But that's what the pond wanted. A change of scenery, while retaining the same surreal, absurdist theatre of the reptiles ...
And so back to the bromancer, turning decidedly gloomy at the results from this particular Murdochian experiment ...
How is this a huge, unavoidable crisis?
The reptiles have long encouraged the notion of a hard Brexit and back in the day, the Moggie himself proved a dab hand with numbers …
There were squillions to be made … and now all we seem to have is an abundance of cartoons …
Ah all this talk of monsters, no wonder the bromancer is suffused with glom and despair ...
And so the reptile dream, the Murdochian experiment, has hit a few hurdles, has encountered a few bumps in the road, much like a semi bearing down on a poor moggie asleep on the tar and about to be flattened, squelched, and squashed …
And so even with the bromancer, the talk turned to monsters, and the sleep of reason …
And what do you know, the pond can still finish off with a visual reference to master Goya …
Has this not been a fun trip, have you not been entertained, have not squillions been made, and are there not more squillons to be made?
Surely any honest soul must concede that the reptiles and the bromancer have done it again, and what a winner in Boris did they pick …at least for lovers of British bats in the belfry ...
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ReplyDeleteRolled gold shocker for Dame Slap.
ReplyDeleteShe's always been a go to for epic misreading of facts, but today's epistle will be very hard to beat. Sadly, the ground is shifting under the IPAettes at an alarming speed.
The judgement on Hughes versus Hill is a serious rapier into the hearts of the loons. Doubt she'll be able to muster a retort. But then she's proven us wrong many times:
https://twitter.com/KieranPender/status/1286512831731363845
That Judge Vasta is just a wee bit of a worry though:
DeleteSalvatore Vasta: judge in the Peter Ridd case has had more than 20 verdicts overturned
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jul/24/salvatore-vasta-judge-in-the-peter-ridd-case-has-had-more-than-20-verdicts-overturned
I take it that Dame Slap would regard a bit of pussy grabbing as a right of passage in legal chambers and not something to criticise.
DeleteIt does raise a problem if that is the case. Can Vasta be a solid legal mind in the case of Ridd v JCU and an activist judge in the case of Hughes v Hill?
In the IPA world the enemy of my enemy is my friend and, once recruited, they can do no wrong. No nuance, no complexity, we are right and you are wrong.
As an aside, someone who knows the ins and outs of the Ridd case tells me that in the past he has pointed out some flaws in ocean current modelling. It was no big deal, just part of the normal peer review process.
What happened in this case was a big sook and straight off to Sky and News Corp.
I am also at a loss to understand what twitter has got to do with this story. It may have been mentioned in the proceedings but she doesn't in any sense establish how Twitter has killed anything. I know that whenever the reptiles blunder into it they come out with a black eye so maybe that explains it. Oh, how they must miss the days when only they had a platform.
Lastly, what was the point of the Wilberforce-Huxley story. It seemed to have about the same relevance as a great bronze statue with an incorrect statement on the plaque.
I think the relevance of the Huxley-Wilberforce story is simply to obscure the issue. The relevance is at best minimal, but can it be used to befuddle the audience ?
DeleteThat is assuming that Slappy isn't so personally befuddled that she simply doesn't understand how totally befuddled she is.
:-) :-)
Well now, do we think that Peter Ridd, Dame Slap and the whole IPA will ever learn that it isn't what you say, it's how you say it ? No, I don't think so either, the distinction between 'poop' and 'shvt' will forever elude them. But oh my, my, how they do love to lie.
ReplyDeleteAnd nice to have a reminder of one of Slappy's "big lies", DP, but you forgot to include the bit where our besotted Dame has to assure her teenage daughters that it's all true and they are going to grow up in an evil UN dictatorship. She never mentioned her son Jamie though - I wonder why.
Anyway, enough of agitprop and reptile juvenalia, there's movement at the Bromancer Station: yes, he's back on with Ree-sMogg ! Well, wouldn't we be too, compared with Boris ?
So, what did the Bromancer have to put before us for our Saturday morning repast: apart from the thought that this time with the idiot Johnson in charge, "Great" Britain might just not manage to "muddle through".
But he did accuse the British of having "the anti-Conservative gerrymander". Now that's a new one on me - there is a gerrymander, so we're told, but it's actually a 'pro-Conservative gerrymander':
The Tories are using the boundary changes for ruthless gerrymandering
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/boundary-changes-tories-ruthless-gerrymandering
But the Bromancer does make one interesting comment: "In the 1990s Blair stole the middle class from the Tories; Johnson stole the working class from Labour."
Now if that is true, it would be the British version of the great middle class/working class swapover from Democrats to/from Republicans and it would put BJ in the same respective position as Trump. So does that mean that after about 3 more years of Johnson stuffups - the British coronavirus fiasco being a major one, just as for Trump - that the British "working class" will tire of Boris ? Oh, watch this space.
Also note that at least some commentators have said much the same about the LNP "stealing the working class" from Labor and that is really why Shorten lost the election: he basically held the ground, but couldn't recapture enough seats to become a second Julia Gillard (ie a minority PM).
It's a bit of a hoot that Dame Slap thinks that the Wilberforce - Huxley debate was of significance. It wasn't recorded at the time and had little effect on the thinking about evolution. (Because it wasn't recorded, we don't know what Huxley said - see http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/learning/pdfs/debate.pdf). For robust modern debate, see, for example Sabine Hossenfelder's blog http://backreaction.blogspot.com and the comments.
ReplyDeleteJoe - thank you for the Hossenfelder link. Yes, robust, but, from what I have seen, contributors need to state their case, be prepared to defend, and do it with basic courtesy.
DeleteOne of the things I have not understood in the Ridd matter is why he (or any person of academic reputation) would want to curry favour with people like Jones, and Sky News?
Chadwick
Hmmm, about the Hossenfelder site: Albie was indeed a bright lad, but I don't think that the gedakenexperiment is entirely his legacy since it very clearly was not of his origination. Gedankenexperiment is built into the 'scientific method' which starts, at least 'ideally' as:
Delete1. observe
2. ask a question or two
3. form a hypothesis
Every time step 3. above is performed it is a gedankenexperiment which is a necessary precursor to steps 4. and 5. - Make prediction(s) based on the hypothesis; then test the predictions (e conduct an actual experiment or two where possible).
For instance: in the early days of physics the hypothesis was that heating objects expands them (observation) but the question was "how does a ring expand ?" and the prediction was that a ring would expand in the same way as a circular solid - ie the diameter of the inside boundary of the ring would expand outwards (get larger) not inwards.
So far, so good: so make a metal ring and heat it and measure the inside diameter before and after heating. But here is where some gedankenexperiment comes in: will the colour of the walls and/or ceiling of the room in which the experiment is conducted have any effect on the result ? Will it be necessary to conduct many experiments in different coloured rooms and maybe in different outside environments to be sure.
Gedankenexperiment says not, so it wasn't done - we might still be doing it otherwise (how many room colours, uniform or mixed, are there ?).
Yes, Einstein did more or less make the gedankenexperiment 'famous' for some, but that hardly makes it his legacy.
DP - thank you for putting up the Dissembling Dame's, er - 'work' today. So eagerly anticipated, it is going, in its entirety, straight to my electronic pool room. I know I need offer no further comment in detail; it is quite the best example of her style of obfuscation I have seen. Everything is there, including the reflections on the judges, as befits one who has attained a Doctorate of Juridical Studies - a qualification, no doubt, waaay better than 'taking silk'.
ReplyDeleteChadwick