The reptiles, and so the pond, because the pond must always follow where the hard-headed, stubborn, wilful, reptiles want to go, decided to give the war on China a good run this day …
Regrettably this meant a few other reptiles had to fall by the wayside, but the pond must pause to honour Dame Slap, recipient of the cult master award of the day …
Well, it's only ASIC, and besides Carl Barks was doing square eggs in the 1950s.
And let us not fail to honour Killer Creighton, out and about doing his usual killer thing …
Apparently Killer thinks we're not in a bit of strife already, a bit of a pickle, something of a tough trot. We are in strife, you useless goose, and the world is in strife too …
But that's the way it always goes with the Killer, where's the harm in a few dying if his precious economy can float on blood and bone to keep News Corp afloat a little longer…
And now honour served, back to the bromancer and the war on China …
Thank the long absent lord there was no mention of climate science … and so to the solutions … which of course mean that we must keep shipping clean dinkum Oz coal and iron ore, no matter all those other minor disagreements ...
Here the pond must fault the bromancer. Surely he meant "real solutions to real problems"? Couldn't he have talked of a "realistically realist approach by a realistically hard-headed real leader given to realism and reality-based solutions"?
Luckily the pond stumbled on some realistically real and very hard-headed cartoons, and perhaps the bromancer might take note …
And so having proposed real world solutions to real world problems with real soft-headed folk singers, the pond can move on to the next logical step in the war with China. Bring in the Americans …
This is a solid start, asking candidate Biden penetrating questions, because the pond also wants to know if he'll emulate the Donald's solid, consistent, coherent stance on China …
Too soon with the cartoons? Sorry, the pond needs a little strength before proceeding ...
Oh come on, before proceeding with the questions, a familiar reptile litany, can't the pond at least bring in the immortal Rowe, with the reminder that there's more Rowe here …
But will our American WSJ reptile dare to ask Joe about TikTok?
Yes, yes, all that and more. Can Joe show the strength of the Donald and his leadership skills, on tariffs and whatever?
Now is there a chance our WSJ reptile will ask an interesting question, such as "is it possible for anyone US politician to be more fucked up, incompetent, incoherent, demonstrably stupid and corrupt, a demonstrably woeful con artist snake oil salesman, and yet mysteriously, almost mystically, still the favourite of Fox News, the GOP and the WSJ Murdochians?"
No? Oh well, roll out the alternatives ...
Indeed, indeed and come November, perhaps the Murdochians will realise their dreams, and they can again let loose the con artist in the China shop …
And good luck with that.
And so to the third arrow in the reptile quiver, an imported pleading Pom ...
Poor Hong Kong … but it goes without saying that the Poms are perfectly poised to deal with the situation, what with things going splendidly on the home front …
Remember you can always Graudian toons here, and might even think of helping out the old Blighty rag, because there's fuck all life in the colonies …
And now on with the solution ...
Um, let the pond get this straight. The Poms have just decided to exit an organisation, which through its collective size, by default provides a balance to the economic power of China? And now it wants everybody to join together and sing Kumbaya with the Poms while standing outside that band of perfidious Europeans jibber-jabbering in foreign lingoes?
Perhaps join in with the Donald, who is always around showing interest in being a Xi, or at least a tinpot South American dictator in the Mussolini style?
But back to the English solution to the war on China, and it gets even richer as we move along ...
Say what, "like-thinking countries, particularly those in the same language group…"
You mean no wogs allowed?You know, the Germans with their harsh, guttural language, the Italians with their obsession with pasta, the hoity-toity uppity French, with their Napoleonic delusions of grandeur, bread rolls and plonk …
And instead of that mob, abandoned by the Poms, suddenly Nigeria gets into the mix?
Oh right, intellectual, academic and democratic freedoms for everyone except poofters, Graudian here …
Instead we should step into the mouth of the beast?
Oh you silly plaintive Pom, trying to revive the Commonwealth, and the special relationship with Australians, and English-speakers, when everyone knows, mate, that we speak dinkum, and you speak toffy Pom, and really, shouldn't you have stayed with the Europeans instead of roaming the world trying to pick up chums ...
The pond always suspected, what with Brexit and all that it wrecked, that it wouldn't be long before the Poms came down under, whining and moaning and talking about mateship like drunks in the front bar, oh we was cobblers wunce, jeez, couldn't we be dinkum cobbers again Doreen, and then reeling home to clutch at the colonial skirt …
Well go call on the Donald, see if he'll toss you a paper towel or three …
My Source tells me that the column from the Creighton today includes this shattering discovery -
ReplyDelete‘There’s more to life than GDP.’
and goes on with ‘One could try to work out the dollar value of freedom of movement, physical association, by asking how much people would pay for it.’
Well, yes, ‘one’ could. In which case ‘one’ would be engaged in ‘contingent valuation’, which has become a legitimate tool in assessing costs and benefits. It has also been disparaged and derided by those who maintain that the path of human society can, indeed, MUST, be left to the ‘market’.
Finally, I am assured (the Source is well aware that I may give her communications in evidence to the Pond, so I trust what she puts in quotes to be the true record) - that the Creighton finished with ‘- not enough are focusing on the long-term costs that aren’t captured in GDP.’
Well, yes - GDP, and its predecessor GNP, does not tabulate costs. That was made plain by those who have developed the process, including prominent economists who have cautioned, repeatedly, that we should not use GDP as a measure of welfare. Interesting that Creighton claims ‘not enough’ are focusing on costs in any kind of national accounts - given that the usual attitude of columnists in Limited News is that such negative thinking is anti-development, and generally contrary to what they present as the public interest.
Anyway - the Source was amused by those several hints of heresy in the Creighton’s column. We do not have a wager on where that might take him, or how long that might last; there are oldies to terminate.
Chadwick
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DeleteSo we have a war on two fronts, the war against China and the war against the aged.
DeletePerhaps these conflicts will cool down a bit after the US presidential election? I doubt it, the pandemic will still be in full flight and lots of distractions will still be needed to deflect from the ongoing failures.
The jihad is deeply entrenched in the News Corpse culture and they can hardly admit to being a large part of the real problem. Murdoch has helped engineer an example of how not to manage a crisis.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/
- Great link. After reading Ed Yong’s excellent article one can not come to any other conclusion .......the Murdoch empire is the ultimate novel cultural virus, no different to Covid 19 in respect to the devastation it has and is spreading.
Delete- Well worth the read, even if it left me feeling rather depressed.
- I will offer a small antidote for anyone else who reads it. Cheers. CA.
- I was going to link Jonathan Swan’s Trump interview for anyone who has possible not seen it yet, but that is equally depressing so ....
https://youtu.be/rzRzL8T03Ao
Good link, Bef. I first started reading Ed Yong back in his beginnings when he had his own blog: Not Exactly Rocket Science. He always wrote, and linked to, good scence reading. But now he's a pro 'science writer' journalist so I rarely get to see his stuff nowadays. My loss, I guess.
DeleteNot sure, CA, that Bunnings would endorse that 'crapper' ad. but I guess it more or less says what some of us are thinking.
Contingent valuation was (is ?) pretty much a real estate tool, I thought, Chad. However it can be applied to any subjective/emotive valuation situation, I guess. But then, even the almighty 'market' is really a subjective/emotive thing isn't it.
Though it always seems to be the emotion driven quasi-rational types such as the Killer who insist on referring everything back to its 'market price'. And for them, BOC, 'GDP' (seldom GDP per capita) is "the indicator of welfare".
But costs ? You only pay any attention to them when you want to use gross overestimates in order to criticise somebody else's good ideas.
Phew, Befuddled - thank you for the link to 'The Atlantic', although as I read it I was inclined to boost my afternoon coffee with something stronger. Some of it reminded me of the kinds of plots that Richard Condon was so good at imagining.
DeleteChadwick
GB - if we might accept Baron Robbins' definition "Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses." we might wonder at how few who claim to write on economics bother to read those who attempt to study the basis of that 'behaviour' as a study in psychology; rather than just asserting ideological positions (e.g. almost anything emanating from the IPA). Contingent valuation is one of the areas that has attracted such psychologists as Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky into economics, and opened up discussions on e.g. the 'endowment effect' and similar experiments. Perhaps the Creighton is just discovering this; in which case, there is hope.
DeleteChadwick
Chad: I could maybe accept Baron Robbin's pronouncement if we replace the word "science" with the word "art", or anything that doesn't try to pretend that the vast majority of human "decision making" is anything other than subjective/emotive in which formal quantification is difficult if not downright impossible. And in that case, science is equally impossible. Which is part of why psychology has a lot of difficulty claiming to be a science, especially if one's view of science is based on several centuries of success in physics, chemistry.and biology
DeleteI have a fair bit of time for Kahneman and Tversky - and if we're talking Kahneman one needs quite a bit of time; have you ever tried to read 'Thinking, fast and slow' ? - but despite some clear advances, there's much left to be done. After all, think how long ago Herbert Simon wrote compellingly about 'bounded rationality' and how little has been actually done about it and with it. And who even mentions 'satisficing' now ?
Then we can contemplate Ed Yong's invaluable analysis of where America's response to SARS-CoV-2 shows absolutely no evidence of either "a science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means" nor of any 'bounded rationality' but instead a surfeit or 'loosed ignorance and stupidity'.
Apart from which, I have no confidence in the idea that Killer Creighton can "discover" anything.
Morning GB. Won't string this out too much more, but yes, I enjoyed Kahneman's 'Thinking fast and slow', and coupled it with Jonah Lehrer's 'The Decisive Moment'. Aside - one of the interesting consequences of the work of Kahneman and Tversky was the extent to which John de Mol used it in structuring television shows.
DeleteAt that point, it is only right and fair that we return this site to the themes that Dorothy prepares and presents to us.
Chadwick
If you insist. In parting, I only vaguely remember Jonah Lehrer from some assorted web discussion several years ago; I see his 'How We Decide' was published in 2009 under the title you mention. Not being a teev aficionado I've never heard of John de Mol at all - have to look him up: hmmm, The Voice and Big Brother in Holland and a billionaire - now that's the kind of decision making I can envy.
DeleteMy comment re Kahneman was that 'Thinking' is a big, thick book that takes time to read because he likes to ramble on and tell stories instead of just getting to the point and sticking to it.
Oh yes, a little bit of prompting eventually brings recall: Jonah Lehrer the Plagiarist:
Deletehttp://www.jonahlehrer.com/2013/02/my-apology
This essay gives a unique perspective on the possible relationship between Covid-19 and the now universal Wetiko virus of which the murderous murdoch empire is one of the leading vectors.
ReplyDeletewww.awakeninthedream.com/articles/covid-19-wetiko