It was a crisis of the first water, and before the pond had even blinked, early this morning jolly Joe's malarkey had been disappeared from the top of the digital page in the lizard Oz ... while his ambitious nonsense never had a chance in the tree killer edition ...
Yes, the war on China had topped the front tree killer edition, but the digital edition had to record sundry tragedies, albeit briefly and soon to be reshuffled so that Joe's malarkey could be consigned to the dust bin...
The war on China still led, but sadly news of brave climate denialist gorgeous George leaving the field copped a mention, along with news of those difficult bloody Europeans ... but most urgent of all, Killer Creighton had been assigned to cover the war SloMo conducted with pretty much everybody else at the conference ...
The pond can never work out why the reptiles have abandoned showing Scotty from marketing in his finest hour ...
Be proud, be brave, remember ...
Luckily the reptiles had another solution ... break up Killer's tragic tale of muteness with sundry shots of assorted leaders ...
Dear sweet long absent lord. Out of its depth? A laggard like Saudi Arabia. How could this be? How could Killer report this way on the coal clutcher? Be proud, remember ...
But never mind, back to shots of assorted dignitaries and psycho killer dictators ...
Oh yes, they all mouthed pious words, but plucky Scotty from marketing bravely resisted the talk of targets ... and he also resisted the best jokes ...
Who could forget Bojo's slogan, shortly to be smeared like milkshake across an astonished world. "We are the Saudi Arabia of wind", he said, apparently not realising that school children around the planet would make farting noises to join in the joke ...
Bunny hugging? Cake have eat? The lad was on fire and the world humbled ... and poor old SloMo left in the wake of this scintillating wit ... but at the very end, Killer could take no more and slipped in an editorial note, suggesting that he felt harangued, as if the ghost of some activist teen had crossed his radar ...
What to do? Oh, what to do?!
Well luckily just at this moment, a book review from the WSJ landed with a thud on the lizard Oz editorial team's desk, and it was a lifesaver ...
Yes, a true teller, which is reptile code for nay sayer, and how important he should arrive at this time, and Holman W. Jenkins Jr was at hand to write him up ...
Indeed, indeed, when in doubt with climate science, turn to a maths whiz and a theoretical physics man ... because naturally he'll know the best way forward, the best way to join Holman in downplaying the hysteria, and talk of a "slightly enhanced greenhouse effect" ...
By this time, the reptile strategy had been a wild success, and the pond had completely forgotten about Scotty from marketing ... at least until the infallible Pope turned up ...
But no on with the book plug, and of course it's all unsettled and nothing is sorted, and really there's nothing to see here, what with there only being a slightly enhanced mild disturbance in the force ...
Of course there's nothing to justify the rapid and wholesale abandoning of fossil fuels. We all like a little warmth as this lovely detail proved ...
How could anyone expect the reptiles to give up on their love of sweet, pure, innocent, virginal coal? Unless it's to do a waltz with nukes ... on the basis that there's no crisis here, but if there is, why not just nuke the fridge and solve the problem?
Indeed, indeed, why not let technology and markets work. They've done so well in the past, and all we have to do is adapt, which is easy if you happen to be a bloviating bullshitter from somewhere up the Hudson with a book contract in hand, and a Subaru to show the way ...
What a splendid piece. What a devastating set of hard-hitting questions and insights. How adept our butler Jenkins (didn't he appear in Scooby-Doo) is at asking hard hitting, penetrating questions, how he really challenged Koonin and put him to the sword ... so much so that the pair managed by the end to be in fulsome, furious agreement, heads deep up each other's butts, certain together that soon this minor fuss will disappear from the radar ...
The pond just had to slip in that First Dog so that there might be a change of pace - more First Dog here, because as usual on a Friday, the pond has another onerous task, challenging and debilitating all at once ... a worthy mission for a hardened keyboard warrior in an advanced state of keyboard PTSD...
Modesty forbids the pond from listing our Henry's extensive military record, covered in full at his wiki here.
Let us just say that he has modestly worn out many leather armchairs talking of the bravery of the Greeks, and the glories of western civilisation ... because there's nothing like bunging on a couple of world wars to show civilisation at its finest ...
Ah yes, the ancient Greeks, and the finest Western civilisation values ... yet strangely, didn't the Americans cop a whipping in Vietnam, and aren't the mad mullahs of Afghanistan about to get the upper hand and make life a misery for women?
Hang on, hang on, didn't Alexander the Great fail to tame Arabia, and wasn't he fiercely homosexual? Jut asking for a friend of Western Civilisation's oldest components? Let's not leave Hephaestion out of the picture, please ...
Oh emotionalism and immediate gratification. Is that what explained this?
There's only so much horseshit the pond can take from armchair generals in any one day, and thank the long absent lord, our hole in the bucket man has reached his limit ...
What a pile of tosh, and how indecent to drag Yeats into the picture. Didn't Sir Henry Newbolt say it better, didn't he perfectly evoke our Henry's mindless militarism and colonial mindset?
Here it is, as performed by Tamworth Primary School's class 6A in the Tamworth Eisteddfod ...
That's a long way from the pond's grandfather up to his waist in the mud in the Somme in 1917, as a machine gunner a favourite target for German infantr, returned home to become a raging alcoholic and wife beater prone to never-ending nightmares ... for that you need a different poem ...
And so to end on a lighter note.
Anyone familiar with the reptiles will remember years of railing at the curse of social media, and the terrible havoc that anonymity has wreaked upon the world ...
Yesterday the reptiles began a movement to reverse all that, led by the particularly dumb self-promoter who lives at Quillette. The pond ignored it, of course, but couldn't ignore this follow-up in Crikey ... (paywall affected) ...
That last link points to a Vox piece on the hoax, which is much more fun that a single line Claire Lehmann has ever managed to scribble ...
Of course it's also true that the real Dorothy Parker returned from the grave and her table at the Algonquin to put together the pond ... only to discover that eventually the reptiles would do a 180 and discover the joys of anonymity, and make the whole Dorothy Parker thing an outdated joke ... and that's why the pond avoids revolving doors at hotels, and prefers to end with an immortal Rowe, bringing together sundry wars this day, with more unifying Rowe always to hand here ...
By the way, the pond is aware of who devised the Victorian government's EV policy. A friendly tip. Stop it, or you're sure to go blind, or at least have conspicuous hairs on the palms of your hands ...
George Patton is known to have told his troops on at least one occasion that ‘No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.’
ReplyDeleteHe did not claim to have originated that summary. As one widely read, including in the classics, he almost certainly was aware of many earlier versions of that thought. He was also fairly effective at that ‘στρατηγικοί’ (and we shall see if that transfers to blogwrite - anyway, strategos - ya gotta have a bit of Greek for the benefit of the elite), although perhaps more remembered now for some of the other things he said.
But we must continue to exhort each young generation to be willing to die because ‘leaders’ believe they have some point to prove to each other - and, of course, it has an ennobling effect on ‘our side’. As the maiden aunts of just about every household I was acquainted with as a lad, could testify.
Yes, I did wonder if the Henry had such aunts in his family - with the sepia print in silver frame on their dressing table, showing a young man, in smart uniform - the standard parting gift from around 1914-18.
Contrariwise, Chad, I wonder whether we must continue to exhort armed soldiers to actually fire their weapons at the enemy with genuine intent to wound or kill. Apparently, this is a complex question with many different answers depending on where, when and with (and against) who the action is taking place.
DeleteNot surprising really, not all people are casual killers no matter what the Holely Henrys think.
Here's some interesting background:
https://www.historynet.com/men-against-fire-how-many-soldiers-actually-fired-their-weapons-at-the-enemy-during-the-vietnam-war.htm
But talking about exhorting each young generation to be willing to die, just be sure they've got the right skin colour and/or eye shape or they just might not be noticed:
PM ‘deeply troubled’ by failures to honour black and Asian war dead
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/22/minister-apologises-for-black-and-asian-war-dead-commemoration-failures
Ah, the endless joys of Western Judeo-Christian Civilisation.
I suppose it is being picky to say - if Holman W Jenkins Jr - a post-nominal favoured by our friends across the Pacific - anyway, if Holman is on such buddy terms with Steven Koonin, why does he not afford him the title 'Dr', in recognition of his PhD from MIT?
ReplyDeleteIs this part of a movement by reptile associates in the USA to discount the academic qualification of Dr Jill Biden, by trying to maintain the fallacy that the title should be restricted to medical practitioners?
Whereas, of course, the title is only awarded to medical practitioners out of a mistaken sense of courtesy.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_(title)#:~:text=The%20word%20is%20originally%20an%20agentive%20noun%20of,of%20Bologna%20and%20the%20University%20of%20Paris%20.
But anyway, here's some commentary om Koonin for anybody who's interested:
Did a physicist become a climate truth teller?
https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/2021/04/18/did-a-physicist-become-a-climate-truth-teller/
Notice the mention of Koonin's appearance on Judith Curry's blog.
Thanks GB - I have filed away Lacis' little gem about percentage changes in human body temperature and their consequences.
DeleteYeah, I like the bit about "small numbers don't necessarily imply small effects" (or summat like that). The thing about Koonin is that he's supposed to be a "theoretical physicist" but I'm yet to see any clear indication of his wonderful achievements - which all seem to be more organisational than physical.
Delete