Today was Jimbo's day to pound the drums of war, and what a pounding he gave them ... who else but Jimbo could glibly dismiss questions of climate and gender and resoundingly thump the heads of cancel-culture activists before even reaching the first comma?
That's the startling thing about Jimbo, the unerring precision with which he assembles statistics.
Who else knew that the second most powerful nation has wanted to overtake the most powerful national precisely 16 times in precisely the past 500 years and war has resulted on precisely 12 of those occasions?
Such a mind-boggling analysis, but at least the pond know realises how much time it wasted trying to work out the causes for the first world war.
Don't even begin to ask the confused pond to fathom the data, as compiled by Jimbo's astonishing mind. No doubt there are some demanding a list, to see the workings so to speak, but the pond will settle for a drum banging cartoon, as featured on The Insiders ...
By golly there's an earworm right there, but now back to Jimbo banging away, because when you're a paranoid there's a lot to be paranoid about ...
Um, Jimbo, though it's not spoken about Israel has atomic weapons? Should we get more than spare parts, should we go rogue, do a North Korea, get nukes, and maybe drop a nuke or two on someone we don't like to prove we're serious? Just asking for a drum-beating friend ...
That aside, we seem to be so lacking in so many things, the pond felt certain it was time to run up the white flag ...
Indeed, indeed, with suitable preparations, Australia will be able to whup the ass of the deviant Chinese, without the help of the United States ... it's all just a matter of preparation, and perhaps a recall of Jimbo to show how it's done ... you know, like the way we sorted out Iraq ... what news, Al Jazeera, on 15th April 2021?
At least four people have been killed and 17 others wounded in a car bomb attack in the Sadr City neighbourhood of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, police and medical sources said on Thursday. (here)
Talk about Jimbo instilling confidence in the banging drums ...
And so to an even more predictable offering this day. The pond had warned that at some point all the urbane Urban's idle chatter about the curriculum would set off the reptiles and unleash a bout of cancel culture, and sure enough, the Caterist was on hand to begin the cancelling...
That header is of course a specious load of paranoid tripe, but even worse is that illustration. The reptiles are far too canny these days ... once upon a time, in the glory days, they would have thought nothing of lashing out on a cult master to illustrate the piece. These days? Just a banal Brendan trying to look pious trading off on dead people ...
To be confronted by such a dismal snap of such a dismal man, who has consistently failed upwards, is simply too much for a Monday ...
Indeed, indeed, relatively speaking, in a relativist way, who would want to engage with, analyse, interpret, and evaluate the Caterist? Surely it's hard enough working out the movement of flood waters in quarries without that sort of tomfoolery ...
Now before proceeding on, there's one example of woolly thinking and the woolly use of data that might be questioned ...
In the next half century or so, Christianity’s long reign as the world’s largest religion may come to an end, according to a just-released report that builds on Pew Research Center’s original population growth projections for religious groups. Indeed, Muslims will grow more than twice as fast as the overall world population between 2015 and 2060 and, in the second half of this century, will likely surpass Christians as the world’s largest religious group.
While the world’s population is projected to grow 32% in the coming decades, the number of Muslims is expected to increase by 70% – from 1.8 billion in 2015 to nearly 3 billion in 2060. In 2015, Muslims made up 24.1% of the global population. Forty-five years later, they are expected to make up more than three-in-ten of the world’s people (31.1%). (Pew here in 2017)
Frankly the pond doesn't care which imaginary friend belief is top dog, but what follows might explain by the Caterist has trouble calculating the movement of flood waters in quarries ... what with his talk of Xianity as the world's fastest growing religion ... (did the Caterist join Jimbo at the statistical tree of knowledge?)
Yes, there's nothing like a hefty fine and significant jail time for Australians wanting to return home to demonstrate egalitarianism at its finest.
Perhaps even more astonishing, who'd have thought that the Caterist yearned these days for happy clappy status, reaching some sort of peak or nadir in the following par:
Ah, it's the old dominant culture routine ... and the pond has a good cartoon for that one...
Well there's nothing more to do than plug the speech and the book, and remember Brendan's noble willingness to serve ...
There's just one spot of bother ... the day that the pond shares values with creepy cash in paw Caterist, and civvie street Nelson is the day that ice will form over the mythical hell celebrated by assorted imaginary friends ... but how pleasing to arrive at genuine cancel culture, with the Caterist showing how to cancel.
Not amend or adjust to suit white nationalists and fundamentalist Xians, but torn up all together, put through the shredder ... eradicated, in much the same way as Caterists through the centuries have urged that minority groups be shredded ... it being the Xian way ...
Yes, there's nothing like a plague of locusts to show egalitarianism in action.
And to to the bonus, because there's no way that the pond can overlook the squawking of the Major Mitchell on a Monday ...
The Major really is a broken clock when it comes to social media. Truth to tell, truth doesn't matter that much in a lot of areas. Truth didn't matter when the Major went hunting for that wretched Order of Lenin medal and truth doesn't matter when you plug into News Corp ...
Do Fox News viewers think Tucker Carlson tells them the truth? Are they, in fact, reasonable? The federal judge, Mary Kay Vyskocil, who herself was appointed to the federal bench by Trump nine months ago, dismissed the case, citing Carlson’s First Amendment protections. That is, Vyskocil bought the argument Fox News was pushing that Carlson is, first and foremost, not a provider of “the news” as we know it, or “facts” as we commonly understand them, and his audience knows this. They’re apparently in on the gag. Fox News doesn’t label Carlson’s speech parody because that’s embarrassing for a company with the word news in its name to admit; it’s not factual journalism because that implies some responsibility for the credibility of the information that you spew. Instead, Fox News lawyers claim, Carlson is not “stating actual facts” but simply engaging in “non-literal commentary.” I couldn’t have described Carlson or Fox News better myself.
From Vyskocil’s opinion:
[In] the context of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the Court finds that Mr. Carlson’s invocation of “extortion” against Ms. McDougal is nonactionable hyperbole, intended to frame the debate in the guest commentator segment that followed Mr. Carlson’s soliloquy. As Defendant notes, Mr. Carlson himself aims to “challenge political correctness and media bias.” This “general tenor” of the show should then inform a viewer that he is not “stating actual facts” about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in “exaggeration” and “non-literal commentary.” … Given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ …
In other words, “any reasonable viewer” doesn’t actually believe what Tucker Carlson is saying to be true. It is therefore unreasonable to take what Tucker Carlson says as truth. Good note, judge. (Slate, here).
The general tenor of a Major Mitchell column is that he's not stating actual facts, he's instead engaging in exaggeration and non-literal commentary, hence that nonsense about social media ... and it's a solid defence, because the Major shows his usual capacity for exaggeration, while cultivating paranoid fantasies about the deviant left ...
Indeed, indeed, and in the Tucker spirit, the Major will cherry pick data in order to avoid uncomfortable data ...
Here, but back around to the Major, sliding around such data ... and instead beating that old Marxist drum he once deployed against Manning Clark, without regard to truth or facts ...
How many times can the reptiles blame Marxism, Derrida and the long march through the institutions for the long march of Aboriginal people through prisons? Well since you ask, for as long as you can stand to wade through this sort of Tucker down under... because blaming the victim is a way of life for the Tuckers and the Majors of the reptile world ...
Yes, there's no doubt it's all the fault of the pesky difficult blacks. But what's the situation in the United States? Well it goes without saying that it's all the fault of black people there too ...
The pond just couldn't resist throwing in the NAACP here before heading to the Major's final gobbet ...
Of course Aboriginal lives are so splendid and indolent, no doubt the Major and the pond will don blackface just so we can live the life of Riley, because let's face it, thanks to government indulgence, Aboriginal people dwell in the lap of luxury, and if they don't, it's entirely their fault ...
And with all those matters dispensed with, it's time to turn to a truly Xian state of affairs thanks to the immortal Rowe, with more Rowe here ...
I wonder if Wilcox acknowledged the subs at Crikey (and ABBA) for that Pezz jingle?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.crikey.com.au/2021/04/27/home-affairs-mike-pezzullo-war-china/
Just in passing from the Maj. Mitch: "In other words, the greatest threat to Aboriginal families is other Aboriginals rather than police." Oh wau ! And guess what: the largest threat to non-Aboriginal families is other non-Aboriginals rather than police! Gracious, therefore we must fully exonerate the police because they aren't the greatest threat and we should just ignore all those non-Aboriginal deaths in custody too. So very comforting to know, yes ?
ReplyDeleteI was just sitting here trying to work out what to do next - because at every given moment one should be strenuously engaging in the one and only currently most important thing in one's life - when my mind, without prompting, recalled this from the Cater: "Christianity is the world's largest and fastest growing religion..." to which DP had presciently observed that, indeed, Islam (well, one or another variety thereof) was actually the fastest growing religion because "Muslims will grow more than twice as fast as the overall world population between 2015 and 2060 ..."
ReplyDeleteWell maybe, depending on what climate change does to majority Islam places versus majority non-Islam places (including, boc, India and China). But actually, there's a happening that may just make the Cater almost correct, and that is:
"In Christians terms, the late 20th century will probably be known as the era of the “Pentecostal Explosion.” From less than six percent in the mid-1970s, Pentecostals finished the 20th century representing almost 20 percent of world Christianity.
The sheer speed of growth of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity is difficult to exaggerate. Over twenty years ago Ralph Martin wrote:
By 1992 the numbers of Pentecostals and charismatics had grown to over 410 million and now comprised 24.2 percent of world Christianity… My research has led me to make a bold statement: In all of human history, no other non-political, non-militaristic, voluntary human movement has grown as rapidly as the Pentecostal-charismatic movement in the last 25 years."
https://www.hprweb.com/2017/06/the-explosive-growth-of-pentecostal-charismatic-christianity-in-the-global-south-and-its-implications-for-catholic-evangelization/
So, SloMo is just one of many who will soon take over the world.
The pond should have mentioned that other tribe ...
DeleteYou don’t usually think of churches as going out of business, but it happens. In March, driven by parishioner deaths and lack of interest, the U.K. Mennonites held their last collective service.
It might seem easy to predict that plain-dressing Anabaptists—who follow a faith related to the Amish—would become irrelevant in the age of smartphones, but this is part of a larger trend. Around the world, when asked about their feelings on religion, more and more people are responding with a meh.
The religiously unaffiliated, called "nones," are growing significantly. They’re the second largest religious group in North America and most of Europe. In the United States, nones make up almost a quarter of the population. In the past decade, U.S. nones have overtaken Catholics, mainline protestants, and all followers of non-Christian faiths.
Go, nones ...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/160422-atheism-agnostic-secular-nones-rising-religion (paywall)
The great partitioning begins ... "enlightenment" is coming upon us - any century now !
DeleteHowever, I understand that 'nones' aren't all and only atheists and/or agnostics but in fact many, if not most, believe in some kind of religion but simply aren't aligned with any formal group. It is their connection to catholicism/protestantism/islam/buddhism etc to which their answer of 'none' applies.
Cater - ‘the curriculum advisers might turn to David Kemp’s five-volume history of Australian liberalism.’
ReplyDeleteYes please. Make it a set text for the curriculum (apparently we have only 4 volumes so far, but we will take the fifth unseen). Impose assignments on students that require them to delve into Kemp’s words.
I suppose the Cater was the one in class who did not question what was put before him; the one skilled in writing what Miss Thing wanted, while those around him were doing what a goodly proportion of students do with every set text - parody, searching out contrary opinion to spice up their assignment, making up spurious quotes to see if Miss Thing was actually familiar with the set text - all those activities that made it worth getting out of bed to attend high school.
That way, the students who truly engage with their assignments will come away from that part of their secondary ‘schooling’ with mild contempt for Kemp, and his works, and the political philosophy he claims.
"Mild" contempt, Chad ? For me Kemp is as non-existent as his mythical 5th volume. Life is way, way too short.
DeleteAnd given that the readable works produced in English alone now probably exceeds by a million times what a human being can actually read in an 80-year lifetime (and that's assuming speed-reading once only, 8 hours per day) perhaps the curriculum could include a subject along the lines of: How to pretend you've read even a vanishingly small selection of available written works (and I'm only including major fiction and not mathematical, scientific, historical or philosophical works). Dunno how much poetry could be fitted in, either.
Jim "the butcher" Molan looking more and more like a stock British comedic character every day. Just needs the gouty foot up on a pillow and a glass of sherry.
ReplyDeleteDismisses real world problems with immediate solutions (sort of) and heads off into delightfully vague ideas about something that might happen, that we might have some role in (apart from digging a hole). Perhaps the enemy will wait for the French to deliver a submarine or Lockheed Martin to supply something that can be left out in the rain.
I think I would give that bandaged foot a whack with his own cane if I got a chance.
Just as an aside, Bef, you might enjoy this one if you haven't already read it:
Deletehttps://stumblingandmumbling.typepad.com/stumbling_and_mumbling/2021/04/capitals-political-power.html
Thank you for that link. You would only need to add projection and entitlement to that list of heuristic biases and you would be describing most consumers of reptile output and the reasons for my befuddlement with them.
DeleteBefuddled - although Molan might tell us that 'many' are hearing the sound of war drums, I am still with Henry David Thoreau, who actually wrote ‘If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.’
ReplyDeleteIt seems there's always a contingent waiting to march to the same drum as Molan and Aus. has its own.
DeleteGreat quote Chadders and the pond was moved to find the original context ...
DeleteWhy should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such
desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his
companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let
him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree
or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition
of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality
which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain
reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over
ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at
the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?
There was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to
strive after perfection. One day it came into his mind to make a
staff. Having considered that in an imperfect work time is an
ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to
himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do
nothing else in my life. He proceeded instantly to the forest for
wood, being resolved that it should not be made of unsuitable
material; and as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his
friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their works and
died, but he grew not older by a moment. His singleness of purpose
and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his
knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no compromise with
Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance
because he could not overcome him. Before he had found a stock in
all respects suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he
sat on one of its mounds to peel the stick. Before he had given it
the proper shape the dynasty of the Candahars was at an end, and
with the point of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that
race in the sand, and then resumed his work. By the time he had
smoothed and polished the staff Kalpa was no longer the pole-star;
and ere he had put on the ferule and the head adorned with precious
stones, Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times. But why do I
stay to mention these things? When the finishing stroke was put to
his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished
artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made
a new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair
proportions; in which, though the old cities and dynasties had
passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places.
And now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his feet,
that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been an
illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than is required for a
single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame
the tinder of a mortal brain. The material was pure, and his art
was pure; how could the result be other than wonderful?
No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at
last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we
are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infinity
of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and
hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult
to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that
is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is
better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the
gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors,"
said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they
take the first stitch." His companion's prayer is forgotten.
http://www.online-literature.com/thoreau/walden/18/
"Any truth is better than make-believe."
DeleteHmmm. Not altogether convinced about that one; they keep telling me that "the truth will out" but it never comes to visit me.
However, I can say with pride that, though not a tailor, I always do make a knot in my thread before taking the first stitch. Which I guess is some kind of truth.
Dorothy and GB - fortunately, there was no chance of 'Walden' being a set text in what was laughingly called 'education' in Queensland in the 1950s, so it was not spoiled for me. I discovered it through reading Gerald Green's 'The Last Angry Man'. Since then, I have re-read it several times, and much of Thoreau's other writing; discovering new understanding each time. Thank you for setting out that part of the text.
ReplyDeleteJust one of the millions that I have never, and will never, read. And thus the question: if people - other than your good self, Chad - were to read more Thoreau, what would they have to read less of ? And with thousands more to choose from every year, and that's in native English alone.
Delete