Given the reptiles' astonishing fear of Twitter, the pond almost feels like starting each day with a tweet.
How about the ranting of an old rocker?
Alas and alack, the pond doesn't personally use Twitter and so re-tweeting for the reptiles on a daily basis would simply be too burdensome ...
But the pond did start the day at #nikisavva ...
Onward and upwards? A stream of random images flooded back to haunt the pond ...
And sure enough, there she was, replacing the savvy Savva ...
Say what? Her first column is about leadership losing its way? Oh fucketty fuck, irony truly is dead, and how the pond yearned for the days of the onion muncher ... where leadership truly lost its way.
But this wasn't the monkey back in business, this is the monkey grinder, and the pond knew what it had to do.
The black ban, the black list, the black ball must kick in ... there could be no place for petulant Peta on the pond ... not while it was mourning the loss of the savvy Savva ... replaced by a dunderhead, whose only purpose in life was to prove the power of the Peta Principle ...
The pond freely admits this is cutting off nose to spite loon pond face, and it left the pond in a difficult situation, given the paucity of the below the fold efforts ...
Fucketty fuck, what a void, who cares if the rorter makes it to Canberra, all the pond cares about is whether the whiteboard made it there ...
So the pond turned back to the top of the digital page to see what was cooking up there ...
What a relief. Irony isn't dead, it's just cranked up to eleven, because at least a few readers will recall that Dame Slap was ranting yesterday thusly ...
And yet this very day the reptiles were doing provincial posturing and provincial point-scoring, and in their little montage had left off inconvenient thoughts from inconvenient people ... of the kind that could be found at other places ...
Note to reptiles: the real story, the real headline this day wasn't bashing the toads in a provincial point-scoring way.
It was a headline worthy of an old rocker. The pentecostal fuckwit and his arselicking media supporters have fucked it up again ...
So what then? Well at least the pond had the bromancer as a comforter ...
There's nothing in it for the pond of course. The pond has no interest in defending Xi or his authoritarian cult of personality or his desire to become another emperor in the style of Mao ... how silly was that film title about The Last Emperor ... the desire to be the last emperor has never gone away ...
The pond can at least mourn the way the reptiles now hire in their illustrative snaps from Getty and the like ... and yearn for the old days when they paid for in-house illustrators ...
But that was then, and this is now, and the pond can't help but feel its days with the lizard Oz are numbered ...
Sybaritism? Dear sweet long absent lord, he's a funny old Catholic fundamentalist chook, no doubt flailing away at his back each morning before donning the cilice and heading off to the keyboard, satisfied that he's got the blood flowing ...
Here, and it's a reminder how being a barking mad Catholic makes you think that religious fundamentalism underpins everything ... and yet this is a loon invited on to the ABC regularly, thereby prompting the pond to regularly turn off the ABC ...
Never mind, back to the notion that authoritarianism has nothing to do with it ... let's get that fundamentalist Opus Dei perspective really cooking ...
Fuck a duck, he really can drag the Catholic church and the Jesuits and all the rest of it into any discussion ... and inevitably, as it always did, the pond took the wrong message from the sermon. The uselessness of the true believer, fixated on the consumption of human blood and human flesh on a Sunday ...
The Hundred Flowers campaign? Even that event's wiki allowed for a little ambivalence ...
Observers differ as to whether Mao was genuinely surprised by the extent and seriousness of the criticism, or whether The Hundred Flowers Campaign was in fact a premeditated effort to identify, persecute, and silence critics of the party.
Never mind, at least you can rely on the bromancer for the cannibalising of history as well as Jesus ...
Like the emperors of ancient Rome?
Oh for fucks sake, like the emperors of ancient, and not so ancient China, you silly gherkin, you funny old Catholic chook ...
But enough of the bromancer scribbling in quasi-religious tones, because next thing you know, the pond will be speaking in tongues to imaginary friends on the many ways to fuck up a vaccine roll-out ...
And so to end on another solemn note.
Speaking of religious devotion, it seems the pond must also bid farewell to the infallible Pope.
In its infinite wisdom, The Canberra Times has rolled his work into an early morning subscriber newsletter. Much as the pond is devoted to the infallible Pope, and would like to worship at his feet each day, the pond isn't interested in the slightest in ponying up to a parochial rag ...
So it's farewell infallible Pope, the pond will miss you mightily, but at least for the moment the pond has the immortal Rowe, as usual recommending more Rowe here, and also as usual pleased do see that the mighty Rowe was relevant to the day's theme ...
Yes, there you go bromancer, back to the days of first emperor of Qin ... a real charmer ...
... and don't forget those images of his Rowe-like army ...
Apologies again DP but you might find this amusing
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/SquizzSTK/status/1410080949920952321?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1410080949920952321%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwomensagenda.com.au%2Flatest%2Fsa-chief-health-officer-nicola-spurrier-schools-chris-kenny-after-he-said-covid-19-is-a-mild-health-threat%2F
Who is the mystery interlocuter? Whining tone, statements dressed up as questions, a pregnant dog???
Also instructive how Sky have responded by flooding YouTube with their version of events.
That it's not as bad as you might think line has been a Doggy Bov staple for a long time. He does the same with climate change too. He's one of those who, unless something affects them personally and directly, just plays the what are they making such a fuss for gambit.
DeleteJust as a followup to Adam Creighton and Gina Foster, The Conversation has got into the act with this contribution:
ReplyDeleteYes, lockdowns are costly. But the alternatives are worse
https://theconversation.com/yes-lockdowns-are-costly-but-the-alternatives-are-worse-163572
I notice that, shock of shocks, their paper is actually in course of being peer reviewed. But then, they are practising academics.
A good article. Even a plodder like me can make sense of the interactive charts, and they do line up with the actual results in Australia.
DeleteThe NBER publication was a case of studying the entrails of a beast run over by a road train. Take an enormous mess, make a few inadequate changes and try to draw universal conclusions.
In a way it's like our previous discussions about ignoring successful people and taking advice from fellow failures.
It's good to see some reasonable approximation to a scientific paper now and then, isn't it; especially one that might actually be peer reviewed (I'd like to know who actually does it and what the review comments are, if I can remember to keep looking out for them).
DeleteI note the scientific paper uses HALYs - Health Adjusted Life Years - not QALYs, and Health surely is a part of Quality, but somewhat more able to be non-subjectively estimated I'd say. As always, the black and white ends of the (Quality) spectrum are relatively confidently estimable, it's the great bulk in the middle where subjectivity rules. How much quality is there in my, or your, life and how much will there be in 5 years time ?
In yesterday's SMH/The Age there was an article by Jessica Irvine headed "Shrinking pipeline of economists" (p. 24 in The Age) which said:
"Economists make for unlikely newspaper opinion columnists. Why? Because it is the job of columnists to hold strong opinions on a dazzling array of important matters. It is the job of economists, by contrast, to simply and diligently go about the business of politely reminding society that we should generally only take courses of actions for which the benefits exceed the costs.
Or, conversely, that we really ought to stop doing things for which the costs outweigh the benefits."
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/why-the-big-drop-in-high-school-economics-students-is-a-crisis-for-us-all-20210630-p585mf.html
Now I would agree wholeheartedly with Ms Irvine if:
Benefits were clearly understood and agreed and no benefits were missed or unknown no matter over what timeframe they need to be examined (eg what were the short, medium and long term benefits of the American moon landings and how long did it take for all the benefits to become known and accurately measurable).
Such benefits could be accurately assessed and accurately costed over whatever timeframe they emerge and exist.
All costs, again over whatever extended timeframe needs to be accounted for, are known and agreed.
All costs can be accurately assessed and calculated over their entire timeframe.
When all of that is just a matter if (computer aided ?) routine, it might be reasonable to not call Ms Irvine's propositions the utter crap that they are.
"...there could be no place for petulant Peta on the pond".
ReplyDeleteIndeed not. Even compared to the appallingly disingenuous standard of the current reptiles, she really is a waste of time and space and quanta.
Short Bromancer: I went to Kings College, and I was the smartest man in the room!
ReplyDeleteThe sad part, Joe, is that it might even be approximately true.
Delete