You see? What a fucking idiot, or if you will, moron ... a column scribbled by an idiot, full of sound and confusion, and signifying nothing ...
And the craven Craven was able to keep the routine going for the entire piece ...
The Major's name invoked? The craven Craven seeks guidance from the reptiles? What a fucking idiot ... and so to the last of the rampant idiocy ...
Yes, when you want a decent serve of climate science, seek out a climate scientist. When you want a serve of complete idiocy - as befits a blog with the word "loon" in it - seek out a constitutional lawyer and a former academic of a Catholic bent with too much time on his hands, and yet too little time to scribble anything useful ...
And so to nattering "Ned". Usually the pond leaves the Everest of "Ned" to last, but this day he was on song, and pretty competitive with the craven Craven ...
There you go, "Ned" lifting up his voice in praise of a fundamentalist Xian idiot, trudging side by side with the Tudge. Pure, undiluted idiocy is sure to follow ...
Again the pond will be relieved of the duty of saying something sensible in response ...
The verbose "Ned", whose columns constitute an unendurable hellish marathon, complaining about size?
As we're speaking of a fundamentalist Xian, perhaps the pond could add to the preposterous size, by referencing David Marr in the Graudian ...
Ah, educative ... so it's on with "Ned" being educative ...
Not the old phonics rag... the pond would like a quid for every time the reptiles have ranted about that ... and yet here we have a fundamentalist Xian blathering about evidence based practices and otherwsie talking of a scientific basis for reading instruction ...
No wonder it was easy for the trundling Rundle to sound complacent in a recent piece for Crikey ... (paywall)
And yet here we are, in company of a fundamentalist Xian who has shown a remarkable ignorance and bias when it comes to history ...
Ah, there we are again, blathering about length, while being endlessly tortured by "Ned" ... and there are many gobbets to go, and much of it astonishingly dull and remarkably predictable, and offering only a yearning to return to the 1950s ... you know, where Xianity once ruled the roost, and produced the results noted by Marr ...
Only in a piece by "Ned" could talk of Xianity and a rational democratic society be co-joined, and blather about science accompany it.
Talk to the hand, or if you will, the miracle of the burning bush, or perhaps the walking on water, or if you want real science, a little transubstantiation ... up there with other forms of alchemy ...
That blather that history is designed to make a student feel proud of his or her or their country almost tempted the pond to break Godwin's Law, because patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel or the Nazi propagandist ...
Real history shouldn't be about making anyone proud ...it's not a tool for propaganda or a tool for tools of the Trudge kind ...
The pond could feel a rant coming on ... but instead, please allow the pond a little trip down memory lane.
The pond once had the honour of teaching history in a girls' technical high school. Many of the girls knew they were destined to work as check-out chicks, and were eager to escape to get on with the business, before hopefully getting married and turning to breeding.
It was when the pond tried to explain that wondrous invention, the stump-jump plough, that a rebellion broke out.
Indignant students asked the pond why it was boring the class shitless. The pond tried to find an answer - the stump jump plough was after all in the curriculum - but it was hard to make it seem relevant to students trapped in a working class Adelaide suburb.
It suddenly dawned on the pond that it too was bored shitless, and so a career in teaching quickly came to an end ...
Now back to "Ned" for a couple of quick gobbets, and yet more blather about Greece and Rome and a little more black bashing, and so on and so forth from that tired old Blainey hack...
Must never be contested? Try contesting guilt-laden fundamentalist Xianity with a reptile ...
What's really funny? The current education system rankings put the United States at number one. If that's number one - where a vigilante can roam the streets killing people at random, and get off - maybe there's not much point trying to be number one ...
All that exhausting blather has to be worth a Rowe, with more worthy Rowe here ...
And so to a bonus, and it had to be Dame Slap ... because she went MIA during the week, and because all the reptiles were having a go at the ABC this weekend, and while many were called to the task - the dog botherer, prattling Polonius - some would have to be held over ... h
Have at it Dame Slap, give us the IPA view, as if the pond had never heard it before ...
The pond isn't sure why the reptile collective had decided this was the weekend to go full bore at the ABC? Could it have been this?
Yes, after all that reptile ranting and railing, and endless wailing and getting ugly mobs on to the street to riot, the EXCLUSIVE news was bad ...
So why not a bit of ABC bashing in lieu of comrade Dan bashing ... a bit of old school Dame Slap uglification and derision ...
That's all? That's bullshit of course ...
The Chairman of the IPA surely knows that it's the IPA's mission to neuter the ABC, and preferably privatise it ... and speaking of distractions that reminded the pond of this faux ad in Crikey ...
"About us ... just absolutely never shutting the fuck up about the ABC ..."
And so on we go, never shutting the fuck up ...
Settle down, delivered in the most condescending Dame Slap style imaginable?
But, billy goat butt, we know what the IPA has campaigned for, endlessly ...
Whittle away, Dame Slap, whittle away, like water gushing over a rock, until it's smoothed into silence and sold off ...
Truth to tell, Dame Slap couldn't lie straight in bed, let alone deliver a straight lie about the ABC ...
Fucketty fuck, not that ancient dullard Alston, always with an ABC bee in his very weird bonnet ...
Around this point the pond began to realise there might be another urgent need for the reptiles to find a distraction. It's been a bad week for SloMo, though the media didn't manage it, he did it all to himself, as noted by Katharine Murphy in the Graudian ...
So railing at the 'leets and the ABC and such like is a handy distraction ... and it's back to the railing and the patented Dame Slap wailing ...
The Iraq war? That's the hill Dame Slap and Alston still want to die on? What a pity that the war criminals were never tried and brought to justice ... why little Johnny and his cohort might just now be getting out of the clink for crimes against humanity based on specious evidence ...
And now, please join with the pond in thanking the long absent lord there's only one IPA-inspired gobbet of meandering mendacity to go ...
Same old IPA, same as it ever was ... and so to an infallible Pope to end the day's proceedings with a memorable image ...
Craved-in Craven: "...consensus among scientific experts that climate change is real, urgent, dangerous and, to a significant extent, man made. Allowing for herd bias and the difficulties in scientific modelling..."
ReplyDeleteOk, so should we, for instance, attribute belief in a spherical Earth to "herd bias and the difficulties in scientific modelling" ? How much of 'science' is just us liking to agree with each other ?
The bit I was really lost on though, was that after talking about "environmentalism is eating its own children" in relation to some mob wanting to burn biomass, Craven goes on to "A similar example is the push towards fracking for coal-seam gas...". Is he actually claiming that "the push towards fracking" is being powered by environmentalists ? Who ? When ? Where ?
Then we get to "what are we going to do with the displaced fossil fuel workforce ?" Why we're going to take 'em out and shoot 'em, Greg. We can't let the thought that "technologically displaced workers do not transition to well paid jobs." cause us to allow that "workforce" to hold the planet to ransom - maybe we could just put in a few $million to keep them going while we spend $trillions saving the rest of us and the planetary ecology ? Just a thought - but then that would be paying people not to work, and we just can't have that, now can we.
You are way too kind to him, DP.
But GB what's the point of applying a sledgehammer to a peanut? All you end up with paste or a kind of nutty sludge, a form of horse paste slavvered over confused white bread.
DeleteAnd if you think calling someone a fucking moron is being too kind, the pond shudders to think what might happen should the pond follow your advice and get nasty ...
DP - I have no problem with 'fucking moron' in this case - the Craven ‘Not one person in 10 000 has sufficient scientific literacy actually to understand climate change’. To be charitable, that is disingenuous, particularly coming from a lawyer - albeit one who has not provided the ‘Wiki’ with much information about his actually practicing as one, prior to going into the relative comfort of deaning in various universities. Oh, his ‘Wiki’ does say that he ‘is also noted as a key Australian Catholic layman for opinions on important issues.’
DeleteSo he should be capable of reaching an opinion on an issue as important as the simple habitability of the (only) planet on which we live. As a lawyer, presumably, he would go to original sources. That is - not the rubbish put out by the reptiles, but the theoretical works of, say, Arrhenius, which were taken up 50 years later by Charles Keeling, who gave us - I guess Craven considers this a ‘stunt’ - the Keeling Curve, showing steadily rising carbon dioxide in the air over Mauna Loa.
This is not a ‘model’, it is simple, sound, scientific observation.
Neither are the observations at Fort Denison - for well over a century - a ‘model’ to be disparaged. The results are readily available, and, in spite of the assertions of that master hydrographer Alan Jones, repeated endlessly in comments to the Limited News sites, that the survey mark there has shown ‘no rise in sea level’ - it actually confirms rise in sea level, consistent with other long-term sites around the world, and at an increasing rate.
There are other sources, that an experienced academic - or a genuinely inquisitive citizen - can access readily. Those linked to the earlier scientists (none of whom have published with Connor Court) demonstrate the adage that - if you truly understand your research findings, you can explain them to an 8-year-old. Or to a retired Constitutional Lawyer, on a good day.
Aw c'mon DP, almost every single homo saps saps is a "fucking moron"; that's why there's so damned many of us. To call someone a fucking moron is about on a par with calling a gorilla an ape.
DeleteBut hey, I reckon I'd love to see what you can produce if/whenever you actually "get nasty". That would definitely be something to behold.
C'mon Chad, all that Craven wants to do is provide a "both sides" diversion. When he claims that "All of which is deeply troubling, but so is the other side of the debate." We all know that there is no more a debate with two sides about climate than there is about 'flat Earth theory' or even 'Omphalos hypothesis"
DeleteWhen Craven shouts that: "I have news for climate extremists of either bent. ... When I hear Greta Thunberg thundering certainties laced with insults, I wonder why, if her case is so strong, she needs to be so nasty." Ok, right, so it's Greta who has been "nasty", Yes ? All of the words of Andrew Bolt and Parrot Jones etc etc which are so clear and informed and rational which have been directed at Greta, right from the very beginning, have been so courteous and friendly haven't they.
So when you say: "This is not a model, it is simple, sound, scientific observation.", Craven will just have to ask you to stop using such "thundering certainties laced with insults" from yet another climate extremist, won't he.
One of the most common observations on the Pond is "lack of self-awareness". Aaaand here you have a traditional catholic confused by people dressing up. I cannot tell you how bemused I was on the first occasion I observed the standard Catholic get together - frocks, bells, candles, strange hand signals.
DeleteThey gotta do that, Bef, or at the great distance away of Heaven, God would never be able to recognise his own.
DeleteI bet the reptiles are really good at ignoring this
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/19/first-covid-patient-in-wuhan-was-at-animal-market-study-finds
Yeah, they took him into the Wuhan Institute and injected him and then snuck him off to the market. Just ask Shari, she knows.
DeleteOk, so the Drudge Tudge wants to tell us that "[debate going on for 20 years] There have been improvements but our standards have been slipping internationally and compared to ourselves from 20 years ago." And of course that's because we just haven't been worshipful practitioners of the wingnut faith and followed "science". If we had we'd be the first ever to have done so.
ReplyDeleteBut in the meantime, I have a simple query: since 2020-21 financial year to 2015-16 fy inclusive, 2,169,136 immigrants have settled in Australia (stopped at 2016 because I expect few arriving later than that would have been involved in PISA, but some would). Not all were single males or even females, many were families with children of various ages, many of whom would have been placed into Australian schools from Pre- and Primary up to Year 12. Most would not have had English as their first language, quite a few would not have learned English until they were ensconced in an Aussie school. Quite a few would not even recognise a Romanised alphabet.
So many have had a steep learning curve in speaking and hearing, and reading and writing, English. And then they would have had a steep learning curve picking up the course material. What I would like to know is whether this has any noticeable effect in test results that would be totally conducted in English (except maybe for the bits conducted in universal mathematical symbols, if there is any).
So, do we only conduct the PISA tests with native Aussies and long-resident immigrants, or is it all in, no matter when, and where you came form ? And how come nobody ever mentions these considerations ? Is there any other nation on the planet (America ?) that has a similar situation ?
Students in Australia don't take PISA seriously because it doesn't count for their final assessment. They do testing that matters not to them.
DeleteAnd increasingly they are conscious of that.
I think there may be a few teachers who are conscious o it too, and as far as I'm aware, we don't go to some trouble to choose the subset of students to sit the tests like they do in some pats of the world, or have an education process based on continual, frequent testing where students learn the one single skill they really need: excelling at being tested.
DeleteNome of which will ever be known to, or acknowledged by, the Tudges and Neds of this world.
True that school spending rises year on year under the heading of "need". But that "need" is political not educational. Hence, it's spent on students already advantaged.
DeleteWorse, there's no political move to end that farce.
Painfully, and shamefully true, MN; but we wouldn't expect a wingnut or a reptile to mention that, would we. Vert sadly, we wouldn't expect a labor pollie to mention it either.
DeleteAn interesting post in the Conversation about PISA (and NAPLAN) tests:
DeleteYes, Australia’s PISA test results may be slipping, but new findings show most students didn’t try very hard
https://theconversation.com/yes-australias-pisa-test-results-may-be-slipping-but-new-findings-show-most-students-didnt-try-very-hard-172050
Backs up your contention, MN. It contains the following wisdom:
"Educational psychologists in Australia have long studied the links between motivation, self-efficacy (students’ beliefs they can perform at the level they need to) and academic achievement.
For example, expectancy–value theory, to put it simply, suggests the lower the perceived value or usefulness of a task, the less motivated one potentially is to put in much effort. Motivation to do the task is determined by its perceived value.
Perhaps one of the unintended side effects of assuring participating students that PISA is a low-stakes task — it does not count towards their school grades — is the potential for downward pressure on performance."
So, kids aren't mindless perfectionists and they don't put maximum effort into things they don't consider necessary or useful. Wau, hucoodanode.
So, Ned tells us that Tudge quoted "principal and teacher" Sue Knight who "has written about discovering she had not been taught the science of reading in her teaching degree." So, my question is: how did a student so lazy, ignorant and incapable of any kind of self-motivated, self-organised learning get to be a "principal" ? Is it that she can only learn by repeated rote (aka "explicit teaching") and she wants to inflict that on every single student ?
ReplyDeleteSo, The Slap tells us that Alston told us that: "...the strategy is crystal clear: 'Come up with some modest changes ahead of an imminent federal election' ....". Wau, I didn't know that Ita and the ABCers were that smart. Alston held several offices: Minister for Communications and the Arts (1996–1997), Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts (1997–1998), and Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (1998–2003). So, in 7 years of ministry in the Howard government, Alston achieved precisely nothing. Rather like Slappy and her main squeeze who between them had 10 years as ABC Board members and also achieved precisely nothing.
ReplyDeleteBut then, what does one expect from the likes of them ?
Geoff Gallop in the SMH today, on his report, Valuing the Teaching Profession:
ReplyDeleteNSW faces ″a large and growing shortage″ of teachers.
As a result, staff are teaching ″out of field″ – that is history teachers teach maths, or social science teachers teach English. Out-of-field teaching now accounts for 15 per cent of all teachers. The department reports the problem is particularly severe in ″rural and regional areas, secondary and where there has been significant population growth″.
Add to this the ageing of the workforce: 28 per cent of teachers and 45 per cent of principals will reach retirement age by 2024.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/crisis-in-education-a-test-for-perrottet-government-20211119-p59aap.html
I doubt that Ned has read the report.
Yep, them 'baby-boomers' have a lot to answer for: piling into the economy in a very short time-frame increasing all sorts of government spendings (especially that outrageous 'child endowment' of 5 shillings per week to the first child and 10 shillings per week to the second and later).
DeleteAnd now piling out of the work force in nearly as short a time frame, having bought up and kept most of the affordable housing, and forcing Aus to import indentured labour from overseas.
PS, DP: re your year of teaching my beloved partner would agree with you from having had a similar experience of her own. Though she didn't manage to actually last a year. My own "year of teaching" wasn't quite so bad but it's still not an experience I'd care to repeat.
ReplyDeleteAnd indeed, the 'stump-jump plow' was, and is, a wondrous invention. Almost on a par with rust-proof wheat and siroset woolens. And maybe just a bit ahead of the aircraft black box and WIFI.
But the good old 'stump-jump':
"The stump jump plough eliminated the time consuming task of clearing land filled with stumps and stones and allowed mallee land in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales, previously thought to be too difficult to work, to be cultivated."
https://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=275