The pond happened to be wandering through Trove - please don't ask why - when it stumbled on this ...
Ho hum, just another Lomborgian story, so what. They turn up in the lizard Oz as regular as clockwork. But what the pond found remarkable was the date, and to prove it, the pond preserved the date stamp on the page ...
2003! And look there's the bouffant one, looking decidedly less grey ...and as the pond wandered through Trove, it stumbled across another reference ...
Wayward with numbers, prone to conspiracy theories?
Truly some things never grow old, which is why the pond wanted to begin its Sunday meditation by noting this in the Graudian ...
You can read Climate cost study authors accuse Bjørn Lomborg of misinterpreting results in the Graudian ...
It's by way of repentance for the pond having run the Bjørn-again one, but grown too tired, bored, listless and lazy to challenge his nonsense.
But enough of the Bjørn-again one, and turn to the Riddster and wonder if the Riddster will have the staying power of the Bjørn to be wrong scribbler for the reptiles ...
The Riddster has fallen on hard times, and only the lizard Oz finds the space for this gospel of good news (a tautology, but toujours gai Archie) ...
The pond was vastly relieved to hear that bushfires are a jolly good thing - will someone hold the pond's hose now all that talk of ferocious wildfires has been settled? - and that all was well with the reef, and the planet was also likely to be in jolly spiffing good condition ...
Ah Connor Court. Is there anything they won't publish? And not cheap either ...
That last lone tome struck the pond as a tad discordant.
Saving Planet Earth? Does the planet need saving? After all the reef's in tip top shape, bushfires are a never no mind, and so is all the rest of it, the Riddster said so, and so it must be true. Part of the solution? What solution? Do we need a solution? Is there a problem officer?
Meanwhile the pond would rather be reading Katharine Murphy in her latest outing ...The climate war is destructive, dumb as a bag of hammers, but Scott Morrison is prepared to wage it anyway ...
Inter alia ...
...Naturally,
Morrison went straight to war. The climate ambition war remains what it
has always been: hyperbolic, dumb as a bag of hammers, destructive to
the national interest, and corrosive to Australia’s standing
internationally.
But Morrison showed on Friday he is prepared to wage the war anyway, just to get a grip on something. Anything, really.
Never mind that the prime minister tried, in the lead-up to the Cop26 in Glasgow, to engineer a higher 2030 emissions reduction target himself (although not as high as 43%) only to be thwarted by Barnaby Joyce. All that climate pivot stuff is so pre-Glasgow.
But Morrison showed on Friday he is prepared to wage the war anyway, just to get a grip on something. Anything, really.
Never mind that the prime minister tried, in the lead-up to the Cop26 in Glasgow, to engineer a higher 2030 emissions reduction target himself (although not as high as 43%) only to be thwarted by Barnaby Joyce. All that climate pivot stuff is so pre-Glasgow.
The reptiles had already given a hint of things to come, sweet dreams and flying machines on the ground ...
And this is where the pond can introduce the infallible Pope and the immortal Rowe, held over by the pond for the occasion ...
But enough of quiet chuckles at the end of the world, that's not the pond's main lot on a meditative Sunday ...
Instead it must endure some time with prattling Polonius ...
The pond knows where Polonius is going with this, but it remains an odd place ...
Wouldn't have been more manly, more in keeping with western civilisation and its glories, to use "denounce", which can at least wend its way back to middle English, before the perfidious French turn up with the Old French denoncier, until at last the Latin denuntiare 'give official information' appears in the chain?
Sheesh, the pond is starting to sound more pedantic than our Polonial epitome of pedantry ...
Ah, you can always rely on Polonius. Offer up a potato joke, and this is the look you get ...
Why that's almost as apt as the mutton Dutton and a spud.
Forget SloMo's many obvious faults, haas there ever been a more humourless, unself-aware scribbler for the lizard Oz? It is the plight of the alienated to be bored by the sight of Polonius, humorlessly living out his privileged life ...
Indeed, indeed, pig ignorance is the way forward, and Polonius's celebration of pig ignorance is entirely at one with his devotion to Pig Iron Bob ...
And now the pond must do an extreme pivot, because suddenly the meditative Sunday must become ladies day ...
First, in the depressing absence of the Angelic one, a lightweight canter around the track with the bubble-headed booby ...
Ah journalists. The pond knew it would be triggered, and who better to to the triggering than Marina Hyde?
It's always a vintage day at the lizard Oz ...
Another trigger. Not the blather about men in general, but that man in particular, clutching at some sort of report ... and what a clutcher he is ...
And so after all that triggering and clutching a reassuring note. After this gobbet, and even as the pond runs wildly over length, there will still be room for Dame Slap ...
That last hugely comical line - what passes for a rheorical flourish in bubble-headed booby land - provides the perfect segue into Dame Slap, who shows her true measure in not being particularly keen on change, as befits the chairman of the IPA ... where there'll be none of that nonsense and jibber jabber about chairwomen ...
Such a lovely couple at the top of the page as the fudging Trudge trots off to the back seat ... and how pleasing to see a butt, billy goat butt so early in the piece, though dressed up in the disguise of "without detracting from any of the dreadful findings about sexual harassment ...", a sure sign that Dame Slap will shortly get into the business of detracting, and turning the whole matter into sordid catfights and domestics ...
But before going there, the pond should note that at this point the reptiles introduced a Dame Slap reading ...
Keen students will have noted that yesterday the same courtesy wasn't accorded to nattering "Ned", presumably on the basis that he bored the readership shitless and no one wanted to listen to the old fart ... which rather begs the question, who would want to listen to Dame Slap reading her own lines?
If only they'd known about it in the old days, there'd have been no need to invent water torture ...and as for the vulgar youff market, there's a reason that attendance at the pond has long been in the toilet. What it says about the reptile business model, the pond can only guess at ...
And so on to blaming the women, in the style of the bubble-headed booby ...
Ah, another classic billy goat butt: "The wish for more accurate reporting... is not to excuse the appalling behaviour by men in federal parliament".
How soon before Dame Slap begins to excuse the appalling behaviour by men in federal parliament?
Okay, she's already started by dissing gender parity and the behaviour of the sisterhood, but surely she can do more ...
Indeed, indeed,for once Dame Slap is on the money ...read her words and weep at the truth and the accuracy ...
The nature of journalism, especially scribbling for the lizard Oz, attracts a larger than healthy cohort of blowhards (the dog botherer), people with an unnaturally thick hide (Dame Slap herself), people who have spent years corraling, bossing and bullying people (Major Mitchell), and sucking up to the chairman, to get ahead (everyone). Too many have astounding levels of self-belief, unmatched by their skint skill set. Some don a MAGA hat and slip out into the New York night; some side with Lord Monckton and imagine that the UN will use climate science to introduce world government by Xmas ...
Just think how woefully the pond misjudged Dame Slap, when she's capable of that level of self-awareness and insight ...and there's more to come...
At this point, the pond should note that the reptiles introduced a click bait video, because there's only so much anyone can take of Dame Slap on a roll before needing a break ... and this was a very special video ...
The pond could feel Polonius's hairs standing on the back of his neck as he hid behind the arras. That was the reptiles shamelessly running the "bombshell moments' in a Four Corners' report ...
Regurgitating ABC content is the new normal at the lizard Oz?
Why it's as if the reptiles wanted to give fresh weight to that story in the Weekly Beast by the venerable Meade (yes there's also talk of the Devine, but the pond is long over that Miranda in search of a US inn)...
Amid all the farewells there was a message for the ABC’s detractors, including social media critics, the Australian, the IPA and members of the government.
“I’ll say one thing to our increasingly shrill critics, from the vested interests of the media to the unhinged rantings on social media: we’re not your target because we’re failing, but because we’re succeeding,” Morris said.
“We don’t have to remember too far back when the criticism of ABC News was its audience was too small, too niche, too urban, we didn’t break stories, we didn’t have an impact, we were too narrow.
“I don’t hear those criticism now. We’re too big, too popular, too successful on digital, too impactful in our journalism, too many stories leading the agenda, too omnipresent in Australian’s lives, too diverse, too many clips turning up in Dame Slap columns in the lizard Oz.”
“I’ll say one thing to our increasingly shrill critics, from the vested interests of the media to the unhinged rantings on social media: we’re not your target because we’re failing, but because we’re succeeding,” Morris said.
“We don’t have to remember too far back when the criticism of ABC News was its audience was too small, too niche, too urban, we didn’t break stories, we didn’t have an impact, we were too narrow.
“I don’t hear those criticism now. We’re too big, too popular, too successful on digital, too impactful in our journalism, too many stories leading the agenda, too omnipresent in Australian’s lives, too diverse, too many clips turning up in Dame Slap columns in the lizard Oz.”
Or some such thing ... and now for those who can remember back to the billy goat buttisms, such as "without detracting from any of the dreadful findings about sexual harassment ..." and "The wish for more accurate reporting... is not to excuse the appalling behaviour by men in federal parliament", thar she blows ...
Yes, it's the good old two sides defence ... or in other words ... "without detracting from any of the dreadful findings about sexual harassment ..." and "The wish for more accurate reporting... is not to excuse the appalling behaviour by men in federal parliament", because thar she blows for just a couple more pars of blowing ...
The complexity of serious issues? The pond isn't so sure. Kudelka had it about right in yesterday's Saturday Paper ...
Oh dear, is that a real 'blast from the past', Charles Wilson 'Ironbar' Tuckey no less. Thirty years a WA member of the Fed House of Reps and vanished without trace.
ReplyDeleteThe Dame’s final paragraph seems to be an attempt at metaphor. Most guides to writing suggest metaphor can be useful in explaining or illustrating a point the author is trying to make. In this paragraph, it is difficult to identify the point of being ’deluged with contested minutiae’, and offering a fanciful ‘understanding’ of how a pendulum works does not help in any way.
ReplyDeleteOne might wonder if the Dame had, in that proverbial back of her mind, some recollection of Foucault’s pendulum. But that is a dubious metaphor for what she had written, leading up to that final paragraph. She talks about a ‘need to ensure the pendulum comes to rest somewhere sensible’ - with the implication that political to and fro might determine that. Sorry - the simple pendulum simply demonstrates the local effect of gravity. If that is what she meant by ‘the law of physics’, why not just call it what it is - gravity?
Simple pendulums are useful in demonstrating local variations in gravity at different places on the surface of our planet (perhaps on Planet Janet political forces have similar effect?) and, usefully, gave us accurate ways to measure time for a couple of hundred years. Again - not sure what metaphor that could provide for our Dame, in this context.
No doubt received comments praising this column for its insights; I am not about to invite the opprobrium of My Source by asking her for details.
Now Foucault's pendulum is all about proving, and timing, the rotation of the Earth, so we have to ask whether Slappy is addicted to spinning in circles. I only ask because it seems that to her, if it isn't "proven" in court, then it never really happened. So she lectures us that: "To celebrate Higgins' truth prior to a conviction by a properly constituted court of law appears to be a travesty of justice." A "travesty" no less.
DeleteTherefore there has been no substantiated 'misbehaviour' by parliamentarians, none whatsoever. So when Slappy accuses Lidia Thorpe of making "this revolting slur against Liberal senator Hollie Hughes" she is talking about something that is not legally known to have happened. Because even if there was a lot of witnesses, nobody has been convicted in a properly constituted court of law. So why is Slappy celebrating it ?
Spinning in never-ending circles going precisely nowhere. But then I guess that is the reptile way.
The thing I'd have to ask about Polonius' contribution today is whether his public attention to Sean Kelly's little essay is giving it way more attention than he clearly thinks it deserves and he is thereby making a 'Streisand effect' of it - bringing it to more people's attention than he claims it warrants. Of course one could make a similar judgement about Polonius himself: do his pathetic efforts of judgment merely bring unwanted negative attention to himself.
ReplyDeleteAnd as to the gutless Ms Toy-ninny there's that little sentence at the beginning below the picture of Lidia Thorpe: "Had her comments been made by a bloke, they would have more than likely cost him his job" Just like the bloke who commented on her tits' remarks cost him his job. Didn't it ?
And can any of us believe her pitiful attempt at self-justification: "I can only guess it was shock because I couldn't believe it had happened." So, first time in her entire professional career that anything like that had ever happened to her, I guess.