In which the pond is left with an ancient desiccated fossil and a loon not worth memorising ...

 

 

“You have scribbled too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.”

Hmm, that has a certain ring to it, for the reptiles, and for the reptiles refracted by the pond, and so self-reflexively, the pond itself...

More of that anon, but first to observe the standard Clive cash in the claw cry of freedumb, freedumb courtesy of the reptile tree killer...

 

 

How long will the reptiles keep taking Clive's cash in their claw. Have they no shame, no self-regard?

“You have published too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.”

More of that anon, but a note that Clive is canny with his cash. He uses YouTube because it's cheap, and he uses the reptiles because we're not arguing as to whether they're sluts, we're just arguing about the price (hmm, the pond will help reclaim 'slut' another day).

And so  on with the pond's standard survey of what the reptiles are offering this day ...

 

Marise inside the paywall to help with the Chairman gouge a few shekels for his rag? 

If we're going to do third rate comedy about the British empire, what about bringing back Moorice? 

And just look at that trio of lizard Oz editorials, as the reptiles try to fill in the gaps left by their January bludgers. Why they're even worse than the cardigan wearers at the ABC. 

Oh it's going to be a third rate day, and even the triptych of terror was void of interesting content ...

 

Oh dear poor Xian, and there's Truss out and about trussing things up, in a bid to seem relevant and displace Big Dog ... and the pond might have paid some attention if Bogut had been Bogart, brought back to life by QAnon supporters who had given up on that Kennedy ...

And so the pond headed to the top of the digital page to see if there was anything there ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, we've been given a code red alert? Domicon and the marketing man have excelled themselves.

And the reptiles have  exhumed Blainers and he's blathering on about the Djoker? But that's yesterday's news, a bit like that story about yesterday's lie ...

Scott Morrison says he never said there were no refugees in Melbourne’s Park hotel ... as weird a use of the double negative as the pond has seen in recent times. What a natural born liar he is ...

“You have lied and handed out marketing slogans too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.”

But if the reptiles insist that Blainers blathering about a tennis player now well out of the country is the featured, top of the digital page ma, item, what can the pond do? 

So exhumed Blainers it is ...

What to say? Well the pond could note that the splash said "On balance, Djokovic got off lightly", and that somehow became "On balance, Djokovic got off" ...

On balance, the pond wondered if it had been a mistake to get out of bed ...

“You have exhumed too many old farts too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.”

How did the pond know that the reptiles weren't paying attention and didn't really care? 

Well for starters there was a complete absence of click bait videos or illustrations. Apparently they didn't expect anyone to bother stumbling through this ancient history by an ancient historian ...

 

 

Now some might enjoy finding the shards of bigotry entombed in that ancient crusty's reference to western civilisation and our generous ability to lock people in a hotel room for nine years ... but the pond was well over it and reaching for the last gobbet as quickly as it could ... so that it could discover the Djoker had suddenly become a "questionable migrant" ... a questionable form of words ...

 

There seems to be a lingering ancient old fart prejudice against Serbians, as opposed to the pond's lingering prejudice about exhumations, so it was with relief that the pond turned to those other comedy items ...

But why? Truss taking down Big Dog, and Marise evoking the spirit of Singapore in the second world war?

The Australian Government, therefore, regards the Pacific struggle as primarily one in which the United States and Australia must have the fullest say in the direction of the democracies' fighting plan.
Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.
We know the problems that the United Kingdom faces. We know the constant threat of invasion. We know the dangers of dispersal of strength, but we know too, that Australia can go and Britain can still hold on... (here)

Ah once upon a time, before the mango Mussolini.

Never mind,  it was really so the pond could introduce a bit of real comedy writing ... because when it comes to comedy, we have no closer friend and ally than Britain ... thanks to the likes of John Crace ... and of course Big Dog himself and Operation Dead Meat ...

The pond can't do the full read of course, but just a sampler, with a spoiler alert, because it's the closing flourish ...

Ah, so that's where it came from:

“You have bullshitted too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.”

Speaking of bullshit, it would be remiss of the pond not to note the lizard Oz editorialist's latest effort at climate science relativism and reductionism ...

Yes, we need to pass through shades of brown bullshit while on the way to comprehensively fucking the planet ... but it does allow the pond to link to another story in The New Yorker, How the Refrigerator Became an Agent of Climate Catastrophe. (currently outside the paywall).

The pond was initially drawn to it because it evoked dim memories of the leaking icebox and the ice delivery man... 

And then because it came up with this conundrum ...

 If increased energy efficiency makes over-all energy consumption go down, as the I.E.A. and the D.O.E. suggest, then why does our warming problem keep getting worse? Defenders of efficiency as a climate strategy argue that the amount of energy our machines use today would be vastly higher if our machines were as inefficient as they were ten or twenty or fifty years ago. But the flaw in that argument is easy to see. If the only refrigerators we could buy now were thirties-era G. E. Monitor Tops, Cumberland Farms wouldn’t have an entire wall filled with chilled soft drinks and drinking water (in minimally recyclable plastic bottles, which themselves would not exist without the efficient refrigerated display cases that keep them cold). Similarly, if the only way to fly from one coast to the other were to hitch a ride with the Wright brothers, you wouldn’t travel to California for Christmas.
The I.E.A. says that if we successfully implement what it calls an “Efficient Cooling Scenario,” by optimizing the energy efficiency of our cooling machines, we could save almost three trillion dollars by 2050. If we really do that, though, we will have three trillion to spend on something else, and whatever we spend it on will inevitably have climate consequences of its own. The history of civilization is, in many ways, the history of accelerating improvements in energy efficiency. Extracting greater value from smaller inputs is how we’ve made ourselves rich; it’s also how we’ve created the problem that we’re now trying to address with more of the same. Making useful technologies more efficient makes them cheaper, and as they become cheaper we use them more and find more uses for them, just as adding lanes to congested highways makes driving more attractive, not less. In 2011, the D.O.E.’s forecasters presumably didn’t anticipate that improvements in energy efficiency would make it increasingly economical to power and cool the server farms that mine and manage cryptocurrencies. The correlation between growth in efficiency and growth in consumption is not accidental.

Not a problem for Larry or the reptiles of course ... just keep hauling in the cash and fucking the planet ...

And so to finish off with a truly wretched offering. 

The days of Claire spoofing academics for a little intertubes glory are long gone, and now the reptiles are left with the detritus, and so the pond ...

Ah the old memorisation riff. What a tired horse to be flogging ...

Of course if the pond happened to suggest that memorisation as an education strategy had resulted in two world wars and the Holocaust, there'd be howls of derision. 

But please explain how the pond is still almost word perfect on this meaningless piece of gibberish ... Vitaï Lampada by Sir Henry Newbolt ...

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night—
Ten to make and the match to win—
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote
'Play up! play up! and play the game! '

The sand of the desert is sodden red,—
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; —
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
'Play up! play up! and play the game! '

This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the school is set,
Every one of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame,
And falling fling to the host behind—
'Play up! play up! and play the game!

In what god-forsaken universe does knowing that sort of tosh off by heart prove useful, except perhaps to put the pond in touch with the thinking of Blainers and Barners and the reptiles and mindless moronic imperialists in search of a jolly good world war ...

Never mind, Claire's probably too young and too dumb to remember the full horror of memorisation as a teaching strategy, a delusion the pond's best teachers managed to overcome with enthusiasm for the joys of learning ... leading to a realisation that there was more to education than having an icebox stuffed with ice ...

 

“You have scribbled too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.”

Critical thinking does not occur in a vacuum, but when it comes to Claire, there's actually no sense of any air in the Bell jar ...

The pond wondered whether, by way of apology, it should offer the front of that Crace piece, or a cartoon ...

Here, have a cartoon showing critical sloganeering at work ...

 

 

And now please allow the pond to offer any passing stray student some relief. 

You will not be required to memorise Claire's piece, you will not be asked to analyse it with a critical eye, you will not be tested on it, and yes, learning about the world and its ways and its past and the things in it, can be fun ... and not everyone has to end up sounding as deeply stupid as Claire ...

 

Indeed, indeed, and now it's done, and we've had a reptile nonentity sound off about others sounding off, because apparently you shouldn't have an opinion on racism or climate science, unless it happens to be Claire-approved ...

And that's how we've ended up with a certified liar in the home country ... and Big Dog and the mango Mussolini, and chairman Rupert fucking the planet ...

Here have a cartoon to celebrate ... and don't blame the pond for not running the first part of that Crace piece, you have the link, and if you're a glutton for punishment, you can watch the PMQs on the UK parliament's YouTube channel here ... where some 80,000 lost souls have wasted some portion of forty minutes of their lives, never to be recovered ...

 Yes, that's where memorisation and dodging critical thinking gets you ...

“You have lied and handed out marketing slogans too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.”