It's a quiet day for herpetological studies at the pond.
Oh sure the lizard Oz tree killer edition has produced an exceptional form of paranoid hysteria, what with the reptiles being sublimely unaware of climate science, global warming and the implications for coal ...
And the reptiles are still taking Clive's cash in their claw, though the pond is astonished that Clive has managed to escape the deadly hit squad put together in the west to take him out ...
Meanwhile, it's into the small eddies disturbing the backwater known as Henry, the hole in the bucket man, still sobbing over a long lost cause ... and rest assured there will be the usual array of bullshit references of the pompous, portentous kind ...
Did anyone note that line "the fact while the parents of transgender students have plenty of schools to choose from, religious parents - and especially those who seek single-sex schools that abide by their faith's moral code - don't" ...
Has the hole in the bucket man gone full Islamic fundamentalist, turned full Taliban? Why that's way better than an angry Sydney Anglican blathering on about complimentary women ... how much more right and proper that the sexes should be entirely separate, because let's face it, the cheap hussies are always after the life essence ...
Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.
Mandrake: [very nervous] Lord, Jack.
Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?
Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.
Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. 1946, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.
Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen... tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?
Ripper: Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.
Mandrake: Hmm.
Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.
Mandrake: Hmm.
Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.
Mandrake: No.
Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence.
Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter of the essence denying Henry, at least for those who managed to stay awake for the entire length of that pompous wail about freedumb ...
And so to a quick editorial, and the lizard Oz editorialist brooding about bloody coal ...
Indeed, indeed, let's hope we all forget climate science and global warming, and are content to stew along with that beefy boofhead, prime Angus, and the 'leet reptiles enjoying life in Surry Hills ...
And so to wrap up a quick survey of what was on offer this day ...
Sheesh, it's getting thinner by the day ... the pond would rather pluck out both eyes than spend time with the Swiss bank account man, so it was on to simplistic Simon, if only because he set the right scene for the cartoons of the day ... and because he's celebrating the further coarsening of the public discourse by that truly horrible, horrible man, that liar and hypocrite, that complete psycho ...
The pond notes the infallible Pope's apology to Speed, and so he should, because the pond had to flip the image below to get a match ... though otherwise the sense of SloMo as a crazed Dennis Hopper wannabe was pretty exact ... and what do you know, somehow fake Rolexes made it into the dialogue ...
Howard Payne : A SloMo is made to explode. That's its meaning. Its purpose. Your life is empty because you spend it trying to stop the SloMo from becoming. And for who? For what? You know what a SloMo is, Jack, that doesn't explode? It's a cheap gold watch, buddy.
"that truly horrible, horrible man, that liar and hypocrite, that complete psycho ..."
ReplyDeleteOk: thhmtlahtcp I think can set up a macro key for that. And it truly is more accurately descriptive than "SloMo".
I have to say that Holely Henry quoting Jeremy Bentham is somewhat of an improvement to his usual fare.
ReplyDeleteSo we have: "...as early as 1796 the great British legal theorist [Bentham] had warned that the proliferation of 'rights talk' - in which ever more rights were invented and set, like attack dogs, at each other's throats - would eventually prove fatal to civil peace."
Well, I don't think I'd call 1796 "early"; 5000BCE I'd call "early" and 190,000BCE I'd call actually foundational.
But never mind, a "right" is as good as a "freedom" any day, and we had the "divine rights of monarchs" for many thousands of years. And we still had "attack dogs, at each other's throats" for all that time. We all do remember George Downing, don't we - the "right' to execute a treasonous king and then later the "right" to execute the treasonous folks who had executed Charles and to be granted a baronetcy and a street named after him for being such a very good "attack dog". So it goes.
Anyway, HH would like us to consider that: "...it seems fair to suggest that a free society should allow individuals to pursue, as best they can, an ideal of congruence between their most fundamental ethical commitments and their actions, so long as they do not inflict undue harm on others..."
Oh ok, but "due harm" is fine, yes ? Which all sounds good until we recall that all "rights" or "freedoms" are just inventions of the human psyche. So when HH says "few ethical commitments are more fundamental than those associated with religion." he is saying that a bunch of old superstitions are somehow primary in human society. So let's consider the divine rights of divines:
"Onan's death was retribution for being 'evil in the sight of the Lord' and disobeying a direct order from the Lord by being unwilling to father a child by his widowed sister-in-law."
Just because he did a bit of masturbation and hence contraception, he was "evil in the sight of the Lord" and so he was executed - not by "the Lord" it has to be said, but by those self-appointed interpreters of "the Lord's" unspoken judgements. And so that's the way that those "religious ethical commitments" are practised.
And nothing will ever change that, will it.
Tried to put this up last night, but -
DeleteThe Henry uses the sophomoric debating trick of identifying John Rawls as ‘the leading political philosopher of the 20th century’. I have huge regard for what Rawls wrote, but, in his case, that is unnecessary fluff. It also invites quite pointless exchange of ‘opinions’ in the same way that any list of ‘the greatest . . . . .’ does. It is perhaps the worst kind of argument from authority.
He could have been more useful if he had written a little more about the most tantalising aspect of Rawls’ writings - that the basic case is for equality of process for all persons - unless it can be shown that there is a form of inequality that would work to the benefit of the most disadvantaged in a society. This may be what the Henry was hinting at with his ‘high hurdle of proof’ - but why not use Rawls’ words? Or was our Henry worried that that might play to those damned ‘do-gooders’ who use the political process to benefit the most disadvantaged (and, as we are told, relentlessly, by those who now claim the mantle of ‘conservatives’ - produce perverse outcomes.)
And Rawls did look to the political process to provide justice. He had little expectation that markets - good as they are at promoting efficiency in distributing goods and services - were of much use in promoting justice.
Talking about "equality of process", how about thus for maintaining traditional "equality":
DeleteMen on high incomes to take lion’s share of Coalition’s $184bn tax cuts, analyses find
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/17/men-on-high-incomes-to-take-lions-share-of-coalitions-184bn-tax-cuts-analyses-find
Wonder if Jenny got called in to explain that one.
But the thing is that any and every thing thought, written and said (or sung) about human values, ideas, concepts, processes, advantages and disadvantages etc etc is just more mooning and crooning by that very limited species, homo sapiens sapiens.
And next year, next decade, next century, next millennium, next decamillennium ... it will all be different; if homo sapiens sapiens survives that long. Do you think it will ?
GB - the Henry, whose most recent position was as ‘Professor of Infrastructure Economics’, rambles on about ill-defined religious rights. What he has not done is apply anything from that academic posting to the largest, but unstated, assumed ‘right’ of the Abrahamic religions - that of reproducing to the limit of the ability of one’s brood partner(s), usually in the belief that the particular Great Friend in the Sky will provide for one’s brood, and their broods, and - so on.
DeleteRight now, Brazil - the most populated country to be predominantly Roman Catholic in faith, is steadily converting the Amazon rain forest to - it hopes - grazing and cropping land, but quite likely to desert, within a few generations.
Brazil’s ‘Wiki’ entry claims that it has come close to achieving the ‘demographic transition’ - to stable population, at around 200 million. But a high proportion of those people are of limited literacy, and it is that part of the demographic that is most involved in destruction of the rain forest - the forest that actually generates rain for the country. So, even if it has reached the ‘transition’ - that is not likely to provide lasting benefit as its natural resources are trashed.
Not that Australia is doing much better in maintaining the elements of production for food, fibre and timber - soil and water.
The Henry is right in suggesting that interfering with the culture produced by the ‘Abrahamic’ religions would upset people. He shows no sign of trying to move the discussion into the actual survival of humanity for, say, another millennium, so - we might as well quibble about the interpretations of the (various) sets of holy words, as further interpreted by generations of old fuds, whose function in life was to quibble.
Like the kerfuffle in the Disunited States about the fate of those whose baptismal dialogue was that ‘We’ baptise thee, not ‘I’. Some true existential angst there.
Amen to all that, Chad. But when you say that "a high proportion of those people are of limited literacy" it behoves us to acknowledge that a very high percentage of humanity is now, always has been and always will be "of limited literacy". Including, sadly. most of those who fill out our governments.
DeleteBut Holely Henry as a ‘Professor of Infrastructure Economics’ at the SMART Infrastructure Facility at the University of Wollongong no less. And from the ripe young age of 57 in 2009 through to 2016 with a range of accomplishments that have underlined his totally unmemorable existence.
You can see what the problem is DP. Mr Ed's gobbet just recycles the same old misunderstandings and misrepresentations.
ReplyDeleteTerms like baseload and dispatchable are used without demonstrating any knowledge of what those terms actually mean. Reliability and cost are both straw-men. Reliability is actually quite good, especially considering the level of failures in coal units. Ed actually admits renewables are reducing costs - oops!
Elsewhere, we get a lesson in how to deal with lying liars
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/18/on-coal-plant-closures-the-energy-industry-has-learned-to-keep-angus-taylor-out-of-the-loop
"Taylor’s admission he was kept out of the loop on one of biggest decision affecting the electricity grid in recent times suggests Origin learned from the experience of others, particularly AGL. Those lessons include that to be open with the federal government that you plan to shut a coal plant early is to invite pressure to keep it running."
Reckon the reptiles will be refraining that particular chorus for quite a long time to come, Bef.
Delete