First the usual check of the reptiles' tree killer edition to make sure they're still tasting the sweet nectar, the delectable honey of Klive's Kash in the reptile Klaw ...
KKK business as usual with Clive, and so to the top of the digital edition ...
Oh there's nattering "Ned" out and about and determined to bore the socks off the pond. Off to a late arvo slot for him ... and look, there's Boris the law-breaking criminal ...
But it was that ancient photo that caught the eye and reminded the pond of this funny story in Media Watch about ancient political history ... which ended this way on the matter of Towkes and petulant Peta talking about the game of character assassination ...
Wow? Make that a triple wow, with cream and a cherry on top, and yes if you follow the link you can see bouffant Shanners looking not so bouffant as he blathered on about the woke.
But why was the pond so amused?
You see the reptiles ran this day with a dirt file, and 15 years is just a mere doddle when a savage Sharri (aided by Jess) gets to digging up the dirt ... such a compleat dirt digger and never mind the smearing ...
The pond isn't going to assist with the dirt and the assassinations by running the whole piece, but will note the examples which produced that triple wow ...
Wow, that's Albanese in Marrickville in 2000.
ANDREW BOLT: … I must be stupid. I mean, I thought this election was about your future. But the media left and Labor, they seem to think it’s about Scott Morrison’s past, in fact about something the Prime Minister allegedly said 15 years ago. I mean, it’s nuts. - The Bolt Report, Sky News Australia, 4 April, 2022
15 years ago?
That's nothing when you're an assiduous digger of dirt of the feral Sharri kind, shocked that anyone in their vulgar youff might take on political causes ...
1983? Where's the Bolter's assorted nuts now?
Sadly that's as far back as they managed in the dirt digging operation, and so we shifted to relatively modern dates, such as 1986 and 1991, though they should have mentioned the crime of Albanese's birth in 1963, in Camperdown, where the pond currently resides ...
And so it goes, from tranny bashing one day to dirt file digging the next, and we're only a few days in, and already the pond is full of nausea, a condition frequently induced by shameless Sharri trolling for the chairman, and so the pond turned to the Oreo of the day for a bout of stress-relieving bout of hysteria ...
If the solution is to reject liberal democracy for a more closed and militarised state...?
Well the pond won't go straight to the spoiler, but meantime it was wondrous, marvellous and truly funny to read the next line, roughly akin to that immortal line about Gramsci's long march through the institutions ... you know, the sort of march that saw a feminist score a PhD, and then turn into a reformed, recovering feminist ...
Indeed, indeed, which the pond must remind stray readers is vastly different from reformed, recovering feminists being vassal states of Chairman Rupert ... but now it's on to a short last gobbet, and that punchline the pond hinted at ...
Yes, yes, there's your answer. To defeat the authoritarians, the autocrats, the dictators and the fascists, we must introduce loyalty tests and anyone who doesn't conform must be despatched to the gulag as a warning and a lesson to others ...
Not for the first, or possibly the last time, the pond remembered the end of Animal Farm, freely available to all via Project Gutenberg ...
Indeed, indeed, all men back then, and all men probably today, but the pond senses if that there really was a long absent lord, the Oreo would be sitting at the table, hatching a plan to get those gulags for the politically incorrect going ...
And so to a further distraction.
The pond loves it when Dame Slap heads off to planet Janet above the faraway tree, and offers the hope that a bit of black bashing will stand alongside the tranny bashing ...
What's so rich about Dame Slap blathering on about parliament?
Well you don't have to look far for rich ironies, though it helps if you can get past the Crikey paywall ... (avoid anyone Grundling on the matter of Ukraine)...
And so on and so forth, but of course Dame Slap herself knows the pleasure of appointments, having scored a job on the board of the ABC ...
Now back to teaching those difficult, uppity pesky blacks a thing or two ...
Meanwhile in New Zealand ...
...The Royal Commission on the Electoral System, established in 1985, gave considerable thought to the future of the Māori seats. Its 1986 report concluded that separate seats had not helped Māori and that they would achieve better representation through a proportional party-list system. The commission therefore recommended that if its favoured mixed member proportional (MMP) system was adopted, the Māori seats should be abolished.
As the prospect of electoral reform became more real from 1992, some Māori began to rally to the defence of their separate system. Eventually, following strong representations from Māori organisations, the seats were retained under the new MMP system. Their number would now increase or decrease according to the results of the regular Māori electoral option.
Before the first MMP election in 1996 the number of Māori seats was increased, for the first time in their 129-year history, to five. Two more were added in 2002, and the total has remained at seven.
The separate electoral system for Māori was essentially an 1860s solution to a supposedly temporary 'problem'. Its appropriateness and effectiveness have been the subject of debate ever since. Nevertheless, the Māori seats have survived to become one of the most distinctive features of New Zealand's electoral system.
Of course Australia had a much better system in place ... don't count 'em ...Prior to the 1967 referendum, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were not counted towards Australia’s population, with estimates of Aboriginal people made by authorities responsible for native welfare. (here)
So much simpler ...
And now back to Dame Slap for a final gobbet ...
Indeed, indeed, and especially our system of rorting, and the pond stands with Dame Slap on vigorously upholding the right to rort ... or more particularly the right to drill, as celebrated by the infallible Pope this day ...
With your permission, DP -
ReplyDeleteThis might seem a little tedious, but - the electronic arms of Murdoch continue to nurture ‘discussion’ on how to define a ‘woman’. And, of course, it has been taken up in Australia, where details of the inquisition into candidates for appointment to the US Supreme Court are considered to be of much more significance to Australians than any of the pecados of our current government here.
So Rita Panahi’s wide-eyed assertion last week that she knew so much more about determination of sex and gender than the Secretary of the Department of Health continues to generate supportive assertions and lay interpretations of what ‘the science’ supposedly shows.
Except - this is one of the areas where Australian bio-medical research has defined the - quite complex - science. Would it be too much to expect a supposedly Australian ‘news’ broadcaster to be aware that, back in 1990, Prof. Andrew Sinclair and team, at the - yep - the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute - identified the SRY region, on the human Y-chromosome, that is so influential in the differentiation of human genitalia? It follows that imperfections at that site cause much of the confused ‘development’ that truly makes it difficult to assert that adult humans are man or woman, and nothing else.
So, again, Murdoch media - in the USA and Australia - follows the ideology rather than the science, even when the science was largely produced by an institution named for Murdoch and his initial funding.
Ya can’t make this stuff up.
Chadders, you inspired the pond to do a search and sure enough ...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mcri.edu.au/news/twenty-five-years-discovery-human-sex-determining-gene
The discovery of SRY has also been fundamental to understanding disorders of sex development (DSD). Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. However researchers have known that some people are in a ‘grey’ area; their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their sexual anatomy says another. Five weeks into development, a human embryo has the potential to form both male and female anatomy. At six weeks, the gonad switches on the developmental pathway to become an ovary or a testis. A disruption or change to this process can have dramatic effects on an individual’s sex. Gene mutations affecting gonad development can result in a person with XY chromosomes developing typically female characteristics while XX individuals may develop along male lines.
After the discovery of SRY, Professor Sinclair then went on to prove that SRY was, indeed, the human sex determining gene by finding XY female patients with mutations in the critical region of the SRY gene. This showed that SRY was required for normal testis development. He defined the transcriptional unit of SRY and showed that it could act as a transcriptional activator. The group established that the small DNA-binding and bending region of SRY was its active site, and nearly all of the sex reversing mutations in this gene had mutations in this site. Subsequently, researchers found that by itself, the SRY gene can switch the gonad from ovarian to testicular development. For example, XX individuals who carry a fragment of the Y chromosome that contains SRY develop testes and become males. The discovery of SRY was pivotal for the understanding the whole developmental pathway of genes that regulate gonad development and sex determination in mammals. SRY remains the most common gene mutation in DSD patients and has been widely used for establishing sex in humans and other mammals. These insights have helped Professor Sinclair’s team to substantially improve diagnostic rates for DSD patients.
When Professor Sinclair discovered SRY he also identified a whole new family of related genes, called SOX (SRY-like HMG box-containing), which have important roles in development. There are 20 known SOX genes that play a role in a variety of developmental processes, such as sex determination, chondrogenesis, neural crest development, angiogenesis and neuronal cell-type specification. SOX genes appear to act as master switch genes encoding transcription factors regulating the differentiation of a number of cell types. Crucially one of these genes, SOX2, was one of four transcription factors used by Yamanaka and Gurdon in their 2012 Nobel Prize winning studies that showed that mature differentiated cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent...
Thank you DP - for retrospective permission, and this really neat description of Sinclair's work and its significance. Some day, he may even qualify for an entry in 'Wiki'.
DeleteRemembering also that it was Brian Deer, in the Sunday Times, who exposed the fraud of Andrew Wakefield and the claimed causative link between MMR vaccination and autism. Deer is the kind of ‘investigative journalist’ that our Sharri probably imagines herself to be - but, as Daryl would say ‘Tell her she’s dreamin’ ‘.
Deer’s work was largely completed by about 2010, and it brought considerable kudos to Murdoch as publisher. But then - Trump appeared, dropping casual remarks in his rambling campaign orations that there was such a link. It was taken up by Trumpists, and, of course, endorsed by Fox ‘News’. So promotion of any and every inanity from Trump over rode the serious journalism of just a few years before.
Oh - and minor Murdoch media in the UK resurrected the controversy. This was blamed for a resurgence of measles in several parts of the UK - including death and developmental impairment of children - because parents with held MMR vaccinations.
It's all good Chadders, the pond only looks at the pond's comments to learn things. Looking at the reptiles in the pond's herpetarium, you only learn that the Murdochs are helping fuck the planet ...
DeleteLearning things from trusting the words of others - oh yeah, that'll work a treat.
DeleteHow about this:
Vaccine resistance has its roots in negative childhood experiences, a major study finds
https://theconversation.com/vaccine-resistance-has-its-roots-in-negative-childhood-experiences-a-major-study-finds-180114
And consider that it isn't just what some "other people" say about vaccines that they distrust. It's what those "other people" say about everything. So off they go to Fox to get their dose of real reality that they can "believe".
Genetics is complicated. How complicated?
Delete"Lydia Fairchild was 27 when she became pregnant with her fourth child in 2003. In order to apply for welfare, recent legislation in the US state of Washington required her to prove that her children were genetically related to her and their father, Jamie. So she took a DNA test. But while the results showed that Jamie was indeed the father of her first three children, there was no match to prove she was their mother. This was a shock to Fairchild, who had distinct memories of giving birth to them.
State officials, suspecting a welfare scam, warned her that her children would be taken away from her. And when she eventually had her fourth child – the birth witnessed by a court official – again a blood sample showed the baby had no DNA match with Fairchild. A nightmare was unfolding. “Even though an officer of the court had witnessed the child’s birth, it still prepared to put Fairchild’s children into foster care and prosecute her for fraud,” Carl Zimmer (science writer and New York Times columnist) tells us.
At this point her lawyer intervened. He had heard of a similar case: Karen Keegan, from Boston, whose DNA had also failed to match her children’s. Scientists had investigated and found she was a “chimera”, a person containing the DNA of two different – albeit related – people. Shortly after her own conception, the female egg that was to become Keegan had become fused with another of her mother’s female eggs and the resulting embryo ended up containing two entirely separate DNA blueprints. As a result, some of her tissue matched her children, some did not.
And so it was with Lydia Fairchild. Her blood, skin and muscle did not match her children’s but, bizarrely, the tissue of her cervix and other organs did. In one sense, she was the mother of her children. In another, she was their aunt." https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/05/she-has-her-mothers-laugh-genetics-in-the-madhouse-review
Amazing scenes ...
DeleteBut we do have such interesting conversations here, thank you DP, and Joe. Of course, it would be easier 'contributing' to reptile comment sections, particularly Sky, where all one needs is to enter 'Defund the ABC'.
DeleteAs for the long march of the leftists through the GOP, re the Oreo, the pond should have added:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thebulwark.com/putin-wants-to-break-nato-republicans-want-to-help-him/
...Putin scored two significant victories this week.
One was in France, where Marine Le Pen, a Putin sympathizer, finished a close second to Emmanuel Macron in Sunday’s French presidential election. Le Pen is running almost even with Macron in polls for the April 24 runoff. She has said that if she wins, she’ll withdraw France from NATO’s command structure.
The other victory was in the United States, where 63 House Republicans, nearly a third of the GOP conference, voted against a resolution of support for NATO.
The House vote, taken on April 5, is a warning sign. Putin may be losing ground in Ukraine, but he’s gaining ground in the U.S. Congress. Three years ago, 22 House Republicans voted against pro-NATO legislation. That number has nearly tripled.
The “Putin wing” of the House GOP—useful idiots such as Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who openly spout Russian propaganda—is only a tiny fraction of the Kremlin’s target audience in Congress. They’re joined by a larger crowd of Ukraine bashers, hardcore isolationists, and right-wingers who say we shouldn’t worry about anyone else’s borders until we “secure” our own. Together, that coalition adds up to more than 20 lawmakers.
That’s a problem. But when you combine them with the NATO skeptics who voted against last week’s resolution—another 40 or so House Republicans who don’t trust alliances and who view Europeans as America’s rivals or adversaries—the problem gets a lot bigger.
"Putin may be losing ground in Ukraine, but he’s gaining ground in the U.S. Congress"
DeleteOoh look, it's made it into the woke news:
What happens when a group of Fox News viewers watch CNN for a month?
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/apr/11/fox-news-viewers-watch-cnn-study
But it made skepchick a lot sooner. And it made loonpond sooner, too - twice. Have I ever mentioned that about 24% of humanity have an IQ below 90 ?
William Saletan in Bulwark: "It’s so much easier to serve evil when you think you’re doing good". I wonder how many people serve evil while thinking that they're serving evil. Must be quite a few in the USA, perhaps ?
DeleteAlso, I wonder how many remember that the USA was patriotically saving American lives - and American dollars - by staying out of both WWI and WWII until one or other of the foreign combatants dragged them into active participation. What did the American Congress vote back then ?
So here we go with the MAGA cap and UN World Government lady (have I ever mentioned that about 24% of humanity have an IQ below 90 ?): "A voice that is permanently entrenched by the Constitution, co-equal with parliament and unable to be abolished by parliament, should be offensive to all Australians..." Well here's one 'white skinned' Australian of recent Anglo origin who is offended by the complete absence of any special consideration for the 'First Peoples' who had their land invaded and taken and who were subject to exploitation and murder and massacres - including attempts at genocide at least one of which just about succeeded - and prejudice and so on for more than 200 years.
ReplyDeleteList of massacres of Indigenous Australians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_of_Indigenous_Australians
But this is the bit that really gets me: "To do all this on racial grounds..." because, of course, us wholly Aussie Australians never did anything to the Abos on "racial grounds" did we - no, it was just on the grounds of their inferior genomes, wasn't it. And thus to "permanently divide Australians by race is not something we should tolerate." Ok then, let's stop doing it.
However, I am amused by Slappy's contention that including a 'First People's voice' in the Constitution somehow makes it permanent and unchangeable. But if that is so, how would it get into the Constitution in the first place ? Oh, I see, there's this thing called a "referendum" when all voting citizens get a say and that is how the Constitution is changed.
No, it isn't as quick and slick as just passing a law in the parliament by a government with a one seat majority, but surely that is the point: it would take a deliberate act by the voters of Australia to include into the Constitution and an equivalent act to remove it if that is ever considered appropriate.
Now is this really an act to "permanently divide Australians by race" ?