The pond is mainly here for the entertainment, but there's a fine line between slapstick, farce and subtle wordplay, and this reptile headline veered towards a pie in the face or a banana on the footpath ...
It was as good an excuse as any to note Rowe's splendid portrait of a sociopath ...
And it did help explain why the pond decided to elevate bubble-headed booby Claire to the top, with her splendid attempt at both-siderism ...
Good old Jeremy, how handy he is as a wild-eyed loon, and how handy for those who want to bang the both sider drum ... but truth to tell, he's a figure of rags and tatters from yesterday's political life, while Tuckyo Carlson right now is busy making money for the man, and apparently the bubble-headed booby doesn't have the first clue who the man is ...
What an elegant-sounding yet remarkably abject-looking doofus, and yet the blinkers and the blinders are admirable in their way ...
Meanwhile on another planet ...
Yes, in another world, chairman Rupert's assets would be frozen, and the cheque for the bubble-headed booby's column would have been confiscated.
Forget the blather about arcane theories of the Faye kind, the reason there's an ideological warrior loose, cheering on Vlad the impaler, is that Chairman Rupert is happy to rake in the loot while leaving the dog off the leash ...
Well you're not going to get any of that thinking from the bubble-headed booby, so here's a sample, with more at Fox News deals in Kremlin propaganda. So why not freeze Rupert Murdoch's assets?
Indeed, indeed, but don't let attention to the loony left get in the way of reminding who gives Russia's favourite quisling air time in exchange for loot.
If you do, you might end up grundling at Crikey, on the one hand baiting Lachy, and at the same time letting the grundle troll its readership ...
And then you might entirely overlook the bubble-headed booby's confusion ...
Nope, nope, nope. It's a lot simpler than that ...
…the conversation on the show centered on Fox chair Rupert Murdoch’s decision to pull ultraconservative host Sean Hannity from broadcasting at a Cincinnati tea party rally in 2010. “I’m 100 percent [Murdoch’s] bitch,” Carlson said. “Whatever Mr. Murdoch says, I do. … I would be honored if he would cane me the way I cane my workers, my servant
And the bitch still makes a helluva lot of money for his pimp ...
Meanwhile, a little light relief from the immortal Rowe as we go through the currency wars ...
On with the cash-less society, and on with our Henry ...
That period of stability? As often happens, wiki was to hand with some help ...
Then you'll realise that Queen Victoria's reign was a time of remarkable turbulence, imperial and colonial war-mongering of the first water, though as it generally involved pesky, difficult furriners in far away places, no need to pay much attention to any of them ...
But if you do get lost in any of those wars, including the shortest war in history, you'll miss our Henry blathering about Queen Victoria, stability and peace in her time ...
Dwelling on a monarch bringing stability is a bit like thinking that the assassination of the Archduke was all that mattered in causing the first world war ... and yet in any student's guide you might read ...
...though the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was the direct precipitating event leading to the declaration of war, there were many other factors that also played a role in leading up to World War (WWI).
In the 1900s, several European nations had empires across the globe, where they had control over vast swaths of lands. Prior to World War I, the British and French Empires were the world’s most powerful, colonizing regions like India, modern-day Vietnam and West and North Africa. The expansion of European nations as empires (also known as imperialism) can be seen as a key cause of World War I, because as countries like Britain and France expanded their empires, it resulted in increased tensions among European countries. The tensions were a result of many colonies often being acquired through coercion. Then, once a nation had been conquered, it was governed by the imperial nation: many of these colonial nations were exploited by their mother countries, and dissatisfaction and resentment was commonplace. As British and French expansionism continued, tensions rose between opposing empires, including Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, leading to the creation of the Allied Powers (Britain and France) and Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire) during World War I.
Sheesh, and the pond thought it had long ago put aside Albertini ... three bloody volumes ...
But enough of the pond's suffering, which to be honest, is an ice cube in the sun compared to the misery caused by the colonising powers during the nineteenth century ...
Instead on with the hole in the bucket man's last gobbet, as he blathers on about the peace of Queen Victoria's century, when surely he meant to say that the great powers were busy having a piece of this and a piece of that, a piece of whatever they fancied, and if anyone tried to stand in their way, why they'd have a piece of them too...
Finally, as a bonus, the pond is pleased to offer a rare chance to trudge along with the Tudge ...
The pond only offers the Tudge trudge because of the peculiar poignancy of reading a line about the Labor government staring down entrenched interests ...
If the pond recollects its history, little Johnny was in power from 1996 to 2007, and then there was a short, confused interregnum, before the rightful rulers resumed operations, and ran the ship - if that's the best way to describe a shipwreck - from 2013 to 2022 ...
And yet the trudging Tudge finds it seemly to blather about events in the "past two decades", as if entirely removed from the events in those decades ...
Perhaps that's why, if you search the next short, final gobbet for any insights, or solutions, you'll be left bemused by a serve of nonsense ... the sort of stuff about inquiry-based learning that a well-trained parrot might produce after a generous serve of sunflower seeds, because the trudging Tudge has never been gib on an inquiring mind ...
Gone, though at least long suffering bureaucrats will be experiencing a temporary relief from the droning "I" ...
But is there a longer-term solution?
Well you could get agitated about the head on a five dollar note, what with plastic currency all the go - a vital issue for Aldi shoppers wanting to save on the surcharge - or simply settle back and enjoy an infallible Pope, and memories of great empty vessels ...
"out of his preferred period of ancient Greeks and Romans, our Henry is remarkably obtuse ..." Verily and indeed indubitably ... but then in his preferred period, our Holesome Henry is also remarkably obtuse. Oh, consistency is a virtue, non ?
ReplyDeleteSo, Rudgy Tudgy: "the dominance of inquiry-based learning (where the student leads the learning) over explicit instruction (or teacher-based learning) is a clear example." Of how "ideology and fads dominate instruction" ? Does Rudgy Tudge have even the faintest idea about 'learning' versus 'instruction' ? Would he actually perhaps claim that he, personally, is an example of the superiority of "instruction" ?
ReplyDeleteBack somewhen over 50 years ago, I read an article in the Melbourne Herald Sun (yes, back when it was some approximation to being a real 'newspaper') about a school out in Melbourne's east where indeed, it was 'student lead' learning; note 'learning' not 'instruction'. The teachers propounded the curriculum which the brightest kids picked up on and then passed on down the intellectual line until even the 'least bright' kids had picked up the essentials. It reportedly worked very well. But that was about 55 years ago - things have changed and the human race has evolved, hasn't it.
As to the "abandonment of phonics" ? To my best (fallible) recall, I was largely, but not completely, taught via phonics, but so what ? Until the invention of pinyin in 1949 - and some prior efforts dating from 'romanization' back in about 1605 - it simply wasn't possible to use 'phonics' to teach the Chinese to read. Even now, I understand, the Chinese use pinyin to give their young a start but then switch over to 'whole word' approaches based on recognition and memorisation of Chinese characters. Does anybody want to claim that the Chinese are bad at learning to read ?
What Are the Best Alternatives to Phonics?
https://makingenglishfun.com/2021/06/11/what-are-the-best-alternatives-to-phonics/#:
Oh dear. Much as I have no wish to poke holes in Our Henry’s grand tribute to the glory of the British Monarchy - or whatever the Hell he’s on about - I feel duty bound that while King William IV (AKA “Silly Billy”), they were not, as Henry states, father and son. George IV died with no surviving legitimate children, and was thus succeeded by his younger brother, William.
ReplyDeleteA minor historical error? Well, perhaps, but it’s always fun to spot mistakes when Reptiles are in full-on pontificating mode.
The infallible Pope inspired this little bit of quantum frippery.
ReplyDeleteSchrodinger Scott; was PM, now he’s not
But his fellow MPs keep their distance
Like a particle (they pray)
He might just fade away
Or spin himself out of existence!
OK - to state the bleedin' obvious - our Tudger writes only of students being taught, in the sense of someone standing in front of a group, and talking at them. I did not see much understanding that 'learning' is not necessarily the product of 'teaching', or that, if education is the maintenance of our culture, then it should be something we do for all our lives.
ReplyDeleteIt may have been more obvious in the 50s and 60s, but there was a percentage of students in my schools who were electronics nuts. The phrase was 'completely self taught', but they constructed all kinds of items using valves, and separate components to provide resistance and capacitance. What they built, worked; some were quite adept at testing and trouble-shooting, and happy to share their knowledge. And none of that came from any course of 'teaching' within the school system. It was driven by a wish to make electronic units - to levels of complication like radio-controlled models - by finding (and usually adapting) diagrams from magazines or books, and putting that together, component by component, with solder.
Dick Smith and Tandy came a generation later, with early integrated circuits and kits, but, of my time, it was a remarkable demonstration of 'education', not involving a single teacher.
Now there's a couple of names we don't hear much about nowadays: Dick Smith and Tandy. Though Dick Smith does at least have a 'follow on' in Jaycar.
DeleteBut our Rudgy Tudge ? Typical unquestioning dogmatism* in everything he preaches; so 'teaching' is by "instruction": sit still and quiet in your desk and just take in all, and only, what the teacher tells you. Wonder if any of his teachers ever apprised him of the word 'autodidact' of which there have been quite a few in human history.
List of autodidacts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_autodidacts#Scientists,_historians,_and_educators
* Don't seem to hear that word much these days, but unthinking dogmatism is as rampant now as it has always been.
Just a little note for Cranky Killer: "More than ten million children are #COVID19 orphans. Though the #pandemic is currently declining, the impact on the lives of these youngsters will be felt for decades."
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/Laurie_Garrett/status/1570458321014128641