"Zealotry" or "zealot" seems to be the new reptile word du jour - projection anyone? - though the pond had to mount a search party for it this day.
Could it mean that "woke" is on the way out? The pond suspects that, as the reptiles are rather limited in their abuse repertoire, the usual words will keep on turning up through a revolving door, and as one word carpet looks a little shabby and worn, the old word carpet will be dragged back in to serve another day ...
So on with the word hunt - much verbal salad to get through - and - it should go without saying, the usual, standard, one size fits the planet, climate science denialism ... with the hole in the bucket man leading the way ...
The pond is always a little unnerved when the hole in the bucket man absent-mindedly leaves his well-thumbed copy of Thucydides in the bus and decides to grapple with the modern world.... but there''s always the question of how long it will take him to get around to slagging off renewables and mourning the loss of sweet, dear, innocent, virginal Oz coal with a heavy sigh.
Being Henry. it will take some time to reach that particular hole in the bucket ...
Viewed from a non-Thucydidean perspective, all these proposals sound like a canny throw across the Nullarbor to the land of the socialists, with the sandgropers in a state of ecstasy at their rat cunning ... as
celebrated by the AFR ...(possible paywall for the rest).
Strange, and naturally the sandgropers are exceptionally keen to tell the likes of the keen Kean to piss off ...
Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King has poured cold water over New South Wales Treasurer Matt Kean’s calls for a national gas policy that would force Western Australia to send some of its reserves east.
In comments in The Australian on Monday, Kean urged the Albanese government to come up with a national gas and coal reservation policy to help combat skyrocketing energy prices on the east coast grid.
His vision would see WA scrap its state-based reservation policy that carves off 15 per cent of production from large-scale LNG projects for domestic customers in favour of a national scheme...
Kean’s comments opened up a new front in the bitter rivalry between WA and NSW that has previously flared up over GST distribution and COVID-19 responses.
WA Infrastructure Minister Rita Saffioti accused Kean of “grandstanding”.
“I don’t think the feasibility or the economics of what he is suggesting stacks up,” she said.
“I think it’s New South Wales wanting to try and cut us down and they’ve been trying to do that for a few years, but we know we’re very proud of the policy.”Just like WA wants NSW taxpayers to prop them up by taking our GST, NSW families expect WA to do their bit to support them during this energy crisis,” Kean said....
...A 100 per cent domestic reservation policy applied to all onshore gas projects in Western Australia, save for two projects granted exemptions.
Any move to export gas from west to east is complicated by a lack of infrastructure to send and receive the commodity.
A gas pipeline connecting Dampier in WA’s north-west to South Australia was costed at $5.8 billion in 2017 and was being considered by the Coalition government in 2020 as part of its “gas-led recovery” out of COVID-19, but the economics have never stacked up.
But, lest keenly envious eyes distract, please allow our Henry to keep on explaining why the sandgropers have got it all wrong, and it'd impossible or impractical or some other sort of "im" ...
Meanwhile, some might be wondering where the pond's hopes had gone in relation to climate science denialism. Oh ye doubters of little faith ... our Henry was just saving the best for last ...
Yep, thar she blows ...it's those bloody renewables, and the suffering of dear sweet innocent Oz coal, and as for the planet, why squaring the error of current follies would be an epic folly. Sorry, vulgar youff, it's gunna be a long, hard ride into a new world, and misapplied super glue isn't going to save you, but on the upside, you'll be doing it tough without benefit of Henry's hole-fixing company ...
Has our Henry thought of using a hammer? That'd fix things quick smart ...
Once the zealots go on the march, it's impossible to stop them, so naturally the lizard Oz editorialist couldn't resist joining our Henry.
It seems Greta still has the magic touch and still has the capacity to trigger the reptiles ...
Ah, the politics of misery ... now there's a tidy variation, but the pond does miss "zealotry" ... so it must keep searching ...
How did cackle-brained Claire come to occupy a Friday space in the lizard Oz? Was it just wishful thinking on the part of the reptile brain trust that her jibber jabber would provide a satisfying distraction?
The pond's theory is that her presence is designed to make petulant Peta seem like some sort of rocket science climate science denialist ... because, wait for it, there's still more yadda yadda to go about renewables, and the loss of dear, sweet, innocent Oz coal ...
Still banging on about South Australia, though that issue has been the subject of a
wiki listing, offering a lot more insights than those provided by cackle-headed Claire ...
The AER
clucked in reports, and yet you won't hear any of this in reptile la la land, per that wiki:
The Grattan Institute's Tony Wood was reported as saying "If you've got a wind farm or a coal-fired power station at the end of a transmission line, and that system either is taken out by a storm or is forced to shut down to protect itself from a storm, it doesn't matter what the energy source is" while Clean Energy Council's Tom Butler said the weather event "created a fault in the system which has caused the generation to trip offline" and that "the Snowtown wind farm, north of Adelaide, was actually helping to prop up the state's power supply ahead of gas power stations as the network was gradually brought back online."
But back to the renewables bashing for a last round from the cackle-headed Claire ...
Meanwhile, speaking of recognising reality, on another planet, one where cackle-heads are inclined to be short-sighted, ‘Climate carnage’: UN demands funding surge to save millions of lives.
“Climate change is landing blow after blow upon humanity, as we saw throughout 2022,” said Inger Andersen, the executive director of UNEP. “If we don’t want to spend the coming decades in emergency response mode, dealing with disaster after disaster, we need to get ahead of the game. The temperature ranges we are currently looking at over the decades to come will turn the climate impacts we are seeing now into knockout blows for generations to come.”
Good luck with all that UN. Have you thought about conflating and confusing climate science with crypto just to prove you can sound even dumber than petulant Peta?
Never mind, the pond was still yearning for talk of "zealots", and so had to turn to another source ... is there a genuine dickhead in the reptile house?
Ah, "nanny state" ... how could the pond have forgotten that one, and as a bonus, cherish the indicative words beneath the illustration
"fireworks lit with flame of match."
In its own humble way, it's the compleat reptile guide to blowing up the planet, though the pond does prefer the notion of lighting the touch-paper and immediately retiring ...
And so on and on, with more
here, but back to the reptile loon of the moment, who, having lit the fuse, isn't inclined to be retiring ...
Thar she blows ... good old-fashioned talk of "wowsers", but still no "zealots" ... though there's splendid comedy to be found in someone losing an eye. Why it beats the old slipping on a banana peel and turning into a quadriplegic hands down ...
Come on, to be truly crackers, "zealotry" surely must finally get a run ... it's been a long haul and the zealots are impatiently waiting for the honour ...
What next? An old-fashioned sobbing that all the fun has gone out of witch-burning?
Actually the pond would cheerfully ban poker machines and, if it still watched the telly, the advertising of betting ... but the pond is delighted that finally "their zealotry" scored a mention ...
Still, it seems that stupendously silly Steve yearns to take a walk on the wild side. Please allow the pond to make a few suggestions.
Has he thought of getting as pissed as a parrot, taking off his seat belt and driving into a tree?
A tad expensive, and he's worried about the tree? But surely it would prove the uselessness of all that rabbiting on about seatbelts and getting pissed as a parrot ... and where's the harm? It's not like the pond is suggesting Steve drive on the wrong side of the road and plough into an oncoming vehicle to prove all those improvements in safety design are a complete waste of money.
No, it should be something personal and easy and cheap/
How about he just gets a knife and sticks it into a power socket, just to prove those nanny staters and wowsers were wrong to indoctrinate his parents about the dangers of electricity?
With any luck, he'll be flung across the room, and if not dead, at least comatose ... and won't that be a grand result.
Sadly the chances of him dying from Covid have been much reduced thanks to the wowsers and nanny staters carrying on about vaccines, but he's still got the chance to head north to join the vaccine denialist Nimbin mob and catch whatever's doing the rounds... the pond hears that polio is returning to fashion for Heinlein quoters ... (though to be true to him, it should really be a dose of TB) ...
Alternatively, our Steve might show his libertarian leanings by giving Elon some cash in the paw on a monthly basis and end up twittering away with the other twits ...
"in Liverpool... hundreds of flattened spaces, many of which remain to this day". Not according to Google Maps, unless you reckon city parks come into the category of 'flattened spaces'. Our Henry would tell him that the "iron laws" of economics make empty spaces in cities an impossibility.
ReplyDeleteYair, Holesome Henry and Thucydides. Maybe it would have been better if he'd just temporaily switched to Marcus Aurelius: "Does aught befall you? It is good. It is part of the destiny of the Universe ordained for you from the beginning. All that befalls you is part of the great web."
ReplyDeleteSo there's nothing the government could, or should, do about the price and availability of gas, is there. "It is good." It's all according to the "great web" of libertarian market "economics", isn't it. After all, "greed is good" too, isn't it.
Makes me wonder why we bother with governments at all since they can never, and should never, do anything about anything.
Except if you live in Western Australia, of course.
Joe said "Our Henry would tell him that the "iron laws" of economics make empty spaces in cities an impossibility."
ReplyDeleteThe Metalic Laws of the Effect of Cool Aid on Henry's & Reptile Revisionist (world) Riters
"The qualitative procedures they propose are not exempt from issues of internal and external validity and ordinarily do not attempt to address these thorny problems.
"Indeed, the procedures which they advance as substitutes for the mainstream methodology are usually vaguely described, [pg9] constituting an almost mystical advocacy of the virtues of qualitative approaches, without clear discussion of the specific ways in which such procedures meet validity criteria. In addition, many appear to adopt program operator perspectives on effectiveness, reasoning that any effort to improve social conditions must have some effect, with the burden of proof placed on the evaluation researcher to find out what those effects might be.
"Although many of their arguments concerning the woodenness of many quantitative researches are cogent and well taken, the main revisionist arguments for an alternative methodology are unconvincing: hence one must look elsewhere than to evaluation methodology for the reasons for the failure of social programs to pass muster before the bar of impact assessments."
"The Iron Law Of Evaluation And Other Metallic Rules
"Problems with social experiments and evaluating them, loopholes, causes, and suggestions; non-experimental methods systematically deliver false results, as most interventions fail or have small effects.
by: Peter H. Rossi
https://www.gwern.net/docs/sociology/1987-rossi
In recognisable Henry fashion, he invokes someone from YALE, but, apparently, without giving clues to where we might find the work of the great one - just accept him as an authority.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is the Henry is drawing from Paul McAvoy’s 2007 book ‘The Unsustainable Costs of Partial Deregulation’. This is a rather patchy work, but McAvoy did hold to a theme that I might be allowed to restate as - in the 1970-80s, believers in ‘free market’ deregulated the service structures in gas, electricity and telecommunications along purely theoretical lines. They justified this by the claim that what they had done would improve those services and reduce prices to the consumer. By the time of McAvoy’s review, none of these objectives had been met.
As the title tells you - McAvoy, like so many other zealots for ‘the market’ says the failures were because authorities did not deregulate utterly, and then let ‘er rip.
I suspect the Henry might have dipped into this volume of McAvoy because of McAvoy’s comments on what was happening to telephone companies, mainly in the USA. If so, Henry seems to have missed McAvoy’s remarks on shortage of broadband capacity at his time of writing. Odd, because the Henry is notable for his retrospective enthusiasm for installation of telephone in Australia early in the last century, and then for his regular articles decrying outlays on NBN.
McAvoy identified a fundamental problem with deregulation of gas and electricity supply, that (whaddya know!!) they were supplied through grids, that, um - could not readily be broken up into neatly independent entities. Interestingly, he seems not to have written particularly on the Enron ‘scandal’, even though it, and subsequent action, had all been completed in the early 2000s - well before his work on ‘partial deregulation’ was published, although I must point out that I do not have current access to the 2007 book.
I often wonder what would happen if the economics approach was applied in engineering. Lots of time would be devoted to explaining that the design is still good despite the bridge falling down and that other bridge that is still standing up will inevitably fall down because the wrong theory was applied.
DeleteGrueBleen
DeleteBefuddled - I think there are still bright newcomers to the profession of engineering who offer changes in design that will need less material, so be cheaper to build, perhaps quicker - something that appeals to the bean-counters; or will just look more - modern, or more - engineered. Some of these do fail, but, as I understand it, the profession shelves whatever that innovation was and does not repeat. Against that, we still have 'economic advisers' claiming that particular initiatives - that pandered to 'the market' - failed because 'the market' should have been allowed to run absolutely free. Of more recent time, John Quiggin discussed this kind of thing in his quite readable 'Economics in Two Lessons'. I do not expect to see the Henry cite Quiggin's work favourably, and not just because John is alive and (very) well.
DeleteGaseous Henry
DeleteHis work is prosaic and his brain is archaic
Yet Henry’s full bottle on gas
But his details are dubious
And somewhat effluvious
Cos he’s pulling them out of his ass
Now THAT is a worthy lucubration, Kez. I am fond of the word 'lucubration', from early acquaintance with the essays of Sir Walter Murdoch. Walter was uncle of Keith, and great-uncle of Rupert - but a vastly different, and in every way better, person. He presented his essays as the result of 'nightly lucubrations'. From my pre-teenage years I found them easy to understand, and, in retrospect, I would say they demonstrated the later adage that 'reality tends to have a liberal bias'. It is worth reminding people that the university in Western Australia is named for Sir Walter, not for anyone from the dark side of the family.
DeleteMuch appreciated Chadders. And a little bit of nightly lubrication doesn't go astray either!
DeleteAmen, Kez.
DeleteTry again.
ReplyDeleteIt's all a matter of 'religious faith', isn't it. No matter what the evidence of the senses or the processes of sovereign reason tell us, it is all as nothing before the overweening truth of their myths.
The main point always is total lack of consequences. Just like this says:
Republicans have entered a 'post-truth world' -- and their voters absolutely love it: columnist
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/politics/republicans-have-entered-a-post-truth-world-and-their-voters-absolutely-love-it-columnist/ar-AA13HeMb?
"Republicans have run out of reasons to tell the truth because there's no consequences for lying ..."
The Fireworks Man - who from his reminiscences sounds as though he may be 80-100 years old - certainly tops off his article by quoting Robert A Heinlein. He was certainly a major Science Fiction writer, but from the late 1950s onwards he became increasingly obsessed with Libertarianism, “military virtues” (the film “Starship Troopers” was made as satire; Heinlein’s original novel was dead serious, and he first wrote it as a YA book) and some extremely suspect views on sexuality. Sadly, there’s still a significant subset of Science Fiction fans who see Heinlein as some sort of a significant intellectual force - a sort of SF Ayn Rand. Steve Waterson may be one of them. However Heinlein only died 36 years ago, so he may be a bit too recent a literary influence for the likes of Our Henry.
ReplyDeleteWell Heinlein's 'Stranger In A Strange Land' was quite readable, and 'By His Bootstraps' was fun and 'All you zombies' was good, but otherwise ... ? Yeah, way too simplistically "libertarian" really.
DeleteTrue GB, he wrote some excellent fiction (though “Stranger” always left me cold), and was a major force in the field. But somewhere along the way he veered way off to the lunar Right, and his All-Knowing Wise Old Man characters (all idealised versions of Heinlein himself) became increasingly insufferable. He’s one of the SF favourites of my youth who, for the most part, I simply can’t reread.
DeleteYep, have to basically agree with all that, Anony, though I didn't mind Stranger and I did read it twice. The only other one of his that I remember much was 'The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress'. And yes, I guess 'Starship Trooper' but who wants to own up to that. Of course Heinlein was along run favourite of John Campbell (of Astounding/Analog fame and a promoter of Isaac Asimov (who claimed he couldn't write about aliens or sex until he wrote 'The Gods Themselves (cry in vain)'.
DeleteJust reading our Claire and wondering what has become of Shannahanna. Oh well, easy go ...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Claire would like to tell us some deep truths: "Go online to Reddit forums and one can read stories posted by real people describing their investment in crypto as the biggest mistake of their life." Well now, I'd have to disagree with that: the "biggest mistake of their life" was simply just failure to learn. Failure to learn about evidence and reason and validation and thus total failure to apply any of those well proven practices to things they do in their life.
And why is this so ? It's because of the Law of No Consequences. Because of the organisation of the society they live in, there are very few 'negative consequences' for their very many failures of sense and sensibility. And Claire goes on to involve Warren Buffet's mate Charlie Munger by telling us that he says "the biggest mistakes he has made in his long life were born out of wishful thinking." Well yeah, I guess so.
But this is good: "The cryptocurrency bubble is one of many examples of wishful groupthink." Yeah, right, and others might be the Dutch Tulip mania, the South Sea bubble, Ponzi schemes etc etc. But hey, they are as nothing compared to the "overwhelming hype associated with renewable energy technologies, specifically wind and solar."
So there we have it: the totally in-credible Claire would like us to know that it's all just "wishful groupthink" that Charlie Munger would have warned us against. And are there any consequences for Claire's heartfelt testimony ? Why yes, she gets to keep company with lots of powerful people and make a very comfortable living. Can't hold that against her, now can we.
So those nasty nanny state zealots have poured their health and safety waters on poor little Stevie's bonfire...
ReplyDeleteWaterson's Lament
Though an eye could be lost or the odd hand blown off
Our excitement outweighed all the pain
But now zealous wokeness
Has outlawed such blokeness
We can never throw crackers again!
Fireworks lit...
With flame of match
Silly girl's dress...
Starting to catch
Thrupenny bungers...
Best ammunition
Enormous bang...
Easy ignition
Tail-less dog...
Yelping in pain
Steve and his mates...
At it again
Neighbour's mailbox...
Blown off its post
Big nest of bull ants...
Turned into toast
Skyrockets set...
Schoolhouse on fire
Pyros all cheer...
Flames leaping higher
Firemen come...
Scratching their heads
Steve and his mates...
Back in their beds!
After I posted the above I found this amazingly stupid quote re the resurrection of cracker night from Liberal MP nonperson David Elliott back in 2014. The bit about scared cats is priceless.
Delete“Daring things we did do. We may or may not have destroyed a few letterboxes, but if any got a bit damaged, they would have belonged to the cranky neighbour, who probably deserved it. We may have scared a few cats, but YouTube teaches us that scared cats can be really funny.”
Mr Elliott said cracker night was not just about fu (sic) but a means of acknowledging the State’s traditional connections to Britain.
“The reintroduction of cracker night to the calendar requires serious consideration,” he said.
It's in the Daily Terror but it's worth it: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/david-elliott-wants-to-overturn-a-threedecade-ban-on-cracker-night/news-story/d0a3934540c1309170454a4899a71a04
A bit of retrospective serendipity, Kez - that Elliott article was May 2014.
DeleteBack when I last crackered, it was penny bungers - when did it 'inflate' up to thrupenny ?
As a five year old in 1960 in Broken Hill we had penny bungers which were about an inch and a half long and thrupenny bungers which seemed to be half the size of a stick of dynamite. Then again, living a bolshie mining town, us BH kids might have been the only children in Australia with access to such a lethal explosive...er...firecracker.
DeleteYep, I definitely remember the penny bungers but not the thrupenny. Maybe I just couldn't afford them :-)
Delete