The pond was very attracted to this recovering Republican's traumatisation scale, featured in Salon ...
It would need some tweaking to turn into a reptile traumatisation scale, but the basic elements are sound. It omits, for example, fear of masks and vaccines, and a reluctance to treat a pandemic as a pandemic ... still lingering below the fold in the comments section ...
Allysia """ Finley and the good old vile 'leets, and perhaps in the body of the text, she joined Elon in demanding Fauci's immediate arrest - Elon Musk Sets Medical Twitter on Fire After ‘Prosecute’ Fauci Tweet - but the pond didn't bother finding out, because meanwhile the reptile tree killer edition was screeching to the high heavens ...
Yes, it's still a thing, and surely vaccines and masks shouldn't be demonised, but if you walk in the streets with a mask on, you're likely to cop random abuse from a stranger.
The pond is reminded of the time it first visited Japan, and it was deemed polite and a common courtesy that if you had a cold, the sniffles or the flu, you should mask up while on a train or out and about in public ...
Speaking of Asia, keen eyes will have noted that Barners was out and about this day ... and of course he had to be made the pond's top feature. We Tamworth folk must stick together, and Barners' ability to mangle the English language is legendary, and as usual there was a surprise ...
Still it was an important message from a politician who routinely manages to look like a beer-swilling slovenly slob, and the pond took it to heart ...
As for food, never mind that the Nationals turned Gina's mob and have turned into the National Mining Party, and presided over the destruction of the Hunter Valley, and were quite happy to do the same to the Liverpool plains, following the mantra of dig it up and ship it out... you know, back in the days of unbridled romantic naivety, and a deep, abiding love for clean, innocent, dinkum Oz coal ...
But enough of the brooding, Barners can alway s talk about the realities underpinning the new global Gina power paradigm ...
Barners had gone full Confucian and is compelled by the Confucian ethos ... (please make sure to confuse Asia and China and Buddhist and Islamic countries ... just lump them all together as a "them", it's the dinkum way) ...though the pond senses that some vulgar youff might have difficulty treating Barners' as a respected elder, what with him blathering about respect for family, and some still having enough memory cells to remember Barners' actual behaviour when it came to family ...
Ah, yes, the perils of an all-inclusive culture. If you remember that scale, the needle might be hovering somewhere between 5-6 and 7-8 at the thought of all those threats to the likes of Barners, but enough already, if you can't savour the poetry in that last line, you must surely be a heathen or a philistine ...
It was just as well Barners was to hand, because this day's Groan was dull and predictable, and the pond's heart sank the moment it saw the teaser at the top of the digital page ...
Yes, snowflakes it's apocalyptic disaster Tuesday time, and the usual epic catastrophist groaning ... but to be honest, the only question for the pond was whether the reptiles would use a snap of demonic, satanic windmills as the opening image ... only to be disappointed by the ongoing lack of imagination in the lizard Oz's much reduced pictorial department ...
Please pay attention, elsewhere in the digital edition there was a valiant warrior at work ...
If you can get around the WaPo paywall, you could read about the latest in cloud research ...
The new cloud research indicates that the lower estimates for warming are highly unlikely. Instead, the recent papers estimate that CO2 levels of 560 ppm would probably result in at least 3 or 3.5 degrees of warming.
That doesn’t mean that the world will definitely hit 3 degrees of warming — if countries continue to shift to clean energy, CO2 in the atmosphere could be stabilized at a level significantly below 560 ppm. But it does mean that the most optimistic estimates for how warming will unfold have been taken off the table.
Or you could read dangerous talk of state-owned facilities and be confronted by a demonic snap of windmills at the Beeb ...
Plans for a publicly owned energy company could see bills reduced and renewable supplies directly benefit communities, a minister has said.
The proposal is for a joint venture between the Welsh government and developers.
Profits would be used to construct wind turbine sites owned by communities.
Climate Change Minister Julie James says "it sticks in my craw" that foreign governments get profits from wind farms in Wales.
Why that's just one step away from the long march through the institutions and the sort of Marxist Leninist thinking that could reduce a reptile to tears, or lead to an even louder groaning, and a jump way up the traumatisation meter ...
Oh the bastards, the heartless bastards, first coal, then gas, where will it all end? Well, likely it does mean that the most optimistic estimates for how warming will unfold have been taken off the table.
Meanwhile, the immortal Rowe has a cartoon designed to cheer up the Groaner ...
Range anxiety!
And so to the bromancer.
The pond realises that this makes for a long post, just as the pond is preparing to take time off for the holyday season, but it takes immense power for the pond to resist the bromancer, the sort of energy requirement that could fuse the grid.
Better to give in with good grace and go with the flow. It's a long one, five fathoms full, but rich with the fear and paranoia that would see it rate well on any reptile scale you might devise ...
Foreign interference in Australia pervasive?
It was at that point that the pond realised it was reading a column in a newspaper owned by a foreign crime gang syndicate, always intent on interfering in Australia in an insidious and pervasive way ...
The pond took a leap back in time to the keen Keane at Crikey ... (possible paywall)
....No satisfactory discussion of the present state of the Liberal Party is possible without looking at its toxic dependence on News Corp, a company that, by Kelly’s own admission, is aligned with the Coalition.
Why is the Liberal Party seen as the party of climate denialism? Why is it seen as a party hostile to women? Why is it regarded as a party obsessed with culture wars rather than real issues for working households? The answer in each case involves News Corp, and not peripherally, but in a way intrinsic to the current functioning of the Liberals. That’s happened in two ways.
The first is that News Corp — by acting as the in-house media organ of the Liberals, both MPs and members — has shaped what is regarded as acceptable policy within the party, and who is seen as an acceptable leader. News Corp was crucial to the ousting of Malcolm Turnbull in 2018. It has been crucial to attacking any serious climate action. Its own obsession with culture war issues has meant the Liberals felt either emboldened or obliged to prosecute them. And it provided the Liberals, up to and including Scott Morrison, with a parallel universe within which to live and operate, ultimately to their downfall.
In the News Corp universe, climate action was the obsession of a few inner-city soyaccino drinkers, trans people were enemies to be smitten hip and thigh as a first-order matter of public policy, gender and workplace issues were a minority obsession foreign to the experience of ordinary Australian women, and Morrison was a political genius and master tactician. Sadly, May 21 2022 confirmed this parallel universe had minimal overlap with planet earth.
The second is that News Corp is a fundamental part of the Liberals’ campaign strategy, just as it is for the Tories in the UK. News Corp is crucial for amplifying Liberal attacks on Labor, for demonising opponents, and for using its staff to harass the Labor leader on the campaign trail.
This isn’t just a case of fellow travellers working toward shared goals; News Corp’s role is planned and relied upon by the Liberals’ campaign strategists, drawn from the ranks of CIT Group and its alumni.
Again, May 21 2022 showed News Corp struggling to deliver for its partners. As in the Victorian election, its attacks on Labor appeared ineffective, and may have even blunted the impact of more legitimate negative coverage by actual media outlets such as Nine.
The reader searching for a comprehensive account of the current state of the Liberals in News Corp publications will look in vain: the role of News Corp in the disastrous state of the party is never mentioned. Its commentators operate — again, as in a parallel universe — as if they are thoughtful, independent analysts, when they are defeated players whose own performance should be examined along with the politicians now the subject of their commentary.
Yes, that sounds like a foreign owned company routinely interfering in Australia, but never mind, on with the bromancer, doing his best to distract by fear mongering about other FUDs ...
Would this be mentioned, perhaps even the way the most intimate details concerning the Higgins matter have been blazed across News Corp publications, with ritual humiliations and misinformation offered on a daily basis?
Not bloody likely, as they used to say in musicals ...
It took them so long to kick the habit, and only then when it began to look and sound like it might be terribly expensive ... Is Dominion’s $1.6bn defamation lawsuit a death blow for Murdoch and Fox News?
The pond can only hope, but suspects that, much like that wascally wabbit, the foreign interventionists will keep on intervening ...
Meanwhile, a final gobbet from a scribbler for a company with a globalist reach and a habit of interfering in the governing of each country within which it resides ...
At this point the pond would usually reach for an infallible Pope, but he's too slow this morning, and instead this Wilcox will do the trick ... what with globalism copping a mention ...
Shorter Barnaby - “Gaw-lee - them Asians sure is smart! No way we could do that sort of thing, so its lucky that we can dig up stuff and sell ‘em tucker, ain’t it?”
ReplyDeleteYeah, if only the CSIRO weren’t just a pack of useless Greenies. Pity that it’s funding and capabilities were run down over so many years by LNP governments….
BTW, I assume that bit about microns-thick electrical components was cribbed from a factory visitors’ pamphlet.
Anonymous - I wasn't going to give Barners much attention, but I did wonder what was lost in a beer-bombed brain cell linking CSIRO with penicillin. Yes - Florey was highly significant in getting penicillin into production, to the point where it could be used routinely in treatment - but he had little to do with CSIRO, even after he returned to Australia. Perhaps Barners had a transient brain connection of 'Some Aussie was big in penicillin, musta been CSIRO'. Otherwise your synopsis covers his musings so much better than he did.
DeleteAll of that, and he didn't mention the stump-jump plough even once. Could a bunch of Taiwanese ever have invented that, I ask.
DeleteThe challenge for we Groan cultists is to find the enduring myths that get the nod in boardroom conversation. Our Dame has not disappointed this day - starting with the ‘high risks and uncertainties’ that, she claims, attach to developing gas fields.
ReplyDeleteSo she continues with the requirement to secure acreage. Not notably a problem until would-be gas buccaneers wanted to work the acreage (is that term a reflection of the extent of foreign, non-metric, financial dominance of this industry?) - anyway, when the ‘producers’ saw no conflict in tromping across prime agricultural land to punch holes into the land, and the aquifers - but the big item, naturally, is the ‘cost and risk of exploration’. That so readily brings up images of the survey and research arms of the extracting companies - out in the desert, or on the high seas, looking at or into instruments.
It is not easy to put up such images, because the simple truth is that, for the last about 70 years, exploration has been done by government agencies - bureaus of resources, state and commonwealth geological surveys - funded by governments of both colours.
Clinton Fernandes has written on this, and made submissions to parliamentary inquiries. Ironically, one of his most recent was
Senate Economics Legislation Committee Inquiry into Offshore Petroleum and Greenhouse Gas Storage Amendment (Benefit to Australia) Bill 2020
Submission by Professor Clinton Fernandes, UNSW Canberra
but which took up from comments by Pauline Hanson on how Australia had pretty much given away its gas resources to foreign interests. Well, like the proverbial clock, Pauline can be right occasionally.
Fernandes goes back to the Fitzgerald Report of the Whitlam administration - which told us that governments spent more on support for miners than it was ever likely to receive in revenue. He sets out the scale of the technical surveys; all paid for by government, which then handed the results to whichever ‘exploration company’ asked for it.
He does contrast what Australia did not do, with what Norway did, to ensure benefits for its citizens from petroleum extraction. He is also about the only author I have come across who mentions the unease of departments of treasury and finance, in (Australian) cabinet, over the blatant gifts to mining groups.
Certainly I cannot recall our Dame ever telling us about cabinet documents, but her understanding of where her own financial benefits can be found means she is unlikely to take a career as a mythbuster.
Beats me why the old Country Party voters followed when the party donned the hard hat and went mining. Tribalism? Inattention? Pork barrelling?
DeleteMind you, much the same could be asked about some Labor electorates that operated like hereditary fiefdoms (Smiths, Fitzgibbons etc)
Beats me too, Bef, though apparently the percentage of folks who "always vote for the same party" is slowly decreasing. I have to confess though, that it applies to me mostly: I don't recall having ever voted LNP, even once. Though I did vote for the Democrats while the party still existed, and for the Greens sometimes and the Reason Party more recently.
DeleteBut it doesn't really matter: whichever of Labor, Libs or Nats you put highest amongst your preferences is who you are really voting for - well at least it used to be.
Just a question though, Chad: how many Australians, other than your goodself, have ever heard of Professor Clinton Fernandes ? I certainly hadn't until now. D'you reckon Albo or any of his minions ever have ? Have any of them ever heard of Norway and its sovereign wealth funds ? At least I have heard of them.
DeleteBefuddled - as I recall from chatter amongst the generation of my family before me - it was McEwen's doing. Mines tended to be out in the country - so they were, naturally, the then Country Party's fief (as in - NOT the Liberals). From the '60s, mining towns were less likely to have a wholly-unionised workforce - and the steady move away from even building mining 'towns' probably diminished the effect even more.
DeleteI realise that this does not account for McEwen's odd economic attitudes. My guess is that he could get away with being a protectionist because the Country Party interests in the state of Victoria, and much of South Australia, did not see that it affected them. The more northerly factions farmed smaller properties, with focus on grain, so were avowed free traders for imports, and adherents of 'single desk' marketing for their exports. But they usually voted for whoever had the 'Country Party' on their banner at the voting booth.
GB - the kind of detail that Prof. Fernandes sets out - much of it from annual reports of the Government agencies showing-off how technically advanced their methods were - was never likely to be reproduced by major media, because it did not, does not, accord with the myth of the doughty Aussie miner out there prospecting under dreadful conditions - so their reward for all the 'risk' and 'effort' is to pocket the entire economic rent available from the resources they dig up. There have even been attempts to portray a younger Gina in khakis and blunnies, whacking chunks of iron oxide. Never mind that dad Lang did virtually all his 'prospecting' from his aircraft.
DeleteTerry McCrann, in his earlier days, had a particularly good imagination for the supposed challenges and privations of prospecting.
I know from bruising personal experience what was the News Limited narrative, because I was involved in trying to get one lot of resource extractors to meet a licence fee that, at very least, returned the costs by government to maintain one resource at a high level of yield, for their exclusive benefit.
I wasn't in the event. During what were supposed to be 'negotiations' in one country town, I was refused service in every eatery, down to the burger place on the beach, because of 'what I was doin' to the industry'.
Truly sad to contemplate just how 'universal' lazy stupidity was and is.
DeleteBarners: "That is why an island half the size of Tasmania supports a population nearly the size of Australia's..." Funny, I thought the reason why Taiwan's population is nearly half the size of Australia's was the Chinese high 'fertility' rate of all those mainland 'coolies' imported as virtual slave labour after the Dutch stole the island from its native, non-Asian population in the 1600s. Apparently there's still about 500,000 of the indigenous 'Formosan' people still inhabiting Taiwan. "...with a gross domestic population approaching that of Australia."
ReplyDeleteWell now, the GDP of Australia is about US$1.3 trillion, and that of Taiwan is US$0.675 trillion. Yep, to someone of the numerical skills of a Barners, Taiwan, being about half of Australia's GDP, truly is "approaching that of Australia".
Oops: "with a gross domestic product approaching that of Australia."
DeleteOoops again: "Taiwan's population is nearly the size of Australia's" not "nearly half the size".
DeleteOnly tenuously connected to today's offerings by way of the war against renewables
ReplyDeletehttps://www.aumanufacturing.com.au/researchers-see-14-fold-improvement-in-hydrogen-production-by-adding-soundwaves-to-electrolysis
For those with big heads and long fingers
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.202203164
Assuming this isn't some sort of unicorn sighting it would seem to be very promising.
Hmmm. "practical limitations associated with existing electolyzer technology isaddressed, including the need for highly corrosive electrolytes..." I understood that Stanford U had developed corrosian resistant electrodes (well, the +ve electrode anyway) to overcome this problem:
DeleteCorrosion resistant positive electrode for high-temperature, secondary electrochemical cell [electronic resource].
https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/11319819
And that it was going to make direct electrolysis of unpurified seawater an economical process.
I hadn't heard about the soundwave approach though.