Monday, and Major Mitchell still MIA, and now it seems that the Caterist has done a bunk, taken a powder, while memories of the Oreo are but a fading dream ...
Oh the wretched holyday season ... with the lizard Oz editorialist dragooned in to fill in the gaps ... not to mention Dan "the man" Tehan ...
Good old Dan "the man", still working the paranoid fear and loathing side of the beat.
The pond decided to pass on that splendid offering, remembering the biblical injunction to tear out an eye, but there was a fresh face that caught the pond's working eye, and this scribbler really deserves to become a regular reptile ...
Of course Polonius was a dedicated hater of such carry-ons, and once upon a time the Chaser boys were routinely given a Polonial lashing, down there with the Graudian, the ABC, the Fairfax newspapers (well it was ancient times) and the rest of the axis of weevils that haunted the Sydney Institute with their offensive ways ...
Out of nostalgia, he was still at it last year ...
This might seem to imply that Polonius loathed and despised juvenile stunts, but in fact he loved the Chaser boys so much that he couldn't resist providing the transcript ...
Apparently the Dominator's party appearance was so reflexive, it was actually a stunning piece of performative theatricality in the ironic mode that would have sated a jaundiced Oscar Wilde... up there with the best of them in terms of post-ironic, post-modernist juxtaposition. After all, as any Young Liberal would know, there's only one thing in life worse that being talked about, and that's not being talked about ...
Who knew that the Dominator was a Chaser devotee? Sssh, better not tell Polonius ...
As for the notion that the Dominator was completely clueless and simply aping comedians, did this mean that he never read the lizard Oz?
Surely as a Young Liberal already in the game, he would have already taken the red pill and entered the Matrix and realised that the sort of juvenile humour that the Chaser boys offered, in their post-modernist, post-ironic way, was an anathema to the reptile way of life ...
After all ...
The newspaper, first published in 1999, was The Chaser team's first enterprise. Though the paper initially had a circulation of well under 30,000, the paper gained national infamy when their February 2003 edition published Prime Minister John Howard's private home number on its front page with the headline "Howard ignores the people. So call him at home on (02) 9922 6189". The prank came in response to Howard's dismissive attitude to half a million protesters marching against the invasion of Iraq. Howard's number was blocked by the afternoon after being flooded with calls, and federal police raided The Chaser's office. (wiki)
Of course it wasn't always that way ... something happened back in the dark ages of the intertubes ... as recorded here ...
Ah mammaries, and the pond had to cut that off in mid-sentence (it was "before the stunt had aired"), but there's more at the link and those with a taste for nostalgia will rush off to complete the read, and might even miss the last small gobbet from Sam ...
What a titillating bit of information, insufficient, but titillating, and the pond did love the notion that the Dominator "should probably apologise."
It was the "probably" that did it for the pond, hinting, as it did, at a lack of regret, a defiant attachment to post-ironic comedy stylings ... because where's the harm dressing in a manner designed to suggest that you were always down with The Young Ones and giving that bastard hippie Neil an 'orrible 'ard time ... perhaps even a dose of the ancient art of ecky thump with a bit of black pudding...
If ever the reptiles are looking for a replacement for Lloydie of the Amazon, surely Sam is probably a good contender. Perhaps possibly, no probably, even a resident comedian.
Polonius would probably love the comedy stylings, what with his taste for the Chaser boys ...
The pond should probably pitch Sam as science graduate writing on climate science to the reptiles, but probably should move on ...
And speaking of science, Killer Creighton was also out and about this day ... doing the usual Killer thing ...
And then to the pond's even greater astonishment and delight, Killer assured the pond that it was a right-winger, and perhaps even a devotee of Ron DeSanctimonious, what with a stove using gas just a few yards away from the pond's keyboard ...
Still, it was such an extremely unique subject (*ABC licensed) that the reptiles felt the need to provide a link to the study, and as the pond aims for complete coverage, and its screen caps never convey hot links, here's the link to the study ... but please, stick with the Killer comedy ...
Truly the Killer can unearth a climate science conspiracy quicker than an Italian hound can find a truffle.
As if climate science was actually real, as if there was anything to worry about, as if cooking the planet wouldn't produce a very tasty stir fry, Sichuan peppercorn paraesthesia style, because who doesn't like feeling comfortably numb?
And so to a last, very short Killer gobbet ...
The pond was transported back to the good old days yet again, when the reptiles whipped themselves up into a lather about light bulbs.
The pond hesitates to mention it, what with energy saving life bulbs in a range of colour temperatures now being all over the place, and the fight to save tungsten bulbs completely forgotten by vulgar youff ...
It also happens to involve being self-referential, and being back in 2009, and fluff-gathering and navel-gazing and post-ironic post-modernist thinking, and all that, because way back then, the pond was reporting on little Timmy Bleagh and his valiant fight to save the bulbs ... (links no longer valid but the Wayback Machine did produce one snapshot, and the pond can't be bothered with the rest).
What a day for nostalgia and the pond owes it all to Sam and the Killer (*potential film title copyrighted to the pond) ...
And now as is traditional, to end with an immortal Rowe, also travelling abroad in the USA ... and jolly Joe hands the mango Mussolini yet another 'get out of jail free' card ...
In among his usual blather and bullshit, the Killer may have accidentally included one accurate point - that the best answer to the “New York Times” headline asking how much people should worry about their gas stoves is “Probably not very much”.
ReplyDeleteI don’t base that claim on any scientific evidence (I’ve learned well from the Reptiles), but rather on Betteridge’s Law of headlines, which basically states that the appropriate response to any headline ending in a question mark is “No”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
The Law can certainly be usefully applied to the Reptiles’ own scribblings - Scientific Sammy Carroll provides a perfect example today.
"Remember when being ironically offensive was funny ?" No.
Delete(But I do remember Barry Humphries.)
"Henderson, Director of right-wing think tank The Sydney Institute..." Aaarrgh. Can we please stop this "think tank" nonsense - there's no thinking of any recognisable kind in The Sydney Institute (amongst many others eg IPA). Can we please start to call them what they really are: agitprop mills.
ReplyDeletePolonius will face a quandary when he shuffles of this mortal (might as well borrow a figure of speech from the same play as we borrow the nom-de-machine à écrire). A 'frequent contributor' to 'Quad Rant' tells us that Pell 'has gone to a far, far better place. They don’t get the ABC in Heaven.' This 'f.c.' speaks with as much authority on what is in Heaven as any other human, delving around in his own imagination - so it is as likely to be true as any other supposed revelation of the after life. But the Polony's quandary is obvious - if there is no ABC in Heaven - he absolutely will not want to go there. What would he do all day - remembering that a day in eternity is - a really, really, long time. If I have understood the theology of my (protty) Sunday school days, Polony might be able to effect a transfer. If he has nothing coming in from the ABC for him to respond to, he may well take to, well, offering suggestions, with respect, you understand, to the Almighty, about the phrasing and general lack of detail of some of His edicts. A couple such suggestions should see him going the way of Lucifer, as set out in Binsfeld's 'Treatise' - to join the other 6 Princes of Hell.
DeleteAh, but what about other potential afterlife viewing? https://theunaustralian.net/2023/01/12/cardinal-pell-complains-to-the-devil-about-the-lack-of-sky-news-in-hell/
DeleteThank you Anonymous - Mark Williamson has quite a talent for speculating on the afterlife, and I will put the main site on the list to check back on from time to time.
DeleteEven the minutest moment is an eternity in the "afterlife", and there's an infinite lot of moments to experience.
DeleteBut I really think we should correct our terminology: it's not the "afterlife"; what we are in now is actually the "prelife" and then we move on to the real life - heaven or hell - that we earned in our brief moment of prelife.
Thank you too GB. Out here in the electorate of Maranoa - the land of the littleproud - it is difficult to keep up with the pace at which great matters are 'revealed'; particularly when they are 'exclusive'.
DeleteSam C: "Because social media changed it all. We began hearing from voices we had never really encountered. They often made sense." Not very often though, mostly it's a QAnon world of lesser insanity.
ReplyDeleteBut the easy access to 'mass communication' via social media is making changes in the world that will grow. Remember that more than half of humanity are below the mean IQ and just contemplate what more than 4 billion of them could mean as the weather gets worse and worse.
Oh nostagia unlimited: the Mac 512 since the mid 1980s; spreadsheets and word processors on a desktop.
ReplyDeleteAnd I haven't had a gas stove for over 40 years.
"Over 100 people a year in the UK die from carbon monoxide poisoning" "gas cookers emit toxic fumes into the homes of people who cook with gas. It is likely the highest exposure to mixed oxides of nitrogen that you will experience anywhere in the UK is not by a roadside, but in a kitchen." "Imagine that Wind Turbines killed more than 100 people a year... Do you think there would be media outrage? Of course there would! But with gas – these consequences are literally just ignored." from https://protonsforbreakfast.wordpress.com/2023/01/01/gas-and-gaslighting/
ReplyDeleteBut I think you'll find that it's the gas heaters, not stoves, that put out enough CO, often in a fairly enclosed space, to have a sizable kill rate. Remember that there was a strong push not so long ago (in Victoria, anyway) to ensure that household gas heaters weren't killers - and I lost my own gas fire heater in the process (the remains of it still stick into the wall where the air duct came into the room).
Delete"Friends, welcome to 2023.
I would have liked to start the year talking about something positive, but I can’t!
Over the Christmas break it struck me just how astonishing it is that we still allow homes to be heated by burning methane gas.
And we even build new homes incorporating this deadly and disgusting technology."
But hey, one day either (or both) of green and natural hydrogen will restore it for me.
GB - 40-some years back, the South Australian government of the day, took similar action on the gas 'fires' that were, in many ways, convenient to warm individual rooms in winter. I was in process of restoring a couple in our house - having tracked down a supplier of the ceramic 'candles' that were fitted in the 1920s - when the man with the meter contacted us to see if we would like a room test. Yes we did - and closed-off the individual fireplaces almost immediately afterwards.
DeleteMy recollection was that it was done primarily by educating the public - a person with a meter (AND - fully trained in operating it, and interpreting results) would offer to meter your home. What you did with that information was, I am fairly sure, entirely up to you, but if you had young family, you would think very carefully about continuing to use those 'fires' after you saw typical results.
Also as I recall, if you wished to sell your house and it still had such 'fires', you had to be able to provide test results, probably as part of the long-term South Australian 'Housing Improvement Act' requirements for sale. You had to show that your house complied with several basic requirements, or the title would carry an 'HIA Order' - which wouldn't do a lot for the price you might hope for.
Very similar, Chad except (i) not optional and (ii) if your gas heater failed the CO test, the inspector guy disabled it on the spot. Ours was quite sizable for heating a medium large lounge room and I guess we could have paid quite a bit to have a modern heater installed, but we really just couldn't quite be bothered.
DeleteSo now we dress warmer in winter and have an electric-oil mobile heater to bring the room temperature to 20degC. Though we do have to turn it on just a while before we want to occupy the lounge - which we do because that's where our one and only TV lives.
The article by Emily Oster that Killer mentions is at https://slate.com/technology/2023/01/gas-stoves-asthma-paper-headlines-kids.html and surprisingly for someone quoted by Killer, is very sensible. On gas heating by open flame, there is something worse - George Monbiot of The Guardian had an article recently about the evils of wood burning heaters. I suspect many of my fellow commenters grew up warming themselves in front of wood burners, it's a marvel we survived.
DeleteBut just think, Joe, of back when the only cooking we could do was by large open fires ... so I guess it was good for us back then that our wood burning was all out in the open with excellent atmospheric circulation. Except for those fired up in caves, of course.
DeleteBut indeed it was a good article on the matter.
https://cookerpedia.org/wiki/Cooker
ReplyDelete"In the Qanon community cult, the "gifted" people who takes Q's cryptic pronouncements (known to the cultists as breadcrumbs) then extrapolate and stretch them into semi-coherant ideas and conspiracies are lovingly known as Bakers. The cooker is a little lower on the social scale of far right nut jobs. The cooker doesn't really create any new conspiracies, the cooker contributes to the cause by merely believing every conspiracy they ever hear, no matter how far fetched or moronic the conspiracy might be."
The Killer continues his descent into madness, moaning about all and any change however justified or sometimes inconsequential. perhaps this explains it.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/genius-and-madness/200809/is-political-conservatism-mild-form-insanity
I do wonder at times whether we ("they"?) aren't melding and merging cause and effect.
Delete"'several psychological variables predicted political conservatism. Which variables exactly? In order of predictive power: death anxiety, system instability, dogmatism/intolerance of ambiguity, closed-mindedness, low tolerance of uncertainty, high needs for order, structure, and closure, low integrative complexity, fear of threat and loss, and low self-esteem."'
That's an awful lot of "psychological variables" to try to evaluate and score. Do they all mean the same thing to different people ? Do we have accuracy certified tests for each of those ? If we applied the same test to the same person two days in a row, would we get the same result ?
To say that "the core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and a justification of inequality.” tells us what, exactly ?
Maybe a 'tolerance of ambiguity' would allow us to see that people are capable of believing many different, and even contradictory, things all at the same time. So what was it about Trump ? Did he suddenly present a static world with lots of inequality in it to nearly half of the American (adult) population ?
I'm guessing that neither of us will check Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Sulloway to see if the methodology stands up but it sure ticks a few boxes in relation to the the more extreme conservative types I've encountered.
DeleteIt wasn't the methodology so much as the taxonomy, Bef: how much of what is presented as causes are really effects, and vice versa.
DeleteDo you think someone in reptile HQ will direct Killer's attention to the sanctimonious hand wringing of assorted contributors who have praised those altruistic extractors of good ole aussie coal, who ship it off to lesser countries, where it will be burned in ginormous power plants, and fed into amazing distribution networks, so the hapless peasant or semi-tribals (pick your continent as you wish) will not have to suffer all kinds of respiratory and neurological afflictions from having to cook their food over some or other kind of flame. Remember, even the stoves fuelled by 'gas' are not designed to deliver emissions from their combustion that minimise such impacts on the health of residents. No, the peasant, or semi-tribal, will be able to plug in to squeaky-clean electrickery, from squeaky-clean Oz coal.
ReplyDeleteDo try to keep up, Killer. Remember, it comes from the same pool of concern that required the Liar from the shire to 'stop the boats' - not because we did not recognise our signed obligation to accept persons fleeing persecution, oh dear me no - we were deeply concerned for their safety on the seas, at the hands of scurrilous people-smugglers.
This country overflows with concern for the poor of the rest of the world.
Dolly Downer is now spruiking “natural hydrogen” - https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8047378/ex-minister-downer-fronts-natural-hydrogen/?cs=27845 (paywalled)
DeleteIs this the 2023 version of “clean coal”?
That Killer piece of fap was nothing but a storm on a cooktop which necessitated some retaliatory nonsense...
ReplyDeleteThe Killer was learning to cook
So he opened the oven to look
When he smelt a gas leak
He lit a match for a peek
And now he's the roast - not the chook!
Heh.
Delete