The pond regrets to advise that its reptile studies might be erratic in the next few weeks, but today at least the pond can play with a full hand, if not a full deck.
The pond was delighted to be advised of Tony Abbott and John Howard join Jordan Peterson-led group looking at ‘meaning of life’.
Sweeping aside thoughts of Monty Python, the pond reckons it can match that, or perhaps trump it, because the bromancer is on a winning streak these days ...
..Heinlein’s shift to the right took place over a decade, from 1948 to 1957. In the early 1950s, the Heinleins travelled around the world. The writer was already a Malthusian and a eugenicist, but the trip greatly exacerbated his demographic despair and xenophobia. “The real problem of the Far East is not that so many of them are communists, but simply that there are so many of them,” he wrote in a 1954 travel book (posthumously published in 1992). Even space travel, Heinlein concluded, wouldn’t be able to open enough room to get rid of “them.” Heinlein treated overpopulation as a personal affront.
Heinlein had caught a bad case of the Cold War jitters in the late 1940s. He accused liberal Democratic friends, notably the director Fritz Lang, of being Stalinist stooges. With Heinlein's great talent for extrapolation, every East-West standoff seemed like the end of the world. “I do not think we have better than an even chance of living, as a nation, through the next five years,” he wrote an editor in 1957. The USSR's Sputnik launch in 1957 and Eisenhower’s moves toward a nuclear test ban the following year both unhinged Heinlein, who called Ike a “slimy faker.” By 1961 Heinlein concluded that even though it was a “fascist organization,” the John Birch Society was preferable to liberals and moderate conservatives.
The turning point came in 1957. After that year, Heinlein's books were no longer progressive explorations of the future but hectoring diatribes lamenting the decadence of modernity. A recurring character in these books—variously named Hugh Farnham, Jubal Harshaw or Lazarus Long—is a crusty older man who's a wellspring of wisdom. “Daddy, you have an annoying habit of being right,” runs an actual bit of dialogue from Farnham’s Freehold (1964). In the worst of Heinlein's later books, daddy not only knows best, he often knows everything.
Back to the bromancer, because daddy bro knows best, rivers deep, philosophically high ...
At this point the pond often turns philosophical, even biblical ...The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.
There's certainly nothing new in the bromancer, especially as he runs with a mob that decided to price a tertiary liberal education out of the reach of many ...
Meanwhile, there was something in that Graudian story that caught the pond's eye ...
Never mind the inherent absurdity in the grouping or the nonsense that follows.
Look, there's a pro-Brexit hedge fund billionaire ... and that seems a good cue for a lament this day by ancient Troy ...
Was it only yesterday that the bromancer was proclaiming that Boris got some big things right in office, even bizarrely adding that he'd turned deep green in his net zero policies, and so perhaps might even have become a lentil terrorist ...
Enough of this ancient Troy heresy - is there a job opening at the ABC? - and it's on with the groaning.
These days the pond finds the obligatory groaning almost unreadable, but the Major caught a whiff of the tone, with his line "It's scary."
Every week Dame Groan lines up to be scary ... though the pond has discovered that repeated exposures to assorted Dame Groan boogeyman tend to reduce the level of scare ...
The internet again, and smart phones, rooning everything, because what's the point of having an app and being able to access the deepest thoughts of Dame Groan for a few shekels in the chairman's pocket?
And with all that, while the immortal Rowe is off-topic, the pond is pleased to go there as a closer ...
A new star has appeared in the reptile firmament - step forward from the shadows, Troy Bramston (oh Troy Troy where have you been - he’s been to London to see the omni-shambles).
ReplyDeleteBut Troy - who is to blame for Brexit? He calls Farage a ‘xenophobic, rabble-rousing fool’ but does not actually blame him for it. And he adopts the Farage line of argument, that Brexit has failed due to incompetence of Conservative leaders. Truth is that Brexit was the mission statement of the anti-EU conservatives (not unlike anti-Medicare liberals, it goes back decades to the very start), and David Cameron was too weak to stand up to them.
We’ve seen it all before when Johnny Howard gave licence to Pauline Hansen (our local Farage). We’ve seen it all before when Malcolm was too weak to stand up to Tony Abbott (and his half dozen acolytes) on energy policy.
So what is the point of all this, Troy? Are you taking the lead of the Bromancer and just scribbling to make up the word count?
Troy is right that the Conservative leaders have been woeful (though May tried to rescue the situation by proposing a non-EU member trade agreement, only to be torpedoed by Johnson who was pursuing his glory), so the point of the article is to join the pile-on against Johnson, thereby perhaps eliciting some sympathy for Sunak (or his successor?) who is left to sort the mess, while at the same time having little positive to say for Starmer.
In his heart of hearts, Troy is still ridgy-didge reptile, and would like to see a Conservative miracle at the next general election. But he has seen it all before, dismal polling amongst millennials, and others, leading to a good old-fashioned hiding. How apposite, DP, to refer to him as ancient Troy, watching history repeat itself. Perhaps he fancies his chances to takeover the mantle of hole-in-the-bucket Henry? AG.
Here comes the Bro: "It has often been the case that we think a new technology will destroy or transform everything, yet it never seems to happen." Mebbe not, but look at what the "new technologies" of machine guns, tanks and poison gas achieved in WWI and aeroplanes and submarines managed in WWII. Not bad efforts even if they did mostly affect those closest to the technology's creators. Then we get to: "As a species we've long had a fear that something will destroy us. For a couple of centuries we've worried we might destroy ourselves." And now, after the failure of atomic weapons to do the job, the world-wide consequences of the industrial revolution are coming together to produce global heating, so we're finally giving it the best shot we can manage.
ReplyDeleteOh sigh, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is not one of the best of Heinlein's never particularly great scifi novels and in the course of pursuing the "libertarian revolt" (and it had to be "libertarian", this is Heinlein), HOLMES IV managed to 'destroy' itself. Which the Bro, of course, represents as it benignly resuming a "wise, though enigmatic, silence". Oh yeah, But Of Course.
But then: "Heinlein treated overpopulation as a personal affront" and so we all should, even though the human population back then, say 1955, was only just about 2.8 billion. Mind you, I still think a couple of his shorties - By His Bootstraps, 1941 and especially -- All you Zombies, 1959 - are still readable. Mainly because they are short. Stranger in a Strange Land 1961 was as good as he ever got.
Anyway, moving along: "It's still not clear that AI will ever actually achieve general intelligence - that is, the ability to reason." Personally I wonder if AI will ever even begin to replicate that all-time great accomplishment of some humans: creating mathematics. Just for a reference, read this:
Has a mathematician solved the ‘invariant subspace problem’? And what does that even mean?
https://theconversation.com/has-a-mathematician-solved-the-invariant-subspace-problem-and-what-does-that-even-mean-206859
Yeah, I'm not sure I get it either.
Yeah, as I comment below GB, Heinlein’s novels got pretty bad. These days I can only enjoy some of his short fiction; “By His Bootstraps” and “All You Zombies” are indeed two of the great time paradox stories. A few years ago I began to revisit some of the classic SF writers whose work I’d devoured 40 to 50 years earlier. Some authors I appreciated a lot more than I had originally, some quite a bit less, but Heinlein I found largely un-rereadable.
DeleteYes, there's not much Heinlein that I could read (or re-read) these days. Probably not even Stranger. But he was just right for Cambell's Astounding back in its day, before it mutated into Analog.
DeletePS did you ever read Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity ? Now that was a real scifi novel, even greater than Childhood's End.
DeleteOccurred to me, as I was doing something repetitive on the tractor this afternoon, that perhaps the Bro. might tell Jordan Peterson (or his consultants - Winston and the Muncher) that the answer to all the significant questions about life, the universe and everything was determined some years ago. Would save the funding billionaires a bit of chump change.
DeleteI certainly did read “Mission of Gravity”, GB, along with several other Hal Clement. His strange alien lifeforms seemed much more human than most of the Reptiles.
DeleteI know he was recently gassed in London so that might explain his even more than usual deluded state. I think we are witnessing some kind of HAL sequence as the bro slowly loses what little grip on reality he had. He's jumping topics like an idiot savant on speed...it's all quite entertaining actually!
DeleteI frequently find myself doing repetitive things, Chad: eating, drinking, defecating and urinating. You'd think some eternal omniscient and omnipotent creature could do a better job of design than that, wouldn't you ? Well I do, fwiw.
DeleteKez, I think we might be seeing a classic case of 'intimations of mortality' - there's nothing quite like coming close to death to stir up one's life. And I don't think the Bro is old enough to have come to such thoughts naturally, as it were.
Our Dame had a brief flurry of what she might have thought was
ReplyDelete‘productivity’ a couple of years back, when she composed what we now recognise as one of her standard columns - since then, rinse, repeat. This demonstrates why industrial productivity is not improving at a rate that would help contain inflation in the ‘produce-consume’ economy we live in - so many corporations coasting along on ideas of several decades ago.
Of course, she recognises the importance of the ‘aorta’ - ‘aorta do something about productivity’ - but still without the smallest hint of how to do that. Her comments in parenthesis - award flexibility, kinds of bargaining - yada yada - are not complete in themselves. She should be able to remember, from her researching time, that gains in process and procedure come from a work force that, respected for its understanding and experience, has ways to communicate ideas to management, with genuine feedback. In how many corporations is ‘human resources’ about everything but treating humans as resources? As often as not, the first encounter most employees have with ‘HR’ is when they seek to question pay or conditions, and are sent on their way, or when their services are summarily terminated.
Oh, and ‘HR’ is also the scapegoat when very large corporations are found to have been serially underpaying their workers.
This rather shows why our Treasurer need not pay attention to anything coming out of the Productivity Commission. Our Dame was a Productivity Commissioner, and it is difficult to trace any gains in productivity from her tenure there.
She sure yabbers and jabbers a long, repetitive column doesn't she. And yet still displays about zero understanding of 'productivity'. We've seen inflation running somewhere around 2 per cent for quite a few years now, so, does that mean that the rate of around 2 per cent in wage rises every year simply drives the inflation for next year that then drives the wage rise for that year ? And on and on and repeat and repeat ad infinitum ?
DeleteNot that I mind because my age pension simply goes up as inflation goes up, but I have to confess a complete failure of any productivity increase on my part. Nope, I just get one year older every year and sooner or later I'll need to be supported even more with increased aged care. What's the productivity increase that pays for that ?
Some things about "productivity" that maybe we all should note:
Delete"The official figures show labour productivity (output per hour worked) falling. Although it usually increases, and increased very fast in the 1990s, GDP per hour worked has been falling since March 2022. Since then, it’s down 4.6%.
But it’s the sort of thing that would be expected when there’s a surge in employment. All other things being equal, the more hours that are worked, the less GDP per hour should be.
In the past year, hours worked have surged an extraordinary 5% to an all-time high. When a cafe puts on an extra staff member it doesn’t immediately mean it’ll sell more food. When a childcare centre or a school puts on extra staff it mightn’t produce more at all."
And then great words of wisdom:
"Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman famously said
'productivity isn’t everything, but in the long run it is almost everything. A country’s ability to improve its standard of living over time depends almost entirely on its ability to raise its output per worker.
'"
Don’t blame workers for falling productivity – we’re not the ones holding it back
https://theconversation.com/dont-blame-workers-for-falling-productivity-were-not-the-ones-holding-it-back-207594
So, Paul K: does that mean we have to keep on increasing "output per worker" until everybody has the same living standard as today's billionaires ? It all sounds like bullshat to we.
DP said "Look, there's a pro-Brexit hedge fund billionaire" yet it is worse tha just a billionaire & JP.
ReplyDeleteRetire at 75! **
They are all fundamental conservative wolves in sheep's clothing.
Alliance for Responsible Citizenship gets funding from "Dubai-based Legatum Capital" ..."exclusive to the zone, and by its own court system" ... "The freezone houses financial institutions, and wealth funds" ... ""regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority, ... by its own court system, DIFC Courts, separate from the Emirate of Dubai's legal system and that of the federal government of the UAE.[3]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai_International_Financial_Centre
Freezone, Universal Credit, nuclear families, "$340 million in direct, indirect or enhancing grants" for Rio Tinto", and god!
Employment for fundies. Zombies such as:
- Tony Abbott
- Little Johnny
- Andrew Hastie!
- Anderson! (a zombie?)
"Anderson told Guardian Australia he joined the group at the urging of the UK House of Lords member Lady Philippa Stroud." See Phillipa "universal credit" & "increase the state pension age to 75" below.
- Amanda Stoker
- Prof Robin Batterham**
- Bjørn Lomborg
-----
Legatum Institute funds;
" the opportunity to pursue the opportunities that we have been blessed to pursue.”
...
"“We posit, instead, that men and women of faith and decisiveness, made in the image of God, can arrange their affairs with care and attention so that abundance and opportunity could be available for all.”
...
"..., stable heterosexual marriages sanctified by the community”.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jun/13/tony-abbott-and-john-howard-join-jordan-peterson-led-group-looking-at-meaning-of-life
Legatum "In 2006, Christopher founded Dubai-based Legatum Capital as an independent venture
"Legatum is a private, multibillion-dollar investment firm ...In April 2012, Legatum acquired its own building in the Dubai International Finance Centre.
"Chandler committed US$50 million to build the Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT in 2008.[12] The Center has partnered with the MasterCard Foundation and other organizations to cultivate leadership, entrepreneurship, and innovation to benefit vulnerable populations.[13]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Chandler_(businessman)
Philippa Stroud, Baroness ... founded the Centre for Social Justice **... "2019 - A report called on the government to increase the state pension age to 75.[13]" Wikipedia
"After the 2010 General Election, Stroud was appointed as a Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. This came as billions of pounds were stripped from the social security budget, and so she worked to help create and implement the Government's welfare reforms, including the launch of universal credit."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippa_Stroud,_Baroness_Stroud
Baroness Stroud helps the poor!
"In theory,...But reductions in funding and changes to withdrawal rates left commentators on either side of the debate to question whether it would actually make work pay. ... Polly Toynbee wrote "Universal credit is simple: work more and get paid less".[14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Credit
** Prof Robin Batterham.
"In May 1999 Australian Prime Minister John Howard appointed Batterham to the position of Chief Scientist, ... advising him on issues, including energy policy. For the remainder of the work week he worked as Managing Director of Research and Technological Development for Rio Tinto. Batterham resigned as Chief Scientist in 2006."
"[Bob] Brown told the Senate that during Batterham's term as Chief Scientist, which commenced in 1999, the government had cut back funding for renewable energy but provided "some $340 million in direct, indirect or enhancing grants" for Rio Tinto.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Robin_Batterham
Amanda Stoker? I suppose, when one is casting for such a production, it is wise to remember that stock character, the ingenue. For now, rather than searching for the meaning of life, she seems to be spending almost all her time searching for nomination to a winnable coalition seat. While she made it into the Senate as nominee to fill a casual vacancy, she did not get the approval of the actual voters when her time came at an election.
DeleteIn my yoof I read massive amounts of science fiction; and as the genre was a lot younger and smaller then, and it was comparatively easy to read most of the work of the “Greats”, that included most of the works of Heinlein (it helped that he wrote a number of novels specifically for the Juvenile market, the first major SF writer to do so). While I enjoyed his work, there were always elements that made me uneasy; even a lot of his better work had elements of racism, a love of authoritarianism ams the early versions of his annoying “infallible men who know everything” characters. Even less savoury elements, such as an ease with incest and very young women being sexually attracted to the aforementioned Great Old Men, didn’t turn up until later. The warning lights really hit red with “Starship Troopers” - unlike the satirical film adaptation, Heinlein meant its praise of a military-dominated society seriously. His writing ability also began to deteriorate -“The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” is pretty much his last readable novel.
ReplyDeleteThere’s been a lot of critical reevaluation of Heinlein and his work in the last few decades. While he’s still widely read - though probably not so much by younger readers - it’s been a long time since anyone but a few aged fans and the Libertarian fringe considered him to be “the greatest of all SF Writers”. The fact that the Bro refers to him as such is just further evidence - as if it’s needed - that Greg remains firmly rooted in the 1950s.
As for the Bro’s sudden interest in AI - any chance he’s already been replaced by one? He’s been awfully prolific of late.
Yeah, still not quite sure about an AI-rendition of Grand Master Greg, pseudo-Marian apparitions, and the Western Can(n)on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SX2qs8-eNk .
DeleteMarina in good form today:
ReplyDeleteSad, confused, deluded: spare a thought for the friends of Boris Johnson at this difficult time
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/13/boris-johnson-nadine-dorries-tory-infighting
And just for a little bit of perspective, in case you're feeling better than you should:
Quarter in UK believe Covid was a hoax, poll on conspiracy theories finds
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/13/quarter-in-uk-believe-covid-was-a-hoax-poll-on-conspiracy-theories-finds
Now here's a question I've never thought to ask - how about you ?
ReplyDeleteWould a Bridge From Australia to the U.S. Be Cheaper Than Flying?
https://www.msn.com/en-au/travel/news/would-a-bridge-from-australia-to-the-u-s-be-cheaper-than-flying/ar-AA1csOTb?