Free trams!? Is there no end to the depth of the wickedness of these southern socialist perverts?
And speaking of perversion, the pond is lodged near the Regent Theatre where they're planning to do a re-run of Moulin Rouge! Talk about socialist decadence and the forsaking of Western Civilisation.
Western Civilisation? Is today the hole in the bucket man day? Sorry, the pond is on a break, but in its travels it did read Martin Brookes' profile of a notorious eugenicist, Extreme Measures, the Dark Visions and Bright Ideas of Francis Galton ...
A very easy read and the pond came across this (apologies for the roughness, the pond is away from PhotoShop for the nonce) ...
Question: if the ancient Greeks are superior to the Victorians, where does that leave our Henry? Are the ancient Greeks four grades, on average, above the intelligence of the hole in the bucket man?
Discuss, if desired, or submit a two hundred word essay proving that our Henry is as silly as the average Victorian. Shoddy thinking, useless rhetoric, and sandal-wearing syllogisms are allowed ...
"Question: if the ancient Greeks are superior to the Victorians, where does that leave our Henry?" Out the back worshipping Thucydides ? Anyway, the thing about the Greeks is the number and quality of things they did first: yes, formal philosophy and even more importantly, formal mathematics. Happy to be corrected, but did any other civilisation back then produce anything even remotely proximate to Euclid's Elements ?
ReplyDeleteAnd many thanks to the Arabs and Persians who rescued Greek mathematics from almost terminal obscurity and then went on to extend it - eg al-Khwarizmi and the creation of algebra, and not to ignore the concept of algorithms. But all things considered, us Euros and Scandinavians did go on to extend the whole concept, together with modern science, way past the originators.
Besides, it was always only a small part of the Greek society that had a paradise made by slavery and female servitude that enjoyed the "literary works and works of art". Most of them never even learned any mathematics - much like most peoples today.
For an explanation of that 'grades of intelligence', your last paragraph might be key, GB. So ancient Greek society 'had a paradise made by slavery and female servitude' where those free from such restrictions on evolutionary development flourished, and even recited 'severe' literary works (presumably to each other). At what other time in history were slavery and female servitude popular? Why in Victorian Britain, of course.
DeleteAnd to an extent in Rome, but neither the slavery nor the female servitude were quite so savage. Women could even inherit and own significant amounts of property.
DeleteOoops:
ReplyDelete"Poor result weighed down by lower print and digital advertising at News Corp Australia, a division that includes flagship newspaper The Australian".
News Corp profits dive 75% as Rupert Murdoch-owned company hints at AI future
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/aug/11/profits-dive-at-news-corp-as-media-group-hints-at-ai-future-plans-rupert-murdoch
Will there be anything left for you to come back to, DP?
Truely wonderful news - though I expect the creative accountants that must now make up a substantial portion of the New Corp workforce will be working overtime to present the figures in a favourable light. May the downward plummet continue.
Delete“(In these wokeist times, when few - if any - of those without the benefit of a Classical education recognise the absurdity of egalitarianism and instead propound the social media-driven absurdity that humanity’s development has been a steady, upward ascent, resulting in the sad reality that it is now a commonplace view that modern, politically correct attitudes are intrinsically morally and ethically superior to those of earlier generations. This approach is applied not just to the shining recent example of the Victorian Era, when so much of our current economic, legal and political infrastructure was refined, perfected and exported from the Western European world to the less fortunate indigenous peoples of other lands, but even to the Classical period, with some even venturing to claim that such minor factors as the commonplace nature of slavery, the lack of universal democracy and the chattel status of females are such as to render the Golden Age of Greece a les than ideal model for the modern era. That this absurdist attitude at once confines to the dustbin of history such influential thinkers and writers as Plato, Socrates, Thucydides, Tacitus, Livy, Marcus Aurelius, St Augustine, the Venerable Bede, Machiavelli, Castiglione, Erasmus, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, and of course, Francis Galton. While the latter’s commendable zeal for the example of Ancient Greece caused him to view his own society more critically than latter analysis might warrant, his disdain for the contents of the 19th Century railway bookstall - the guide to the typical reading matter of the Everyman of that period - would surely have risen to admiration were he so unfortunate as to foresee the 21st century equivalent - the puerile, largely. online leavings of the diseased and shuttered minds that, with a few noble exceptions, such as this masthead, make up so much of the modern “media sphere”, as some cal it. Furthermore…” (rambles onwards for several thousand more words, continued next week).
ReplyDeleteYou must be envious of Albo today, DP. There you are, imprisoned in Dictator Dan’s gulag, while he gets to breathe the fresh, clean air of freedom in Tamworth,
ReplyDeleteBefore it fades from our consciousness, are the reptiles going to sic Senior Investigations Reporter Sharri onto that wild mushroom caper? I'm sure she'd uncover some juicy tidbits.
ReplyDeleteHenry is 150 years old.
ReplyDeleteHenry missed the joke and swallowed "‘The Victorians actually invented the idea of putting stockings on piano legs as a joke about puritanical Americans’".
Ahaha!
"How did the Victorians Become a Reference Point for Joyless Prudery?
"Four experts debunk the myth of modestly covered piano legs and point the finger of blame at ungrateful modernists.
...
"Strachey and his circle, with their unconventional sexual relationships and modern, Freudian attitudes to pleasure, art and emotion, needed a foil against which their ideas could shine more brightly. The dull, hypocritical, obsessively religious and repressed ‘Victorians’ – the parents and grandparents of the Bloomsbury group – fitted the bill perfectly. Thanks to the success of their project, the word ‘Victorian’ has taken on connotations of prudery and repression. We now need periodic reminders that such a picture is woefully incomplete.
"‘The Victorians actually invented the idea of putting stockings on piano legs as a joke about puritanical Americans’"
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/head-head/how-did-victorians-become-reference-point-joyless-prudery
Henry does have an irony / joke gene. His epigenetics just won't update from the Victorian era. Dixed since 1870.
Dorothy may loan, via a Spectator, "The Loonpond Crispr-9" to re-jig (does Heney dance?) for humorous gene therapy. What fun we could have.
But! I hear you say.
Henry's joke gene does get;
"30 Delightful Puns From the Victorian Era" Impress your friends with these Victorian puns."
“Puniana is just a relentlessly eccentric bombardment of puns that goes on for hundreds upon hundreds of pages.”
[ SEE - Henry is just 150 years old AND "Henry is as silly as the average Victorian" ]
1. What is the difference between a beehive and a diseased potato?
- None at all; as one is a beeholder, the other a speck’d tatur.
2. What sort of musical instrument resembles a bad Continental hotel?
- A vile-inn. [You wouldn’t like a foreign vile-inn very long; you must return to your Bass-soon!]
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/648525/puns-victorian-era
Ahaha.
Henry chucked and said: "Superb humour. I nearly let my my boiled egg yolk get hard!"
Ahaha.
“The Henry Ergas big Book of Humour” would surely have to be one of those trick volumes that contains only blank pages.
DeleteThe Ancient Greeks!
ReplyDeleteThey didn't even have a word for Blue!
"Blue was by c. 1600 the distinctive color of the dress of servants, which may be the reason police uniforms are blue, a tradition Farmer dates to Elizabethan times. Blue as the color of police uniforms in U.S. is by 1853, when New York City professionalized its force. They previously had had no regular uniforms, only badges."
https://www.etymonline.com/word/blue
(Worth a read in full. Long entry )
"Courting disaster
JUL 27, 2022 |
By Henry Ergas
| The Spectator Australia VERIFIED
"I read James Allan’s comments on my column in the Australian about the US Supreme Court’s abortion decisions with considerable astonishment – and a fair measure of disappointment. The Spectator’s readers are owed a clarification. I never suggested that the court should not overturn its previous decisions."
The 2,000 word clarification is Henry's shtick. Not mine.
Henry does know the colour though.
"Title
"Blue arm"
2000
Artist
Richard Maloy
New Zealand
1977 –
Credit
"Gift of Henry Ergas 2009. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program."
https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/460.2009/
But as for economics?
"The report, comissioned by Malcolm Turnbull, found the Coalition's NBN would leave Australians $16 billion better off."
...
"The panel responsible for the report also included former Australian Communications Authority chairman Tony Shaw, economist Henry Ergas and former eBay Australia managing director, Alison Deans.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/labor-slams-biased-nbn-report-showing-coalition-plan-more-cost-effective/46ybme0mj
I'm feeling blue now.
I think we have the spirit of sandal-wearing in our great land of Girtby, as shown in the widespread adoption of the 'thong' footwear in much of the country, and the still-high prevalence of what are known as 'Roman' sandals across all ages, and genders, in South Australia. At least the South Australians show a preference for the traditional leather, rather than rubber, for that footwear.
ReplyDeleteOh dear, Chad - now I’m picturing Our Henry in a toga…..
Deleteand rubber thongs? Sorry - that might be difficult to erase from the memory banks. I know it is nigh impossible to free up bits of memory that retain the registration numbers of vehicles I once owned, and which have long since largely returned to their native earth as iron oxide, and telephone numbers that no longer connect.
DeleteAnd while I am here (more interesting things to do across the estate) - Rupert's supposed rival publisher, in the form of 'Financial Review', for this day, has an extract from a recent book, which claims to show that the Petrov piece of theatre gave no real advantage to Menzies in the election of 1954, and its timing was all just happenstance.
ReplyDeleteJust for the record - the author is Anne Henderson, companion in life, or at least in the Sydney Institute, with our Polonius, and the book was published by Connor Court.
Stutchbury continues to insinuate that part of the '9 papers' in his editorial purview, into the gap that Rupert's flagship is steadily drifting away from. Perhaps he should speed-up his efforts there - the demographic that is prepared to pay for such printing is, well - expiring, and not being replaced on the subscription lists.
Hmmm… even if the timing of the whole Petrov imbroglio were sheer coincidence (which, frankly, I don’t believe), there’s no doubt that Menzies took advantage of it for his political benefit. Of course he was helped in that regard by Evatt’s mishandling, particularly his naivety in seeking assurances from the USSR. As for claiming that it gave the Coalition no particular benefit - well, they were tracking poorly before it, yet went on to win the next election handsomely. No doubt Mrs Polonius cobbles together some sort of explanation, but it sounds like another effort to sanctify Ming, placing him above mere political scheming.
ReplyDeleteOur prime reptile denialists haven't been mentioning Carbon Capture and Storage of late, have they. Don't need it if you nuke the world, I guess. And just as well because it still isn't working anywhere: a race between CCS and SMR ?
ReplyDelete"Critics concerned energy department decision on fledgling technology will undermine efforts to phase out fossil fuels"
Experts fear US carbon capture plan is ‘fig leaf’ to protect fossil fuel industry
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/11/us-government-biden-carbon-capture