The pond realises that some correspondents have become a tad anxious at the news and the studies that keep pouring in, and appear everywhere except reptile lizard Oz la la land.
There was this, Repeating climate denial claims makes them seem more credible, Australian-led study finds, (Graudian) and as the pond repeatedly repeats reptile climate denialist claims, that gives the pond incredible credibility.
Then there was this, Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of US Congress (Graudan)
Then the pond was watching the weather news on the ABC, full of fancy graphs, and there it was on that other ABC, 2024 on track to become Earth's warmest year on record despite slight global temperature drop: Copernicus, The last time Earth recorded a cooler-than-average year was in 1976.
The Conversation in particular has been full of it, with First map of vegetation across Antarctica reveals a battle for the continent’s changing landscape.
Or echoing the Graudian, with Repeating aids believing: climate misinformation feels more true through repetition - even if you back climate science.
Dammit, must the pond keep repeating itself to score even higher credibility?
Then there was that scurrilous article in The Conversation by a bunch of science toffs, ‘Wake-up call to humanity’: research shows the Great Barrier Reef is the hottest it’s been in 400 years.
Sure it was published in Nature with a lot of high falutin' words and footnotes in the abstract:
Mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) in Australia between 2016 and 2024 was driven by high sea surface temperatures (SST) (1). The likelihood of temperature-induced bleaching is a key determinant for the future threat status of the GBR (2), but the long-term context of recent temperatures in the region is unclear. Here we show that the January–March Coral Sea heat extremes in 2024, 2017 and 2020 (in order of descending mean SST anomalies) were the warmest in 400 years, exceeding the 95th-percentile uncertainty limit of our reconstructed pre-1900 maximum. The 2016, 2004 and 2022 events were the next warmest, exceeding the 90th-percentile limit. Climate model analysis confirms that human influence on the climate system is responsible for the rapid warming in recent decades. This attribution, together with the recent ocean temperature extremes, post-1900 warming trend and observed mass coral bleaching, shows that the existential threat to the GBR ecosystem from anthropogenic climate change is now realized. Without urgent intervention, the iconic GBR is at risk of experiencing temperatures conducive to near-annual coral bleaching (3), with negative consequences for biodiversity and ecosystems services. A continuation on the current trajectory would further threaten the ecological function (4) and outstanding universal value (5) of one of Earth’s greatest natural wonders.
Oh there were graphs in the attached alarmist video clip ...
For Pete's sake, just relax, the Riddster and Lloydie of the Amazon have got this.
Look how well Lloydie's piece has aged ...
Resilient! The resilient reef, always bouncing back...
And that's how Lloydie of the Amazon and the pond retain an incredible credibility, though Lloydie has become an incredible slacker of late, with that and a posting about Twiggy back on 18th July amongst his few recent gnomic insights.
And now with that all settled, and the planet as safe as an increasingly hot tot like a bug in a warming rug, can we just get on with the day's real business?
Look at that, what tremendous events this day in commentary competition ...
Sadly the craven Craven finished out of a place - the pond recently did Gaza and anyone who takes a view on genocide should of course be sacked immediately.
Instead gold went to the hole in the bucket man, silver went to Killer and the bronze to Dame Groan for just being there ... so let's get on with the awards ceremony ...
Hmm, that chintzy snap at the start of the hole in the bucket man's piece reminded the pond of other chintz, a certain blending of Graeco-Roman pap and fascism...
The reptile video clips weren't up to that level - what a tragedy Nine got the rights - so they could be downsized and rendered inert ... safe to the touch ...
Stripped of his visual distractions, our Henry could go on to slobber in fine Ergasian style ...
Critical voices? Be damned to that. To the victor goes the spoils ...
Sorry, that's a tad too recent for our Henry ...
For some reason, the pond was reminded of that quote in The History of Violence ... Joey: I'm here to make peace. Tell me what I got to do to make things right. Richie: You could die, Joey.
Indeed, you could die, albeit in a glorious way ...
...competing in the games could be dangerous.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 50 BC-c. 40 AD) describes how a father lost both sons in the “pancration”, a type of combat sport that was a violent mixture of boxing and wrestling:
A man trained his two sons as pancratists, and presented them to compete at the Olympic games. They were paired off to fight each other. The youths were both killed together and had divine honours decreed to them. (here)
Perhaps the hole in the bucket man has an elective affinity with death, or perhaps he's just infatuated with responsible citizenship ...
The final gobbet already? Never mind, he's given us his very best effort ...
Oh indeed, merit all the way, lodestars and such like, and the distant roar of the best that the Western world had to offer in the twentieth century ...
And so to silver medalist Killer, though to be fair just a nanosecond separated Killer's sprint from that of the hole in the bucket man ...
The reptiles honoured Killer's piece with some juicy snaps, including a couple of wildly radical Commie swine and preverts, and Shady Vance and Ronnie Raygun, and reducing them down to a small size is no reflection on their intrinsic appeal ...
The terrified of masks and vaccines Killer was on a roll because he just loves himself some of that good old RFK Jr. science ...
It was by coincidence that the pond had just come off watching John Oliver roasting RFK Jr. as
"A full-blown menace", (as reported in the Graudian):
...While Kennedy goes “out of his way to seem reasonable and open-minded” on more mainstream podcasts, he still has a lot of extreme views, such as refusing to drop an early theory of how Aids began, blaming it on the use of poppers and gay men “burning the candle at both ends”.
He has also frequently attacked Anthony Fauci, claiming the immunologist wanted to call Aids a virus so he could profit from drugs to treat it. Oliver said RFK Jr’s Aids denialism has had “real damage”, as has his belief that psychiatric drugs lead to school shootings.
Oliver blasted RFK Jr for having “so many confident assertions” on unchallenged platforms, showing footage of him on an extremist podcast saying he would tell a random mother with a baby not to get it vaccinated.
“You don’t get to say ‘I’m not anti-vaxx’ then wander around the woods telling people not to vaccinate their babies like you’re some red-pilled version of Smoky the Bear,” Oliver said.
Kennedy has also pushed the “bullshit” theory that autism is a result of vaccinations, something that is “clearly absurd” while showing “a certain cruelty” toward autistic people.
“There is an earned distrust of pharma and medical authorities,” Oliver said, while admitting that it is “comforting at a frightening time” to believe certain things Kennedy might say.
Kennedy’s popularity surged during the early days of Covid as there was “a lot of uncertainty back then” but his views “caused real harm to real people”. He provided the introduction to a debunked book linking the deaths of young people to Covid vaccines. Multiple children and teens mentioned had no relation to the vaccine in any way.
“The idea of RFK is appealing but so many of the reasons to support him do not stand up to the slightest of scrutiny,” Oliver said.
Naturally Killer isn't interested in offering the slightest scrutiny ... nor is he capable of any logic, though driving five hundred miles for an abortion might be just his cup of tea ...
The pond regrets that had already mentioned Clare Malone's lengthy profile of RFK Jr. in
The New Yorker, What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want? (paywall)
Malone mentioned some of the best of RFK Jr.'s thinking ...
With the arrival of COVID, Kennedy’s reach exploded. He churned out books: “The Real Anthony Fauci,” “Vax-UnVax: Let the Science Speak,” and “A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and Covid.” In the summer of 2021, as COVID vaccines were rolling out, Children’s Health Defense promoted its film “Medical Racism: The New Apartheid,” which was seemingly aimed at Black Americans. During the early weeks of Kennedy’s Presidential campaign, the New York Post published a video in which Kennedy said that COVID was “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people” and that “the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.” Researchers in China, Russia, and the U.S., he went on, are developing “ethnic bioweapons” to “target people by race.” (Kennedy said that his remarks were taken out of context.)
Kennedy has long been drawn to questionable science. But some of his former close friends have grown alarmed at the changes they’ve seen in him more recently. Last summer, Kennedy posted a video of himself shirtless, doing pushups, a sunburn blooming across his well-defined back and torso. The implication was that his then rivals, Trump, at seventy-seven, and Biden, at eighty, were comparatively old and enfeebled. On a podcast last year, Kennedy said that he was taking testosterone-replacement therapy under the guidance of a doctor. One of the side effects of that treatment is increased muscle mass. But the longtime friend told me, “It’s almost like he’s been body-snatched. I look at pictures of him, and he’s unrecognizable. His sense of humor is all but gone. There’s this anger.”
Say what, we're already at Killer's final gobbet? By golly, these sprints and learning experiences go quickly these days ...
So what did the much better informed, mask and vaccine fearing Killer learn?
Why, that he'd be a good publisher of Rolling Stone ...
...In 2005, Kennedy approached his friend Jann Wenner, the co-founder of Rolling Stone, with an idea for a story about what he said were links between vaccines and autism. Kennedy was well liked at the magazine; two years earlier, he had written an article on the environmental movement. “He’s an incredibly charismatic presence,” Will Dana, the former managing editor of the magazine, said. “One time, he gave this speech in the Rolling Stone conference room about environmentalism, and I swear to God he practically had everyone in tears.” Still, Dana went on, he could display a certain sense of entitlement. “He came in one day carrying a bucket with a little injured baby bird,” Dana said. “So then we have our meeting, and we do our thing, and suddenly he’s, like, ‘I gotta go. Um, can you get one of your interns to take the bird to the vet?’ ” (When asked to comment, Kennedy said, “This is a lie.”)
Kennedy’s previous work for the magazine was sometimes problematic. “He would turn in these manuscripts, and it’s barely exaggerating to say, like, eighty to ninety per cent of the facts would be incorrect, even the simple ones,” Dana said. “It’s because he’s not a journalist. He’s a lawyer. He’s more about making arguments than about trying to communicate the truth.” The former friend remembered attending a dinner party with Kennedy and finding his case against vaccines persuasive and nimble, even though the former friend knew that the facts were wrong. “People think he’s an idiot—he’s not an idiot,” the person said. But the vaccine story for Rolling Stone was riddled with errors. Eric Bates, an editor at the magazine, tried to slow-roll the piece, but Wenner pushed it through. (Wenner said that, if he had known that the piece was “flawed that deeply,” he wouldn’t have published it.)
The article, titled “Deadly Immunity”—which stated that “the link between thimerosal and the epidemic of childhood neurological disorders is real”—required a number of major corrections. Kennedy falsely reported the amount of ethylmercury that infants receive in their vaccinations and misrepresented the transcript of a meeting of doctors in order to support his thesis that they were conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry to push unsafe vaccines. The magazine staff agonized over the fallout, but Kennedy seemed unfazed. “Bobby never had a moment of doubt,” a former staffer told me. “He was already convinced in the overarching argument, so the loss of any one piece or all of the pieces of data didn’t put a dent in that.”
Kennedy told me that, in the aftermath, he stepped away from the vaccine issue. “I did the Rolling Stone article, and I felt like I’d done my part,” he said. “Things kind of calmed down.” A year later, he published a piece for the magazine suggesting that George W. Bush stole the 2004 election. In Kennedy’s telling, he was dragged back into the vaccine debate in 2011, when Salon—which had co-published “Deadly Immunity”—retracted and removed the story from its Web site. “By then, I was watching the science on this issue, on neurological harms from certain vaccines,” Kennedy told me.
In 2014, he published “Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak,” an expansion on his refuted claims in Rolling Stone that vaccines contain dangerous amounts of ethylmercury. He told the Washington Post that friends and colleagues had urged him not to pursue the project. But, when we spoke in Atlanta, he seemed to suggest that his honor had been besmirched, forcing him to respond. “At that point,” he said, “it was like a declaration of war from pharma.”
But then the pond only repeats vaccine denialism and bad science because that gives the pond that much more credibility when it comes to a measles epidemic or the return of polio or the latest wave of Covid ... whatever you do, please develop a Killer fear of masks and vaccines and all will be well ...(refer all complaints to the pond's lawyer, who can file it with Great Barrier Reef correspondence)...
And so to the bronze medallist, and the pond means no disrespect, because Dame Groan is a stayer and a marathon item, up there with nattering "Ned".
Others might want to spend time with quark or Quiggin, but there's always room for a Groaning at the pond ...
The reptiles provided only one video distraction ...
... but there was some stunning news in relation to the lizard Oz graphics department.
They'd hit on a new angle, a new way of livening up Dame Groan, breathing life into the corpse, as the saying goes, with a fancy format for quotes ...
It so happened that the pond's favourite cartoonists were also in on the game ... and so the pond could match the lizard Oz graphics department ...
What about actually commenting on the Groaning?
Sorry, the pond always leaves that for correspondents ... but surely they'll be stimulated by the sight of all those handsomely presented quotes ...
By golly, the pond can match that, with pole vaulting all the go ...
The pond was devastated that this was the last of the quotes ... just look at those bright red quotation marks and the sweet eggshell blue ...
Under the pump?
By golly, they cruelly snatched away c. $10 million, leaving him a measly pittance of c. #14 million for the year (or
so it says at the ABC) ...
Is this the new way to tackle unseemly inflation?
And so Dame Groan's Groaning petered out, with nary a quote in the final gobbet, and only a few gloomy words ...
Surely it serves other purposes, not least the chance for Dame Groan to rail yet again at unbecoming Labor governments, a splendid variation on unbecoming unrenewables and unbecoming, but always coming, difficult, pesky furriners ...
And so, by the end of this commentary competition, the pond didn't know whether to celebrate Uncle Elon ... who, lets face it, is no match for Henry, Killer and Dame Groan ...
... or go couch surfing ...
Mixed in with his usual Classics Illustrated-like history summary, the hole in the bucket man accidentally raises a serious question - merit vs quotas. Are Reptile columnists selected for publication on the basis of their merit and originality as writers and thinkers? Or are they picked because of the need to fill the lizard Oz pages with the quota (100%) of reactionary ravings required to mirror the views of the Chairman Emeritus and Junior?
ReplyDeleteStill, for once Our Henry managed to write about Classical Greece without mentioning Thucydides.
A good question, Anony, but still, even if they are all selected for their 'reactionary ravings' there would still be some kind of merit rating, yes ? However, in reading The Oz's collection of ravers, I'm led to think that if they're the most meritorious, what do the other Murdoch publications get ... well there is Rita Panicky, I guess, and "beautiful" Daisy Cousens and Sharri Markson. We wouldn't want to mention Andrew Bolt here, would we.
DeleteYes, an excellent note, Anon, though puzzling to the point of perplexity. Our Henry could have meditated on the usefulness of floggings, bannings and killing the umpire, and bunging on a war...
DeleteThucydides, Xenophon, and Lichas: Were the Spartans Excluded from the Olympic Games from 420 to 400 bc?
https://academic.oup.com/book/7219/chapter-abstract/151877403?redirectedFrom=fulltext
This chapter examines the consequences of one of the most tense and dramatic moments in the history of the ancient Greek Olympic Games: the exclusion of the Spartans from the sanctuary of Olympia and from the Olympic Games of 420 bc by the people of Elis who controlled the games and the festival; and the flogging, by the Eleian umpires, of the distinguished Spartan athlete Lichas son of Arkesilas when he crowned his charioteer publicly. The analysis focuses on one aspect of the 420 episode: its bearing on a war fought some twenty years later — the war of about 400 bc between Sparta and Elis, described by Xenophon in the Hellenica (3. 2. 21–3) in terms of revenge for Elean behaviour...
Or he could have celebrated nudity, featured in the opening of Olympia, and urged its return ... let's start doing it in the buff ...
https://www.aei.org/articles/thucydides-in-london-would-the-ancient-greeks-approve-of-our-modern-olympics/
Thucydides in London: Would the Ancient Greeks Approve of Our Modern Olympics?
When I was a boy and first learned about the Greek penchant for performing athletic feats while perfectly naked, I was puzzled by this strange lack of modesty. I vaguely attributed their shortage of clothing to their primitive times—perhaps people back then just didn’t know that you weren’t supposed to run around naked in public. Later, when I read the great Greek historians, I discovered that the Greeks were perfectly aware that other people made it a point not to go around butt naked. The Greeks had a name for these people—they called them barbarians. These were people, like the Persians, who did not speak euphonious Greek, but who, when they opened their mouths, could only stammer incomprehensibly “bar-bar-bar”—hence the origin of the term barbarian.
The ancient Greeks were perfectly aware that the barbarians found nudity to be utterly shameful. They were also aware that their own ancestors had originally felt the same way about nudity. According to the usually reliable Thucydides, the practice of athletic nudity was originally introduced by the Spartans:
"[The Spartans] were the first to play games naked, to take off their clothes openly, and to rub themselves down with olive oil after their exercise. In ancient times, even at the Olympic Games, the athletes used to wear coverings for their loins, and indeed this practice was still in existence not very many years ago. Even today, many foreigners, especially in Asia, wear these loincloths for boxing matches and wrestling bouts. Indeed, one could point to a number of other instances where the manners of the ancient Hellenic world are very similar to the manners of foreigners today."
Note the smug tone of Thucydides’s remark. Yes, we Greeks were once like the barbarians—foreigners—but now we are modern and unhampered by the irrational shame so characteristic of the barbarian.
If nudity was good enough for the Spartans - so the usually reliable Thucydides says - then it should be good enough for bucket repair men ...
"Climate change deniers make up nearly a quarter of US Congress (Graudan)" which is most probably a significantly lower percentage than in the general public.
ReplyDeleteKiller’s article might not tell us anything new about RFK Jr’s views, but it certainly gives some insights into Killer’s own strange mind.
ReplyDeleteIt’s unsurprising that one conspiracist crackpot hails another as a bold, principled independent mind who demonstrates the shortcomings of the two party system. Others might assess Kennedy’s independent candidacy as evidence that, for all its fault, that system usually manages to weed out obsessive nutters who seek the nomination of the major parties, such as former Democratic candidate RFK Jr (I say “usually” because, well, Trump…).
As an economist himself, it’s not surprising that Killer laments the lack of economists in the management of medical programs; however his claim that vaccines aren’t tested via placebos is simply another manifestation of his anti-vax paranoia. The placebo group is that portion of the target population which refuses vaccination, and the relative impacts upon that group and the vaccinated determines the efficacy of the vaccine.
Of course Killer himself laments that he can’t vote for Kennedy himself. While the USA is probably grateful for that, why doesn’t Killer try and persuade his hero to migrate here, become a citizen and stand for office? I can think of a couple of political parties where he’d feel right at home. Perhaps his cousin, the currentUS ambassador to Oz, could help facilitate the process?
In shifting his Olympic perspective from ancient Greece to recent Australia, I assumed our Henry would mention J Malcolm Fraser, and the celebration in 1980. Few actions better characterised the ineptitude of Fraser than his bumbling 'guidance' to those who had qualified for the Oz team, on what they should do in what he considered the national interest. If I might adapt from Shakespeare - "And it was all for nothing! For Afghanistan, . . . ! What was Afghanistan to him, or he to Afghanistan, that he should weep for her?"
ReplyDeleteOur Dame Groan instructs us that, for three decades, the Reserve Bank has been required to target inflation. More specifically, within a (wholly arbitrary) band of 2 to 3 per cent (the per annum is superfluous, if you think about it). As she puts it, the bank is tasked with adjusting the cash rate to achieve this goal.
ReplyDeleteI will happily renew my offer of $1 000 to the Dame’s nominated charity (that is, if she believes in charity - many of her ilk state that it is inimical to economic progress) for every time she can show us the word ‘inflation’ in the Reserve Bank Act 1959. Actually, I would offer an easy $100 if she could show that she had read that Act in sufficient detail to assure herself that the word ‘inflation’ does not appear in it.
Her comments are reminders that largely self-styled economic commentators, particularly sitting opposite the Treasury benches in our several parliaments, believe there is advantage to their side of politics in chanting the word. No doubt the members of the Board of the Reserve Bank take up that chant, for the same reasons, so the Governor has to do the regular ‘cosplay’ before the media about that.
In fact, the Act states that it is DUTY- yep, a word with some weight - of the Board to ensure that the monetary and banking policy of the Bank is directed to the greatest advantage of the people of Australia, and that its powers are exercised to best contribute to
(a) the stability of the currency of Australia ;
(b) the maintenance of full employment in Australia ; and
(c) the economic prosperity and welfare of the people of Australia .
‘Stability of the currency’ involves a lot more than trying to fiddle inflation numbers. If you look at the structure of the Reserve Bank, you will get an impression of how wide a task that is. If you want to know why ‘stability’ is so important, just look at the effects in nations which have seen their actual currency either pummelled by circumstances, or manipulated by other nations. That is when you look in your garden shed for tulip bulbs to eat.
No doubt, one outcome of the media chanting ‘inflation, inflation’ is that the Board need not fret about duties (b) and (c) at their meetings. There won’t be time.
When one thinks about all the 'wingnut welfare' jobs and positions that have been given unto the Groany, one wonders just how to notify Holey Henry about her total lack of various attributes he believes to be essential, but specifically about her lack of any claim to "merit".
DeleteSo according to the Graudian, Murdoch media is “open to offers” for Foxtel. First thing that springs to mind - is this code for “Help, we’re desperate for cash - somebody please take this money-pit off our hands”. Second thought- what would this mean for Sky News? Would the Chairman Emeritus and Junior really give up such a propaganda machine, despite its feeble viewing figures?
ReplyDeleteNice reply to Holely Henry by you, DP, but I'll chuck in my two bobs worth anyway:
ReplyDeleteOk, here we go: Holely Henry would like to lecture us on the virtues of "ambition, determination, discipline, and, above all, merit". Yeah sure, Henry: nobody who has ever displayed these qualities has ever been anything but a fine example for the human race. The fact that such as Hitler displayed all of those qualities in greater degree than most of his contemporaries just goes to show us how unspecified ambition, determination and discipline, and not to forget undefined "merit", have benefitted the human race.
Has anybody ever mentioned the concept of 'abstract virtues' to you, Mr Ergas ? One wouldn't get a pass in a year 9 history essay for a load of codswallop so empty of intelligible meaning.
And so, as even Henry admits, that students "...were being taught how 'to break the law legally and mask breaches as compliance." And isn't that just the very essence of acquired merit ? And: "...there was also, and increasingly, organised corruption and the systematic intimidation of officials." which is clearly how "ambition, determination, discipline" are enacted in a real world with very different levels of reward for very different enactments of "merit".
Just examine the career of Alan Joyce as a fine example of all those qualities in our modern world. For whom the loss of about $9.3m is trivial against the $125m he was rewarded with for destroying Qantas.
"Resilient! The resilient reef, always bouncing back..." aka the dead cat reef bounce.
ReplyDeleteOr in "the best of RFK Jr.'s thinking ...", the dead bear reef bounce.
"Former prime minister argues Australia has made itself a target by aligning with American ‘aggression’ towards China".
ReplyDeleteOh dear, how terrible ! Anyhow, the US is going to invade Taiwan any day now because once the US occupies it, Taiwan ceases to be a part of China.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/08/aukus-pact-will-turn-australia-into-51st-state-of-the-us-says-paul-keating
But we already are, aren't we ? Didn't we go to war in Iraq when the yanquis told us to ? So when do we get our set of electoral college votes ?
And is anybody at all still paying any attention to Keating ?
This essay fits in with the tone of the images re the Berlin Olympics that you featured
ReplyDeletewww.thenerdreich.com/unhumns-jd-vance-and-the-language-of-genocide
Ta NN, and it's a good read, but this link might work a little better ...
Deletehttps://www.thenerdreich.com/unhumans-jd-vance-and-the-language-of-genocide/
“One of my teachers at Columbia was Joseph Brodsky...and he said 'look,' he said, 'you Americans, you are so naïve. You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn’t come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language.'" – Marie Howe
In the latest example of his dangerous extremism, J.D. Vance has enthusiastically promoted a book that uses genocidal language to stoke hatred toward both liberals and progressives.
Unhumans, by right-wing conspiracy theorists Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec, offers a sinister thesis: Progressive-minded Americans are not humans. Instead, they are "communists." In turn, the authors define communists as bloodthirsty "unhumans" hellbent on the destruction of civilization.
Right-wingers, they write, must stop these unhumans with a policy of “exact reciprocity.” This means doing exactly to these so-called unhumans what the authors claim the unhumans are planning to do to them.
The 283-page screed reads like an effort to incite a civil war. It strains to create a sense of urgent terror in its readers. On nearly every page, it demonizes and dehumanizes “the left”– a vaguely defined group that apparently includes journalists (“the unhuman-occupied media”) and people who believe in things like diversity, equity, social justice and the rule of law. The definition is so broad that it seems most Democrats would qualify as unhumans.