The Australian, and paranoia at the barricades as the minions stand guard at the paywall ...

(Above: nothing like a little agitprop to set the right tone for a debate).

(Above: oops, that's more the kind of crude agitprop we were thinking of).

You have to hand it to The Australian ...

The lizard Oz is splendidly boastful, defiant and splenetic, and its abuse of other media outlets continues apace.

There was Laura Tingle getting them agitated by talking to Phillip Adams about the soon to be announced anti-siphoning decision, and suggesting that the minions of Murdoch might have more than a passing interest in what happens, because of its relevance to Foxtel.

Could you please keep your voices down? We're trying to cook up a conspiracy in here, came the retort to Tingle, and if you wonder what the paranoid fuss was all about, you can hear the inept Adams go at it with Tingle by way of download or stream here.

Like a dog with a bone, and nowhere to chew or bury it, the agitated Oz couldn't let the insult go, and so came up with Independence above all else as a further editorial response.

The notion that the crusading Oz is independent of the News Corp agenda is so splendid, surreal, and fanciful that it offers a guaranteed laugh for all.

Naturally, the lizard Oz, stablemate with that most splendid of all conspiracy theorist hysterics, Fox News, contends that conspiracy theories are a function of being left:

Sociologist Frank Furedi describes it as a "crisis of causality", a growing tendency to see a hidden agenda behind important events.

In The Weekend Australian last month he wrote that conspiracy theory had migrated from crackpot fringe to the mainstream and its most vociferous supporters belonged to the cultural Left.

Suddenly Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are on the cultural Left? Golly, count me a right winger ...

As usual, the lizard Oz makes a sweeping generalisation of the kind only a genuine cultural paranoid could make. Perhaps because it's in bed with the crackpot fringe (and provides plenty of space in their opinion pages for same) ...

Oh there's dark mutterings about grassy-knoll explanations, and talk of the progressive green tint, which colours the news judgement of those two Satanic news organisations, the ABC and Fairfax.

The Australian stands by the promise it made to readers in its first edition, on July 15, 1964, that it would be tied to no party.

Uh huh, except of course the party of Murdoch. And tied by such a Gordian Knot that no bold stroke could sever it:

The outcome is that Fairfax and the ABC lose credibility and customers. While the economy improves, the circulation of the AFR continues to fall, down 4.9 per cent on last year. But perhaps this is all part of the conspiracy.

Or could it be that it's all part of the downturn in newspaper sales, no matter how they litter The Australian like cocky cage lining through the Qantas lounge? Lordy what a supply there was this weekend past, such that jaded travellers couldn't even find the heart or the energy to steal the rag and take it with them.

Unless of course The Australian is talking about the biggest loser of all, the Sunday Mail in Queensland, which dropped nearly 5.7% in the latest figures? Was this because the rag continued to lose credibility and customers as a result of its inept editorial policies, generally of a right wing Murdoch minion kind? The Monday to Saturday editions didn't do much better, dropping 4.8% through the week, and 5.4% on Saturday.

The Herald Sun has also dropped 3.4% through the week, and even managed to lose 3.1% on Sunday.

Sure the Fairfax rags are in relative free fall, especially the Australian Financial Review, which has found its paywall inept, and its habit of picking up international features for the Friday and Saturday rags no longer attractive in a world where the originals are a click away.

But you have to be careful about throwing rotten eggs on the basis of editorial skills, for fear that some of the egg might stick to the thrower.

You see, before The Australian gets to chortling about its own 1.6% increase from July-September 2009 to July-September 2010 - gee that papering the halls with holly and the Oz must be working well - it should contemplate the reality. That's a simply stupendous increase from 134,100 copies to 136,268. And I could find that extra two thousand in the Qantas lounge on the weekend ...

And don't go flinging around the bonuses for unflinching independent journalism just yet, especially as the Weekend Oz managed a 0.7% drop to just a tad over 300,000 copies in the same period.

And we could do the same for other Murdoch rags - with the Advertiser/Mail in South Australia dropping over 3% on each of its editions and the West Australian joining the slide. (And there's more figures than any media junkie might require, with readership data also confirming the slide, in Latest newspaper circulation figures: not a nice set of numbers, by Margaret Simons, who also mentions the dumping scandal that figures in current circulation calculations).

For The Australian to think this all has to do with ideological values, and that its own much self-esteemed and vaunted 'independence' means its riding the wave, produces only a snicker, or fond memories of the snake in Snakes and Ladders, wherein pride came before a fall.

Meanwhile Foxtel is suffering in the current cold multi-channel, 18 channels and nothing on, climate, and has been forced to make unseemly offers like six bucks a month for six months, but beware the six buck a month routine somehow transmutes into $396 bucks over twelve months. Well there's a knockdown way to turn around churn ...

And in the week ending November 8th 2010, the cardigan wearers at the ABC were delivering healthy ratings figures, from 19.9 on Saturday (knocking Ten into fourth with 18.8) and hovering at respectable 14-17 through the week. And the macrame fiends and knitters aren't doing too badly in radio either ... and The Drum is doing nicely enough to get Crikey agitated and moan along with Murdoch's minions about state-funded competition ...

Well the deeper question is how well the paranoid crusaders at the Oz will do behind the approaching paywall ...

Bring it on, so that paranoid rhetoric about conspiracy theories most vociferous supporters belonging to the cultural Left can be hidden from general view. But it does say a lot about the political bias at work at the rag, and its capacity to see the world through a glass darkly ...

Poor old Mark Day can't tweak the ball and impart any decent spin on this sticky wicket (oh we luvs our sporting metaphors for jocks) in Online pay puzzle far from being solved. Noting the 2% annual fall across the board in newspaper sales, he worries:

Clearly, there's life and profits left in printed newspapers, but it would be a folly to suggest our slow rate of decline is a reason to ignore the big questions about the transition to digital delivery and how to monetise the new formats.

Day refuses to call the recent News Corp figures for The Times' paywall rubbery, and instead dubs them "opaque". Talk about a glass darkly, in a kind of opaque way.

And then he quotes Clay Shirky's analysis suggesting that the reduction in The Times web audience seems to be in the order of 97 per cent :

Put another way, that means just 3 per cent of past readers are paying. Ouch. That, to me, does not suggest a strong and vibrant base for growth. Those quick to jump to conclusions might even say it's a case of "What's plan B?".

But Shirky says the pay wall does more than simply shrink an audience. He argues it fundamentally changes the nature of the organisation behind the wall.

"One way to think of this transition is that, online, The Times has stopped being a newspaper, in the sense of a generally available and omnibus account of the news of the day, broadly read in the community," he says. "Instead, it is becoming a newsletter, an outlet supported by, and speaking to, a specific and relatively coherent and compact audience.

"This re-engineering suggests that pay walls don't and can't rescue current organisational forms. They offer instead yet another transformed alternative to it."

I guess that must be part of the conspiracy formed by the ABC, BBC, and others, to do poor Chairman Rupert down.

Well it's all enough to make Mark Day jump ship and hastily dub The Times paywall an experiment. Just that: an experiment!

Instead he seeks refuge in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times models, and the porous wall being planned for the New York Times, and hope beyond hope, The Daily, a tabloid newspaper designed for Apple's iPad, targeted at US consumers, which will need 800k app buyers to break even.

A tabloid! That's what the world needs, another tabloid. Did I detect a quiver, a shiver in the lizard Oz's broadsheet format?

Poor old Day jumps ship so far that he even begins to talk about alternative sources of revenue:

Murdoch has been on something of an education crusade recently. He sees education as the key to lifelong opportunity, and perhaps he sees it as a business opportunity, too.

The owner of Fox Noise is suddenly a crusader for education? What, so we can all understand Glenn Beck a little better, and buy gold in case his conspiracy theories turn out to be correct?

In 1984 The Washington Post purchased a small company called Kaplan, providing services in the education sector. It is now by far the biggest division of the Post's business, a point not lost on readers of Murdoch's tea leaves.

Shouldn't that have read, a point entirely lost on Tea Party followers?

Well it's amiable fun to start the week by watching the minions of Murdoch caught up in and bemused by the Internet threshing machine. And the more they talk of their circulation figures as a corollary of their editorial 'independence', the more deluded they sound ...

Because like The Times, The Australian is already a newsletter, an outlet supported by, and speaking to a specific and relatively coherent and compact audience. Who are welcome to it ...

And as we used to say in Tamworth, they can put that in their paranoid pipe, and smoke it ...

(Below: surely they could have found room for the lizard Oz on the blackboard? Seeing as how they're such keen spotters of conspiracies).

Simon Smart, and time to smarten up the christian v atheist debate with talk of tigers ...

Want a guide on how to sound smug, condescending, and something of a know all in your opening par?

No worries, just follow the Simon Smart guide, as demonstrated at the start of Ignorance is more concerning than religion:

I was once at a dinner party when a friend, who I think had read a Robert Fisk article that morning, began explaining an aspect of Middle Eastern politics. Unbeknown to her, one of the guests was something of an expert in the field, and was nodding politely at my friend’s newfound wisdom. I felt the need to jump in and save her from embarrassment.

What a golden goody. First theres' the notion that Robert Fisk knows nothing about the Middle East, so reading his columns in The Independent, indexed here, is a waste of time. You know, a little learning and considering the opinion of others is always a dangerous thing ...

Perhaps it was his piece Exodus: The changing map of the Middle East, from Israel to Iraq, a Christian flight of Biblical proportions has begun that got up the nose of Smart or his expert friend.

Then there's the condescension of the 'real' expert, who understood that anything that Fisk said was likely liberal gibberish, so he could nod politely at the friend's "newfound Fisk wisdom", matched only by the condescension of Smart, who of course knows as much as the 'real' expert, and so, as a 'real' expert himself, can jump in and save his friend from embarrassment.

Well once you've strutted your punch drunk stuff for The Punch with that kind of opening par - The Punch has lately turned into an outreach post for the Centre for Public Christianity - there's no chance things will get any better.

Smart, you see, is scribbling in agitated response to another Punch-drunk posting:

I have something of a similar response to Brendan Brown’s appeals to rationality (Why an Atheist Prime Minister is better The Punch Nov 10). The article, picking up on the now familiar New Atheist shtick makes me want to point out some realities of history and philosophy that the writer seems unaware of.

Yep, it's more of that now familiar soft shoe New Christian shtick, and oodles more condescension, as he points out realities of history and philosophy that turn out to give surreality a good name:

There are some bold claims here. We read for instance that, “even the most devout of Jesus’ disciples would admit that the Bible makes an underwhelming historical document.”

The audacious statement, sweeping aside thousands of years of scholarly work, reveals a lack of understanding of believers in the first instance, but also of the many non-believing historians who nonetheless consider the biblical text to be historically robust by ancient history standards. Classicist and historian Joseph Klausner and his successor, Oxford Professor Geza Vermes, come to mind as historians at the top of their field, without Christian affiliation, who consider the New Testament to be serious history at its core.

Uh huh, but merely assembling a couple of historians doesn't make a decent point, since a dozen historians with countervailing views could be assembled just as easily to make the point that the Bible isn't particularly historically robust, even by ancient history standards.

And much of the scholarly study of the bible in previous generations has been of the quasi historical theological kind, resulting in dross like Archbishop James Ussher's epic timeline starting the history of the world at 4004 BC (how we love our Ussher). If that's history, pardon me while I forget about the Stone Age ... though in his day Ussher was hailed for his remarkable work of scholarship, and I still have a number of bibles in the house adorned with his impeccable datings.

Never mind. A lot of the bible was written way after the events described, authorship is shadowy and often unattributable, much is clearly mythology and myth-making, and nothing wrong with that, and because many events took place in the outer parts of empire, there's a disturbing lack of correlative references in other contemporary literature.

Much of the study of the bible as history is like Shakespeare scholarship, pinning a lot on very little, and relying a lot on studying the actual text and resolving internal contradictions, or scrambling around in archaeological digs trying to nail a little reality on the tail of the donkey.

Even poor old Herodotus, himself something of a fabulist, emerges with a better charge sheet as an ancient historian, and when he gets on to turf he knows something about, turns in a good read as well as decent history, especially as there are good ways to check what he wrote - well better at least than a lot of the stuff in the bible, from Noah's ark to Jesus rising from the dead.

At its core, the Bible is great mythology, and great poetry, at least if you have a soft spot for the King James version, wherein Elizabethan language and apocalyptic scribbling had a fine meeting of minds.

Sadly, not content with explaining how miracles and rising from the dead form a decent historical record (when will we ever see that sort of thing again, excluding of course Philippines faith healers and the joys of the transformative e-Meter) Smart has bigger fish to fry, and that's the important role Christianity has to play in the world:

And what about the claim that economic reform and climate change are decidedly secular issues? That appears arbitrary and ill-founded. It is very clear that faith has contributed to and shaped, in both good and bad ways, huge social movements throughout centuries. One can immediately think of the fight to end slavery, 18th Century British social reform and the Civil Rights movement in the States, the growth of education and development of hospitals. We could go on.

Please don't, because otherwise we'd be tempted to go on in our own way with a list of standard naughty Christian things, from the Inquisition to the odd bit of witch maltreatment at Salem, and really it's just the same old stew re-hashed a thousand times, as we might expect of the new atheist-new Christian schtick. And talk of good and bad ways doesn't get you out of jail, if all you talk about is the good ways ...

Of course it's clear that faith has played a major role in the world. Enough already ...

Smart can't get enough of lists and experts and completely non-sequitur arguments, which soon reach a peak of irrelevance:

The suggestion that religion survives on “faith alone” and that it is not subjected to even the most elementary scrutiny or analysis, is especially problematic. It’s boringly obvious to point out the many great minds that do in fact believe and could hardly be thought of as foolishly naïve. Even that most pugnacious of atheists, Christopher Hitchens, is happy enough to describe Francis Collins, the man who brought the human genome project to completion and a committed Christian, as “one of the greatest living Americans”. Presumably Collins isn’t in the business of committing his life to something that is completely devoid of evidentiary burden, as Brown believes all religion to be.

Huh? Say what? So Hitchens thinks a piece of science is a great piece of science and the scientist is a committed Christian so that's the evidentiary burden gone, and it's a jolly mystery why Hitchens remains a committed atheist, and never mind his outrageous poking at the long absent god as he's devoured by cancer?

It's the level of logic in the argument that makes me feel a deep pity for Smart's friend who showed up at the start of the story. I have a deepening suspicion that she and Robert Fisk were right ...

Because then we get another dose of condescension as an example of how to conduct a debate:

But regarding the argument that religious belief is entirely non-rational; that it is about disregarding the laws of the universe and ignoring the natural order I do feel the need to offer a suggestion. For those who want to go down that path, getting familiar with Notre Dame Professor Alvin Plantinga’s work on why naturalism cannot be rationally believed, might make for an interesting excursion?

Yep, it's another expert, a field trip, a spiffing excursion, possibly with tea and scones, and offering more expert views, as a way of helping a friend, who might have read an article by Christopher Hitchens and offered it by way of insight at a dinner party, and so possibly produced an incredible faux pas, and only being saved from social embarrassment by the ever-helpful and ever-obliging Smart.

So come on, roll out the expert:

Plantinga, a leading American philosopher, recently explained his famous argument in an interview with the Centre for Public Christianity. The basic idea is this: if you’re a naturalist (there’s no God or gods), you’ll also be a materialist (the only thing that exists, including consciousness, is physical matter). You’ll think human beings are material objects, and that there isn’t any immaterial soul, or self, or person.

Uh huh. Would this be the same Plantinga who has lent support to the intelligent design movement, and who was a member of the 'Ad Hoc Origins Committee' that supported Philip E. Johnson's book Darwin on trial against Stephen Jay Gould's rather stern review? (here) Would that be the same Plantinga who scribbled this?

Consider the role played by evolutionary theory in our intellectual world. Evolution is a modern idol of the tribe; it is a shibboleth distinguishing the ignorant fundamentalist goats from the informed and scientifically acquiescent sheep. Doubts about it may lose you your job. It is loudly declared to be absolutely certain, as certain as that the earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun—when it is no such thing at all.(here).

Would that be the same Plantigna who wrote this?

Like any Christian (and indeed any theist), I believe that the world has been created by God, and hence "intelligently designed." The hallmark of intelligent design, however, is the claim that this can be shown scientifically; I'm dubious about that. ...As far as I can see, God certainly could have used Darwinian processes to create the living world and direct it as he wanted to go; hence evolution as such does not imply that there is no direction in the history of life. What does have that implication is not evolutionary theory itself, but unguided evolution [original emphasis], the idea that neither God nor any other person has taken a hand in guiding, directing or orchestrating the course of evolution.

Yep, it's the same Plantinga who lent moral support to the intelligent design camp, and who believes in Wedge strategies, and who was a signatory to the Evangelical Manifesto.

Naturally Smart takes time out to explain Plantinga's arguments about naturalism, albeit in a half baked way:

Now, evolution doesn’t give a toss about what you believe. It only cares about rewarding adaptive behaviour and punishing maladaptive behaviour. So evolution will modify those neuro-physiological properties in the direction of greater adaptiveness, but it doesn’t follow that it modifies belief in the direction of truth. Evolution doesn’t care about true belief.

So, says Plantinga, if you accept the combination of naturalism and materialism, you’ll have to take it that for any particular belief you might hold, the probability that it’s true is about a half. It could as likely be true as false. All you really know is that as creatures, we evolve and behave adaptively. If that’s the case, given naturalism and evolution, then the probability that one’s beliefs are reliable will be low.

Actually I prefer Plantinga's own surreal example of the idea that there are true beliefs which come in handy as a survival strategy:

Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief... Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it... Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour

Uh huh. And perhaps Paul is just a dimwit fuckwit, and that's why the Neanderthals are no longer with us ...

I mean, did you ever see the bones of a sabre tooth tiger in a museum, and wonder how you might have wanted to be eaten by one? Assuming of course we'll allow a sabre toothed tiger into the historical record ...

But back to Smart, and see how valiantly we've resisted making a pun about his name in the body of the text:

Now of course, if you don’t accept naturalism and materialism, and suspect there is more going on inside you and those you love than mere physical matter, then you don’t have that problem. If you think there is more to life than only that which you can see and touch and smell, you have grounds for trusting your faculties.

Grounds for trusting your faculties? Because you believe in holy ghosts and ghoulies and zombies and werewolves and saints and miracles and spirits and boojums and garlic and silver bullets and holy water and relics? Waiter, bring some loaves and fishes, I'm feeling in the mood for a little scientific research ...

Well there's a fair argument that people - men in particular - wouldn't be so cheerful about the prospect of being dead for all eternity, if all they could look forward to was bones dissolving in the cold earth, as opposed to pie in the sky, and life in a kind of blissful summer camp with god, Christ, the Buddha, Muhmmad, seventy two virgins, endless beers, poker machines that pay out, and lawn bowls with a decent bias.

See how you go about a recruiting drive for a holy war (or unholy ones for that matter), if all you get is a bullet in the brain or a head chopped off, and an eternity in the earth, rotting, eaten by worms, and fit only for a soliloquy in Hamlet ...

But then comes the Smart zinger:

None of this is intended to prove belief.

Say what? So what's the bloody point? Why the hell have I hung around in this column for so long, spending time with people with more than a toe in the intelligent design camp and given to prattle about friendly tigers?

But it might give Brendan Brown reason to pause. He’s right that rationality shouldn’t be an optional quality in a Prime Minister. But he’s wrong to think that religious faith is always evidence of leaving one’s brain at the door.

Yes, indeed, Brendan Brown's piece was light weight, and his celebration of an atheist PM largely irrelevant to the needs of the body politic.

Thankfully however, it produced Simon's Smart's piece as a counter-punch ...

The result? Well religious faith doesn't always provide evidence of leaving one's brain at the door, but Simon Smart is of a religious faith and clearly leaves his brain at the door ...

Where I come from that's a slam dunk petitio principii argument of a very Smart kind ...

(Below: speaking of tigers, you can find this cartoon at Design Yes, Intelligent No: A Critique of Intelligent Design Theory and Neocreationism).

Christopher Pearson, and the education revolution rolls on, saving the lumpenproletariat in a free enterprise way ...

(Above: Martin Rowson, that bloody Guardian cartoonist, here, displaying a sense of irony).

It being a quiet Sunday on the pond, the time seemed right to meditate on the meaning of things ...

What to do? Read Diane Ravitch's exposure of The Myth of Charter Schools, in The New York Review of Books, or continue with Christopher Pearson's astonishing discovery that he's an educationist in the lizard Oz, as he scribbles Infants can be groomed for learning?

Happily Ravitch is a healthy dose of cod liver oil to all the blather Pearson has been offering up in recent weeks about the free market in education, and the role vouchers might play, as well as a good kick in the pants to recent films such as David Guggenheim's Waiting for "Superman" ...

In particular Ravitch tags the blame game:

At last we have the culprit on which we can pin our anger, our palpable sense that something is very wrong with our society, that we are on the wrong track, and that America is losing the race for global dominance. It is not globalization or deindustrialization or poverty or our coarse popular culture or predatory financial practices that bear responsibility: it’s the public schools, their teachers, and their unions.

But then Pearson is so befuddled that this week he argues against himself by citing evidence that poverty might have a role in education:

... he (The Spectator's Toby Young) cites a book by two educationalists at the University of Durham. One of their main findings is that the attainment of middle-class children doesn't vary much according to what school they attend. Generally they tend to do well even in poorly performing schools. In a nutshell, a language-rich preschool environment and a domestic setting to match it can inoculate kids against the damage that substandard schools do to their classmates.

Yep, one week it's vouchers will fix things, and the next it's a language rich preschool environment.

But what to do about poverty, as Ravitch asks?

According to University of Washington economist Dan Goldhaber, about 60 percent of achievement is explained by nonschool factors, such as family income. So while teachers are the most important factor within schools, their effects pale in comparison with those of students’ backgrounds, families, and other factors beyond the control of schools and teachers. Teachers can have a profound effect on students, but it would be foolish to believe that teachers alone can undo the damage caused by poverty and its associated burdens.

Sorry, poverty is a little too hard, so let's zoom off to the UK.

Pearson is rhapsodic at the way a new "pupil premium" in Britain is going to fix things, and so settles for a LibDem approach, when he might equally have been applying his fertile brain to the current woes besetting British higher education. Nick Clegg has been in a jolly old firefight, because as usual people discover that there are core promises, and then there are non-core promises (Nick Clegg: I should have been more careful in signing tuition fees pledge).

It turns out that the "pupil premium" is an attempt to incentivise schools to take poorer children ... as a way of overcoming current "league table" incentives for schools to weed out the most challenging children. And it isn't new money, but a budgetary shuffle. (Michael Gove admits pupil premium is not new money).

Well good luck to the British with their latest attempts at pulling the public education levers, in their own peculiar attempt to level the playing field, but the notion that the scheme will fix things, could only inhabit the minds of British politicians ... and Christopher Pearson, who was struck by this factoid delivered up by Clegg:

Most of it (the pupil premium) will be spent on free nursery-level education for Britain's poorest children.

The aim is to narrow in the early years the vocabulary gap between the disadvantaged young and everyone else. As Clegg put it: "Children from poor homes hear 616 words spoken an hour on average, compared to 2153 words an hour in richer homes. By the age of three, that amounts to a cumulative gap of 30 million words."

Uh huh. Sounds like an impressive factoid. Let's see the results of those who bothered to check it out:

The Cabinet Office told us it came from the book “Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children.” So, the DPM was actually talking about the educational opportunities of kids across the Atlantic. And a quick flick through the book reveals it’s actually based on a sample of just 42 American children – and that the research was undertaken in the 1980s. The book was published in 1995, by Dr Betty Hart and Dr. Todd Risley, with a forward from Lois Bloom at Columbia University in New York. FactCheck reached the now retired Lois Bloom, who confirmed the research was old, and that it showed income wasn’t the only that determining factor in children’s development. “The book says there are many other factors,” she said “including how many people in the house work and how many children there are in the house.”

So, it doesn’t seem all that ‘fair’ to us, to pass off research that is 20 years old, and based on a small sample in America, as relevant to a speech about inequality in modern Britain. ...

... The verdict
There is good evidence that wealth is one of several determining factors in educational attainment. But FactCheck found nothing to uphold the claim that poor children hear only 616 words an hour at home, in this country, in 2010.

Nick Clegg’s research on this seems extremely sketchy – quoting an old study, from a different county, and using a tiny sample, lands him a fiction rating. (more here in cache form, and more on that critique in turn being critiqued here in Nick Clegg and the Word Gap).

As usual, a few seconds googling would have got Pearson into the levels and bevils, but what's the point of finding out the devil in the detail when you want to embark on a round of rampant assertions.

Thus the factoid can be used for a splendid round of bizarre thought bubbles on the benefits of lashing toddlers to the educational grindstone, and giving them a good going over to sharpen their minds:

Young offers some rather endearing anecdotal evidence. "When my daughter Sasha was around six months old I read her Pride and Prejudice. Sounds pretentious and it is, but that's one of the advantages middle-class children enjoy over working-class children: their parents are willing to risk appearing pretentious if they believe their behaviour will secure their offspring a competitive advantage. And it worked.

"I have a video of Sasha scoring 100 out of 100 in a flash card test before her first birthday. By contrast, I read all three of her brothers Peepo! and none of them started talking until they were two."

Flash card testing before a first birthday? Pride and Prejudice at six months? Rather endearing?

Well I suppose playing Mozart to cows helped increase milk production (forget it Jake, that's just another factoid thought bubble - Mozart for Milk Production suggests Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Waters is just as effective. Yes Mozart or torture. So much for science).

I suppose torturing young children to ensure they 'get ahead' in life is a middle class prerogative. Got to be in a position to have that fifth plasma screen in the lavish bathroom by age twenty one ... or at least be in a position to deliver factoid blather for The Australian or The Spectator at any age you like.

And after reading Jane Austen? Well there's reading books which serve as an introduction to irony to your child, which is most peculiar, because in his scribbles, Pearson steadfastly refuses to introduce any sense of irony into his generally portentous pronouncements.

Instead we get anecdotes about his childhood, and a kind of childhood Jewish determinism, whereby ... There was scarcely a boy among them who had not settled on a choice of profession, with a modicum of parental nudging, by the time he was six.

Dear sweet absent lord! What next? What would Pearson say to parents in China? Enrol your child in the Communist party by age of five to ensure a settled life? Or how about give me a child until they're seven, and I'll have them believing in pie in the sky for life ...

Well thank the lord that John Safran escaped that notion of parental nudging, and saw Yeshivah College as fertile grounds for hip hop and the Raspberry Cordial. But then Safran has an actual sense of irony, frequently displayed, and nowhere better than when he did over Ray Martin ...

It seems that Pearson was left intimidated by his competitive Jewish counterparts:

Long before I was literate, most of my playmates could read a little English, speak Yiddish and perhaps another European language, and were beginning Hebrew lessons.

As well, willy-nilly, most learned a musical instrument. While some of them complained of a pressure-cooker existence - and left me feeling like a cheerful underachiever - they had a head start in life that most parents now can only dream about.

Yet what do you know, here is prattling away delivering factoids and superficial views of the UK education system, while no doubt many of the infant prodigies once around him are now stumbling from garbage bin to garbage bin in search of food, or as a tryout for a re-make of Shine. (Oh sorry, that's already been done, in The Soloist, using a cello. Back to your bins, infant prodigy bums).

Still there's good news:

My last four columns and this week's have all concentrated on what constitutes a great education and why so few of the rising generation have access to one. I fear it has been rather bleak reading for the most part, which is why I'm ending on a positive note.

Thank the absent lord, Pearson is leaving education behind. Yippee, done and dusted, finished, and many fine solutions found. (Warning: irony).

Time to read Diane Ravitch in peace. Clearly someone has thought of the children, and decided that a month of Pearson reforming education is enough, already ...

But then came the bad news:

Very early intervention to break the cycle of educational disadvantage holds out far more hope - especially for Aboriginal infants and the children of what used to be called the lumpenproletariat - than the public system ever has. It ought to be high on the productivity agendas of both the main parties.

Oh dear absent lord, won't someone think of the children.

Could Pearson have hoped to pen a more befuddled and benighted last paragraph on education than this? Conflating as it does Aboriginal infants and the lumpenproletariat, and productivity agendas and the failures of the public system ...

Well now we know what happened because Pearson's parents refused to read Pride and Prejudice to him at the tender age of six months.

Gobbledegook ...

How did Jane Austen put it?

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a six month old baby in possession of a good parent, must be in want of a good book ...

(Below: still if you want to give your six month old a flying head start in life, you'll be pleased to know all things Pride and Prejudice, including the text, are here. Or you can pick the text up, along with other Jane Austen novels, at Project Gutenberg, here).

Miranda the Devine, a Malibu conspiracy, and poison in the precious tap water and so in our even more precious bodily fluids ...

(Above: no relevance, just love the argument).

Guess which one is the paranoid ...

Write a rambling account of Charlie Sheen being a wife beater and a profanity deployer, and then scribble more notes about Mel Gibson copping it for his Passion of Christ flick, and his own way with profanity and personal abuse ... and then round it out thus:

Since then, Gibson has been the leper of Malibu. He was even blackballed last month from a cameo role in Hangover 2 after the cast and crew protested against his inclusion.

Fair enough. But Sheen is back at work on the Two And A Half Men set, feted by one and all. He even filmed a cameo in another movie, two days after the Plaza incident.

Like Gibson, he makes racist comments. Unlike Gibson, he has a domestic violence conviction. He seems to get away with anything, while Gibson is dead man walking in Hollywood. Guess which one is the conservative?

Yep, guess which one is the paranoid, and of course when writing at that level, it could only be Miranda the Devine, now settled comfortably in her tabloid home, writing incisive exposes of Malibu lifestyles ... this time in A tale of two meltdowns: Charlie v Mel.

Sadly the three punters that bothered to reply weren't buying it ... Gibson gets passed over for a cameo in a dodgy movie and suddenly it's a leftist conspiracy?

What to add? What can possibly said about a mind set that sees the dastardly liberal elite at work in a conspiracy to do Mel down? When are they going to get to work on scientologists like John Travolta? Is there a reason Qantas engines are failing ... one we haven't been told about ...?

But reading the scribble and having a good chortle reminded me how little attention we pay at the pond these days to the Devine, once a formidable giant strutting the liberal cardigan wearing Fairfax media like a conservative giant, a Colossus of Rhodes ... or of North head, whichever symbol moves you the most.

These days, the Devine is much reduced, forced to resort either to the Malibu stars or to a beat up about Sydney's desalination plant. Nothing like getting Sydney-siders agitated by telling them they're drinking shit ...

Why it reminds me of the good old days body surfing in Maroubra when I bobbed up in the water and wondered what all the brown bits bobbing in the water were doing there alongside me ...

These days Sydney pumps its sewage further out to sea so that's not a problem - well it might be for the fishies, but who cares about the little fishies.

Like other minions in the Murdoch press, the Devine seized on a Sydney Water report to do her beat up about the way desalination plant water allegedly has 390 times the amount of E coli organisms per 100 ml as compared to the numbers found in Warragamba dam water.

I say allegedly, because you can never trust the Devine when it comes to data, and it seems you can't trust Sydney Water either. Contrast her rant in Meek, stupid leaders will be damned with a hasty correction issued in various outlets, including the ABC, Sydney desal bacteria report wrong: MP.

A quarterly Sydney water report found that between July and September, seawater at the plant had up to 390 E. coli bacteria per 100 millilitres before treatment.

The treated water averaged one bacterium per 100 millilitres, according to the report, failing safe drinking guidelines.

But Water Minister Phil Costa says the data was wrong.

He has assured residents the processed water is safe to drink.

"There was human error that led to incorrect reporting on the levels of E. coli at the plant as being unsafe," he said.

"So we do apologise - there was a human error, and the water coming out of the desalination plant is very safe indeed."

He says Sydney Water is investigating the mistake.

Of course if the key Devine figure is wrong, then that rather deflates the entire point of the Devine column, which is that the Devine is a 'dams' sort of scribbler, and - after she's said damn you greens, damn you Labor party, damn you bureaucrats - what Sydney needs is more dams, not the desal plant.

Seeing as how dams provide impeccably safe drinking water, with Warragamba showing the way towards an extra fine virgin level of water purity.

Which somehow reminded me of the great cyptosporidium and giardia scare of 1998 ... when high levels of the bugs were found in the water, and 'boil water' alerts were issued, and the city was plunged into a week long boil water crisis ... for water coming from Warragamba Dam (why it even has its own wiki, 1998 Sydney water crisis).

Yep, in her usual Devine way, she doesn't begin to understand that whatever the source, there'll always be issues with filtration, storage and delivery, and doing a beat up over one source while ignoring issues with other sources is just ... woeful.

Naturally being the Devine, she has an alternative solution. Damn the Shoalhaven river. Sorry, that should be dam the Shoalhaven, though in the end the result will be the same ...

And naturally, being the Devine, she has to work global warming into the scenario:

The city’s great dam, Warragamba, was built in response to the 1940s drought by our practical forebears who believed in creating infrastructure for the future rather than in the dark voodoo of global warming.

Instead, today, the government steals water from the farmers of the Murray Darling Basin and then charges them for the rain that falls out of the sky into the dams they had the foresight to construct on their own land.

The reason water was so scarce in the recent drought was not because of climate change - it was because our dams simply aren’t big enough for a growing population. D’uh.

Of course our practical forebears had no way of knowing that rainfall patterns would shift away from the area in which they built the dam, with coastal regions these days tending to cop the rain. D'oh.

But don't take my word for it. Bizarrely, there's a site with more graphs about Sydney's rain and dam levels than even Dustin Hoffman in his Rain man days would have needed ... Sydney's Dam Levels - current statistics and graphs.

Reading the Devine however reminds me that there's one fate worse than being run by a flock of inept NSW state Labor types ... and that would be having the Devine's hand anywhere near any policy or government lever ...

Thank the lord she's just a Murdoch minion doing her bit for fish and chip wrapping ...

After moaning and groaning and whining and carrying on and on and on about how we need more damn dams, the Devine rounds out her column with this:

Taxpayers would be content if only governments would provide adequate water, energy, sewage treatment and roads as their core functions. Forget bank bashing, carbon trading schemes, free laptops and the $43 billion NBN broadband rollout. Just get the boring basics right.

Yep, you went looking for public transport in that list of boring basics, didn't you? Sorry, it's dams and roads, roads and dams, and never you mind if the world might be changing just a tad or a wee bit ...

There is of course an explanation for the decline and fall of the Devine, finding leftist conspiracies at work in Malibu and shit in the water in Sydney ... and yes it is surprising she didn't mention the really dangerous thing in our water, the fluoride that allows the aliens to access our brain cells directly via our teeth ...

It is of course the malignant effect of Twitter, as explained by the Devine's old chum Baroness - we just love the Baroness bit - Susan Greenfield:

My final issue is identity, and it does stun me, Twitter for example, where the banality of some of the things that people feel they need to transmit to other human beings. Now what does this say about how you see yourself? Does this say anything about how secure you feel about yourself? Is it not marginally reminiscent of a small child saying "Look at me, look at me mummy! Now I've put my sock on. Now I've got my other sock on," you know? And I'm just being neutral here, I'm just asking questions, right... What does this say about you as a person? (here).

Yep, head off to Miranda Devine on Twitter, here, and you get juicy tidbits like this:

Columns are up on the blog: Mel v Charlie: Hollywood Hypocrisy and Desal Insanity http://bit.ly/axmlB4
11 November 2010 8:26:03 AM AEDT via TweetDeck

Which is to say, look, look at me readers, now I've published one paranoid rant, and now I've published another paranoid rant - and you know, here at the pond, we're just being neutral, we're just asking questions right - what does this say about Miranda the Devine as a person?

Well it reminds me that it's been a while since we visited Dr Strangelove, and all this talk of water and purity is making me nervous:

Ripper (through his cigar): Mandrake ..

Mandrake: Yes, Jack?

Ripper: Have you ever seen a commie drink a glass of water?

Mandrake: Well, no I... I can't say I have, Jack.

Ripper: Vodka. That's what they drink, isn't it? Never water?

Mandrake: Well I... I believe that's what they drink, Jack. Yes.

Ripper: On no account will a commie ever drink Sydney water, and not without good reason.

Mandrake: Oh, ah, yes. I don't quite.. see what you're getting at, Jack.

Ripper: Water. That's what I'm getting at. Water. Mandrake, water is the source of all life. Seven tenths of this earth's surface is water. Why, you realize that.. seventy percent of you is water.

Mandrake: Uhhh God...

Ripper: And as human beings, you and I need fresh, pure water to replenish our precious bodily fluids.

Mandrake: Yes. (Chuckles nervously)

Ripper: You beginning to understand?

Mandrake: Yes. (Chuckles. begins laughing/crying quietly)

Ripper: Mandrake. Mandrake, have you never wondered why I drink only distilled water, or rain water, and only pure grain alcohol? And not that e coli muck served up by Sydney Water...

Mandrake: Well it did occur to me, Jack, yes.

Ripper: Have you ever heard of a thing called fluoridation? Fluoridation of water?

Mandrake: Ah, yes, I have heard of that, Jack. Yes.

Ripper: Well do you now what it is?

Mandrake: No. No, I don't know what it is. No.

Ripper: Do you realize that fluoridation is the most monstrously conceived and dangerous communist plot we have ever had to face?

Yes, and now we can add the Malibu conspiracy and the e. coli in desalination plants to the most dangerous commie plots we've ever had to face ...

There is of course a debate to be had about desal plants, but not with someone who's mind has been affected by their twittering ...

(Below: but before you get too paranoid about fluoridation, read the wiki here. Sorry I forgot to mention wiki is part of the liberal elite Hollywood conspiracy).

Gary Johns, and once more unto the breach, as we mount a descent into a bilious verbal maelstrom ...

(Above: a handy image when you're selling a magazine, and outback tourism).

The hackles rise, the desire to growl grows, and the fur bristles when language like this comes to the fore:

A statement in the preamble that recognises the original inhabitants is all that Australians will agree to.

And how was the will of all Australians divined? By poll, by referendum, by research, or by examining the entrails or the tea leaves? Or by simply parading the gut prejudices of an extremely prejudiced single man, going by the name Gary Punch, and scribbling furiously Referendum must not be used to settle old scores.

Well I can say one thing. This Australian will not agree to Gary Punch. Or what he scribbles. Indeedy, if I can put it politely, in the Australian way, he can fuck off ...

That's right, before any one has had a chance to propose or agree on any wording, the bilious Punch is in print with a dose of vile bile. How vile the bile? Well about how about this one?

The trouble is, Aboriginal culture, in any sense in which the original inhabitants practised it, is long gone. Elements of the original that remain, such as polygamy and underage sex, are illegal or, in the case of sorcery, re-emerging around places such as Yuendumu and Groote Island, is just plain evil.

What does the man think about transubstantiation, cannibalism, or the average pedophile Catholic priest, and does he understand the concept relating to the giant mote in his own eye?

It's funny - peculiar and perverse, rather than funny ha ha - this constant desire on the part of the chattering elite commentariat class to downgrade and denigrate anything indigenous.

There are of course still parts of the country where English is a second language for Aboriginal people, rapidly diminishing, but still enough of an irritant to the commentariat, intent on making everyone speak dinkum, and you can if you're lucky still talk to an aboriginal person who experienced 'first contact', the meeting of the white ghosts who turned up to haunt their remote locations.

Sure when I talked with one woman about what it was like, given her poor English, it wasn't an epic portrait of a clash of civilisations, so much as weird and passing strange, seen through the eyes of a child, and then adjusted to, more easily than the adults of the time managed ...

Clearly it was a tale she'd told often, and once the strangeness of the encounter and its implications discussed, we moved on to other matters, like her skill with painting ...

But in this context, where oral tradition has actual meaning, 'long gone' is one of those idle contemptuous phrases which seeks to diminish, when it's possible to have all kinds of emotional and actual connections to the past (in much the same way, and for reasons entirely peculiar, I still felt something standing in Tipperary, from where my ancestors had caught a ship to escape the potato blighted country a century and a half ago).

But that's because there's an almost inexplicable deep seated anger and contempt at work in Johns' scribble, suggesting that a therapist might be required at some point.

I won't go on about it too long, because inexplicably it created a deep seated anger and contempt in me in relation to Johns, as he offered up the usual clap trap about Aboriginal nihilism, and settling in the usual way for Samsonn and Delilah, instead perhaps of highlighting the massacre organised and ordained by that deeply British leader, Governor Macquarie.

These days it's all Lady Macquarie's point and the Gov's roads and vision, but in his day the Gov was a veritable William Calley, worthy of a war crimes trial. Still his splendid ways these days are carried on by Macquarie bank and the way they run Sydney Airport. Or is that more Ned Kelly ... I get so confused in my national stereotypes ... (and more on the infamous 1816 Appin massacre here).

Along with his berating of people of Aboriginal descent, and the failure of separatism, Johns offers up this kind of hopeful prejudice:

The fact is, with Aboriginal intermarriage rates at more than 70 per cent and most Aborigines living in the cities and regions and fast integrating, the question of identity is looking very thin. Much more important, Aboriginal identity and culture is a matter for those who claim its ownership, it should not be force-fed to the rest of the nation. If children are to be taught Aboriginal culture, I want for them the full unexpurgated version, not the pretty commemoration of recent invention that one can pick up on the bookshelf at the ABC shop or a university politics department.

What to say about such bilious bile? The temptation is simply to get angry and abusive, the very response that Johns seeks to promote. Force fed? By golly I'd like to take a funnel, shove it down Johns' throat, and force feed him some of his dire prejudices, until he choked on them ... it wouldn't be pretty and agreeable, of the kind you might experience in an ABC shop or a university politics department, but it would be fun (hang on, from what I saw, university politics departments conduct their political business in a way that would make a water boarder give up ... don't they?)

Anyway, let's cut to the chase. No, hang on a second, let's hang on a little longer for a loud laugh:

Perhaps section 51. xxvi, "The people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws", should remain, although the suggestion by Mick Gooda, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, that this power has been used to discriminate against Aboriginal people is laughable.

Yep, roll on the intervention, and don't you worry about any discrimination, and all for an ineffectual result, while having your laughable outburst of laughing. Because you see the Federal Government is now inclined to intervention in the business of all sorts of poor people ... So it'll be class rather than skin based discrimination in the future ... Oh brave new world ...

Now to the chase. Johns' splendid minimal proposal for additional wording for the constitution to recognise aboriginal people:

The present preamble to the Australian Constitution begins: "Whereas the people have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Constitution hereby established." We could add the words: "Whereas those who came to Australia after the act of settlement by the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland recognise that this land was first settled by Aboriginal people."

How generous ...

Of course the waters in this area were muddied a long time ago by John Howard's effort at the 1999 refendum, and the wretched wording he offered up then, pleasing no one:

With hope in God, the Commonwealth of Australia is constituted as a democracy with a federal system of government to serve the common good.
We the Australian people commit ourselves to this Constitution:
proud that our national unity has been forged by Australians from many ancestries;
never forgetting the sacrifices of all who defended our country and our liberty in time of war;
upholding freedom, tolerance, individual dignity and the rule of law;
honouring Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, the nation's first people, for their deep kinship with their lands and for their ancient and continuing cultures which enrich the life of our country;
recognising the nation-building contribution of generations of immigrants;
mindful of our responsibility to protect our unique natural environment;
supportive of achievement as well as equality of opportunity for all;
and valuing independence as dearly as the national spirit which binds us together in both adversity and success. (here).

Right at the start, with his hope in the long absent god, he and Les Murray got up my nose, and it was downhill from there, but even Howard tried a more generous form of wording in relation to indigenous people.

Recently the NSW Government has been dabbling in the area, with wording that is at once both more generous and more legalistic, as a proposed amendment to the Constitution Act of 1902:

(a) The People and Parliament of New South Wales acknowledge and honour the Aboriginal people as the first people and nations of the State, and

(b) The People and Parliament of New South Wales recognise that Aboriginal people have a spiritual, social, and cultural relationship with their traditional lands and waters and have made a unique and lasting contribution to the identity of New South Wales.

(c) Nothing in this section creates in any person any legal right or gives rise to any civil cause of action, or affects the interpretation of this Act or any other law in New South Wales. (here)

Just love (c). Well done NSW lawyers ...

Of course none of this matters in the grander scheme of things - there are real issues confronting aboriginal people, more important than symbolic wording - and Johns' specious attempts to disavow the past and pin all his hopes on intermarriage and interbreeding and aboriginal culture dying out as integration takes hold and all but a few genetic throwbacks can pass for whiter than white (well we wouldn't want a chocolate or even a beige culture would we) brings back the grand old days of the nineteen thirties about aborigines being a dying, vanishing race ...

It reminded me of the shameless cavortings of whites around Gwoja Tjungarrayi, or One Pound Jimmy, who accidentally became a symbol for tourists, as well as a postage stamp star ...

Why not shove it up Gary Johns, and learn a little, by listening to The two lives of One Pound Jimmy, available for download here, on the radio station for cardigan wearers, or read Jillian E Barnes' Resisting the captured image, available here.

There's another upside of course. Johns is no longer an active politician, and so scribbles his bile from the sidelines, which surely is a good thing.

Naturally The Australian was on side with Johns, raising the spectre of New Zealand and claiming some $NZ 1 billion has been paid in compensation as a result of having a treaty. (here). Funny how generosity of spirit always gets threatened by the red back spiders lurking in the wallet ...

Funny too how the rag would, on another day, rail about the billions pissed against the wall on indigenous funding. Yep, the Kiwis managed a billion from 1840 ... and John Howard managed A$587 million rolling out from 2007, and with bugger all by way of meaningful result ... (and now that interventionist effort has its own wiki here).

Meanwhile, it's always fun to read the Treaty which raises such fear in the lizard Oz. Here's the preamble:

HER MAJESTY VICTORIA Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland regarding with Her Royal Favour the Native Chiefs and Tribes of New Zealand and anxious to protect their just Rights and Property and to secure to them the enjoyment of Peace and Good Order has deemed it necessary in consequence of the great number of Her Majesty's Subjects who have already settled in New Zealand and the rapid extension of Emigration both from Europe and Australia which is still in progress to constitute and appoint a functionary properly authorised to treat with the Aborigines of New Zealand for the recognition of Her Majesty's Sovereign authority over the whole or any part of those islands – Her Majesty therefore being desirous to establish a settled form of Civil Government with a view to avert the evil consequences which must result from the absence of the necessary Laws and Institutions alike to the native population and to Her subjects has been graciously pleased to empower and to authorise me William Hobson a Captain in Her Majesty's Royal Navy Consul and Lieutenant-Governor of such parts of New Zealand as may be or hereafter shall be ceded to her Majesty to invite the confederated and independent Chiefs of New Zealand to concur in the following Articles and Conditions.

There, that wasn't too hard. You can cop the rest here, and see how you can still end up with New York for the price of some beads and mirrors ...

Well the days of Peter Garrett singing 'treaty now' are long gone - what a wretched shadow of an idealist he's become - and the commentariat are already determined to neuter any gesture of goodwill that might arise from new wording in the constitution, and instead will make hay and use it as a black bashing exercise, once again ...

You can pin a stake through the heart of Hansonism, and the next thing you know it's risen from the dead again and taken the form of Gary Johns in the lizard Oz. And nothing will change ...

Well one thing will change. I'll be buggered if I read the bilious vile words of Gary Johns any time soon ...

(Below: and on the noble puritan principle that, having wasted time with Gary Johns, that time should be made up by more interesting insights into black white relationships in Australia's past, here's a sampling of Gwoja Tjunurrayi and related imagery - the two dollar coin is only 'inspired' by such images. The stamps are the real deal. Now if only he'd spoken to a decent movie or intellectual property rights lawyer, and done a percentage of gross for exploitation of his image).

Greg Clark, a giant Jesus, and a monumental goose ...

(Above: a giant Polish statue of Christ looking eerily Polish. Or perhaps Scandinavian).

When someone asks if they're being monumentally tacky, is it wrong to say "yes, you're being monumentally tacky", and a big doofus, and a big dork, and a big dingdong to boot?

Sure Greg Clarke is attempting a mild kind of humour in The big merino. The big prawn. Why no big Jesus? but instead of having his tongue in his cheek, he comes across like a boofhead in a rugby scrum with his head up a bum.

There's something unnerving, and unsettling about the megalomania of Christians and Christianity.

The news that the Poles have done over the Brazilians in turning out the world's most vulgar public piece of chintz tawdry gaudy flashy knickknackery in the form of a giant Jesus has got the punch drunk Clark's juices flowing. (not to mention the juices of Swiebodzin, nestling in the western Polish plains, and more here).

Where's the dinkum giant antipodean Jesus, Clark wants to know, given Australia's penchant for giant vulgar items.

According to Clark, Christianity is a "material faith":

That is, Christianity has visible outcomes in the world (it’s not just an ‘in your head’ religion), and so it is no surprise that Christians have built monuments of many kinds—churches, statues, libraries, hospitals, refuges, schools, universities.

Naturally this leads Clark to think a really big Jesus is a really good idea, really terrific and really meaningful, rooly trooly:

All of these are ‘visible signs’ of the ‘gospel’ of Jesus (that is, the message of Christianity and how it shapes what people do with their lives), and Christ the Redeemer is just a really, really big sign that we think Jesus is worth attention, and indeed demands the attention of anyone interested in faith, hope and love.

Or not, as the case may be, since frankly the giant prawn and the giant banana are not really the source of my regard for prawns and bananas. And there's a dark psychological side to gigantism which revolves around all kinds of religions, be they religious or secular, from Jesus through Hitler to Mao, as the cult of personality reigns supreme.

But do go on:

So does Australia need a ‘big sign’ of the significance of Jesus? Would a big Australian Jesus have any impact looking over Sydney Harbour, or the Yarra, or perhaps even our natural Big Thing, Uluru?

Yes, yes, that'd show exemplary cultural sensitivity and stir up those dreaming ants. By the way, while we're at it, can we re-christen the rock Ayers Rock, to remind us that Sir Henry Ayers, as well as being premier of South Australia five times, was a decent god fearing man who gave unto Adelaide Ayers House.

Why come to think of it, the garden at Ayers House would be the perfect site for a giant Jesus.

But hang on, hang on, I sense a problem:

I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
A big, statuesque Jesus would provide a different image: strong, sovereign, protective. Both images are part of the biblical story of Jesus, and both have their place.

Yep, that bloody jealous god, bunging on a do about graven images and likenesses.

Muslims get a regular going over about not being able to show pictures of their prophet, but in the good old days, Christian fundies who took the bible literally had a grand old time ransacking Catholic churches and smashing statues, in the manner of the Red Guard or the Taliban taking an attitude to giant Buddhas.

To feel the the violence of the Protestant Reformation, one has to look at the scarred and broken statuary in Europe's medieval churches. Determined to destroy Roman Catholic imagery, iconoclasts in England went on a frenzy of destruction that lasted from 1536 to the death of Oliver Cromwell more than a century later.

“Their vandalism,” the art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon wrote in The History of British Art, “was evangelism.” They hacked off the faces, heads and noses of saints. They smashed stained glass, built bonfires of statues of the Virgin and slashed paintings. The scholar Lawrence Stone once said that the art historian of Britain's medieval period was a “palaeontologist, who from a jawbone, two vertebrae, a rib and a femur contrives to reconstruct the skeleton of some long- extinct creature and endow it with flesh”. (Enough sledge hammer conversions).

Ah yes, the good old days of Biblical literalism, where people believed in the bible, not just in the chunks that suited them (anyone mention gay marriage?)

These days graffiti and tagging is the preferred aesthetic commentary on urban extrusions, and what's the betting that a giant Jesus would cop a tag or four? Still, that'd all be fodder for the persecuted maligned megalomaniac Christians in our midst.

But seeing as how doing the graven images and likenesses thing might be an issue for three or four generations, perhaps we should settle for an abstract impressionist interpretation of Jesus. Perhaps we could bring back Jackson Pollock and get him to dribble and slash some paint to evoke without provoking the absent lord.

Clark would probably go for it, as he proposes co-opting artists into the game:

I’d be fascinated to see ‘Big Jesus’ projects in Australian cities. I’d like to see someone like Kaldor Public Art Projects pick up the idea of commissioning temporary installations in major cities and then asking journalists, poets, social commentators and the clergy to reflect on the impact of having a Big Jesus looking over their city for a period of time.

Big Jesus? Is that like a Big Mac? Note the cunning use of the words "temporary installations". By golly, that sounds positively artistic ... But why stop at a Big Jesus in a city? Why not do a big Jesus in space, Monty Burns style, which could block out the sun? That'd make people stand up and pay attention to Jesus ... And while we're at it, we could flood the world with a Strauss waltz so the Kubrick estate wouldn't sue, but take it as a homage ...

I’m sure others would like to see the impact of a Big Julia or Big Tony, or perhaps a Big Dawkins, but personally I’m interested in the Jesus effect. Or am I just being monumentally tacky?

Which is where we came in, with Clark being monumentally tacky in a monumentally goosey way.

I know he only scribbled it to tease and provoke, but in the process, a depressing vacuity also reveals itself.

But here's a deal. He can have his giant Jesus if we can have a giant skull in each Australian city, full of Christians tortured for their desire to use graven images and likenesses, especially of a Scandinavian kind when trotted out to represent a Jew of ancient middle eastern semitic stock ...

(Below: Bosch with the right idea).

(Or how about a giant shoe in every town? That would get the shoe fetishists going. Zongshan Park in China, naturally).

Janet Albrechtsen, and no no no, it's not a religious thing, it's just a religious thing ...

(Above: found here at Bank backlash).

The commentariat being what they are - competitive, and able to deliver free ideas to a free market, and who can compete with free? - it must surely irritate a few that Janet Albrechtsen, for some obscure, possibly even opaque reason, is the resident conservative chattering class commentator granted a seat on the ABC's talk shows to chatter away.

Once a board member, always a guru, it seems, and how Miranda the Devine and Gerard Henderson must hate and envy her, as she lined up on Q and A's finale - yes it's November and the ABC goes into its three month long recess - to drop poils of wisdom:

This is a commonsense movement. It's not like one nation. I see that Peter Beattie, you know, has referred to the Tea Party as like One Nation. One Nation was based on illiberal ideas. The Team Party is based very much on the ideas of the founding fathers, which are Liberal ideas about smaller government and freedom.

Janet Albrechtsen. Standing up for the tea party and standing up for commonsense.

A commonsense movement. So commonsense that the notion that Obama dropped US$200 million a day on his trip to India went down like honey in the land of the gullible bees ...

Naturally George Brandis was on hand to reinforce the notion that the Tea Party was an exceptionally good thing, because people were critical ... Never mind the quality of the criticism, they were critical:

I don't think that anything that was said by people in the Tea Party or the more mainstream elements of the Republican Party was beyond the bounds of legitimate but very heated criticism of the president, the current administration and their policies, and to that extent I think - you know, the problem with you people on the left is whenever there is a popular move against you, you try to de-legitimise it, just as you - just as you have done with the American elections.

Yep, this is how you legitimise the likes of Michele Bachmann, Christine O'Donnell, and sundry ratbags delivering "heated criticism", and before you know it you have US$200 million a day as a legitimate talking point. And a great source of satire for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert ...

As always, Albrechtsen was ready with phrases tripping off the tip of the tongue:

You know, the Greens are - I like to call them, you know, a pack of wolves in koala costumes because they - you know, they hide behind this environmental cause.

It was at that point that I remembered why I disliked Q & A intensely. It was full of the chattering elite, sometimes dressed in trendy inner west black, sniping away with glib prepared phrases substituting for intelligent debate, points of view already carved in stone, and no one prepared to give quarter ... or an inch, to mix the metaphors.

Still if you left at that point, you'd have missed the piquant sight of Albrechtsen agreeing with a devout Muslim on the matter of gay marriage, and then hastily adding that it wasn't a matter of religion for her, and then getting caught in a logic trap offered up by Tony Jones as she brayed about how civil unions were okay, but not marriage:

TONY JONES: ... just to confirm, you're okay with idea of civil unions.
JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Correct.
TONY JONES: But you don't like the symbol of marriage?
JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Correct.
TONY JONES: You don't like the religious symbol...
JANET ALBRECHTSEN: That's right.
TONY JONES: ...being applied to it?
JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Mm-hm.
TONY JONES: Okay. But you don't believe in religion either.
JANET ALBRECHTSEN: No. No. No.
TONY JONES: It's not a religious issue.
JANET ALBRECHTSEN: I'm just saying I don't come to it, you know, from a religious point of view.

No, no, no, in the usual Albrechtsen way, she comes at it from a totally incoherent, inchoate point of view. What a non-religious religious hoot.

And then there was some guff about putting out the red carpet for asylum seekers, before thankfully everyone ran out of time, and Albrechtsen no longer needed to dance trippingly on the head of a pin. As she'd managed so adroitly at the start of the show when discussing jolly Joe Hockey, and his dalliance with wolfish thinking in relation to the banks ...

TONY JONES: Janet, we were talking earlier about Joe Hockey capturing a public mood but, of course, when he began, he started talking about pulling levers. Now, were you comfortable with that as a free marketeer?

JANET ALBRECHTSEN: Yeah. No. No. It was pretty undisciplined language, I think, but Joe has come back from that and I think there are lots of sensible suggestions that he has come forward with. You know, the Liberal Party is the party of free enterprise but, you know, why on earth, if the banks are not going to explain to us in very clear language what their case is, tell us what the different sources of funding are, why they're increased costs have come about, if they can't explain that to us, why on earth would they expect others to carry the can for them?

Which is as good a way to throw to Albrechtsen's column today in the lizard Oz as can be managed, jumping from a debate which produced its usual share of hot air and bugger all by way of light.

Albrechtsen has always been a staunch defender of the banks - sssh, let's not mention her partner John O'Sullivan in 2006-07 collected a cool $2.4 million for his work as chief legal officer of the Commonwealth Bank (here) - but of course she's also a staunch defender of the Liberals. And jolly Joe ...

So how to manage those wolfishly green jolly Joe attacks, that have the Greens baying in unison with him?

Well in Let's hear the positive story from the banks, the quality of the toe tapping, jigging, dancing on the spot and deflecting, is positively inspirational. It turns out that while jolly Joe was "clumsy in his language", the banks have a wonderful story to tell, but have been woeful at telling it ...

The wisdom of Solomon at work. Split the child in half, show care and love for each half, and all's well in the world. Jolly Joe's nine point plan is jolly good, but the banks' case is also spiffing. It's just that they don't explain themselves well ...

The Commonwealth Bank's rate hike was the perfect example:

When the CBA increased its variable mortgage rate by .45 per cent, almost double the .25 per cent RBA hike, the bank's response was left to an unknown spokesman who assured us the decision was not taken lightly.

"The impetus of the decision was based on the increased cost of funds the bank has continued to experience," said Mr Spokesman.

Phew, the politics inside the Commonwealth Bank must be ugly.

The "unknown spokesman" was in fact in many cases Bryan Fitzgerald, as was made plain for all to see, carrying as he does the noble title Head of Communications as he fronted the media pack of wolves.

Ah those PR hacks, shills and ne'er do wells, it's always wise to shoot the messenger for delivering the message ...

There's the unknown soldier and then there's the unknown spokesman, and then there's the cheap shot, and never should we mention any undeclared connections ...

By the end of her piece, Albrechtsen had lathered herself up into a self-contradictory frenzy, which allows a pot shot at the mining tax, while offering relief for the Liberal party:

Yes, the Liberal Party is the party of free enterprise, but if the banks can't or won't defend themselves, why should others carry the can for them? Compare the miners earlier this year.

Yes, yes, yes, what this country needs is a multi-billion media assault by the banks, emulating the miners, on ... jolly Joe Hockey and the Liberal party ...

Come on banking lads, show some spunk. Sure you showed some spunk calling jolly Joe an antipodean version of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, but that wasn't the right sort.

... if the banks want to make their case, they could start by using their own set of numbers to communicate some simple messages to borrowers. Explain the basic economics at work, the numbers behind the different sources of funding banks borrow to on-lend to customers. What are the differing costs? Explain the net interest margins. Explain the return on equity and assets. Explain that making banks safer with new capital and liquidity rules comes at a cost. Fight numbers with numbers.

Yes come on lads, an arcane defence of banking methods, couched in the manner of internal accounting procedures, will work tremendously well in the tabloids, especially if used to confront the terrible bashing of banks done with a piece of four be two. I'm sure we'd all love to be informed about the intricacies of the banking world - yawn, sorry I nodded off there for a second - so we can withstand the desire to bash the banks about the charges they inflict on us ... especially the charges for changing banks in a fit of pique ...

And so on and so forth, until the final par, in which the game of Twister is emulated to perfection, as the banks are simultaneously wonderful and yet totally to blame, and bank bashing and Tea party sentiments and jolly Joe Hockey dressed up as a wolf in koala clothing are set aside:

Sure, it's depressing to listen to the simplistic attacks on banks. It's frustrating to see how quickly Australians seem to forget that Australia's AAA-rated banks led the world in best practice during the financial crisis. No bank failures here. No bank bailouts either. Every Australian who has superannuation is a beneficiary of our well-run, profitable banks. There is only one thing worse than a profitable bank. It's an unprofitable bank.

Yes, yes, yes it's a veritable Elysian field of splendid banks, and never mind that the Federal government for some strange reason provided a little underpinning during the GFC. Now what's the dark cloud?

That said, if Australia's big four banks continue to play the policy and politics of this debate as poorly as in the past, they will have themselves to blame for Labor's idea of banking reform.

Say what? I thought it was jolly Joe's idea of banking reform - and bank bashing - that had set the hare running. Suddenly it's all Labor's idea of banking reform?

So there you have it. Jolly Joe innocent, the banks to blame, that unknown spokesperson Bryan Fitzgerald in particular, and the Labor party being their usual fiendish self ...

Gay marriage not a religious issue but a religious issue? Banks not a jolly Joe bank bashing exercise but a deviant Labor idea for banking reform?

By golly I feel a game coming on, a game for adults wanting a little fun. Come on down Milton Bradley ...