A herpy derpy Friday ...

(Above: obvious troll is obvious).

So John Birmingham is personally going to save the intertubes, single-handedly enhance the level of discourse, firmly moderate his comments and plug his finger in the dyke all on his own, as explained in Why I'll be kicking you off this blog.

Sadly under this dire threat, the savagely moderated comments didn't reach Shakespearian heights but quickly turned to a discussion of drivel. But by golly the trick worked, he scored over five hundred comments, largely unread drivel, but no doubt carefully moderated drivel.

If Birmingham had been serious, he'd have simply referred his readers to the Herp Derp app (here) which derps comments so that they become a string of derps and herps.

But why stop there? There's little doubt Birmingham's blogs, and the pond's efforts, and many others, would be vastly improved by being turned into a string of derps and herps.

But why stop there? There's little doubt that the entire newspaper output of News Ltd would be considerably enhanced by being turned into a string of derps and herps.

The latest bout of derpy herpery is an astonishing outburst in relation to an intern. You can catch the conversation at Herald Sun intern debacle is a hard lesson in newsroom culture.

You see a naughty intern wrote some naughty things about her internship at the HUN at first anonymously and then exposed to the world (The Hun Mole, at Farrago).

Now you might think that the intern was being silly, naive, precious, or more, but what's astonishing has been the precious, hurt reaction of not just the HUN, but the entire Murdoch empire. It's a classic case of diddums, as they say in Tamworth.

Even so-called heavyweights like Miranda the Devine have felt the need to weigh in and slag off the hapless intern, as you can read in Kidlet offended by sexist gentlemen.

The Devine gives the girl a clip over the ear, links to a story at The Australian and reports the editor in chief of the HUN has lodged a report with the university over the earth-shattering controversy.

This from a crusading rag that routinely embarks on wars against individuals with no shame and precious little sense of restraint and honour - think of the crusade against Simon Overland, maintained long after he left his job with the Vic coppers, and that's just the easiest one to spring to mind. Think of Andrew Bolt's crusade against fair-skinned people who identify as Aboriginal ...

As for comparing the hapless intern with the other ceaseless wars and crusades conducted by Andrew "Hussein the Bolter" Bolt, talk about small cheese and the mouse that roared ...

It's yet another indicator - if anyone was needed - how News Ltd has become a paranoid castle full of group think people ever ready to use their power to crush and dispose of anyone they don't like. A tortured twisted garden of hate and bile, and incidentally full of herpy derpery.

Speaking of herpy derpery and silly headers, surely David Penbery takes the cake in his tribute to Robert Hughes, Grumpy genius railed in vain against the rise of stupidity.

Yes we know Penbo, Hughes completely failed to prevent the establishment of The Punch.

And now, emboldened, stupidity is on the march on a daily basis.

Evidence? Just read Daniel Piotrowski's Men are the new sluts, in which Piotrowski stakes a claim for having written the creepiest opening par ever written for The Punch. Piotrowski is an intern who learned how to play the News Ltd game proper-like, and so a story about male slutdom shrieking SLUT in the header nails the standard of stupidity required by The Punch, the HUN, Mx, and the rest of the godforsaken stew of mind parasites.

But this is Friday, so let's step outside paranoid castle for a moment, and celebrate calm contemplation of News Ltd current's campaign for the right to go on defaming the weak, the helpless and the powerless (an apology and a correction is always available for you on page 36 amongst the brothel ads for any front page that offends), by turning to Richard Ackland's Free speech debate is coloured by hypocrisy.

By golly, from the opening par the pond loves the cut of Ackland's jibe:

The martyrdom of Saint Andrew of Bolt is stirring a stifled nation. ''Freedom of speech'' rings from the battlements as this cherished right apparently faces its gravest threat.

Indeed. Ackland, in his usual way, takes a look at the truth of the Bolt matter, denied in the usual way by Tony Abbott, always ready to suck up to the Murdoch press:

Abbott's clunky speech did not finesse the boundaries. His attack on the government's deliberations on the convergence review and the Finkelstein proposals for a News Media Council to patrol journalistic standards shows that he is quite content with the idea that a self-regulated regime, with one company straddling like a colossus the print and pay TV business in this country, is a great way to protect free speech.

Sock it to 'em Mr. Ackland, but do expect precious shrieks and howls.

The further good news this Friday? Both big Mal and Ian MacFarlane having the courage to talk truth to power over the matter of electricity pricing, as outlined in Coalition split over energy price rises.

The problem for the Gillard government is that the boondoggles got set and running under state Labor governments, in Queensland, NSW and Victoria. That's why we didn't hear much about it during the good chum years.

The problem for Abbott, always in denial about the truth, is that the Liberal replacements have maintained the boondoggle. Abbott shows every sign he's one of the sheeple he chants to, since all he's been able to do in response to a situation that needs a nuanced response is the usual "carbon tax is responsible for the ruin of everything". He's such a herpy derpy doofus.

Expect much heat, not much light, and an ongoing desire to charge exorbitant prices for the heat in this ongoing debate. But what fun it will be if Abbott gets into power and has to deal with these contending forces.

Will he discover that there's more to electricity prices than the late-breaking carbon tax? Will the HUN discover it's a newspaper rather than an intern-bashing echo chamber?

Of course you won't get any of these perspectives by reading News Ltd publications. They're too busy slagging off that intern and anyone else who steps outside paranoid castle to go against the grain.

Herpy derpy.

(Below: more herpy derpy at Urban Dictionary here).

The glorious joys of contradiction and compartmentalisation ....

(Above: click to enlarge).

Every day the pond is charmed by the sight of people deep in the art of embracing contradiction.

It's an essential skill. This morning for example Tony Abbott studiously explained that the Andrew Bolt matter was political oppression of a champion of free speech (and never mind that he got his facts wrong), while the Facebook page abusing aboriginal people with "controversial humour" was merely an issue of problems with social media which will be sorted by the opposition. (his weasel way with words will turn up here in due course, or sit in the archives for 09/08/2012)

And then there's the sight of Facebook itself, ostensibly fervent champions of free speech, ducking and weaving and dodging and refusing to exercise its right to free speech by refusing to respond or to say anything about the page, before it was eventually taken down.

Of course United States' citizens are accustomed to the sight of Obama dressed up as a witch-doctor or chomping on water-melon as part of mainstream political discourse and so don't have a clue about a page they might well have found unexceptional.

It's just sending up blacks? But that's a daily sport here...

The United States rarely has a clue, except perhaps when a crazed gun man runs amok in a Sikh temple.

Then there was the bizarre sight of Paul Sheehan falling into a frothing, foaming, fainting frenzy at the prospect of listening to Sir David Attenborough, as outlined in Lining up for some quality time with king of the jungle.

Sheehan routinely keeps the company of climate denialists, is big on fracking the entire countryside, and rarely speaks of the wonders of the bush. It seems you have to be in the jungle:

Speaking of which, my wife bought tickets for A Life On Earth. We'll be there tonight. It may not be the jungle, it may not be front row seats, but it will be an evening in a theatre filled with people who want to share some time with a legendary keeper of the flame that illuminates what we hold most precious in our world.

What we hold most precious in our world?

Here's hoping Attenborough spends some time contemplating climate science, and repeating the things he said in Frozen Planet, which got him charged with sensationalism, as you can read in David Attenborough is accused of climate change sensationalism by Lord Lawson.

Attenborough denied the charge in Frozen Planet was not alarmist about climate change, but carried on about the polar bears - routinely an item of fun in skeptics' heaven - in his personal plea about global warming here:

Polar animals are already reacting to the changes. We saw the evidence for ourselves when we accompanied a Norwegian team from the University of Svalbard who were making their annual check on the health of polar bears. The bears' condition has been steadily deteriorating as the ice, which they need when hunting seals, diminishes. And cubs born to underweight mothers are much less likely to survive their first year.

In a classic case of not being able to hear, and focussing on the medium rather than the message, Sheehan rabbits on a number of times about Attenborough's beguiling voice. Will Sheehan pay any more attention if Attenborough covers climate change in the flesh?

The loss of sea ice in the north affects not just polar bears but the whole planet. The frozen Arctic Ocean acts as a huge reflector, bouncing 85 per cent of the sun's heat back into space. This keeps the polar regions cool and moderates the whole of the earth's climate. But when the ice vanishes, the dark sea water that replaces it absorbs the sun's energy, so its temperature rises. This is why the Arctic - a region the size of North America - is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. As a consequence, increasing amounts of meltwater are now flowing into the polar sea. This could eventually disrupt the flow of ocean currents around the planet that transfer heat around the Earth and are critical in maintaining the climates we've known for centuries. The implications of that are hard to overstate.

The things we hold precious! Does that include the planet?

Well, there's your post-modern ironic Thursday cackle. (You don't really need a link to Sheehan on climate science do you? Do you really want to mix the cackle with post-modern nausea?)

It's not so much the love of climate science denialism that Sheehan exudes, it's his Whitman-esque capacity to embrace his contradictions.

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes. (thanks Walt, but should you feed Sheehan's megalomania?)

Then there was a splendid piece about the "emperor has no clothes" or more to the point, John Coates donning the garb of see-through hypocrisy, to be found in Richard Hinds' Hard to win medals when turn-Coates takes breath away:

...at London 2012, there is unlikely to be a moment more utterly gobsmacking than the Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates declaring the key to an improved performance by Australia was to make sport compulsory in school, and to thus increase participation rates.
What made Coates's comment so jaw-dropping was it involved a backflip that, on the gymnastics mat, would have scored a perfect 10. This was the same John Coates whose organisation seemingly exercised every political muscle in its successful attempt to bury the findings of the Crawford Report into government sports funding - a report that, among many sensible suggestions, strongly advocated the restoration of physical education in schools.

That's just the start of Price's demolition of the AOC and Coates. Let there be more of it. The pond could read a piece a day on the stench that emanates from AOC poobahs and the Olympics ...

What else? Well there was the grand sight of News Corp posting a hefty loss on its newspaper business:

News Corp, billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s media company, reported a $1.46 billion fourth-quarter loss after writing down the value of Australian newspapers and other parts of its global publishing empire...

Advertising falls at Australian and UK newspapers continued hit profitability in publishing - the core of the company's publishing spin-off.

A billion plus loss for the billionaire's company, but naturally The Australian was more concerned with a minor blow-out in the cost of the NBN, and the report in The Australian, News Corp makes Q4 loss on publishing writedown (not paywall affected at time of writing) couldn't bring itself to mention newspapers by name. Somehow it was "publishing businesses":

News Corp reported a $US1.55 billion ($1.46 billion) loss for its fiscal fourth quarter on a multibillion-dollar writedown, primarily of its publishing businesses, most significantly those in Australia.

"Publishing businesses"! In Australia! No mention either of the bleeding obvious implication:

Chief operating officer Chase Carey suggested there were substantial costs still to be cut out of the Australian business, saying this would happen in coming months after the overhaul of management in the first half of 2012.

Yep, there'll be more pain for the mob that spend the first half of 2012 gloating at Fairfax's misfortune ...

And all this before you even get down to a genuinely weird Australian eccentric like Greg Sheridan scribbling his heart out in Three things I hate about Uncle Sam (behind the paywall, and aren't you lucky you know how to google, or better still, couldn't be fucked googling):

It would be difficult anywhere in the world to find a newspaper columnist who loves America more than your correspondent does. From John Wayne to Diet Coke, from the Cosby family to Ronald Reagan, from the Mars probe Curiosity to Martin Luther King, from Abraham Lincoln to I Love Lucy to iPads and the internet, I love it all.

Uh huh. Wayne, diet Coke, Lucy (perhaps Sheridan identifies with gormless Desi Arnaz).

No mention of Colbert, Stewart or Seinfeld, but being Sheridan, there's no expectation of taste.

We get the idea, he just loves America, and sings his love like a Berstein-Sondheim song, but to hit you with a spoiler, the three things about the US that upsets Sheridan are its gun culture, its health system and litigation culture, and finally "the new American vulgarity."

Say what? Could it be that Sheridan is actually going to slag off the dire impact of Fox, and the right wing radio shock jocks, run rampant and out of control these past few years, coarsening the debate and cultivating a kind of Tea Party frenzy of stupidity, fear and loathing?

... finally there is the new American vulgarity. Most Americans are not vulgar. Most are neighbourly, kindly, decent. Many are church-going, positively courtly people. But in recent years a toxic combination has taken hold of public culture.

Uh huh. It's sounding good for creationist-loving, rabid, gay-bashing Texans.

This is a left liberal desire to shock bourgeois sensibilities, an ideological determination that there be no standards of restraint in public morality and a commercialised crassness in popular working-class culture that produces hybrid monstrosities such as Jerry Springer, Jersey Shore and the wildest excesses of daytime TV's parade of domestic dysfunction. It coarsens American life. So now the US has been warned. Get cracking, Fix it up.

It's a left liberal desire to shock bourgeois sensibilities? It's Springer and Jersey Shore, and not the whole studio of comedians that populates Fox (and not just at The Simpsons). It's got nothing to do with the way the Republican party and its affiliates have left the centre and trotted off into a crazed la la land of fear, loathing and hatred for mild-mannered liberals?

The most astonishing thing? People pay to subscribe to The Australian expecting to get informed comment. And instead they're served up Greg Sheridan.

If that doesn't give you a post-modern ironic laugh on a Thursday, what will?

Cue Noel Coward, sing us a song:

... I like America,
I have traveled far
From Northumberland to Zanzibar
And I find America-okay.
I've roamed the Spanish Main
Eaten sugar-cane
But I never tasted cellophane
Till I struck the U.S.A.
All delegates
From Southern States
Are nervy and distraught.
In New Orleans
The wrought-iron screens
Are dreadfully overwrought.
Beneath each tree
In Tennessee
Erotic books are read.
And when alligators thud
Through the Mississippi mud
Sex rears its ugly head.
But-I like America,
Every scrap of it,
All the sentimental crap of it
And come what may
Give me a holiday
In the good old U.S.A. (you can find the rest at various lyrics sites)

And speaking of American vulgarity, here's Colbert doing over Republican Steve King.

Now you might think Colbert's part of a left liberal conspiracy to inspire a new vulgarity in the States, but at least he's not as fucked in the head as King and Greg Sheridan and Fox:

Okay losers, time to muscle up, Janet Albrechtsen's in front of the telly ...

Now you might think the pond should start off with this graphic because it's relevant to the text below.

There's gold, gold, gold for Australia, and there's Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen tucked up in the corner brooding about being a winner.

But hey, this week, thanks to Gina Rinehart and the Ten network, for the pond it's been ape week, concluding with Ape Lincoln, in what collectively is surely the most stunning collection of sequel losers the world has ever seen.

And curiously those ape movies - what else could you put up against the Olympics? - brings us back to the text of the day, which concerns losers in sport rather than losers in television, and the way the pond loves mixed signals, the more mixed the better.

Janet "Dame Slap" Albrechtsen is a dab hand at mixed signals, as she proves yet again in No, Olympic silver is not the new gold. (paywall affected)

Sadly this involves the pond contemplating the Olympics and sport. Never mind, it's almost over, so we're up for the game, just for the sheer pleasure of participating.

Participation? Get yourself fit? Shed obesity?

How many times has the pond heard the line that it's not the winning that matters, it's playing the game.

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night—

Ten to make and the match to win—
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote—
"Play up! play up! and play the game!" (the rest here at the poem's wiki)

Say what about the ribboned coat? A season's fame? Soap please!

Ablbrechtsen takes for her text a line from Rudyard Kipling and dealing with winning and losing with equal grace - ah the perfidious winning British, still providing all the lines - but she really isn't into graceful losing.

Poor old Mitchell Watt immediately pops up, reproaching the media for marking down his silver medal, and Dame Slap's not having any of it:

He told us to "wake up", stop the negative reports and celebrate all the medals, the gold medal won by our girls in the 4x100 freestyle relay and the growing list of silver and bronze. He's right. And he's wrong too. Winning and losing is a complicated, highly personal affair. Athletes themselves don't always celebrate a silver medal in the way Watt has done.

Yes, he's absolutely wrong, what would he know? Snort, he's a silver medal loser.

And as for that dropkick who said he'd enjoyed himself and he'd raced his heart out and he was pleased as punch to come eighth in such stellar competition!! Somebody had to finish last, and it just so happened it was him, but at least he'd made the finals, unlike a lot of other athletes ...

I mean, come on Aussie loser, come on.

Albrechtsen then proceeds to produce some real gold medal zingers, right up there with Leni Riefensthal's Olympia:

Let our young sportsmen and women express their emotions in all their raw natural beauty.

Translation: Susie O'Neill was right to pour scorn over a useless bunch of minor medal-winning, dropkick, bone lazy, lacking in work ethic, losers.

That said, let us pay credit where it is due. Lack of gold notwithstanding, let us marvel at the myriad human reactions to triumph and defeat.

Translation: take that drop-kick Magnussen. Sure he trained hard but he lost. He went to win gold and he came back with silver, so we know he's a loser.

After all:

Unlike any other sport in the Olympic Games, there is an Australian obsession with winning gold medals in the pool. We are, after all, so used to winning them. That partly explains why the expectations of Australians for our swimmers are so extraordinarily high. It explains the tears and the despondency when our swimmers lose. And there is, of course, a direct correlation between the level of despondency and the length of time between opportunities for glory. In this case, four long years of more training and more sacrifices will pass until there is a chance to win gold.

Never mind next year's world championships where you can be pronounced the fastest or the strongest or the highest. They're not run on nation state lines for the glory of all Australians.

And don't bother to come home in four years time if all you're bringing is silver or bronze, or even worse. We've got enough cutlery, and we certainly don't need any more bronze taps.

Sport, opines Dame Slap, is an enduring puzzle:

Remembering second place is the exception, not the rule in sport. Yet every four years at the Olympics, we hand out gold, silver and bronze medals. Why do we celebrate second and third in some arenas and not in others? And why, if we do hand out medals for second and third place, do we assume that the winners of those medals ought to show grace in what is, after all, a defeat. Silver is not the new gold. Not even for a nation now struggling in the gold medal count after a proud history of success.

Why do we sugarcoat and butter up the losers with a medal? It's outrageous. It just hides the fact that they're losers, they came second, they should go away and hide somewhere.

So why have we struggled to reach this far with Dame Slap's soliloquy? Well it makes the pond a winner, gold, gold, gold for the pond for reaching the end of another Janet Albrechtsen column.

But there are other, more important, benefits than an over-sized gold trinket for the pond.

For starters there are important messages embedded here for your children. The next time they come home from school bearing some rubber stamp from the teacher, remind them firmly that a silver koala isn't the same as a gold one.

Point out in a kindly but stern way - without shouting - that the child is a loser and a drop-kick. He or she has lost, been defeated, come second, might just as well have come last for all it meant. Go shed rivers of tears in a quiet corner, then get out and start training properly for John Coates and Kevin Gosper.

If the child attempts to explain that they've enjoyed the participation, or somehow taken pleasure from the activity, remind them that this is the attitude of a loser. They have been defeated, and remorse or tears are acceptable signs of being a graceful drop-kick loser.

A line like "I tried so hard for ya momsy and for the country, I did, I did, but I lost, I'm a loser baby so why don't you kill me" is perfectly enlightened and appropriate, especially if accompanied by tears, mutilation and self-harm.

This way the child can be led to understand silver isn't the new gold, tinfoil isn't tin, and it's no good talking about how they'd been competing against the best in the school and tried their guts out. Trying simply isn't good enough. They might reply, try:Tri-Tri-anti-wonti-Triantiwontigongolope (having read the C. J. Dennis poem here) but don't be fooled by the devious little buggers.

Some children are born sophists - that's why they're losers - and so some might ask "daddy, what did you do in the war?" or "mommy, how many gold medals do you have?" or even worse, "daddy how many gold medals, or silver or bronze does Janet Albrechtsen have?" and it's important to give them a cuff over the head and send them on their way at this point.

Do not allow them to pass Go, but demand they go directly to our new lavishly funded internment camp, run by John and Kevin, designed to produce a new flowering of gold medals, with losers banished to Tasmania.

Now your average over-clever child might say "but isn't it the case in any sport that many might be called but few are chosen, because it's a kind of Ponzi scheme and 99.9% can't win gold, the tip of the pyramid, and isn't being an integral part of the pyramid just as good and useful, especially if you enjoy what you're doing", at which point you'll realise you have a right drop kick loser for a child.

The ultimate aim here is to have your child scarred and branded for life as a loser.

This is a noble aim for the individual. But please remember that this isn't just about the individual, it's about national identity and nations competing and the triumph of the nation state, and its international standing, and its ability to fight in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and at Gallipoli und blut und boden und heimat und lebensraum und mein fuehrer I can walk and win the walking gold at the Olympics.

Sorry don't know where all that came from, must be the mix of German and Irish genes, and coming from a long line of losers.

Anyhoo, if you maintain this regime long enough, with a bit of luck, your child will grow up to be as screwed up as Janet Albrechtsen, and all the other commentariat currently salivating about gold medals.

Happily this attitude will also make you the life and soul of the party.

If you happen to chance on a stray Olympian who's returned with a silver or a bronze, lightly and wittily note "Oh so you're another loser then, a bit like Greg Norman, only didn't he walk home with a pile of cash after finishing second in a couple of majors, because they might not hand out medals or jackets to second place, but they sure ease the pain of coming second in golf with a splash of moola".

Or perhaps you might just eye them sympathetically and say "guess there's nothing left for you but to start selling useless multi-vitamins, or perhaps devices presented not just by Dawn Fraser but by people close to the company providing testimonials" (See Multvitamins, and Circulation device ad features testimonials from close to home).

Yes, yes, Janet Albrechtsen completely misunderstands the game of professional golf as well as the importance of the Olympics as a way to flog completely useless stuff to losers ...

But what to you expect? There she is, sitting in a comfortable armchair watching the television and correctly branding participants in sport as dropkick losers is an Australian Olympic event.

And it's gold, gold, gold to Janet Albrechtsen, sitting in her armchair, watching and pontificating, for no apparent purpose.

And it's gold to the pond for reading her, and gold to you for reading this, and not a bit of silver or bronze in sight.

And while we're at it, please don't go away empty-handed. Take this wonderful hand-crafted mug for losers with you:

It'll help you understand why in the world of the commentariat there's only me, me, me, which is to say Numero Uno, and no seconds please.

Now why not sing along with a scientologist?

The hazards of screen culture, and the first one is ... Susan Greenfield ...

(Above: oh dear, the thing that lurks on screens strike again).

Well there it goes, and civilisation and the pond will never be the same.

It's the end of the Lara Bingle bump, and quality television network Ten style.

The whisper around the traps is that Telstra is looking for a television network to buy. Seven's a little too premium with an unwilling owner, and there's nothing to be done about Nine until it goes into receivership and its burdensome debt structure gets sorted.

The last time Nine was floated as a Telstra purchase option was back in May with this story Telstra eyes troubled Nine television network (may be paywall affected) when the debt was reckoned to be $3.8 bn. Even amongst chums, that's more than loose change.

That leaves Ten, driven into the ground by the current Murdoch-inspired cabal, aided and abetted by that classy media entrepreneur Gina Rinehart - you know, the one that routinely shows fear and loathing and disdain for journalists.

Could the last Bingle bump see Ten bumped to Telstra? Aided and abetted by the Shire and assorted other follies that have seen advertising revenue drop and the share price spiral into the ground.

Who knows, but it's a reminder of the dangers of television, and the deadly plasticity of mind-warping screen culture.

Yep, and that's the cue for the pond to be drawn, like a moth to the flame, to the latest column from Susan Greenfield, a scientist always alert to the danger of screens in our lives.

Of course you could put her message all in one fear-laden New Yorker cover:

Is there no end to the hazards of screen culture? The world reduced to tweets and texts?

Greenfield's at it again thanks to Fairfax, who've offered up How digital culture is rewiring our brains, a familiar regurgitation of all Greenfield's standard talking points, as well as a handy promo for her forthcoming tour down under.

As usual, Greenfield is just asking questions about all-pervasive digital technology, without providing any coherent answers, while hinting at the need for digital panic, fear, uncertainty and doubt (put it another way, games and gamers are ruining themselves and the world).

And as usual, it's always fun to spot the point where she inserts a disclaimer in relation to relevant research. That's the way it goes, question, thesis, and disclaimer.

So first of all we turn to social networking and a hideous loss of empathy over the past thirty years, and the last decade in particular, which might well be due to screens in our lives:

Such data does not, of course, prove a causal link but just as with smoking and cancer some 50 years ago, epidemiologists could investigate any possible connection.

Such data might not even be reliable, especially when grappling with the fuzzy concept of empathy. No doubt it was the presence of feature film screens throughout the land that led to a startling decline in empathy for Jewish people during the years of Nazi rule in Germany.

Then there's video games, which pose all sorts of speculative possibilities:

Second, video games. Neuropsychological studies suggest frequent and continued playing might lead to enhanced recklessness. Data also indicates reduced attention spans and possible addiction. In line with this, significant chemical and even structural changes are being reported in the brains of obsessional gamers.

Note all the clever qualifiers and adept fudges. Might lead to enhanced recklessness, for example. Compare and contrast this to the enhanced recklessness you might get from a night on the piss, or a dose of speed.

Fling in an "indicates" and "possible addiction" and the next thing you know you're off with obsessional gamers. Compare and contrast this to the significant chemical and even structural changes induced in the brains of obsessional poker machine players.

It's always the games and the gamers that cop it from Greenfield, an obsession which led to Miranda the Devine and the like becoming obsessional about Greenfield. After all the Devine and the rest of the right wing commentariat aren't happy until they've got something to blame. Getting pissed in the streets and going the biff? Must be a gamer.

Eventually the Devine tired of the game and moved on to new speculative endeavours. Was it perhaps because of this sort of rubbery Greenfield speculation:

No single paper is ever likely to be accepted unanimously as conclusive but a survey of 136 reports using 381 independent tests, and conducted on more than 130,000 participants, concluded that video games led to significant increases in desensitisation, physiological arousal, aggression and a decrease in prosocial behaviour.

Indeed. Why it's also possible that participation in the military, turning up to actual warfare, and indulging in post-colonial adventures might lead to significant increases in desensitisation, physiological arousal, aggression and a decrease in prosocial behaviour on the killing fields.

These days Greenfield has a new problem to add to deviant games and gamers. Search engines!

Third, search engines. Can the internet improve cognitive skills and learning, as has been argued?

This is of course merely a straw question, which cleverly conflates the internet, and the content that might be on it, with search engines, a very specific activity undertaken in the context of the internet.

That's so Greenfield can get down to the real business, which is to get deeply concerned about the internet and get us all thinking about the redeeming joy of reading a good book:

The problem is that efficient information processing is not synonymous with knowledge or understanding. Even the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, has said: ''I worry that the level of interrupt, the sort of overwhelming rapidity of information - and, especially, of stressful information - is, in fact, affecting cognition. It is, in fact, affecting deeper thinking. I still believe that sitting down and reading a book is the best way to really learn something.''

There, even Eric Schmidt thinks a good book is better for you. You might think you're just having a surf, but actually the information is stressing your brain. Could there be an upside?

Given the plasticity of the brain, it is not surprising adapting to a cyber-environment will also lead to positives - for example, enhanced performance in skills that are continuously rehearsed, such as a mental agility similar to that needed in IQ tests or in visuomotor co-ordination. However, we urgently need a fuller picture.

Uh huh, it's only a speculative upside.

So why do we need a fuller picture? Well somewhere along the way you'll usually get a line like this:

The design of innovative software that attempted to offset some of the perceived or agreed deficiencies arising from our digital culture would be enormously valuable. We need more detailed profiles of computer use, along with surveys of the views and insights of parents, teachers and employers. Then, in the light of all this input, this hypothetical initiative would make recommendations. It might well include a root and branch re-examination of education and subsequent training that best equips the citizen of the 21st century to be personally fulfilled and useful to society.

Yes we need innovative software and a screen-based software-driven solution to our screen-based software-driven problems.

This is the sort of tosh that back in 2007 saw Greenfield launching MindFit, PC-based software alleged to halt mental decline. (a BBC news item here).

One of Britain's top scientists is joining the likes of Chris Tarrant and Nicole Kidman by putting her name to a new wave of computer games designed to keep the brain fit.
As if the gym was not tyranny enough, now there's another fitness routine that's playing on the insecurities of the masses - the brain workout.
But at least couch potatoes will not have to stir from the sofa to take part. This path to cerebral salvation can be navigated sitting down, in front of a screen, with a computer game.

Don't you just love it? You do?

Well that reminds me, the pond has invented the perfect exerciser for you. All you have to do is sit on it in front of the television, let it shake you like James Packer shaking down the NSW government, and within thirty days, you will have a body equal to a Greek Adonis (no exchanges or refunds).

Occasionally readers of Greenfield get agitated, as with this bit of angst in relation to her ill-informed speculation that autism and ADHD might be related to the intertubes or screens or whatever.

But she usually gets a free kick when she ventures into the antipodes - this time she's turning up as guest speaker at Creative Innovation Asia Pacific 2012 Never mind that in the past decade she's spent most of the time outside her speciality fulminating about creative digital innovations and the dangers they pose to the world - that's just the qualification you need to cultivate a cup of creative innovation.

Will they have a screen for her at the show, will they stream her, will the plasticity of the audiences' brains be frayed and fried a little more?

Part of Greenfield's skill is to conflate and draw together unrelated issues and treat them as another way to ask speculative questions - so brain change is as significant and as poorly understood as climate change.

Which is why the pond would like to include this quote from a 2008 review of one of her books because nothing much as changed in the interval (to get the full cultural reference you need to know that agitated Colonels in Tunbridge Wells frequently write to the newspapers deploring the way teenagers will turn out sinister and different to said agitated Colonels):

... It is not her fault that she can't get from mental metaphor to neural quiddity. It is her fault, though, to give the impression that she can - by leaping so irresponsibly from metaphoric to literal, from mental to neural; or by asserting that neural networking "personalises" the brain. In a sense, it must do, but this simply begs the question, using a formulation that any non-scientist could blithely use - no more authoritative than her account of human individualism as a naturalised version of the Seven Deadly Sins. Despite her expertise, Greenfield is unable to do more than the rest of us - deduce from brain activity and behaviour to speculative causes and effects, and rely on dubious metaphors. If we discard the metaphors, what are we left with? A complaint as ancient as Plato's against writing, or Renaissance elites against the printing press. The neuroscience never marries up with the complaint, just impressively but speciously adorns it. Which is why Greenfield's speculations, interesting as they are, don't get much further than Tunbridge Wells whimsy. (here)

Of course writing changed the world, and so did the printing press, and so did telecommunications and radio, and so has the screen, but the fervid paranoid imaginings of Greenfield in relation to screens and brain plasticity holds as much water as the notion that television ruined the baby boomer generation (hold on, could it be that television helps explain why Greenfield has such a bee in her bonnet about screens?)

The one thing we can be sure about is that Greenfield is more a part of the problem she dreams up than a part of any solution.

She is in fact a child of the screen, made known by the screen, and relieved of deep questioning about the screen by the need to keep constantly moving, like an agitated Colonel or butterfly.

Shwe's a dab hand at publicity, trades on her status as a scientist and a baroness, and so has scored her very own tag in the science section of The Guardian where assorted journalists and scientists worry at the bones she tosses into the air without any supporting research.

She is invariably to be found on a screen near you, even if you're not sure what it all means, as noted in The elusive hypothesis of Baroness Greenfield:

Baroness Susan Greenfield has an idea. It's a scary idea that could have far-reaching consequences for our society. Greenfield has used newspapers, magazines and television channels to promote her idea. This has caused alarm, and other academics have demanded that she properly publish her idea with supporting evidence in a research journal.

There's one big problem though; nobody seems very sure what Baroness Greenfield's idea actually is.

Indeed. On a bad hair day, Susan Greenfield reminds the pond of Marshall McLuhan, who was equally fuzzy in the use of terms and concepts, whereby certain media could be hot or cold or even lukewarm.

It's a fine way to provoke people and get the world into a tizz, but reality is inclined to be more banal.

Greenfield fancies that she's at the cutting edge of new insights into new ways of going about things, but then so did phrenologists.

Perhaps she needs to spend a little more time away from screens, and the nightmares they seem to provoke in her ...

Tramps like us, baby we were born to bore ...

(Above: why not sing along?

In the day we sweat it out in the streets of a runaway pedant's dream

At night we ride through Phillips street institutes dreaming of glory in suicide machines

Sprung from cages out on Penrith road ...

Baby this bore rips the bones from your back

He's a death trap, he's a Whitlam suicide rap

We gotta get out while we're young

'cause tramps like him, baby he was born to bore ...)

There's a danger in being a weekly columnist, especially if you're as dull and torpid as that prattling Polonius Gerard Henderson.

Long after the chattering classes have dispensed with the rooster Swannie and his addiction to Bruce Springsteen, Henderson turns up with the Boss as his opening par in Toss 'The Boss' palaver, leader's economic legacy the real issue.

The real issue for Henderson is terminal tedium - he doesn't even have the grace or the style to deliver a musical opinion on the Boss or the rooster's musical tastes.

Perhaps that's because Henderson usually shows absolutely no interest in music or the arts in general. Perhaps he's like my father - tone deaf and wandering in a world where the music stopped with the death of Bing Crosby.

Anyhow, this week's historical lesson is what a disaster the Whitlam government was for the economy. Yep, it's ye olde ancient and medieval fear-mongering, a rattling of cages and a stern finger pointed at the wedding guests and "aye me hearties look what Gough did to the albatross".

It takes a commendable rigour of mind to discuss the economy of Australia in the 1970s without once mentioning the oil shock and the start of the worldwide recession in 1975, but Henderson manages it in style.

There's something about his naturally blinkered approach that keeps him on a one-way track. The Whitlam government mismanaged its response, but then so did the Fraser government. They were strange times, and yet here we are ...

Meanwhile, since Mark Latham has gone off ferreting in the trough with Andrew Bolt for tasty French food and European beer, let the pond brood yet again about Henderson distorting for the nth time the truth of the Commonwealth Scholarship scheme:

For example, the likes of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard claim that they would never have gone to university if it had not been for Whitlam's decision to introduce free tertiary education. This initiative was continued by Malcolm Fraser but scrapped by Hawke. The fact is that, as bright students, Rudd and Gillard would have won scholarships under the Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme which came into operation in 1951 under the Robert Menzies led Coalition government. This scheme covered tuition fees and provided a means-tested living allowance.

The fact is that in those days bright students often ended up as bonded teachers because the teaching scholarship paid more than the Commonwealth scholarship, and next thing you knew you were a bonded teacher out back of Bourke ready to have a beer with Chips Rafferty, get mauled by Donald Pleasence, go 'roo shooting with Jack Thompson and generally Wake in Fright.

For a brief moment during the Whitlam years, some students did experience genuinely free tertiary education, and no harm in that.

Not to worry, the real trick is in the wording, "which came into operation in 1951 under the Robert Menzies led Coalition government". This studiously ignores the role of the Chifley Labor government in devising and implementing Commonwealth scholarships.

In the immediate post-war period the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme provided capital and recurrent funds to universities to enable them to enrol hundreds of demobilised defence personnel that it was hoped would hasten post-war development. Even Curtin’s death could not slow the momentum. Enrolments more than doubled immediately after the war, rising to almost 32, 000 in 1948. The Chifley Government continued the new pattern of involvement by approving 3000 university scholarships, in September 1949, to veterans and other able students who wished to undertake studies in fields deemed to be relevant to reconstruction. Ten thousand scholarships for secondary education were intended to follow. (here in pdf format in a handy review of higher education history in Australia).

Yep, it was the Menzies' government's singular achievement to continue the policy of the Chifley government, except to discontinue the notion of secondary education scholarships.

As for Whitlam's achievements in relation to education, why not have a read of the same source, since the Whitlam years showed a utopian interest in the education of people who might not otherwise be able to afford it, a desire which has always earned the disdain of prattling inner city patrician elitists like Henderson.

But we digress, because there is another singular achievement in the column. Not once does Henderson manage to drum up a conspiracy involving greenies, the ABC, and inner city elites.

It stands as something of a record.

Instead Henderson gets agitated because the rooster Swan refuses to pay due attention to the wondrous economic work of John Howard and Peter Costello. But that'd be like the pigeon Henderson paying due attention to the way the Australian economy has rolled along these past few years, despite the ministrations of a minority government.

How it must stick in the craw. How it needs to be diminished. How there needs to be fear and doubt and uncertainty spread in the land.

What to do, but to nuke the fridge, jump the shark, and roll out what is known as the ultimate weapon, the "W" option:

The essential problem with Labor since its election in November 2007 is that it is more like Whitlam than Hawke/Keating.

Eek, it's that deep sea monster Gough W (and while at it, what a pity there doesn't seem to have been room for the communists in the fifties).

... when in reality the essential problem is that Gerard Henderson increasingly sounds like the Ancient Mariner stopping the wedding guests and warning them of the dire threat arising from albatrosses.

Naturally Henderson follows with the Rex Connor gambit:

Rudd and Gillard have significantly increased regulation across most areas of the economy, particularly with respect to industrial relations. In Whitlam's time, the cabinet minister Rex Connor regarded the mining industry as led by hillbillies.

Hillbillies? We can't have that, can we, and so Henderson heroically stands shoulder to shoulder with a trio ... of hillbillies.

Today Swan is obsessed with castigating the likes of Twiggy Forrest, Clive Palmer and Gina Rinehart.

Is it possible to imagine a grander hillbilly than Clive Palmer, responding to the rooster's love of the Boss with his love of Australian bands like Redgum, Paul Kelly and the Seekers?

That's right up there with John Howard saying he liked the music of Bob Dylan, but not the lyrics (he never inhaled either) - though it could have been worse, with former Chairman Rudd confessing to a love of John Denver and jolly Joe Hockey fond of Delta Goodrem (ah the good old days of 2009 and It's irresistible to poke fun at Joe Hockey for liking Delta Goodrem).

In his other forum, Henderson manages to diss working class people, and working class heroes, while maintaing Clive Palmer's hillbilly attitude to Bruce Springsteen, and the relevance of the discussion to Australia.

That's the patrician way, and the seedy sordid contempt for places like Nambour (how did the world get by without an attempt at a joke at a "Back to Nambour High" occasion). Of course if anybody did that about the outer suburbs and the people of Penrith, Henderson would be up in arms about a contempt for normal everyday Australians. But that's the thing, you can reliably rely on Henderson's slip and contempt to show.

It goes hand in hand with the complete disinterest in anything to do with kultur, high and low, which in explains why Henderson so readily reaches for his revolver when kultur is mentioned (more here if you can stand it with Henderson showing penis envy in relation to Bob Carr and Gore Vidal).

Anyhoo, it seems that Henderson - without a conspiracy involving the ABC - gets utterly lost in the woods:

And Labor seems to be committed to a worthy but expensive National Disability Insurance Scheme, without having determined how it will be funded.

Yes, yes, but in a more realistic world, that would have been followed by another, equally accurate par:

And the state and federal Liberal and National parties seem to be committed to a worthy but expensive National Disability Insurance Scheme, without having determined how it will be funded.

There's Abbott offering up bipartisan support in an April press release here, and there's Joe Hockey undermines Tony Abbott on the National Disability Insurance Scheme. (paywall affected).

The trouble with being a one-eyed partisan at the wedding feast is that you completely overlook such remarkable pleasures, with jolly Joe discreetly nibbling at the throat of Abbott.

So what's Henderson got left this week?

Not much, just the big "W":

"The Boss" does not really matter in the Australian political debate. But the economic legacy of "The Leader" is still capable of doing real harm.

Yes yes, the boogeyman, look under your bed children and make sure Gough Whitlam's not hiding there.

Is this how conservatives still scare their brood? Watch out or the Gough Whitlam zombies and vampires will get you?

But what if the person infected with "W-ism" is Tony Abbott, with his social Catholic desire to interfere in everything, and promise everybody everything in the hope that nobody expected him to carry out the promises when in power?

What if the real spirit of Gough Whitlam lurks in Tony Abbott? What if Abbott promises to spend billions on roads, to produce workable IR laws, to rev up the east-west link, to put controls on land sales, to allow neo-Nazis to abuse Jews, to get rid of carbon pricing, to return to Work Choices except it won't be work choices, to sort out climate science, except it won't have anything to do with carbon, and to provide generous paid parental leave, and so on and on and on and on.

What if Abbott faces his own race against time?

What if Abbott has invented something entirely new, as explained in Aspirational Opposition Leader is careful with the P-word. (forced video at end of link)

Mr Abbott invented a new form of political promise, a quaint thing called a policy ''aspiration'', or alternatively, a policy that is ''in prospect''.

Yes, there are non-core aspirations and prospects these days, and possibly even core ones.

Eek, run and hide under your beds children, and pray that Gerard Henderson will be there to protect you.

He'll be ready to dissemble and distort, and whenever you're in doubt or fearful, he'll bring out the big "W" and can watch an old re-run of Halloween together ... and if you're good, you can call it a policy seminar ...

(Below: and now for no particular reason, the pond would like to present this photo, which proves, if nothing else, that Julia Gillard isn't afraid. It made the pond nostalgic for Tamworth and the days when every second member of the family had a pet white cockatoo).

It's Monday, so it's time for some fracking good conspiracy theories ...

(Above: look around, the pod people are already here).

It had to happen, as the sheep circle aimlessly, bleating "we've lost our golden fleece and we don't know where to find it."

That well known exponent of the art of snout in government trough, John Coates, is out and about, demanding that Australia take another step towards the East German system.

Coates: compulsory sport a missing link in medal evolution reports the chatter that's got the media excited. It seems as usual it's the government's fault:

The president of the Australian Olympic Committee, John Coates, has urged Australian swimming to ''have a look at themselves'' and has blamed the federal government's failure to introduce compulsory school sport in the wake of Australia's disappointing London Olympics campaign, its worst performance since the 1988 Seoul Games.

Presumably the federal government didn't purchase enough mirrors to supply to athletes so that they could take a good hard look at themselves. (That was the favourite phrase of one of the teachers most loathed by the pond, a sports freak who roamed the corridors demanding that students take a good hard look at themselves).

In the manner of an East German gauleiter, Coates is big on compulsion:

''The one thing London has done is to get sport back into school curricula. They've made that their legacy and we would encourage the Australian government to look at competitive sport in schools. We've been saying this for a long time but maybe we're just not saying it loudly enough: we need to start in our schools.''

Naturally Coates would like to turn schools into feeder units so that the movement can select the best stock for future training (who knows, even breeding) so that once every four years Australia can compete against the best of other countries devoted to similar training (and who knows, breeding) programs.

Naturally the chorus quickly joined in, noting how sports were jolly good for the system, like cold showers and bed restraints designed to keep healthy thinking to the fore.

It was Caroline Wilson who picked up the Coates' story for Fairfax. We look forward to her editorialising how football should be banned from schools, since it's not an Olympic sport.

The punters might prefer it but Australia is wasting valuable resources devoting time and money to a game suitable only for boofheads and international matches with the Irish.

Dream on.

Naturally the pond went in search of famous libertarians - celebrated in their lunchtime by Mark Latham - determined to take a stand against Coates and his fetish for compulsory sport - why not compulsory opera, so we can compete on a level playing field with Germany in Wagner operas, why not compulsory Shakespeare so we can supply quality rep. trained baddies to American action movies - but was disappointed.

Not a bleat. Instead the Bolter was indignant about being associated with the Galileo Movement. It seems that was all the fault of Fairfax:

I note The Age has loved associating me with this movement and these comments, without going to the bother of asking me what my association really was. Only too delighted for the chance to smear. (here)

It seems that cunning Fairfax went off to the Galileo Movement and hacked into its site and put the Bolter's name up as an adviser to a bunch of climate denialists. As if he'd sink so low!

Jokes aside, it always gets a bit uncomfortable for the likes of the Bolter when it turns out that his avid followers and climate denialist true believers are actually barking mad international conspiracy theorists, but hey if you breed the pups you should own them.

Just down below his "I'm hurt and upset and smeared" routine, the Bolter provides in How we won - a gloat about how climate sceptics defeated climate science and Robert Manne all in one blow - a link to the website at joannenova, which was by happenstance also celebrating the defeat of climate science and Robert Manne.

Of course you don't have to look far to find there's zero degree of distance between the Bolter and Jo Nova and David Evans and ... Malcolm Roberts' conspiracy theories.

It's all laid out here, for the lazy, and the pond is naturally lazy, so let's just list a couple of quotes:

David Evans has written up a paper that describes just what kind of Octopus we are dealing with, and it’s bigger and more insidious than almost anything you can imagine. It’s a long paper, but if you are not aware of how our currencies are created out of thin air, backed by nothing, and why the Global Financial Crisis was not a surprise to those of us watching the money supply, then stand back, hold onto your hats and take a deep breath.
It’s like living in The Matrix. (2009)

Now let's get a little closer to the source of the troubles:

Nova cites one of her husband’s papers made available from notorious denial think tank, the “Science and Public Policy Institute” (the home of Lord Monckton). At the end of his paper (pdf) Evans makes the following claims:

“…There are a small number of families who, over the centuries, have amassed wealth through financial rent seeking. They are leading members of the paper aristocracy. For example, the Rothschild’s are the biggest banking family in Europe, and were reputed to own half of all western industry in 1900. That sort of wealth doesn’t just dissipate, because unless the managers are incompetent the wealth tends to concentrate. The banking families don’t work for a living in the normal sense, like the rest of us. They avoid scrutiny and envy by blending in and make themselves invisible. Since they own or influence all sorts of media organizations, it isn’t too hard. There are unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories, but nobody can really credibly say how much wealth and influence they have…

…Perhaps today’s fiat currencies—the US dollar, pound, yen and so on—will go up in smoke in an inflationary crescendo in the next few years, perhaps as planned by the paper aristocracy. Maybe they will reintroduce an asset backed currency. And guess who has all the gold? Those banking families have been salting it away for years. Possibly a global currency, so one cannot escape the predations of the paper aristocracy. This is not just about money, but about power, of course. Anyway, these are only unsubstantiated rumors. We shall see.

The Rothschilds? Banking families? Global currency? International conspiracies?

And that dummy Bolt links to Jo Nova and her partner David Evans, and their international conspiracy theories, while proclaiming how he doesn't believe in international conspiracy theories?

Truly he gets away with murder.

At the same time, the pond was drawn to this poignant note to the out-tray of The Drum which draws together all the current inspirations for sceptics:

Australia has many bodies trying to expose the AGW hoax; trying to get the real "science" to the people.
There is, of course, the The Climate Sceptics Party, and the Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party; there is Viv Forbes' Carbon Sense Coalition; Ray Evans and the Lavoisier Group; the Australian Environment Foundation; among others and then there are the bloggers who are contributing to the enlightenment of the science including Joanne Nova; Malcolm Roberts; Jennifer Marohasy; Australian Climate Madness
and the few marvelous columnists in the MSM who look outside the circle, who investigate instead of republishing party handouts -
Foremost is Andrew Bolt and then (in alphabetical order) Akerman (at sea), Albrechtsen, Blair, Devine etc and the amazing cartoonist Zeg.
More power to them all. (here).

Yes more power to them all because a lot of them have nibbled at an international conspiracy theory at one time or another, and in allegedly distinguished newspapers. For starters, anyone of them who has kept company with Lord Monckton has endorsed the notion of an international conspiracy theory.

The Bolter himself has been a Monckton devotee, calling him brilliant and providing links to his Australian tour and urging punters to trot off to see him (here).

That'd be the same Monckton who turned up at the Heartland conference to make birther jokes and admit he had no scientific qualifications. (here).

Who can forget Janet Albrechtsen's splendid effort in Beware the UN's Copenhagen plot back after a hefty drink of Monckton kool-aid:

Even after Monckton’s speech, most of the media has duly ignored the substance of what he said. You don’t need me to find his St Paul address on YouTube. Interviewed on Monday morning by Alan Jones on Sydney radio station 2GB, Monckton warned that the aim of the Copenhagen draft treaty was to set up a transnational government on a scale the world has never before seen. Listening to the interview, my teenage daughters asked me whether this was true.

So Albrecthsen valiantly read further, for the sake of her daughters, that they needed to be alert and alarmed and listen to Lord Monckton:

At least we have heard from Monckton. He told Jones there had already been a million hits on the link to his St Paul address. “So the message in America is now out ... Now you know about it and you need to spread the word.”

Yep, spread the word that those who accept climate science are off with the pixies and Hitler Youth.

And who can forget the work of Miranda the Devine, Monckton devotee, given a nice going over here in Miranda Devine's Annus Mirabilis.

The Bolter claims that he despises Jewish world conspiracy theories, but gives no clue as to where he stands in relation to black helicopters and UN world conspiracy theories.

Given the company he keeps, and the assorted loons working for News Ltd who peddle this sort of tripe, we look forward to his denunciation of Jo Nova, David Evans, Janet Albrecthsen, Miranda Devine, Tim Blair, Akker Dakker and Lord Monckton, and his employer News Ltd for encouraging the peddling of far-fetched conspiracy theories. Then he can stand tall in his disavowal of Roberts.

Dream on.

And now, it being Monday, and your strength is strong, you're probably wondering what's happened to Paul Sheehan.

He's in spiffingly good form - it shows how playing jolly hockey sticks can sharpen the mind - and doing his very best Chicken Little impression.

The sky is falling in, NSW is running out of gas, we'll all be ruined, possibly by Friday, did we mention the gas is about to be switched off, and when that happens there's a Firestorm set to ignite when power runs out.

We must immediately, in no particular order, worship coal seam gas, frack until we've fracked ourselves silly, ignore silly deluded people concerned for the environment, frack everything in sight until it's well and truly fracked, give ACL a break, frack and frack until the cows come home, and whatever you do, don't listen to the greenies, the farmers, the Nationals, the ABC and Alan Jones - they're all in a vast domestic conspiracy together - because we need to frack ourselves stupid.

Or some such thing. Frack away until you're fracking dead.

The pond thought about writing about length about the column, but how far can you go giving paranoid doomsayer and chicken little fantasies credibility?

Truly Sheehan is out of control and each Monday he manages to make Fairfax seem like News Ltd and Andrew Bolt on a bad hair day.

There's only so much of this sort of circus comedy you can take before you're demanding someone hit something or somebody with a giant custard pie ... in the fracking moosh.

(Below: an oldie but a goodie, as useful for Paul Sheehan as for Andrew Bolt, and let's not forget John Coates).

Talking, as we were, of the inviolable dignity and rights of every human being ...

(Above: Father Brian Lucas, left, Bishop Anthony Fisher, Fr Paul Stenhouse, and Cardinal George Pell and Cardinal Edward Cassidy celebrating the 75th Annual Red Mass, found here).

So what's the Red Mass about, you ask, apart from a chance for men to wear nice red frocks?

Let the Catholic Weekly set the scene:

The Pope called on the highest judicial officers in the land, their fellow lawyers and law officers to “defend the inviolable dignity and rights of every human being” at the 75th Annual Red Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral.
The Pope said these rights applied from “conception until natural death”.

Not necessarily including batteries, sexual exploitation, molestation, pedophilia or other crimes that might conveniently be swept under the carpet.

The pond has been given the Sydney Anglicans a Sunday pounding for weeks, so how about we pay the Catholics their due? Cardinal Pell has maintained his veil of silence at the Sunday Terror for eons, but he still turns up elsewhere:

"A couple of basics should be restated," Cardinal Pell said. "All church procedures have to be carried out within the law, respecting and following the provisions of the law ...

"I will continue to encourage victims of sexual abuse to contact the police", Cardinal Pell said. "Where victims are unable or too traumatised to do so or require assistance, the Church's Professional Standards Office can help by contacting the police on their behalf.

"The Archdiocese of Sydney cooperates fully with police investigations and I confirm that the Archdiocese will cooperate with any police investigation of the ex-priest F." (direct link to pdf here, story here).

Now that seems like an unconditional, unlimited offer to help the coppers.

Hey nonny no on we go:

TIM PALMER: One of the most senior Catholic churchmen in the country, the now Archbishop of Adelaide Philip Wilson, had the carriage of much of the McAlinden investigation, but according to newspaper reports he has now refused a formal interview with police. (PM story, here).

Hah, you didn't read the conditional fine print.

The Catholic church has used this ruse for years, roughly akin to the Islamic device of not having a central leader or spokesperson or structure, which has turned out extremely handy when it comes to legal actions and plausible deniability.

Of course, says Cardinal Pell, Sydney co-operates fully, bring me a bowl of water, so I can wash my hands of any other diocese. As for Archbishop Wilson? Well his impression of a silent gargoyle mounted on a cathedral wall is most impressive.

Wilson's response to the press in recent days?

Archbishop Wilson declined to answer questions yesterday ...

Wilson bravely turning up to assist the police?

The archbishop has also declined to be interviewed by NSW police. Detectives have several "waiver" documents produced by the church, and are preparing a brief of evidence for the state Director of Public Prosecutions. (more on Wilson, and the matters on which he's been evasive here).

The stench just won't go away, and here's hoping that the authorities at last have the strength and the will to see certain sordid matters through to a conclusion.

NSW Police will give prosecutors evidence that three of the most senior members of the Catholic Church allegedly concealed the sexual assault of young girls in the Hunter Valley, in a landmark case that could expose the church to a new wave of criminal prosecution.
One of three people of interest in Strike Force Lantle is the general secretary of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Father Brian Lucas, who is alleged to have been aware of the actions of the paedophile priest Denis McAlinden as far back as 1993 but failed to report him to police.

The pond remembers Lucas when he was a bright-eyed bushy tailed 'go get 'em' possum in the church, always ready to front the media and routinely turning up in the Catholic Weekly as a columnist (here).

It's not as if he doesn't have any worldly knowledge in relation to legal matters - his CV includes a bachelor of laws from Sydney University, a stint as a solicitor, a Masters in Law, and he was admitted to practise as a barrister in 1980.

Enough already of the Catholics, mired in their ongoing, never-ending cover up.

Over at the Sydney Anglicans, Russell Powell sees righteous Christians standing in line with Obama to denounce a nation gone to Satan or at least the dogs:

...there was some comment this week on Obama's 2006 statement that America was not a Christian nation. The exact quote was "Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.” (here)

Indeed. And the pond looks forward to the Sydney Anglicans taking a strong stand against Mitt Romney, seeing as how he's the member of a dangerous heretical cult.

The Sydney Anglicans are strong in their conviction that Mormons aren't Christian.

Why not read the heartwarming story of a teenager who left deviant Mormonism to become a genuine Christian thanks to the evangelical powers of Sydney Anglicanism (Help! I doorknocked a Mormon).

Andrew was "outrageously offended" at the "thongs and boardies" the teens were wearing when he first went to the youth group at St Paul's, Carlingford.
Yet it was on one of these Friday nights that the penny of salvation by grace dropped. "That was the first time I really realised "I've been flogging my guts out trying to make God happy, but that's not what God is going to accept me for, but only through what Jesus has done'." One by one and in different ways, Andrew's parents and siblings also became Christians.
Today, the desire for Mormons to experience the same "moment of truth' is spurring him on through his second year of full-time study at Moore College.

Watch out Mitt. What the United States is a god-fearing Sydney Anglican to explain the Christian truth to you. Soon enough you'll be at Moore College, transformed.

Meanwhile, Powell is wildly excited at the news that there might be archaeological evidence to support the story of Samson, as outlined here, and here (paywall blocked but clearly Powell loves his Haaretz).

The pond is also excited. After all, where's the harm in a story about a mass murderer, reputed to have knocked off a thousand Philistines while bedding Philistine women (wiki him here if you want a synopsis of the bible).

Samson of course was just doing the work of a pathological homicidal god who wanted to kill all the polytheist Philistines (she was pretty mean to lions too and keen on riddles).

Talk about a role model for Sydney Anglicans! Now if only they could find proof of Noah and his ark, and so confirm that god was truly a genocidal megalomaniac ...

For the rest, it's quiet times at the Sydney Anglicans. We must wait patiently for the sixth part of Michael Jensen's epic exegesis on the sins of Sydney.

Which leaves the pond a moment to note the fine on-going efforts of the Islamic community as reported in Islamic school ordered to repay $9m funding.

Questions in relation to the nine million arose as a result of a federal audit, but it was the NSW government that decided to press for action.

What did the team of that fierce guardian of the federal public purse, Minister for Education, Peter Garrett, contribute to the conversation?

A spokeswoman for Mr Garrett said the Commonwealth was satisfied that Commonwealth funds had been used for legitimate purposes.
"However, the examination did reveal a number of transactions that did not appear to represent value for money to the school," she said.
"While the use of public funds are not implicated in these transactions, it has raised some concerns about the governance of the school." (here)

Yes there was a fine flurry of blather, and the sure knowledge that the Commonwealth will do its level best to bury the matter out the back, somewhere near the dunny, and do nothing to alienate key electorates.

Is there ever any thought amongst Federal Labor that the funding of private religiously-based schools is now out of control and they should do something about it? Or do something about the Gonski report?

In your rapidly dissolving dreams ...

Long in the tooth readers of the pond will recall talk of a Boulting Brothers' film Fame is the Spur, starring Michael Redgrave and loosely based on the life of Ramsay McDonald:

MacDonald, who rose to become prime minister, was the bastard son of a maid servant. Michael Redgrave, in his MacDonald role, plays a working-class boy whose fierce proletarian anger is fuelled by his grandfather’s tales of the 1819 Peterloo Massacre when government cavalry rode down and slaughtered a peaceful crowd in a Manchester field gathered for parliamentary reform.
In a somber ritual, the grandfather passes on to Redgrave a sword from Peterloo that the dragoons used to cut down women and children, a reminder to the grandson to keep the dissident flame alive. When he is poor Redgrave fights for the poor; when seduced by fame and a peerage – and by ladies of the upper class – he turns his back on his own people. It’s a gripping story with tremendous resonance today.

The final gag is that when he's old and doddery, Redgrave tries to get down the sword and draw it from its scabbard, but it's rusted tight inside the sheath. But there are other scenes that make a similar point:

There’s a wonderful scene in ‘Fame Is The Spur’ where Redgrave, now a Member of Parliament and laden with honors, is addressing a mass meeting when a small group of suffragettes bursts in to heckle him, “Votes for Women!” One of the suffragettes is his own wife, a principled bluestocking who supported his career from a mining pit to Westminister. The police beat up the suffragettes, and Redgrave is mute and passive as his wife is dragged out of the hall. His soul dies but he’s too far gone in surrender to know it.

I’ve often wanted to rewrite that scene so that now Redgrave leaps from the podium, punches the brutal cop and joins the protestors thus ruining his career. But that wasn’t the way of Ramsay MacDonald or of most political pros. (here)

Or Peter Garrett, or the men - oh yes it's always men - who run the mainstream religions in Australia. There's only distant memories of Christ leading a riot in the temples ...

And that's the Sunday meditation done and dusted, which is just as well, because next thing you know the pond might start brooding about Elmer Gantry for the millionth time ...

Instead let's end by celebrating AACo (once the glory of Goonoo Goonoo) CEO David Farley comparing Julia Gillard to an old cow.

In keeping with the Farley spirit, the pond hails the fat bovine* old bull boofhead for elevating the tone of political discourse to a new level.

(*Strangely the figurative sense for 'bovine' of 'dull, inert, stupid. sluggish and stolid' only dates from 1855, which puts it just about right for Farley's Victorian sexist mindset).

Time to give the old bull a snip of the shears and send him out to the back paddock to graze? We keed, we keed, Farley style ...

Update: it turns out that the pond was wrong in thinking that Cardinal Pell was maintaining his silence at the Sunday Terror, as the splendid Italy a mysterious package of soccer and salad days shows. Pell broods about soccer, postal bureaucrats and iceberg lettuces, proving that the church is in touch with the common man and issues that torture souls at the deepest levels, before mysteriously concluding You cannot judge fruit by its cover. You cannot expect coherence from a Pellist, but equating strawberries and tomatoes (it seems Italian ones look most unattractive) to books is the sort of stirring insight we've been deprived of for way too long. Suffer little children, and let's not judge the Catholic church by the strange fruit it covers ...

(Below: at least Michael Redgrave is polite in a British way while the business of empire and gouging the planet goes on).