Steve’s Blog
2013
See also:
NEW
This many people have visited this site:
Kintail Burn, Dusky Track,Fiordland, NZ 2012 Six Moon Designs
‘Swift’ pack @ 450 grams
LINKS: 2012 and earlier blog 2013 blog 2014 Blog
31/12/2013: Film of Douglas Mawson at Commonwealth Bay
Antarctica in the summer of 1912 (Play it and notice how large patches of land
are completely ICE FREE). Today’s team of warmie scientists are stuck in ice 75
kilometres off the mainland: http://mawsonshuts.antarctica.gov.au/cape-denison/building-the-base
31/12/2013: Charles Hoy Fort used to think we were
FISHED for (plus many other strange ideas, Atlantis, etc) but I sometimes
wonder at the sheer NUMBERS of folks (and DOGS) going missing on Facebook! I
can understand the missing lovely teenagers (someone who doesn’t have to put up
with them MIGHT surely want them – if they haven’t simply run away, as
everyone’s kids did sometime if they had any gumption - and most of us STILL want to from time to
time, surely) but the ugly old men (and women: no sexism HERE) and the REALLY
ugly dogs…WHO/WHAT could be fishing for THESE? What could their sinister
purpose BE. What possible USE could they put these folks/dogs TO? Life is
redolent with mysteries!
31/12/2013: I am mystified by the changing nature of
ABC announcers’ emphasis. Remember a few years back when every reporter on TDT
etc had to emphasize every fourth or fifth word no matter how insignificant?
ABC News Radio has now gone one better. Reporters there are now emphasizing
EVERY SINGLE WORD. It is SO VIOLENT. It is as if they are saying, ‘YOU WILL
LISTEN TO THIS!’
31/12/2013: We CAN be TOO kind (particularly to
the good folks of
30/12/2013: Looks like fun; may try it someday
(French tourist - one year in
30/12/2013: The Health Nazis are SUCH an ominous
force. In many countries (including Oz) they are succeeding in having e-cigarettes
banned (just in case they MIGHT prove dangerous – or encourage les autres!) In
just the same way they waged a vicious attack on ‘passive smoking’ which (while
it might have been annoying to some) had NO adverse health consequences at all,
as many long-term studies showed - including a huge one done by the WHO: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100251229/passive-smoking-another-of-the-nanny-states-big-lies/ & http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/16/is-it-safe-yet-to-have-an-honest-convers
30/12/2013: NEAT mnemonic: ‘Stalactites
(ceiling) and stalagmites (ground)’. Always had trouble with that. No more.
29/12/2013: 250cc
Motorbike which weighs 57kg: http://www.fxbikes.com/bikes/
29/12/2013: A
pair of hiking pants which you can wear for 365 days and even sleep in which
weigh 75 grams and a raincoat that you can ALSO sleep in @ 123 grams. That's
REAL weight saving: http://hikelighter.com/2012/01/26/montbell-dynamo-wind-pants/ & http://hikelighter.com/2013/11/07/zpacks-rain-jacket/
29/12/2013: Have fitted a SECOND pair of heavy
duty shocks to the rear of the old Defender. That seems to have finally settled
the camper down so that it is just like driving a car NOW. Looking forward to
our next trip! Merrin & Matt are to trial it first this week.
29/12/2013: ‘The Desolation of Smaug’ gets my recommendation
of ‘Must See’. So much better (quicker and less didactic) than the first
episode. I like the way they are weaving the story into the ‘First War of the
Rings’. Smaug is SUPER!
29/12/2013: Della is the owner of a new domestic
robot for Xmas (thanks to the kids). We toyed with calling it ‘Hired Girl’
after the first one in Heinlein’s ‘The Door Into Summer’ (1957) but have
settled on ‘K9’ after ‘Doctor Who’. It IS still having some trouble negotiating
some of our monumental untidiness but (laziness) will force us to change all
this, so that the house floors will be forever spotless (except for ‘Spot’ the
dog, of course!)
28/12/2013: Does Jesus need an electric hair
curler for Xmas? Or a sky-diving voucher? Panadol? A kayak?
28/12/2013: The old grey thrush has just about
finished raising her SECOND clutch of three babes in the chink in our mud-brick
wall where she nests. She seems determined to fill our small valley with
birdsong! I was reminded yesterday afternoon that she is nonetheless a descendent
of Tyrannosaurus, when she returned to her nest with a tiny still wriggling
garden skink and managed to voice her melodious song with it still I her beak.
I realised then that if we were the size of garden skinks we would view her
song VERY differently!
28/12/2013: More snow and ice in
27/12/2013: Do you TOO wonder what percentage of the
fawning Lefties lamenting the demise of Ford and Holden actually DRIVE an
Australian built car? I suspect if they did, we would have a vibrant and viable
automotive manufacturing industry!
27/12/2013: If this guy is right, and someone
has created malware which can communicate and spread via audio, the world has
just become a wee bit more spooky (if not dangerous). All those folks who leave
their mikes and cell phones off may be right after all: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22029434.700-can-a-computer-virus-communicate-via-your-speakers.html#.UrtJ37Qszwk
27/12/2013: Spectacular (&memorable)
Earthrise on Apollo 8, Christmas Eve, December 1968: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7hZOa_67pc
(& See: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/12/jim-lovell-re-enacts-1968-apollo-8-christmas-eve-broadcast.html)
26/12/2013: Received one of these knives for
Xmas. It is just brilliant: overall weight 36.5g, knife only 27.5g (US$12.27).
Blade is definitely thick enough and strong enough to split kindling though its
big brother, the ‘Zombie Acheron’ has a slightly longer blade. It would
definitely butcher a sambar deer or any other use you could put it to. Its
sheath has a lanyard hole so you can hang it around your neck and quickly
access it with one handhttp://www.kabar.com/knives/detail/38
26/12/2013: The good news is that Alan Turing, a
brilliant mathematician, (cf the film, ‘Enigma’) has been pardoned
posthumously. I have long thought this should be the case even though he WAS
convicted of ‘gross indecency,’ which was what homosexuality was (quite
properly) seen as in c1950. Even though his personal conduct was (no doubt)
disgusting, this does not mean that it should have been then (or now) illegal,
even though it should quite properly be condemned then (& now) and be
permitted/practiced only in private.
26/12/2013: If the
25/12/2013: A very decent Xmas message from
Tony: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQIm769GxaI
25/12/2013: Christmas is for EVERYONE: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/367015/mazel-tov-christians-dennis-prager & http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/15995-How-Christian-is-Christmas-A-brief-history-of-Christmas.html
25/12/2013: It isn’t very often that we get to
celebrate the life of one of the world’s great gun innovators such as Colt,
Mauser, Mannlicher, Purdy etc BUT today Mikhail Kalashnikov IS no more: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/12/23/automatic-rifle-inventor-kalashnikov-dies-at-age-94/
24/12/2013: As mentioned in an earlier post
04/11/2013, I have ordered a heap of ‘hiking’ knives which might best be used
to split wet firewood to create dry kindling & ‘excelsior’, but yesterday
found THIS ‘Scanpan’one on sale in Aussie Disposals for $5.95! Weighing a mere
47 grams (including a VERY secure sheath) it will be hard to beat for the
purpose. It would also make an excellent kitchen or utility knife maybe as a
Xmas gift:
24/12/2013: If you are STILL in denial about JG, you
really need to get your head around the issue, because she WILL be charged.
Read this: http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2013/12/if-julia-gillard-gave-legal-advice-as-a-lawyer-to-her-clients-bruce-wilson-and-ralph-blewitt.html
and this: http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2013/12/julia-gillard-gives-legal-advice-as-a-lawyer-to-her-client-3-examples-today-here-is-the-awu-workplac.html
24/12/2013: A reminder of this fine speech by
the late Michael Crichton: http://www.pe.tamu.edu/DL_Program/graduate_seminar_series/Documents/MichaelCrichton_evironmentalism.pdf
23/12/2013: COLONISATION, not multiculturalism;
I prefer neither: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/muslim_patrol/
23/12/2013: What the future holds? ‘The typical
American family has seen its real income (adjusted for inflation) fall for 5
consecutive years now, and it earns less in real terms that it did in 1989.’ We
just can’t keep BORROWING to make a living: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-17/if-you-have-children-you-need-see-these-numbers
23/12/2013: The ‘Pause’ continues: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/clip_image0026.jpg
22/12/2013: Joe Bastardi:
‘Twas the week before Christmas, when all through
the news, there were reports of record cold , so many were confused;
Told global warming is why we should care, And
that the point of no return would soon be here;
The children were bombarded with tales of dread, While
visions of climate disasters were stuck in their heads;
And mamma in her Prius , and I on my bike, To
save the planet, got rid of the cars that we like. When suddenly in the data
there arose such a clatter, The earth was not warming, what could be the
matter?
The warming stopped, as quick as a flash,
Leaving proponents in sack-cloth, bathing in ash For far too common was
new-fallen snow More than forecasted, temperatures 0 or below,
And , what to my wondering eyes should appear, But an
uptick in sea ice, and even more polar bears,
With a little old driver, called the PDO, I knew in a
moment it had to be so Howling like beagles fearing the shame, AGW pushers
called skeptics many names;
“Now, Denier! now, madman! now neanderthal
,you’re lying! You’re an idiot ! your stupid, know nothing, we’re frying!
To the top of the chart ! breaking through the
temperature wall! The warmings out of control, its frying us all!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane
fly, This is the worst drought ever, global warming is why,
So up to the IPCC the climate pushers flew, With a
gravy train of grants, and politics too.
Make economies pay, we need no proof Just keep saying
temperatures are going through the roof
With the media complicit, my head was turning around,
To see the global temperature level off and then come down.
The warming had stopped, in their mouth was
their foot, Exposing the scam, and the making off with the loot.
Readjusting temperatures, from many years back
Peddling disinformation to the media pack.
At conferences they would drink and make merry! While
the deceit grew in a way, that made it quite scary
For the tide it had turned , there was cold that would
show, You cant say its warmer, if there’s too much snow;
The cold that was showing, led to chattering of
teeth, As the cycle came full circle, not unlike a wreath;
The face of global warming, had become a subject
smelly, Their position as “solid” as a bowlful of jelly.
Hockey sticks broken, sea ice on the increase, I
laughed when I heard their excuses not cease.
Events we all knew were something ahead were
twisted into worst ever, something to dread;
How dare mother nature destroy AGW’s lifes work, These
deniers are as nasty as a Miley Cyrus Twerk,
But the data is there and everyone knows The temperatures
leveled off while co2 rose So when in the wire, you hear the cold wind whistle,
The AGW agenda is ready for dismissal
So let me exclaim, as this fades out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”
22/12/2013: Waterproof split-toe socks: you
would THINK the Japanese (& others) who wear nothing but thongs would have
long since invented them, but it seems they do NOT exist! However, I have
modified my ultralight thongs into ultralight adjustable ‘thandels’ (@ 61 grams
per pair) so that I can wear them with my seal skin waterproof socks making
them into a useful pair of waterproof hut booties with very tough soles. The
commercial alternative are these at 1.7 oz per pair. Their down socks sound
great too: https://goosefeetgear.com/products/2-waterproof-over-booties
22/12/2013: First the BAD NEWS: ‘
21/12/2013: A REALLY GREAT speech! No wonder
this guy was our longest serving Prime Minister: http://australianpolitics.com/political-parties/liberal/the-forgotten-people-robert-menzies-1942-speech
21/12/2013: A SELF-WINDING watch! How I used to
lust for such a treasure when I was a kid. I finally snagged one a couple of
years ago for $200 and was over the moon. Quartz watches for some reason make
me itchy and I haven’t seen a wind-up one for some time. This guy has Seiko
self-winders on eBay from $65 + $18 delivery. You just HAVE to treat yourself: http://www.ebay.com/bhp/mens-seiko-watch-self-winding
21/12/2013: Just in case you might want to treat
yourself TWICE, there ARE still manual winding watches, like this beauty for
$12: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Golden-Skeleton-Analog-Mens-Mechanical-Wrist-Manual-Winding-Band-Watch-S01-/380779708781?pt=Wristwatches&hash=item58a83d416d
20/12/2013: ‘14-year-old Gabi
Stricker-Phelps…the only Australian child adopted by a non-relative last year
through the NSW Department of Family and Community Services. The only child
allowed to escape a lifetime of neglect and abuse.’ Political correctness and
‘Stolen Generation’ myth-making GONE MAD. When ARE we going to SAVE THE
CHILDREN? http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/we_can/
20/12/2013: Interesting paper: ‘This solar “de
Vries cycle” together with the AMO/PDO determine practically completely the
global climate of the past ( Fig. 4 ). This rules out any significant influence
of CO2 on the climate. The latter is not surprising in view of the small amount
of CO2 in the atmosphere and its weak infrared absorption cross section.’ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/17/solar-amo-pdo-cycles-combined-reproduce-the-global-climate-of-the-past/#more-99397
See also: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/16/whither-went-the-warmer-weather/
20/12/2013: Courtesy of an old friend, this
interesting video; you have to wait until @ 2:45 but it is worth it. Our
jumping jacks can expect this treatment soon: http://digg.com/video/what-you-get-when-you-pour-molten-aluminum-into-an-ant-hill
19/12/2013: DD-WRT: For every problem, there is
a solution. A bit difficult for the novice perhaps – and I haven’t tried this
yet – but we do (all) have just such problems with our routers (eg our internet
radio, streaming video wirelessly from one device to another etc), and it would
be nice to think this would solve those issues. When I am game I will try it
and let you know… http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2013/12/huge-improvement-for-my-router-with-dd-wrt.html
19/12/2013: Herbicides DO make thistles look SO
sad; I almost feel sorry for the cursed things: the ten year drought compounded
the weed problem (too much bare ground) but we are slowly getting on top of
them again. This year our spraying efforts have been delayed by too much rain –
not that I’m complaining: there has been plenty of sheep feed so far – you
almost wish you had a thousand ewes…but not quite, somehow!
18/12/2013: I am quite pleased with my latest
‘invention’ a self-cleaning pet water bowl. As you can see a timer empties the
bowl (as often as desired) and it refills with a float valve (you could add a
tap or another timer here to better regulate it). I have used a ¾” ‘
18/12/2013: This guy’s ultralight stove set-ups
are astonishing. Imagine a wood stove which weighs 32 grams! Or a Titanium
version of the ‘Bushbuddy’ (http://bushbuddy.ca/)
that weighs only 78 grams! For the real ultralighter, there is a 2-fuel pot and
stove combo that weighs 45 grams! http://www.suluk46.com/products.html
Comparable products are Trail Design’s Ti Tri (http://www.traildesigns.com/stoves/caldera-ti-tri)
and Evernew’s DX (http://www.evernewamerica.com/EBY257.htm)
18/12/2013: The Fawcett expeditions: watched an
interesting doco an SBS about Col Percy Fawcett which mentioned the astonishing
substance ‘Terra Preta’ which has been discovered (partly) as a result of his
(fatal) efforts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
See also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cja6bV95l-Q
for a recipe). Taken together with this guy’s insights into fungi (http://discovermagazine.com/2013/julyaug/13-mushrooms-clean-up-oil-spills-nuclear-meltdowns-and-human-health#.Uq-GjbQszwk
& see also: http://blog.ted.com/2008/05/06/paul_stamets/)
I think Tony’s alternative carbon ‘solution’ IS the right one. If we can
massively increase carbon in soils in these ways we can vastly increase
agricultural (and natural) outputs – which is surely a win-win strategy?
17/12/2013: Watched the movie/documentary, ‘The
Last Trapper’ (2004) tonight. Well worth a look. It certainly reminds me of why
I still push for multi-day wilderness hiking trips – if you have never done
such a thing, you should. (Put it on your bucket list! At least!). We are
planning several days hiking out of Supper Cove, Dusky Sound, Fiordland, NZ
sometime Feb/March (http://www.doc.govt.nz/Documents/parks-and-recreation/tracks-and-walks/southland/dusky-track-brochure.pdf)
Have been there before (lots of times) but am still drawn back to the
wilderness, the beauty, the solitude, the challenge… We will probably do some
camping out in our Zpacks Solo-plus (http://www.zpacks.com/shelter/hexamid_plus.shtml)
‘tent’ this time, not just staying in huts…
17/12/2013: Now HERE is a great idea for our car
industry (and a wonder no-one thought of this before!) – let’s NATIONALISE it
so we can roll out a heap of (compulsory) Trabanths, Ladas etc to replace your
shiny new Toyotas, Nissans, etc: http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2013/12/socialists-want-holden-to-be-nationalised-to-create-green-jobs.html
17/12/2013: Mind you, it MIGHT be a good idea
for the Federal Government to buy Land Rover and move it to one of the now
defunct car factories in
16/12/2013: Yesterday we shore, drenched and
injected ALL our remaining sheep – a job which used to take a week, and still
had time for a cold beer on the verandah! SO nice to be retired. I am also
happy I no longer have to pick up and turn over 1,000+ lambs at marking time.
Can’t even imagine any longer how my back stood up to THAT. Our apologies that
we no longer feel up to providing you folks with 100,000+ MEALS per year (not
to mention 10,000+ jumpers) but we have to have a spell sometime: I note that
the weather is to be warm this week AND that there is plenty of water in
Gippsland’s rivers – time again perhaps for a bit of white-water work, maybe an
overnight trip to proof-test our new hiking tent?
16/12/2013: Khayyam: ‘Like snow upon the
desert’s dusty face…’ http://www.thepiratescove.us/2013/12/13/some-parts-of-cairo-see-first-snowfall-in-100-years/
16/12/2013: Re the above quote; if you haven’t
read Khayyam, please DO. I still think Fitzgerald’s 1859 First Edition is the
BEST: ‘…one thing is certain, that Life flies; One thing is certain, and the
Rest is Lies; The Flower that once has blown forever dies’: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/omar_khayyam/o54r/
15/12/2013: Very good news for the second driest
continent on Earth: http://www.gizmag.com/freshwater-reserves-under-sea/30072/
In any case lots of water: Enough to sustain a lot of lives for a long time!
15/12/2013: Bizarrely enough, THIS is NOT a
joke! The lengths (and ends) some folks will go to to further terrorism,
religion, whatever…This guy wants to be repeatedly sodomised to make his arse
BIG enough to accommodate lots of explosives. I would have though he is a big
enough arse already, but there you go: http://www.memri.org/clip_transcript/en/3496.htm
15/12/2013: Even a GENIUS isn’t always smart
with money. The ‘South Sea Bubble’ and ‘The Tulip Bubble’ & etc bear a
striking similarity in my mind to
15/12/2013: Maybe you should also get your head
around this; life was actually BETTER under apartheid: ‘Today South Africa has
a 26 percent unemployment rate and a 17 percent HIV rate…Among the 18-34 age
group, 56 percent of whites, 53 percent of Indians and 43 percent of those of
mixed race want to leave the country. Among blacks the number is only at 33
percent which still means that a third would like to leave…Today 77 percent of
South African households face food insecurity and most teachers are not able to
teach students how to read independently…With its high crime rates and high
AIDS rates, South Africa has a life expectancy in the fifties.
14/12/2013: ONE boat containing THREE people
this week –AND they will all be promptly sent home! WELL DONE TONY!
14/12/2013: WELL DONE George Brandis! I think
THIS is the first time in my life that one of our governments has struck a blow
for INCREASING FREEDOM: http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2013/12/this-is-your-chance-to-strike-a-blow-for-your-freedom-.html
14/12/2013: I feel SO sorry for people who have
nut allergy because…is there anything more delicious than Kraft’s Whipped
Peanut Butter? Well: Nutella, Thai Chilli Peanuts, Sea Salt Macadamias…
14/12/2013: I’m sure THIS is how it works here
too. Redistribution only fuels the entitlement mentality. Everyone should pay a
proportion of their income as taxes so that they feel their Government and
society BELONGS to them – and so they will have an interest in how Government
money is SPENT: not just sit idly by with their beggar’s bowl crying ‘Poor Me’
and expecting a handout from the rest of us: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-obama-care/121013-682454-government-becomes-a-massive-wealth-transfer-engine.htm
13/12/2013: Courtesy of
my bird-brained wife, Della: http://distractify.com/people/personal/reasons-birds-are-pure-evil-and-should-not-be-trusted/
13/12/2013: Just as they destroyed Holden and
Ford, Shorten’s bully boy union mates want also to destroy
13/12/2013: Don’t let THIS be YOU: http://acculturated.com/2013/12/09/last-regrets-of-the-dying/
13/12/2013: WILL the Royal Commission into child
sex abuse investigate these prominent political figures? Horrifying: http://pickeringpost.com/story/rob-borbidge-for-qld-governor/2459
13/12/2013: A LONG history of EQUALITY which we
would be foolish in the extreme to dismantle: ‘When the state constitutions of
New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania were framed in 1850s,
voting rights were granted to all male British subjects over the age of 21,
which included Aboriginal men.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffrage_in_Australia
12/12/2013: It sure is COLD out there: minus 94C
measured in
12/12/2013: WHO would have thought: Movember is
racist AND sexist: http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/11/why-movember-isnt-all-its-cracked-be
12/12/2013: Puzzles of our times: why ARE we
only FULLY HUMAN in the mornings until after TWO cups of coffee?
11/12/2013: Went to these folks’ site to order
Della a set of lenses for her smart phone when I was blown away by the photo
gear they have for smart phones! Freight is reasonable too: http://photojojo.com/store/
11/12/2013: Elon Musk is AMAZING: his SpaceX has
just launched its first geostationary satellite. Next stop; Mars! http://www.space.com/23727-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-launch-photos-ses8-satellite.html
11/12/2013: Lung cancers can now be detected and
CURED with regular screening. As this is a cost effective way of reducing the death
rate, it should be adopted as breast screening has been. Of course, there will
be opposition from wowsers who view smokers as bad, and lung cancers as their
just desserts! There is no end to the evil folks CAN get up to! An interesting
observation: this medical ability may now mean that if you were going to die
from cancer rather than eg heart disease that smokers may gain increased
longevity over non-smokers. I predict this is an outcome which the ‘virtuous’
will not allow: http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/pulmonary/clinical-centers/lung-cancer-screening-program
10/12/2013: Mandiba. What a great guy! His (and
Winnie’s legacy): 80,000 whites murdered including @10% of the nation’s
farmers, tens of thousands of black ‘opponents’ of the ANC ‘necklaced’ to
death, a host of terrorists bombings etc, support for and from a heap of nasty
dictators world-wide, his country (once so peaceful and prosperous) NOW an
economic basket case and the murder capital of the world (far MORE dangerous
than even Iraq!)…he WAS a good communist – just like all the rest. The Left
‘celebrate’ his life. They are completely unable to distinguish good from evil.
He should be remembered for NO achievements.
10/12/2013: What a great outcome THAT would be.
Hope MANY others join them: ‘Mr Haddad said the men were so incensed that, if
they could, they would leave the country and not return.’ http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/asio-teen-fights-face-of-jihad-claim-as-unjust-racist-20131208-2yzf0.html#ixzz2muzjJlvx
10/12/2013: ‘We are living through a disruptive
innovation as far-reaching as the steam engine or the discovery of
petroleum…The people who created the shale gas revolution, and their gutsy
backers in the financial markets, sank billions of dollars into often fruitless
gambles over long periods before eventually reaping rich rewards. It is a
reminder that innovation is neither easy nor cheap nor inevitable…Yet we… can
now benefit from their efforts…They reduced the use of chemicals by 95 per cent
to very low levels; they proved that significant earthquakes or the
contamination of aquifers by fracking are both almost impossible; that methane
leakage is no worse than in conventional gas drilling; that the time and cost
spent in fracking a well can be greatly reduced with experience. We can come
in, in other words, when others have shown how effective, safe and affordable
slick-water fracking in shale is.’ http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-frackers.aspx
09/12/2013: Re Ju-Liar today,"I am
satisfied that, in each instance, the communication was made or the document
prepared in furtherance of the commission of a fraud or an offence."
09/12/2013: Chief Magistrate Lauritsen will rule
today on whether Gillard and
09/12/2013: THIS flying jellyfish robot
(weighing just TWO grams) IS rather neat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tadbCnpSAh0
09/12/2013: Human prehistory becomes stranger
and stranger: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/science/at-400000-years-oldest-human-dna-yet-found-raises-new-mysteries.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1&
09/12/2013: Definitely a good question: ‘When,
if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living
ones?’ And the answer: http://what-if.xkcd.com/69/
08/12/2013: Homo Erectus mastered fire 790,000
years ago: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4944-charred-remains-may-be-earliest-human-fires.html#.UqJJzuI4nwk
and maybe created THIS amazing artefact 230,000 years ago (cf ‘Our conclusion
is that this object was purposely modified by hominids.’ http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=C3820F32074D17818923916A23FF7713.journals?fromPage=online&aid=76619)
maybe also the Tan Tan figurine from Morocco @ 400,000 years old (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3047383.stm).
These little guys certainly made their way to some places (eg islands) where
they would have had to be able to build large boats to access (which argues for
their having had LANGUAGE). If so, then the ‘human brain’ PREDATED humans –
which is a pretty mind-boggling concept really. It also makes you think about
the ‘legends’ of the ‘little people’.
08/12/2013: STOP paying folks to BREED! This
will make a ‘better’ movie even than ‘Snowtown’! Kids who have barely even
learned to talk! Omigod! AND we are having a Royal Commission into a handful of
perverted priests who ought to have been publicly castrated and hanged
generations ago. Why don’t we throw some MORE money at such wonderful social
‘problems’? Sickening, but DO read the article – all this happening in the
hills just a few kms out of
08/12/2013: Life constantly tosses up novel
unexpected experiences. Yesterday driving into Churchill I saw two tiny rails
on the side of the road (like miniature brown-feathered velociraptors). My
guess is they were Lewin Water –Rails (or maybe Marsh Crakes – probably the
latter as they were very small; I only saw them for an instant). I am almost
astonished that in a life mis-spent wandering wild places I had NEVER seen them
before, yet yesterday saw them on the verge of a busy main road!
07/12/2013: Here’s an interesting water and
energy conserving gadget: ‘How much water does the Quench shower consume during
Step-2 (Auto-Mode re-circulating shower)? Around 4 litres (1 gallon) of water
is all that is required to enable the Quench shower to operate in Auto-Mode.
You can shower for as long as you like in Auto-Mode – using no more than 4
litres of water.’ http://quenchshowers.com/faqs/
07/12/2013: ‘The bulk of his adult life, Nelson
Mandela was a failed Marxist revolutionary and leftist icon, the Che Guevara of
07/12/2013: Structures 15 TIMES the diameter of
the Earth (and in plain view) found ‘hiding’ in our neighbourhood! What else
don’t we know about the sun? Yet Chicken Little believes EVERYTHING is down to
AGW! What fanciful tosh! http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/05/giant-convection-cells-found-on-the-sun/
06/12/2013: Just across the valley, this morning
THIS is the forecast: SNOW! (AND we have the heater on!) O, AGW ‘WHERE is thy
sting?’ http://www.bom.gov.au/vic/forecasts/mountbawbaw.shtml
06/12/2013: It is not just a LOCAL phenomenon
either: http://joannenova.com.au/2013/12/more-than-1000-cold-snowy-records-set-in-us-one-small-media-outlet-covers-it/
06/12/2013: AND in the
06/12/2013: All over the country farmers, pet
owners, manufacturers of animal housing, feeding, & handling equipment make
and install equipment which does NOT injure or kill animals. Lucky sheep, ducks,
parakeets, etc.
06/12/2013: Albert Einstein: "As he lay
dying of an abdominal aortic aneurysm in 1955, he refused surgery, saying: 'It
is tasteless to prolong life artificially. I have done my share, it is time to
go. I will do it elegantly.'" (Albert was 76 and one month old, and had
lived a VERY productive life, unlike most of us – some more of his bon mots
here: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
) I think the author has a point: there has to be some cost/benefit analysis on
the issue of prolonging life, particularly if the life is really not worth
living, and especially as someone ELSE has always to pay the piper - & as
the kitty is rapidly running out. At a somewhat creaky 64 I think about this
issue more and more, and feel it is long past time we could go to the doc and
say, “Some of the pretty blue tabs Doc, I’m out of here’, then just go home,
say ‘Goodbye’ to friends and family, ring the undertaker, and depart without
leaving huge bills behind for unnecessary and unwanted ‘care’: http://www.althouse.blogspot.com.au/2013/12/is-there-any-evidence-that-more-old.html
06/12/2013: The Dalmatian pelican at up to 15kg is the
largest living bird that can fly. What an impressive beast. (PS: It never did
feed its young from its breast but sometimes beats its breast with its bill to
assist regurgitation, which is what may have given rise to the myth): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalmatian_Pelican
05/12/2013: ‘O, Brave
05/12/2013: Indos at it again (PS: Perhaps we
should hang onto this lot – and the Herc - until THEY release Schapelle!) : http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2013/11/smuggling-it-would-seem-is-in-indonesias-dna.html
05/12/2013: Strange how the Left courts
it…Religious tolerance is ONE thing, Islam is another: restriction and
punishment are common elements of Sharia as followed by extremists:
An eye for an eye
Drinkers (of alcohol) and gamblers must be whipped.
Homosexuals must be put to death
Adulterers must be stoned to death
It’s ok for men to hit their women if they want to
If you say anything negative about Islam, you can be
put to death
04/12/2013: It was instructive to hear Kate
Ellis this morning banging on about the need for more education funding BECAUSE
Oz students have fallen to 17th place in Maths after a decade of
INCREASED spending on education. Just a VERY little arithmetic applied to this
argument shows it to be fallacious. Isn’t it more likely that the Whitlam’s
‘reforms’ which threw out the ‘Three Rs’, especially phonics, and substituted
for hard knowledge (and didacticism) cuddly-softy leftie wanks and
‘student-centred’ learning might have effectively DESTROYED a whole generation’s
education? Especially concerning eg is that in NSW students no longer have to
continue with Maths until even Year 10 – and this is not if they have ALREADY
mastered calculus: indeed they do not have even to master Algebra or
Trigonometry! Nor do ANY graduating teachers have had to do so – is it any
wonder then that our students are innumerate, illiterate & etc. What is
needed is not more money, but more TEACHING! What is it about dy/dx that is SO
hard to understand?
04/12/2013: The Australian Curriculum:
‘Mathematics values Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and
cultures. It provides opportunities for students to appreciate that Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander societies have sophisticated applications of
mathematical concepts. Students will explore connections between
representations of number and pattern and how they relate to aspects of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. They will investigate time,
place, relationships and measurement concepts in Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander contexts.’ Oh, WOW!
04/12/2013: Today celebrating the Big Six-O with
the lovely Dell-A. Seems like only yesterday I met her when she was just
seventeen; she is ever my Dellight! Have a lovely day!
04/12/2013: Nov 2nd’s ‘New Scientist’
headlined the idea, ‘Does Now Exist’; STILL an interesting quandary - even
though our consciousness may never be able to deny time’s flow. It IS
interesting to recall how Newton’s Laws
first codified the relationship between time and other things, velocity, mass,
distance etc (eg the 2nd Law ie: F= dp/dt = d(mv)/dt) . Then along
comes Einstein and shows first that you can turn the equations around so time
becomes a variable, producing the ‘time dilation’ effect or it can be negative!
No surprise that you can substitute for ‘t’ (Time) in the equations and it
disappears –THAT was 1905 – still folks have not got their heads around it! Not
sure it is possible to consciously do so really: we are SO hard-wired for
seeing causality, for example. At the event horizon of a ‘Black Hole’ there IS
no time. If you could get inside one, it would be travelling ‘backwards’…
04/12/2013: William Blake’s ‘Auguries of
Innocence’ still rings redolent of the Luddite romanticism he represented
(remember his ‘dark satanic mills’?) It is astonishing just how many of his
rat-bag ideas still linger amid the Greens, animal libbers, vegans & other
like-minded nincompoops. STILL a great poem, & I confess I love some lines
eg the opening quatrain and,
‘Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.’ http://www.online-literature.com/blake/612/
03/12/2013: FAR too warm TODAY, so: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Real-risk-of-a-Maunder-minimum-Little-Ice-Age-says-leading-scientist
03/12/2013: Another similar paper here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/02/study-predicts-the-sun-is-headed-for-a-dalton-like-solar-minimum-around-2050/#more-98460
03/12/2013: So we do this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10486223/Britains-85-billion-bill-for-climate-policies.html
03/12/2013: Interesting thoughts on the Jewish
faith: http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/13101-Chanukah-Confusion-and-Enlightenment,-reposted.html
Also see: http://www.chabad.org/holidays/chanukah/article_cdo/aid/429014/jewish/Chanah-and-Her-Seven-Sons.htm
Reading this, who can doubt that ideas take precedence over the material world.
03/12/2013: DEEPLY worrying: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100247756/is-china-about-to-tell-the-west-game-over/
03/12/2013: Under Abbott, 207 boat people in
November. Under Gillard, 2630 boat people last November! (7.8%! – even less
when you consider Ju-Liar ran the numbers up to OVER 3,000 per month = 6.9% ie
DOWN 93%!)
02/12/2013: Some of those mountain men were
TOUGH, eg Hugh Glass. There is an excellent 1971 movie loosely based on his
life, ‘Man in the Wilderness’…terribly wounded in an attack by a grizzly, he
nonetheless survived and made his way back 200 miles to ‘civilisation’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Glass
02/12/2013: Also ‘Jeremiah Johnson’ another of
my favourite movies; The Mountain Men
1980, Death Hunt 1981, Daniel Boone 1936…The ‘Mad trapper of
MORE on the ‘Mad Trapper’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c96YQ9yWbX0
02/12/2013: I managed to score a heap of cheap mushrooms
from Safeway’s ‘Bargain Bin’ yesterday so (it) looks like mushroom and bacon
pasta for tea tonight…here at Jeeralang Junction the decade long drought played
havoc with our annual autumn mushroom season which has still to recover. If the
following article proves true, it certainly will. With fungi identified as the
largest life-forms on earth, (and considering their ubiquity) it may hap they
are major players in the climate game (and Gaia will be reborn!): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2513292/Mushrooms-make-WEATHER-Fungi-alter-nearby-air-humidity-create-winds-spread-spores-far-wide.html?ico=sciencetech^headlines
02/12/2013: Thinking BIG: earth to be powered by
solar installations on the moon; (Next stop a ‘Dyson Sphere’ (http://www.aleph.se/Nada/dysonFAQ.html)
: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10480950/Japanese-firm-plans-250-mile-wide-solar-panel-belt-around-Moon.html
02/12/2013: Further reading: Robert Heinlein,
‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’ (recommended, nay: REQUIRED reading!)
01/12/2013: I-Phone telephoto…NEAT idea: http://easy-macro.com/ (Others available: http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/cell-phone-lenses/
, http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Camera-Blackberry-Telescopic-Microfiber/dp/B00AV3ZUQA
, etc)
01/12/2013: THAT long ago! Concorde was SUCH a
beautiful bird. Wish I had flown to
01/12/2013: Rumour has it that the Labor
politician accused of raping a 16 year old girl (albeit 27 years ago!) is none
other than the Hon (?) Bill Shorten, ex lover of Nicola Roxon and confidante of
Julia Gillard and Bruce Wilson. In a move reminiscent of Ju-Liar’s knifing of
Rudd, Tanya Plibersek has (apparently) called for a full investigation. Does
anyone think he should maybe ‘stand down’ whilst that happens? The Labor Party
sure can pick ‘em: Gillard, Obied, Williamson, Thomson, Shorten, Rudd…
01/12/2013: Great men of our time? “To send men
to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois
detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold
killing machine motivated by pure hate.” Ernesto Lynch, aka Che Guevara, ‘Known
as ‘the Butcher of La Cabaña’, Che Guevara is known to have ordered the
execution of several hundred people he suspected of betraying his communist
ideology’: http://the-libertarian.co.uk/che-guevara-10-great-quotes/
01/12/2013: Seems like Shorten’s involvement in
union corruption (which dates back to Ju-Liar’s 1990’s shenanigans) continues
unabated IF this half a million dollars was (improperly) diverted to boost his
leadership campaign. Meanwhile the police investigation into Jools draws
inexorably towards its inevitable conclusion, ie she WILL BE CHARGED AND FOUND
GUILTY, the first PM in Oz history! (http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2013/11/my-story-in-the-australian-today-on-ms-gillard-the-awu-scandal-and-the-abcs-efforts-to-avoid-reporti.html)
What a dent THAT will put in Labor’s vote: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/expensive_union_votes_for_bill/
30/11/2013: Though still a bit stiff and sore (I
think mainly from the VERY hot walk on Wednesday afternoon) I am pretty happy
to be still able to walk 20+km a day carrying a pack (even in fairly rugged
country). Of course it helps if you can reduce the weight of the contents of
your pack (including the pack weight itself). Some tips: Zpacks sell cuben
fibre packs which weigh from less than 230 grams (Della’s), (Tip: include a Sea
to Summit ultrasil pack liner bag and another for your bag and clothes in case
you have to swim!), sub-zero sleeping bags from 397 grams, two person tents
(inc poncho floor) less than 350 grams; Gossamer Gear’s carbon fibre hiking
poles are @100 grams each (a MUST! They reduce walking effort – and falls - by
30%+); Trail Designs will sell you a three fuel cookset which weighs under 250
grams; Montbell’s ultra light
super-stretch down sleeping bags are wonderfully comfy and their down vests and
jackets (or synthetic if you plan on getting wet) are very light weight (and
GREAT!). We wear
30/11/2013: Just a couple of excerpts to whet your
appetite; you really should read this : Friedrich A. Hayek, ‘The Road to
Serfdom’ http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/upldbook351pdf.pdf
‘Who can seriously doubt that the power which a
millionaire, who may be my employer, has over me is very much less than that
which the smallest bureaucrat possesses who wields the coercive power of the
state and on whose discretion it depends how I am allowed to live and work?’
‘Our generation has forgotten that the system of
private property is the most important guarantee of freedom. It is only because
the control of the means of production is divided among many people acting
independently that we as individuals can decide what to do with ourselves. When
all the means of production are vested in a single hand, whether it be
nominally that of society’ as a whole or that of a dictator, whoever exercises
this control has complete power over us. In the hands of private individuals,
what is called economic power can be an instrument of coercion, but it is never
control over the whole life of a person. But when economic power is centralized
as an instrument of political power it creates a degree of dependence scarcely
distinguishable from slavery. It has been well said that, in a country where
the sole employer is the state, opposition means death by slow starvation.’
30/11/2013: ‘Cargo Cult Science’, a really thoughtful
piece by renowned scientist, Dr Richard Feynman: http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf
29/11/2013: THIS is a VERY interesting article (as is
its conclusion): ‘In general, the best times for man in the last 18,000 years
are the warmer periods. The times of the disruption of civilization are the
cooler and more arid times. This is quite consistent and since we have not seen
unusual warming in the present warm period, relative to other warming events in
the last 18,000 years, it seem doubtful that this warming period will be a
problem for man to adapt to. Much of the last 18,000 years is characterized
with much more rapid sea-level rise than we see today and this has caused a lot
of disruption as it will in the future. But, the current rise in sea level is
very slow relative to sea level rise during most of man’s civilized period. Our
current warming and the current rate of sea level rise are very unspectacular’:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/17/climate-and-human-civilization-over-the-last-18000-years/#more-97612
29/11/2013: TO THE LIGHTHOUSE: 43km, two days: one
hot, one wet & cold to (& from) Wilsons Prom light station. For full
story you will have to wait for Della's post. Today: both a bit calf-sore but
busy helping cut and pack ten lambs for Xmas (& many other) dinners!
27/11/2013: Friedrich A. Hayek’s great work, ‘The Road
to Serfdom’ is available (albeit as a Readers Digest Condensed Book) FREE,
here: http://www.iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/upldbook351pdf.pdf
27/11/2013: SWEET: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/11/24/connecticut-couple-set-to-celebrate-81st-anniversary/
27/11/2013: (
27/11/2013:
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/uploads/photo.png
26/11/2013: I have been wondering too what
26/11/2013: NOW that the NSW fires have been washed
out by heavy rain (Ah, climate change you heartbreaker!) it might be time to
consider whether fires ARE becoming more frequent - and whether it really IS
appropriate to reward ‘firies’ with generous emoluments. Of course, the PAID
ones are not the ones who fight BUSHFIRES anyway. THAT is left up to unpaid
volunteers. (I was a member of the CFA for MANY years. After very nearly giving
my life, I thought I would take a break!) I suspect that there has been a steep
decline in the number of fire events here too brought about by similar things:
smoke alarms, fire extinguishers, fire blankets, better electrical
installations & building materials, a decline in smoking rates… http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/explaining-the-steep-decline-in-the-frequency-of-fires.aspx
26/11/2013: MIGHT the Indos become so annoyed with our
dumping their illegal immigrants back on their shores they would declare war on
us? Even if they did, (even though they have 250 million people and our Defence
spending is at its lowest since 1938 – not for long!) we would crush them like
a snake: http://pickeringpost.com/story/armed-conflict-with-indonesia/2344
25/11/2013: NOTHING I have read in the last decade is
as important as THIS (ex Karl Popper):
‘(1) The state is
a necessary evil and its powers should be kept to the minimum that is
necessary.
(2) A democracy is
a state where the government can be changed without bloodshed.
(3) Democracy
cannot confer benefits on people. "Democracy provides no more than a
framework within which the citizens may act in a more or less organised and
coherent way".
(4) Democracy does
not mean that the majority is right.
(5) Institutions
need to be tempered and supported by traditions.
(6) There is no
Liberal Utopia. There are always problems, conflicts of interests, choices to
be made between the lesser of evils.
(7) Liberalism is
evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It is about modifying or changing
institutions and traditions rather than wholesale replacement of the existing
order. The exception to this is when a tyranny is in place, that is a
government that can only be changed by violence and bloodshed.
8) The importance
of the moral framework.’
Please read on: http://www.the-rathouse.com/CRPublicOpinion17.html
25/11/2013: An important paper by an Australian
scientist. Its Conclusion: ‘Natural temperature change and variability in soil
moisture, not anthropogenic emission, is the chief driver of changes in CO2
concentration. These changes may act as a feedback contributing some warming
but are not its principal cause.’ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/22/excerpts-from-salbys-slide-show/#more-98011
25/11/2013: SO, the Indo ‘hissy-fit’ is ALL about
their corrupt military losing a handy source of finance (ie the people
smuggling racket, which is THEIR private boondoggle). That being so, we need to
hit them in the hip pocket some more to bring them to heel, eg by turning off
the lucrative aid and tourist taps. What we certainly don’t need to do is have
Tony apologise for Krud & Ju-Liar’s inept spying activities… https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2013/11/nice-little-earner/
24/11/2013: Confucius: ‘The palest ink is more
reliable than the most powerful memory.’ This is a trick I increasingly
utilise!
24/11/2013: And YOU thought all these nice refugees
would turn out to be good guys? What TOSH! From the 7:30 Report (hardly a
refuge of conservative opinion): ‘Police
believe an Afghan faction inside the notorious Brothers 4 Life gang is
responsible for a recent outbreak of bloody and indiscriminate gun violence in
24/11/2013: The ‘Year Without a Summer’ (1816) –
Reminder: we could get a repeat of such an event ANY TIME. NB COLD is much
WORSE than warmth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer
23/11/2013: BEFORE you say, ‘Sorry’, some things to
consider: http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2013/11/list-of-terrorist-incidents-and-terrorist-groups-in-indonesia.html
& http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2013/11/only-the-gullible-west-allows-hizb-ut-tahrir-to-spread-their-anti-liberal-democracy-poison.html
23/11/2013: Just wondering WHEN ‘Bambam’ is going to
APOLOGISE for the murder of the ‘Balibo Five’! Yeah, Sure!
23/11/2013: Bryce should GO NOW! How dare our GG take a
partisan side in politics? If she and JG are what you get when you put women in
charge (rather than the horrible aberrations they both are) it will be long
before the Australian public wants to repeat such experiments. Fortunately the
two Bishops shine in contrast!
23/11/2013: ‘FOLLOW THAT STAR’ - a serious injunction. One that the fabled
‘three wise men’ or ‘Magi’ (Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar) are supposed to
have done. Trouble is, such a course of action would have had them walking in
circles! http://what-if.xkcd.com/25/
23/11/2013: TRY this out for yourself. The mind is
certainly a ‘strange country’: http://mindhacks.com/2010/09/18/the-strange-face-in-the-mirror-illusion/
23/11/2013: ‘How to fund the needs of
22/11/2013: GO Dave: “We’ve got to get rid of this green
crap" British PM David Cameron: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2510936/Cut-green-c-p-Camerons-private-view-energy-taxation-horrify-environmental-campaigners.html
22/11/2013: Cameron Stewart & Paul Maley:
‘INDONESIA has strengthened its ability to spy on Australia and other
neighbours this year by boosting its army's intelligence unit and buying new
eavesdropping equipment, despite claims by Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa
that his country has no need to spy on foreign governments. The head of
22/11/2013: Black Thursday 7 February 1851, quite
possibly
22/11/2013: THIS is the sort of evil country it is:
NEVER say ‘Sorry’ to them, Tony: http://pickeringpost.com/story/abbott-must-say-sorry-/2339
22/11/2013: TOUCHE: ‘The cables from the US embassy in
Jakarta, sent between 2004 and 2010, contained a series of startling but
unverified allegations about the conduct of Dr Yudhoyono, his wife and family.
Among the allegations were that Dr Yudhoyono ordered a corruption investigation
into political powerbroker Taufik Kiemas be dropped and that he received funds
from controversial businessman Tomy Winata via a middleman.’ Andrew Bolt:
‘Which suggests a neat face-saver. Surely
21/11/2013: Just I case you didn’t know: https://twitter.com/Fascinatingpics/status/402995006186995712/photo/1
21/11/2013: I am so sick of TREASONOUS bastards in the
ABC, the Guardian, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, etc leaking state secrets in
order to destroy elected Governments and cause the deaths of service personnel
- or other innocents. WHY have we repealed the DEATH PENALTY FOR TREASON or for
other serious crimes for that matter?
21/11/2013: Quote of the day: Benjamin Zycher: ‘The
precautionary principle itself — a framework under which no one would venture
outdoors at any time for work or play, as any number of horrors loom, all of
which carry probabilities greater than zero. Even indoors, of course, the
precautionary principle requires eternal vigilance, as Pravda in its glory days
would have put it, as the roof might collapse at any time. I am surprised that
the Left has not proposed a requirement that individuals wear hard hats when
indoors, a diktat qualitatively identical to seatbelt and motorcycle helmet
laws and other such manifestations of nanny-statism. The precautionary
principle, accordingly, is a fundamentally totalitarian construct, as it leads
inexorably toward a world in which government dictates which risks are
acceptable’
: http://www.american.com/archive/2013/november/the-fallacy-of-the-social-cost-of-carbon
21/11/2013: AND THIS QUOTE SAYS IT ALL, 'In 1960,
there were only three game farms in
21/11/2013: And this, 'In terms of their
vulnerability, lions aren’t under nearly as much pressure as rhinos. What has
hunting done for the rhino population? Extending full private property rights
to the animals and legalising trophy hunting has arguably saved both the black
and white rhino from going extinct decades ago, according to a detailed study
conducted by environmental economist Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes.'
21/11/2013: This SERIES will become a ‘must read’ for
those who seek to understand ‘aboriginal’ society’s problems (and what, if
anything) can be done to ‘solve’ them: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2013/11/traditional-culture-vile-crimes/
21/11/2013: The second instalment of Frank Pledge’s ‘trilogy’
is even more disquieting than the first. An example (concerning the
‘entitlement epidemic’), "In Kulgera, I heard the view expressed that
Aboriginal elders effectively fulfil the same role as judges in mainstream
courts, and therefore should be paid at the same rate as magistrates" : https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2013/11/aboriginality-profession/
20/11/2013: Have been canoeing the Macalister River
for over twenty years – and there have always been fish eagles like this guy.
Magnificent creature, feasting on the many introduced carp, redfin and trout to
be found in the river – and without which he (and his mate – off somewhere
nesting I suspect) would not be there.
20/11/2013: Spent yesterday (5 ½ hours) white water
canoeing on the
20/11/2013: Gauge height had dropped to 1.71 this
morning so likely was more like 1.72 yesterday, excellent conditions. I figure
it to be canoeable at approx 2" less than that (though much canoe bottom
scraping) so from @1.67
20/11/2013: Thinking seriously about investing in some
better insoles to improve hiking comfort: http://www.walking.org/walking-equipment/footwear/walking-insoles-guide/
& http://www.superfeet.com/
19/11/2013: Neanderthals destroyed by global warming –
very funny: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/08/friday-funny-neanderthal-campfires/#more-97082
19/11/2013: This is an excellent example of how
deconstruction degrades meaning (or what Orwell would call ‘Newspeak’). This
amazing collection of trough denizen leftoids call themselves ‘Progress’ whilst
militating against every advance in human knowledge/technology. Just an
example: how many do you think would be in favour of nuclear fusion research? http://progress2013.org.au/
19/11/2013:
18/11/2013: Aloksak make really great waterproof to
200 metres snaplock bags. This one is even big enough to put your rifle in
(great for canoeing/boating/hunting trips. It is the only waterproof gun bag I
know of: http://www.survival-pax.com/aLOKSAK-Bags-Extra-Large.html
18/11/2013: Tony Jones should be sacked from Q & A
(and frankly the whole ABC Board which endorses all such partisan programmes as
the ABC (universally & in total defiance of its charter represents).
Miranda: “I’m stopping you,” Jones told Peter Hitchens. “Don’t stop me … I
haven’t finished my answer,” protested Hitchens. “You haven’t stopped anyone
else.” It’s always the way. The audience is as bad. “It’s a rally,” Hitchens
told them, waiting to speak over applause for a Savage interjection. “While you
do this I can’t talk, and you know it, and that’s to your shame because
silencing opponents is a very wicked thing to do.” He even told his fellow
panellists they were “fantastically intolerant”. “This is the absolute seedbed
of totalitarianism. When you start believing that the opinions of other people
are a pathology then you are in the beginning of the stage that leads to the
secret police and the gulag.” http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/sneering_lefties_love_to_hate_abbott/
18/11/2013: Airframes are AMAZING: I see the
18/11/2013: This is a bit like finding a new continent
which has been hiding somewhere in the world. I remember when they first put
Landsat up, they did exactly that: found 100,000 square miles of extra land in
17/11/2013: Who was
17/11/2013: A very thought-provoking article:
‘Free-market economists are wont to point out that economic freedom is in one
sense more tolerant than political freedom. If you like apples and I like
oranges, then economic freedom means I can have one and you can have the other,
and we are both happy. Political freedom means that we take a vote on whether
we all should have apples or all should have oranges, and the loser is
disappointed.’ http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/when-political-tyranny-allows-economic-freedom.aspx
17/11/2013: Here at Jeeralang Junction we had our summer
back in September. Since Melbourne Cup Day (a date after which we NEVER [?]
have to light a fire – Ha! Busted!) we have had inches of rain and quite some
snow on the ranges. We may yet have another summer (and winter) before the year
ends. This is (what used to be called!) WEATHER.
17/11/2013: In my Facebook sidebar I keep getting adds
for ‘Finitro’ whch is apparently intended to banish my arthritis (I wish!) but
I suspect it is as badly misnamed as the ‘Endone’ the (euthanasia?) doctors
once wanted to give me for acute pain…
16/11/2013: With friends like this… http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/14/world/meast/syria-beheading-mistake/index.html
16/11/2013: ‘Ah, but I may as well try and (tax) the
wind’...Shorten’s favourite lyrics (apologies to Dylan)
16/11/2013: Interested in children’s education. Read
THIS and weep. Like many things, it has fallen victim to what used to be called
‘communist infiltration’: ‘…the Rudd/Gillard inspired national curriculum
provides further evidence of the cultural-left nature of
16/11/2013: Some excellent Aussie weather: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/photos-fni0cx12-1226754707840
16/11/2013: ‘The simple truth is that buying
non-organic is far more cost-effective, more humane, and more environmentally
responsible’: http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/henry-i--miller-exposes-the-disappointing-truth-about-organic-agriculture
15/11/2013: I thought Keating was a slime beast when
he was PM. His speech at the War Memorial on Remembrance Day reveals he has not
improved one jot! To describe our magnificent WW1 VOLUNTEER heroes as ‘cannon
fodder’ dupes is reprehensible: (“Young Australians … can no longer be
dragooned en masse into military enterprises of the former imperial variety on
the whim of so-called statesmen. They are fortunately too wise to the world to
be cannon fodder of the kind their young forebears became: young innocents who
had little or no choice.”) Presumably he feels the same about ALL our VOLUNTEER
heroes from WW2,
15/11/2013: The mysterious bombing of Anthony
Mundine’s coffee shop: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/australias_greatest_mystery/
15/11/2013: Beautiful abandoned buildings: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/10415404/Extraordinary-abandoned-buildings.html
15/11/2013: The LIE of the century? ‘The 97.1 %
consensus claimed by Cook et al. (2013) turns out upon inspection to be not
97.1 % but 0.3 %. Their claim of 97.1 % consensus, therefore, is arguably one
of the greatest items of misinformation that has been circulated on either side
of the climate debate.’ http://www.climaterealists.org.nz/sites/climaterealists.org.nz/files/Legatesetal13-Aug30-Agnotology%5B1%5D.pdf
15/11/2013: BEST MOVIE of the C21st so far ‘Hugo’ 2011
(by Johnny Depp and others). It won FIVE academy awards and a host of other
awards. The storyline rotates around a writing automaton such as I posted about
on Wednesday: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUa7oBsSDk8)
as a result of which my son-in-law, Matt recommended the movie – excellent
choice, Matt. DO give it a try: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0970179/
14/11/2013: Goodbye Krud - 1,500 drowned, 55,000
illegally here, 4 dead in ceilings, hundreds of billions blown, industries
destroyed, a catastrophe…The only ‘positive’ anyone could find was the
‘apology’ to the ‘stolen generations’, an apology for something which NEVER
HAPPENED: the consequence of which has been the condemning of a whole new
generation of aboriginal children to the most dreadful (sexual) and other abuse
and awesome neglect. Great work! He must RALLY hate the Labor party though – to
bring on a by-election (mayhap presaging the results of an imminent double
dissolution election as a second referendum on the carbon tax). Imagine if
Julia is charged in the meantime (an event into which Shorten will also be
drawn)…I suspect we will soon see the end of ‘Electricity Bill’, but Labor will
also have to repudiate its neat new leadership ‘system’ (another ‘gift’ from
Krud!) to remove him. O, what a sorry old Party!
15/11/2013: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/not_a_bridge_remains/
14/11/2013: Rather than all going extinct, there are some
real cutesies still out there, like these: http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/11/22-bizarre-animals-you-probably-didnt-know-they-exist.html
14/11/2013: If Kepler’s results prove true (ie one in
five G3 stars are likely to have habitable planets) the we surely are NOT
ALONE. Looks to me as if SETI ought not have been abandoned: http://www.gizmag.com/kepler-habitable/29662/
15/11/2013: Sorry I was wrong, SETI is ongoing: http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/
14/11/2013: An interesting variation on the ‘penis
enlargement’ scam playing itself out in US courts: http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2013/11/fargo-but-with-lawyers-and-porn.html
13/11/2013: This beautiful writing automaton child
from 1770 (sic!) is truly amazing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUa7oBsSDk8
13/11/2013: Ah, sausage POLICE…long have we yearned
for them: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/sausage_police/
13/11/2013: Ain’t it so? ‘Adherents of Marx at some
level must like the mass killings. Perhaps they make them feel powerful.’ http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/178595/
13/11/2013: NSW folk are to get the ‘right’ to clear
their own land to prevent bushfires. Loud cheering: (though I doubt the detail
will reveal as large a victory over the forces of darkness ie Government,
Greens etc) as might be hoped. The decision also misses the point: that it was
always one’s OWN land which Government had no (constitutional or other) right
to confiscate or otherwise interfere with! However, Dennis, PLEASE NOTE – and
follow suit, preferably BEFORE our fire imminent season is upon US again! PS It
might be a good idea to allow/encourage folk to clear a couple of chain (NB a
‘chain = one cricket pitch) of PUBLIC land adjacent to their properties too.
12/11/2013: DEATH to the eagle & bat shredders: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=314_1383318524
12/11/2013: WHAT killed the car industry? ‘HOLDEN
workers will receive cash bonuses and annual pay rises worth almost $5 million
during the next two months as the carmaker seeks extra taxpayer assistance from
the federal government to stave off closure. The struggling car company, which
has received $2.7 billion in subsidies over the past 12 years, including a
$275m co-investment package from state and federal governments last
year’…Holden is apparently losing about $275 per car… http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/pay-rises-at-stressed-holden/story-fn59niix-1226753108425#sthash.HWyWJOaW.dpuf
12/11/2013: Rent Seekers International to co-ordinate
mendicants. What a fine idea. Someone needs to facilitate submission writing
workshops so that the ‘deserving poor’ can be properly cosseted. These folk are
a case in point. Not satisfied by the insane generosity of over 200 years
feasting at the public trough meanwhile causing an inordinate share of crime,
property destruction & etc they would NOW like their own nation – hopefully
it will be funded exclusively by their own taxes and there will be a strong woven
wire fence separating it from the rest of us: http://nationalunitygovernment.org/content/great-lie-still-underpins-thinking-indigenous-affairs-policy-today
11/11/2013: I see Fenix has a new SINGLE AAA head
torch, the HL 10 (http://www.fenix-store.com/fenix-HL10/)
weighing 42.5 grams including the head elastic. I have been using their LD 01
coupled with a couple of O-rings, one micro-cord lock and some hat elastic for
this purpose but this arrangement doesn’t point well (due to the shape of heads
= just above where the eyes focus. If you replace the Fenix headband with the
above arrangement you should have a torch which points where you want it @ less
than 20 grams (discluding battery). Of course, as an emergency back-up torch we
also carry a ‘Photon Freedom’ @ 6.2 grams including battery (http://www.photonlight.com/led-flashlights/photon-freedom-micro-led-keychain-flashlight/).
11/11/2013: An INCREASE in storm activity (as a result
of AGW)? Phooey: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/10/bjorn-lomborg-on-haiyanyolanda/
11/11/2013: I supposed devoted social planners won’t read
this, but the rest of you should. Just a short history of union bastardry in
Oz. Union responsibility for the dreadful deaths of 1,000+ men in the
11/11/2013: Watched Deborah Kerr in the 1961 film,
‘The Innocents’, a depiction of Henry James’ ‘Turn of the Screw’. THAT guy
could really write, and THAT gal could really ACT. What a brilliant film! Half
the film I was frightened out of my seat (and without ANY loud noises or sound
effects at all)! 21st film makers could learn a lesson or three
there!
11/11/2013: Shocking News: Half the Australian
population have below average IQs! The Government MUST act!
11/11/2013: When I heard that Australian
ultra-communist Lea Rhiannon had been detained in
10/11/2013: ‘Lies, damned lies – and statistics’: Is
the danger of death REALLY increasing? Well, maybe not: http://www.luckyculture.com.au/2013/11/04/what-the-sugar-prohibitionist-dont-tell-you/
10/11/2013: So this is really what ‘Obamacare’ was all
about? (Not so very different from our own ‘system’, I suspect). MORE free
stuff for those who do not (and do not want to) look after themselves. It is an
infinite trough. AND will end in tears. A time WILL come when the rest of us
wake up and say, ‘We really can’t afford all this’ and turn off the tap. All
very cruel I know – but I never wept when I skinned my knee, and neither should
anyone else! Mommy is no longer around: time to stand on your own too legs and
shift for yourselves! http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/11/surprise-people-like-free-stuff.php
10/11/2013: I suspect it HAS recently become ‘deviant’
or at east mildly disgusting (certainly openly) to admire delicious members of
the opposite sex. Instead, homosexuality, rather than something spoken of only
in hushed voices and practiced behind closed doors, has become almost de
rigeur. I notice (at least) that many young women are ‘expected’ to demonstrate
a predilection for feminine company in order to attract young males – at
parties and such! Is there no end to perversion? Soon ‘we will see a listing
for pedophobia, the shameful condition suffered by neurotically narrow-minded
people who are judgmental about pedophilia.’ http://moonbattery.com/?p=38701
09/11/2013: WHAT a
powerful animal a MOOSE is (Fast Forward to about 1:30): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GEhM2Byk7w#t=118
09/11/2013: I have only
recently learned that the principal ingredient of ‘flatus’ is hydrogen (not
methane – we are not ruminants – at least MOST of us, though I have known some I
wondered about…) so the ecologically minded telephone recharger aspirant might
also take along a plastic hose and bag to collect their productions and use
these to recharge – other folks could just buy the purpose built canisters.
This ‘must-have’ camping gadget shows surely there is no limit to human
ingenuity, credulity & etc: http://www.gofastandlight.com/myFC-PowerTrekk-Small-Portable-Hydrogen-Fuel-Cell/productinfo/PO-I-HPOWER/
09/11/2013: Here’s an
idea to test your ‘New Age’ views: perhaps this useful gadget should only be
available for women to buy? Girls, though it would clearly be illegal, I
suspect as you are buying it from a hiking supplies firm that you declare it to
customs as a ‘hiking torch, gift’ and see how you go: http://www.gofastandlight.com/Zaplight-Extreme-Electric-Stun-Gun-LED-Flashlight/productinfo/L-PS-ZAPEXT/
09/11/2013: Ann Bancroft
was JUST MAGNIFICENT in John Ford’s ‘7Women’ (1966) – LONG before Germaine’s
stupid silliness. Great film!
09/11/2013: The ‘elephant in the room’ STIRS: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/netanyahu-bad-deal-very-very-bad-deal_766449.html
09/11/2013: Time to get tough with Natalegawa. Either
he takes the illegal immigrants ‘saved’ in THEIR territorial waters back or, we
drive right up to their beaches and tip them out there, and to Hell with the
consequences – or we cut off the huge pipeline of aid the Indos are sucking on.
Charity begins at home! Time to get out the BIG STICK, Julie. Point is, it was
HIS mates Ju-Liar & Krud were spying on them anyway! BUT, might there not
be a pretty good reason to keep a close eye on a huge Moslem country which is
maybe not as alarmed by jihadists as we have every reason to be?
09/11/2013: ‘Ju-Liar, the Movie’! Boy, will THAT be a
winner! Is the world READY for this: http://blogs.news.com.au/images/uploads/LABORFILM_thumb.png
09/11/2013: No boats have arrived now for a fortnight.
09/11/2013: They have
locked up HALF the state! Is it any wonder they are an economic basket case?
This is what the future holds if we follow the lead of the evil and idiotic
Greens. Time THEY were endangered. To make it worse, we have walked/driven
across vast expanses of awfulness that has been locked up eg huge stretches of
‘button-grass plains on the West Coast. If
08/11/2013: ‘I love
people, and people love me’ – the words of a pop idol perhaps? No, this is Hajj Abd
Al-Nabi…the executioner of the Arab Republic of Egypt. A charming chappie.
Unfortunately, we could use a few of his ilk here to deal with some of our
recent murderers (eg of Sarah Cafferty, Jill Meagher, & etc) & etc: http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/7483.htm
08/11/2013: MORE things
to worry about, eg WHEN will the Universe END? O dear, only about 10 to the
fiftieth power years left: http://io9.com/when-will-the-universe-end-1451601485
08/11/2013: Kettle Logic
(far too common unfortunately): Freud relates the story of a man who was
accused by his neighbour of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition and
the three arguments he offers in explanation: That he had returned the kettle
undamaged; That it was already damaged when he borrowed it; That he had never
borrowed it in the first place. Freud notes that it would have been better if
he had only used one.
08/11/2013: Della WILL
like this: Pigeon’s eye view amongst the following: http://voyagerloin.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/pigeon-overlooking-new-york-city.jpg http://voyagerloin.com/actualite/75-photos-du-monde-lavez-jamais-vu/
07/11/2013: I agree with
the writer that cutting out daylight saving just when you could use an extra hour
in the garden is downright cruel. If anything, daylight saving only makes sense
in the winter(ish) months when there is a shortage of daylight - after work
anyway. In summer there is heaps, so no sense at all then. I might support
having it all year (as no upsetting changes). I also like the author’s idea of
scrapping some of our time zones.
07/11/2013: The ‘Ten
Commandmants’ of Government (SOUND familiar?):
‘I Generally speaking,
government always grows -- it never shrinks -- whether times are good or bad.
II In each area it
purports to "assist", government attempts to replace individual
decision-making with central planning.
III In order to implement
its grand central plans and solidify its power, government must take from one
citizen to give to another; this is, in effect, lawful theft.
IV No matter how many
times central planning fails, the self-appointed masterminds in government
assert that "this time is different" and that with only a few tweaks
and more money, their delusional plans will succeed.
V Because it uses funds
confiscated from taxpayers, self-restraint is no obstacle to government's ambitions.
VI Its fundamental
misunderstanding of human nature notwithstanding, government must claim to
grant "rights", which require it steal the labors of one citizen to
give to another (such as food, shelter, employment, and health care).
VII No matter how
widespread the harm it causes, government will never provide an honest and
historical accounting -- a report card -- of its failures.
VIII As more individuals
and families are harmed by the failures of central planning, government must
find suitable scapegoats, must lie to do so, and therefore must also repress
dissent.
IX In order to build its
network of redistribution and grow a culture of dependency on its services,
government must inevitably undermine the family unit, religion, and the notion
of God-given rights in order to cow, bribe, or intimidate its citizens.
X As government grows
ever more powerful, it must also become increasingly oppressive through
compulsion and force. To do otherwise would mean government must shrink, and
this it cannot do’: http://directorblue.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/the-10-commandments-of-government.html
07/11/2013: Just sick to
death of these ‘anti-fracking’ nut-jobs. There has been any number of official
enquiries (including Peter Reith’s) into this process, which has been used in
06/11/2013: Vernal
profligacy continues unabated (mostly outside) our bedroom window. The
bronze-wing pigeons are well ‘at it’ with much fan-tailing behaviour and
careful twig selection in typical ‘columbine’ fashion.’ Hazel’ &
‘Blackberry’ our new lepine (or lapine?) denizens, not yet pot-bound (as Della
pretends incompetence with her Rossi .410) still scamper unaccompanied – but I
fear not for long. Indeed (as Lear observed) ‘The wren goes to 't’ - or at
least two (or more) do, sometimes as I noted once before with the Thornbills!
‘A young man’s fancy…’ Enough!
06/11/2013: 43 places to
avoid, if, like me, you don’t like crowds of people – otherwise, go there: http://microsite.smithsonianmag.com/content/lifelist/
06/11/2013: I’m not at
all surprised that 1350 WA votes ‘went missing’ – or the corollary: that the
vote count in EVERY electorate is wrong (NB WHENEVER there is a recount, the
tally changes). As an old sheep farmer I KNOW that whenever you count even a
small number of sheep (eg 100) the tally is different from the last time (even
when you cross off their tag numbers on a list). There is always at least one
sheep which appears/disappears, or even one which changes its gender (eg from a
ewe to a wether, or vice-versa!) This is what used to be called ‘LIFE’, but
evidently it is NOW a conspiracy – or a reason we should waste a few millions
on having another Senate election so a different coterie of ‘trough pigs’ can
be chosen! I have another preference: Let’s scrap the bloody undemocratic
Senate altogether, AND abolish the preferential system (and PLEASE, the
dreadful Hare-Clarke system in ACT/Tas – indeed WHY are
06/11/2013: I voted
‘NOTHING’. Click to see whether the majority agrees with me: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/the_big_question/
05/11/2013: Shootndrink:
If you haven’t got one of these babies, you are OLD: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/SHOOTNDRINK-ALCOHOL-SHOT-GUN-GADGET-/130665071756
05/11/2013: Horse breeders
continue to show their incompetence in that racehorses do NOT carry an average
person’s weight plus a reasonable quota of gear (Let’s say @ 15 stone or 100
kilos - REALLY what you would expect from a ‘carefully bred vehicle’ which
weighs in at close to a tonne) but continue to (barely) struggle around the
track with little more weight than a small trained monkey would represent. At
least it provides a livelihood for midgets who might otherwise struggle in the
‘big world’, I guess.
05/11/2013: For those of
you who figured I was just a bigot, I notice our security intelligence
organisation (ASIO) shares my view. FYO: I was also against importing IRA
sympathisers most of whom were Catholics (if not indeed atheists, like myself).
Point is we have to have SOME discernment, or what USED to be called
‘discrimination’. O, how I hate the bastardisation of language. (Sometimes I
actually wake up feeling ‘gay’, but NO MORE. AND, Della is a little jealous of
‘Gay’!): http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/asio-report-says-there-are-great-dangers-from-radical-islamists/story-fni0ffxg-1226752319068
05/11/2013: Further to my
post about being able to light a fire in the rain, I have also long toyed with
the idea of carrying/constructing a fire rain hat or raincoat so that heavy
rain doesn’t put out your fire. The two occasions when it is really important
to be able to light a fire are when it is very wet and cold and when there is a
bushfire approaching (so that you can create burned ground as a refuge!) On
such occasions if you don’t have a lighter, or can’t light a fire you’re a dead
duck. Smokers clearly have an advantage here over more sanctimonious folk, and
even though I gave up smoking more than a generation ago (! – THERE is an
interesting method of measuring TIME) I still always carry a ‘Mini-Bic’). We
ALWAYS camp in a shelter which allows a fire outside. A tent is a cold,
creeping thing to have to retreat to when you can sit/stand in a warm open
shelter, drink rum, play games, read etc in front of a cheery fire – and with a
warm back! If you pitch a rectangular tarp high you can have a (small) fire at
one end (though the wind tends to catch the tarp if it isn’t pegged to the
ground on at least 2/3 sides. I think it should be possible to suspend over the
fire (eg a 1 metre square) diamond of eg ‘Tyvek’ @ 1.75 ounces /square yard
with a melting point of 800C. You need to be careful that the fire can’t ignite
its ‘roof’ or use it as a wick to ignite your tent, but this shouldn’t be much
of a problem in the rain. Set-up obviously needs to be when furled (a couple of
rubber bands should achieve this) so you can pitch it over the fire when it is
already lit. Weight should be able to be kept to less than 3 ounces (90 grams)
including stakes and guys.
05/11/2013: Alcohol
simmer stoves: these look good – may try out the ‘Turbo 1-D’ and the
‘Trailbaker’: http://brasslite.com/stoves/products.html
05/11/2013: The jury is
BACK on the effectiveness of the American ‘economic stimulus’. The same reality
applies to the dreadful Rudd/Gillard stimulus - and the horrendous debt it has
left us with. Unsurprisingly the stimulus is revealed as the greatest economic
disaster of all time. When WILL people wake up to the reality that Keynes is
just communism repackaged – and that Government does not create ANY real wealth
– and the corollary: that the best thing Government can do is ‘GET OUT OF THE
BLEEDING WAY!” http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/10/29/laffer-again/
04/11/2013: JUST when I
was opining that folks who talk to dogs are going loopy, someone comes along
and deciphers ‘dog-speak’, or at least dog ‘tales’, if you can pardon the pun: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24746107#
04/11/2013: The first
sign of madness…. A belief in canine telepathy: whenever you get a new dog,
after a little while you realise that you have been asking ‘Spot’ to remind you
to buy tissues when you next go to the supermarket, not to forget to water the
carrot seedlings & etc…then you begin to wonder whether all this talking to
animals is early onset whatever-you-call-it…Talking to birds (our parrots, for
example) is reasonable by comparison (sometimes THEY talk back!), but when it
comes to dogs – and then: ‘I talk to the trees’, well, it gives you pause…
04/11/2013: I have been
thinking about the desirability of carrying a fixed blade knife mainly for
those rare occasions when it is necessary to split branches to produce dry
kindling and shave them to produce ‘excelsior’. Lighting a fire when it is VERY
wet and cold is the most important time – and can save your life. You can’t
really do this with a folder or any other of the ultra-light hiking options (eg
Micro Leatherman – 50 grams, or Swiss card – 25 grams (though both are
excellent multi tools for a variety of purposes; eg the Leatherman has the best
toe-nail cutting scissors in the WORLD!) You have to be able to split dry
branches you can break into eg six inch pieces over your knee. (The lightest
hatchet/machete is too heavy for emergency-only carrying at 4-500 grams). You
have to be able to hold the handle and tap on the end of the blade with another
piece of wood, so the blade needs to be about at least 3” long. These two sites
have some very light fixed blade knives (http://www.gofastandlight.com/Knives-Saws/products/20/ & http://kestrelknives.com/products/) Kestrel’s ‘Ultralighter’ would be hard to
beat @ 11.6 grams though a 2 ¼” blade is quite minimalist, but should do the
job in an emergency and would still butcher game or fillet a fish quite
satisfactorily. It IS a bit pricey at $100 though, so I may opt to carry a
little more weight and try out eg the Ka-Bar Adventure Piggyback Knife just over an ounce & $8.88 or the Ka-Bar
ZK Acheron Skeleton Knife (with a 3 ½” blade also @30 grams) & $9.39 or the
Mora Scout @ 85 grams including sheath $16.89 or the Gerber ‘Myth’: http://www2.knifecenter.com/item/GB31001156/Gerber-31-001156-Myth-Compact-Fixed-Blade-Sharpener-Plastic-Sheath @ 30 grams & $19.95...
04/11/2013: I downloaded
‘The Hobbit’ and we watched it (with subtitles) and without all the attendant
sound effects you now get in the cinema. IT WAS SO MUCH BETTER!
03/11/2013: Target’s
decision to reintroduce plastic shopping bags was just about the best news for
2013. Just wish Bunnings would follow suit as I am sick of trying to carry out
ungainly handfuls of various hardware – and I do NOT need another cardboard
box, which I have to burn, thank you. Mind you they have become more vigilant
against my stated penalty to them that I would simply steal every shopping
basket in their store over time; I am only getting a free shopping basket now
with about every second purchase! Of course the whole ban was just another
Leftie/Greenie nonsense as the Productivity Commission made clear way back
when: http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/10/29/plastic-bags-iii-2/
03/11/2013: More good
news: http://joannenova.com.au/2013/10/co2-emissions-in-last-50-years-made-us-3-5-trillion-wealthier/
03/11/2013: TEACHERS: It is your job to teach
Maths, Physics, English Literature, Ancient Greek or etc, NOT to engage in
politics of ANY sort. An article in the Herald Sun reported a study of 40,000
students which proved that some teachers are SIX TIMES better at doing their
job than others. Such things ARE measurable. It would be far better to have
such teachers in front of classes of 50 students, pay them much more and get
rid of the ones who are not able to achieve results almost an order of
magnitude worse! (ie, we are not talking about some teachers being 10% better
than others; we are talking about them being TEN TIMES better!) Of course you
may have to bring back caning (It should not have been removed anyway). You may
need more secretarial assistants, computerised assessment & marking, protective
service officers, etc. Discipline. Regimentation. If we need ‘thugs’ to
convince ‘bad’ children to avoid their bad behaviour in future, we should have
them. What worked for Pavlov’s dog, etc. The key requirement of an education
system is that it makes children into productive (and loyal) citizens. What we
don't need are more bad teachers, or me social ‘welfare’ or social experiments.
It is just a nonsense that there aren’t VERY MANY in our schools - just as
there were when Della and I were teachers (or students!). Standards have also
clearly slipped. A sixth year of secondary and a seventh year of primary
education have been introduced since I was at school, yet the curriculum is now
only covering many topics at University (if at all!) which were then mastered
at school. In fact so watered down is the curriculum that most students never
(learn any)/master mathematics and science – let alone basic literacy and
numeracy. The average HIGH School graduate has not mastered Algebra (which was
mastered in PRIMARY School in my mother’s day! Imagine sending people out into
the world (as ‘educated’ human beings – they have a piece of PAPER to prove
it!) who cannot do calculus or trigonometry, have not learned their atomic
table or valency, do not understand how business works or have an eagerness to
take up its challenges, have no idea what chemical reactions are – let alone
who are unable to quote large sections of Shakespeare or other great poets –
and who have no knowledge or understanding of the wonders that were ancient
Greece & Rome: have never read Plato or Homer etc, etc! Our school system
is a hideously expensive, left-wing union dominated disaster area!
02/11/2013: ‘Electricity’
Bill Shorten really IS a dill! NOW he wants to deny the clear will of the people
and retain a carbon tax they have clearly voted to have removed, THEN he wants
to fight the next election vowing to bring it back again! PREDICTION: He will
NEVER be Prime Minister – and thank goodness for that! http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/labor-to-stand-by-emissions-trading-scheme-says-it-wont-be-bullied-by-tony-abbott/story-e6frg6xf-1226751373905
02/11/2013: A packable
.22 Winchester Magnum rifle at under 1 pound has to be a useful thing to own,
surely? http://rutalocura.com/PRK.html
02/11/2013: Where your
climate dollars are REALLY going. Boy, do these dudes know how to pay
themselves BIG TIME. Pigs at a trough have nothing on these guys. Millions
squandered. And you guessed it, NOTHING for the poor, or the climate: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/27/long-green/#more-96352
02/11/2013: Quote of the day, former union
official Grace Collier: ‘Back in 1975, 2000 officials were employed by unions
with 3 million members whose membership dues provided a tax-free income stream.
Now 4000 officials are employed, while union membership is down to 1.8 million.
So twice as many union officials now live off less than two-thirds of the
membership revenue. Where is the extra money coming from?’ Those CFMEU thugs
(and others) sure know how to live it up BIG! Hanging IS too good for crooked
union leaders.
02/11/2013: This
guy’s worn-out sophism is viral at the moment; just a rehash of the tired old
‘Precautionary Principle’ really without any figures for ‘likelihood,
cost-benefit, etc…Trouble is the catastrophes he thinks we should avoid are not
real, as we already lived through the worst temperatures that CO2 could ever
cause just back in the Middle Ages, and it was quite nice weather-wise anyway.
Therefore if you took the action recommended you would have all the costs, but
as there were no negatives to avoid, it
would be just insane to waste the money when there are so many more important
things to spend money on right now (eradication of disease, famine etc). In any
case even if there were increases in temperature and negative effects, it is
going to be much cheaper (as a percentage of world GDP) to adapt to them
anyway. It is after all also not possible that the 'action on climate change'
WILL occur as the developing nations WILL not be kept in poverty. All the guy's
arguments are spurious nonsense. Setting up such disjuncts (which are false and
unreal - ie nothing validly follows from a false premise) is the trick which
makes it look like he has a point. Go back to reasoning 101. One could as
easily argue (as folks DID in the past) that GOD was going to bring
catastrophes, destroy the world, etc unless vast amounts of money was spent on
sinecures, indulgences, cathedrals, shamans, fetishes, shibboleths, etc. The
SAME invalid conclusion would be arrived at (as in this case): http://www.upworthy.com/one-guy-with-a-marker-just-made-the-global-warming-debate-completely-obsolete-7?g=4
01/11/2013: Scott
Morrison has just announced there have been no ‘illegal boat arrivals’ in SEVEN
DAYS. This is the first time this has happened since Rudd/Gillard undid Howard’s
‘Pacific Solution’. Hope you can remember that before the election of the
Abbott Government illegals were running at 100+ per DAY. This is what happens
when you have a Government of GROWN UPS! Henceforth the Labor party will be
known as ‘The Children’s party’!
01/11/2013: All that most
folks know about ENGINEERING was taught to them by the nursery story, ‘The
Three Little Pigs,’ which explains their passion for ‘brick veneer’ houses -
which have to be just about the WORST DESIGN IDEA of all time for housing.
Further to that folly, the design standards for even this
disaster-in-the-making idea for a house have declined over the years - so that
now the flimsy stick construction (which is what is supposed to hold up the
single tier of bricks (which will not stand up by themselves - try this with
your child’s blocks! Older houses were double brick) has declined from one
HARDWOOD (F17-21) 2”x4” (50x100mm) upright every 18” (45cm) to one 1 1/4 “x 3”
treated pine (F5-7) every 60cm and NO joints, everything just butt nailed.
However, the metal ties which link the framing to the brick course have
improved (They are now galvanised). If yours was built before this happened the
walls WILL just fall down one day. On top of this flimsy structure people
insist on placing an enormously heavy (yet poorly secured) masonry tile roof
with no structural or tensile strength instead of screwed down (eg) galvanised
iron as on their garage (which they can expect to last longer and withstand
storms, fire etc better than their houses). People are also building such
houses on concrete pads (instead of elevated stumps) on flood plains like
almost the entire city of
01/11/2013: Scientists
reply to IPCC’s nonsense: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/19/scientific-critique-of-ipccs-2013-summary-for-policymakers/#more-95880
01/11/2013: INCREDIBLE:
Each U.S. taxpayer now has a federal-debt liability of $1.1 million, and
rising.
31/10/2013: Interested in
lightweight HIKING? This set of Links will set you off on some wonderful
adventures, eg Brasslite alcohol stoves, down booties, Rutalocura products inc
carbon fibre trekking poles & Tenkara fly rods for same, pack rifles etc,
etc: http://www.titaniumgoat.com/links.html
31/10/2013: If you are
interested in hiking/fishing, these lightweight rods and reels are interesting
too (http://penfishingrods.com/shop/products.php?category_id=13) and these are just about the best hand
casters in the world: http://www.moontrail.com/accessrs/a-misc/handline.html
31/10/2013: Shorten is
such a thuggish chump. Did you see the clown in
31/10/2013: I can’t
imagine WHAT Brendan Nelson is/was thinking: Rudyard Kipling was one of the
great English writers AND a veteran of WW1. His epitaph to ‘unknown soldiers’
needs NO REVISION! http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/chiselling_god_from_the_unknown_soldiers_grave/
30/10/2013:
30/10/2013: STILL the
elephant in the room:
30/10/2013: Coming to a
town near you SOON: http://frontpagemag.com/2013/dgreenfield/muslims-gang-rape-12-year-old-norwegian-girl-get-community-service/
30/10/2013: ALSO coming
to a town near you: http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/10/14/child-marriage-comes-to-australia/
30/10/2013: Dr Spencer’s
paper showing that ‘1/3 of ocean heating over the 20-year period from 1990-2010
can be accounted for just based upon a change in oceanic cloud cover alone’ is
also worth a read: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/10/oceanic-cloud-decrease-since-1987-explains-13-of-ocean-heating/
29/10/2013: And to think
that only LAST OCTOBER it was snowing in the
29/10/2013: Scientific
FACT: the VERY HEAVY RAIN falling on the bushfires in NSW is a result of Global
Warming! http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR043.loop.shtml
29/10/2013: Newspoll:
Coalition 56:44. Past time ‘Electricity’ Bill made up his mind to allow the
repeal of the carbon tax!
29/10/2013: Obamacare:
CNS News reported: ‘Americans who were recipients of means-tested government
benefits in 2011 outnumbered year-round full-time workers, according to data
released this month by the Census Bureau…They also out-numbered the total
population of the Philippines…There were 108,592,000 people in the United
States in the fourth quarter of 2011 who were recipients of one or more
means-tested government benefit programs, the Census Bureau said in data
released this week. Meanwhile, according to the Census Bureau, there were
101,716,000 people who worked full-time year round in 2011. That included both
private-sector and government workers.’ At least you can see where the money has
GONE!
29/10/2013: Quote of the
day: Henry Ergas: ‘LIKE the theologians Voltaire skewered for attributing the
great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 to licentiousness and vice, the green lobby has
seized on the NSW bushfires as a sign that the carbon tax must be retained… To
believe
28/10/2013: Save the
country. Nuclear, not solar (or wind!)! Please? New nuclear power plant to be
built in the
28/10/2013: ‘Electricity
Bill Shorten’. THAT will stick!
28/10/2013: Hiking food:
Continental Sensations Cup a Soup: ‘Sweet Potato with Bacon & Cream’ IS
delicious. Pop one in YOUR day-pack!
28/10/2013: Ice is needed
by a ‘warming’ planet perhaps, but there’s more than enough here for many G
& Ts: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/20/antarctic-sea-ice-didnt-get-the-memo-that-it-was-supposed-to-melt/ & http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/22/nasa-announces-new-record-growth-of-antarctic-sea-ice-extent/
28/10/2013: The FBI’s
‘most wanted list’ of terrorists. Spot anything interesting (which ‘might’
throw a bad light on a particular ‘religion of love’)? Yes there are 2/32 folks
there who are not members. And you STILL think we should have an
‘indiscriminate’ immigration policy? I think we need to be VERY careful to
check out people’s bona fides. There ARE many fine Moslems (and over the years
I have had many such friends), but it is undeniable that a fanatical
fundamentalist jihadist element has hijacked, nay barbarised much of the
Islamic world – and we import it at our peril. PS: I would be just as concerned
about importing ‘Christians such as Timothy McVeigh: http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/@@wanted-group-listing
7/10/2013: Merrin &
Matt have certainly turned their shop into a WONDERLAND. Try some Xmas shopping
in Yinnar: https://www.facebook.com/yinnargeneralstore
27/10/2013: The platypus
sure IS cute; I often delight to see one in the wild on one of my many
backcountry hiking trips, but they rarely let me tickle them like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6QHzIJO5a8
27/10/2013: A good laugh:
Vale Climate Change: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/25/friday-funny-a-tribute-to-the-life-of-climate-change/#more-96263
27/10/2013: THIS will be
a great invention if they can make it work: http://www.gizmag.com/silicon-supercapacitor/29515/
27/10/2013: What a GREAT
gadget: a hard drive which can store your stuff for a BILLION years. Just
think, your bad poetry can still be around long after the species has been
completely forgotten. Now there’s a ‘must have’! http://www.gizmag.com/billion-year-data-storage/29530/
26/10/2013: Quote of the
day; Andrew Bolt: ‘Some things are indeed simple, and cannot be disguised or
overcome with complexity. A knife still cuts the Gordian knot. The emperor
still has no clothes…’YES!
26/10/2013: LIT CRIT may
be FUN, but is it really worthy of STUDY, let alone vast subsidies from the
public purse? For example, would research money be better spent in searching
for a cure for childhood leukaemia, nuclear fusion, better anti-reflective
coatings, higher tensile threads…or maybe working out the role of the brothel
in Shakespeare? YOU decide: http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/142200/sec_id/142200
26/10/2013: Time to rethink our statins? http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-saturated-fat-20131022,0,2193813.story#axzz2iVqDuTTZ
26/10/2013: O, HOW WE
need a ‘Boneta Bill’ here too! One of the few ‘rights’ in OUR constitution is
the right to private property (and its converse) that Government may not
confiscate it without (paying) just compensation. Yet the examples of
Government doing just that are legion; from simple idiotic ordinances such as
the children’s birthday party planning permit which provoked Boneta, to large
scale confiscation of farmland for ‘environmental’ reasons… Frankly it
frightens me to realise what most people (leftists) consider to be ‘rights’. Their ‘rights, almost
invariably MEAN the confiscation of someone else’s property for the ‘good’ of
someone else (themselves?). The right to work, free speech, freedom of
assembly, bear arms, self protection, justice, national defence…etc are low
down on their list. Do they even MAKE their list? http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/10/virginia_farmer_starts_property_rights_legal_revolution.html
26/10/2013: An
(environmentalist driven) lack of fuel reduction burns is what is making
bushfires worse: David Evans: ‘There has been a hiatus in the rise of average
global air temperatures for the last fifteen years or more…While this does not
rule out warming in some regions, climate cannot have been much of a
contributor to the worsening bushfire situation over the last fifteen
years…Current fuel loads are now typically 30 tonnes per hectare in the forests
of southeast Australia, compared to maybe 8 tonnes per hectare in the recent
and ancient past’: http://joannenova.com.au/2013/10/man-made-climate-change-and-bushfires-in-southeast-australia/
25/10/2013: We are
currently enjoying a ‘film feast’ of ‘golden oldies’. The most recent films are
just too loud, there is too much action and too little plot &
characterisation; the background noise and sound effects completely drown out
the dialogue so it is impossible to follow them. There are SO few exceptions.
We have been enjoying the 1940’s Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone.
We have begun a John Ford festival. I already mentioned his ‘Young Mr Lincoln’.
Last night we delighted in Ford’s wonderful adaptation of Erskine Caldwell’s
great, ‘Tobacco Road’. You have to watch this to appreciate just what the term,
‘
25/10/2013: Dr Roy
Spencer (of UAH) thinks CO2 probably does warm the earth (just not very much) which
is likely right (& good for us/it), but his graphic pointing out the
divergence between the climate ‘models’ and the temperature record HERE is
striking: http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/10/maybe-that-ipcc-95-certainty-was-correct-after-all/
25/10/2013: ‘Ah Love, let
us be true to one another’… http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/record-auction-price-for-a-symbol-of-love-the-violin-played-as-the-titanic-went-down/story-e6frg6so-1226743243445#sthash.tl3NtPHy.dpuf
24/10/2013: Trouble is,
Ted Bailleu was one of VERY FEW recent politicians in Australia who took action
to seriously rein in (rather than increase) debt, so that now Vic’s finances
are back in the black to the tune of a few hundreds of millions. AND, we dumped
him. This is the lesson the pollies understood from this. It is why US & Oz
debt continue to mushroom. Unfortunately there WILL be a day of reckoning for
all this recklessness (note the derivation, ‘reck’ = ‘care’ OE). When the
ability to pay finally runs out, we will have paid to breed a vast horde of
utterly useless folk who can no longer be sustained – and we WILL REFUSE to continue
hand-outs to them. WHAT, then, will be the consequence?
24/10/2013: Quote of the
day: ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it!’ Upton Sinclair
24/10/2013: ‘How do I
know my youth is all spent?’ More than anything I think it is the number of
tablets I have to take in the morning. Before breakfast I positively rattle.
24/10/2013: Of course the
SAME WEATHER pattern which is bringing NSW fires is bringing Tas and Vic cold,
rain and even snow! Later on in the season when a weather pattern is bringing
US fires down South it will bring NSW & Qld FLOODS. This is what WEATHER
has always been like. It has NOTHING to do with climate change, besides NEITHER
climate nor WEATHER has changed significantly in the C20th or C21st anyway!
24/10/2013: Just IMAGINE
the good you could do with a BILLION DOLLARS A DAY (if you weren’t wasting it
on AGW, that is): http://www.thegwpf.org/world-spending-1-billion-day-tackle-global-warming/
23/10/2013: John Ford’s
‘Young Mr Lincoln’ (1939) reminds me why the American people BUILT the Lincoln
Memorial. Spielberg’s turgid debasement
is unwatchable rubbish by comparison. Suggest you download the former from
‘Kickass’ and enjoy!
23/10/2013: In
22/10/2013: Evidently an
11 year old named ‘Global Warming’ lit the bushfires now engulfing NSW. Or
perhaps his/her name was Flim Flammery or Adam Bandit?
23/10/2013: Obviously a
product of good parenting: http://blogs.news.com.au/images/uploads/bird_thumb.jpg
22/10/2013: Quick ACTION
‘saved’ this British town from a creeping menace. We obviously need MORE
political correctness here: ‘A council has removed posters advertising a circus
following a complaint from a woman who is scared of clowns. Leighton Buzzard
Town Hall Council said it took down the adverts after one complaint - in a town
of 28,000 people. An unnamed female resident told the authority the posters
were scaring her whenever she drove past them, explaining that she suffers from
coulrophobia. The council removed all of the posters and told the circus not to
come back to the town unless it uses promotional material without clowns on
it’: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2465972/Circus-ordered-posters-ONE-complaint-woman-scared-clowns.html#ixzz2iOXE62j5
22/10/2013: What drives
home the reality that our last Westie and our last cat are no more is the fact
that a brace of (live) conies has invaded the garden (seen this morning outside
the bedroom window enjoying their silflay), something we haven’t seen here in
over twenty years. What the two JRs are doing about it is a mystery. It is
(sort of) nice to see that they have survived the myxo, the calici, the
bushfires, etc, etc BUT methinks they are destined for the pot – if I can work
on Della’s gun handling skills a bit…
22/10/2013: UNPRECEDENTED
bushfires: ‘of 48 major bushfires in NSW between 1926 and 2006, 11 occurred in October
or earlier’…’Serious bushfires occurred in New South Wales in 1951-52, 1968-69,
1984-85 and 1993-94. In 1968-69 over one million ha were burnt and three people
were killed (Linacre & Hobbs 1977; RFS 2003a). In 1984-85, 3.5 million ha
were burnt, four lives were lost, 40,000 livestock were killed and $40m damage
to property was caused (RFS 2003a). In 1993-94, bushfires burnt 800,000 ha,
destroyed 287 residential properties and other premises and killed four people
(Year Book
22/10/2013: You KNOW you
(at last) have a Government of grown ups when they instruct the relevant
departments to call people ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘detainees’ instead of
‘clients’. Well done Scott Morrison!
22/10/2013: The French
will do ANYTHING, but it ought not be illegal: http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/western-australia/broome-police-charge-woman-after-allegedly-catching-her-driving-with-man-dressed-in-dinosaur-onesie-on-bonnet/story-fnhocxo3-1226743317246
22/10/2013: ‘SAVE THE
Planet’, the ‘great unwashed’ scream, yet we may have already done so (and by
the unlikely means of the Industrial Revolution’). Let me explain: Plants need
@ 200ppm of CO2 to survive. If the percentage drops below that (ie .02%) life
will pretty much cease – yet the pre-Industrial world tilted perilously close
to that. The percentage has varied from upwards of 20,000ppm in the time of the
dinosaurs for example, down to just over 200ppm over time, during which warm,
tropical periods and ice ages came and went completely uncorrelated to its
percentage. However, steadily the percentage of CO2 being liberated by
volcanism and other processes eg from the carboniferous rocks, coal & peat
deposits etc where it ‘ultimately’ becomes ‘locked up, declined until just
before the Industrial Revolution its percentage was such that the cessation of
life on earth was imminent. The forests shrank and great plains and deserts
spread across much of the globe as there was not enough CO2 to build any more
forests, and much of life had to retreat to what were really oases to survive.
Just in the nick of time (folks of a religious persuasion will see this as
predestined) as a result of the Industrial Revolution personkind began to
liberate vast quantities of carbon in the form of CO2 and a wonderful profusion
of life was the result. The forests spread, the deserts and grasslands
retreated and once more a profusion of life saturated the planet: THAT is the
era we are living in: the Anthropocene. It can only get better!
21/10/2013: Loony of the
month: I’d bet you hadn’t realised this: ‘Butter-iced snares of self-loathing that sell
precisely because they exploit young women’s insecurity about their looks and
identity, and offer a completely false and self-defeating solace of temporary
gratification, almost certainly followed by remorse and disgust’: http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2013/10/the-cupcake-menace.html
21/10/2013: THIS is the
sort of Prime Minister I want: a man of deeds, not just of words: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/bushfires/tony-abbott-puts-himself-in-line-of-fire/story-fngw0i02-1226743492769#sthash.EKLsvkqG.dpuf
21/10/2013: Compulsory
‘free’ health insurance/care for all IS utterly unaffordable and unnecessary
(as this writer points out). The analogy to car insurance could be taken a few
steps further: eg WE usually only take out Third Party property insurance (and
only because others have a ‘right’ to sue us for damage to their more expensive
cars!) and chose to drive older cars which we maintain ourselves. Cost of
insurance = zero. If folks made a similar attempt to ‘drive’ a cheaper body and
maintain it themselves, and accepted that when it is worn out it should simply
be scrapped as no amount of repair costs can fix it, the cost would come down
enormously – perhaps to somewhere reasonable. Demands for ‘free stuff for
everyone’ are just infantile and irresponsible fantasies: http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/23139-The-Change.html
21/10/2013: This is quite
important: Dr Spencer explains (for the layman) the role of positive/negative
‘feedbacks’ in the climate system (and attempts to allay some extremist fears):
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/09/the-global-warming-they-fear-is-not-based-upon-physical-first-principles/
21/10/2013: Tim Blair: ‘Bill Shorten’s mispronunciation of
words containing “th” – “uvver” instead of “other”, “wiff” instead of “with”,
“fink” instead of “think” – is known as th-fronting. It’s big in
England. Happily, solutions
are available.’ PREDICTION: Tanya Plibersek will be the NEW Ju-Liar!
20/10/2013: Playing
Bandt’s game. Click on the Pic: https://twitter.com/aaronparker73/status/391119402088669185/photo/1
20/10/2013: Art for art’s
sake (WARNING; This is hilarious! Well
worth the $378!) :
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Half-Chewed-Cole-Haan-Wingtip-by-Emerging-Canine-Artist-Left-Shoe-Size-11-5D-/290991841025
20/10/2013: Quote of the
day: Adj. Comr. Dedy Kusuma Bakti, the Cianjur Police chief, said his office
was working with the
20/10/2013: The Call:
Carl H. Emmons
Did you ever have a longin’ to get out and
buck the trail,
And to face the crashin’
lightnin’ and the thunder and the gale?
Not for no partic’lar
reason but to give the world the laugh,
And to show the roarin’
elyments you still can stand the gaff.
Don’t you ever feel a
yearnin’ just to try your luck again
Down the rippin’ plungin’
rapids with a bunch of reg’lar men?
Don’t you ever sorta
hanker for a rough and risky trip,
Just to prove you’re
still a livin’ and you haven’t lost your grip?
Can’t you hear the woods
a-callin’ for to have another try
Sleepin’ out beneath the
spruces with a roof of moonlit sky,
With the wind a sorta
singin’ through the branches overhead
And your fire a gaily
crackin’ and your pipe a-glowin’ red?
Don’t you often get to
feelin’ sorta cramped and useless there,
Makin’ figgers and
a-shinin’ your pants upon a chair?
Don’t you yearn to get
acquainted once again with Life and God?
If you don’t, then Heaven
help you, for you’re a dyin’ in yer pod.
20/10/2013: These amazing
fossil hominids from Dmanisi in
19/10/2013:
19/10/2013: Lots of news
about the fires allegedly ‘caused’ by a non-existent global warming for the
last c20 years and NOT by a very wet autumn-spring and lots of growth (the
exact opposite of what the Flanneries etc predicted, a lack of fuel reduction
burns, absurd locking up of bush areas by misplaced greenie ideologues,
infringement of suburbia into the bush etc, etc and NOTHING about Canberra
having its COLDEST morning on record which has virtually wiped out the wine
industry there (but not the whining industry!): http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/canberra-wineries-hit-by-coldest-october-morning-ever-20131018-2vrd7.html#ixzz2i43s8w3F
19/10/2013: This is a
brilliant explanation of why otherwise ‘normal’ indeed privileged folks with no
problems at all really join hands in crazy mass movements such as
environmentalism. The summary of Paul Bruckner’s book, here (http://www.city-journal.org/2012/22_2_apocalyptic-daze.html) is a really important read (I particularly
like it that ‘Tintin’ is to blame for all this), eg ‘In France, a Green politician, Yves
Cochet, has proposed a “womb strike,” which would be reinforced by penalties
against couples who conceive a third child, since each child means, in terms of
pollution, the equivalent of 620 round trips between Paris and New York.’ There
YOU go, Merrin: always buzzing around! His conclusion is sound: ‘Environmental
worry is universal; the sickness of the end of the world is purely Western. To
counter this pessimism, we might list the good news of the last 20 years:
democracy is making slow progress; more than a billion people have escaped
absolute poverty; life expectancy has increased in most countries; war is
becoming rarer; many serious illnesses have been eradicated. But it would do
little good. Our perception is inversely proportional to reality.’: http://www.nationalreview.com/education-week/360874/wannabe-oppressed-stanley-kurtz
19/10/2013: Ah, the VALUE
of studies! Personally I dislike the wretched things: http://au.eonline.com/news/470937/oreos-are-as-addictive-as-cocaine-study-shows
19/10/2013: The sane side
of the climate change consensus: global warming has been and will continue to
be a net benefit to the world: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/17/the-good-side-of-climate-change/#more-95754
18/10/2013: ATTENTION
dual cab owners: Get a REAL 4WD, one that can easily tow a bogged Landie
(Warning: May not be road legal – or affordable!) : http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/10/ghe-o-rescue/
18/10/2013: Meanwhile,
the wind begins to blow from the right direction: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2461999/Yorkshire-Dales-wind-farm-Britain-torn-down.html
18/10/2013: A day in the
life of a gas protestor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_aklt-PCeI
17/10/2013: It is SO hard
to keep track of the origins of the influences which inform our opinions, nay our
TRUISMS. An example: it was the Marxist historian Gordon Childe who ‘invented’
the ‘Neolithic Revolution’, a ‘fact’ which I had not questioned until recently.
In so doing, he had drawn parallels with the ‘Industrial Revolution’ (which I
must also reprise soon) and had created a narrative of the human story (which
like the ideal of ‘progress’ for example) is wholly false, apparently. The
discoveries at Gobeki Tepe, Jerf el Ahmar, Wadi Faynan, etc, etc undo the
sequence of events in our prehistory underlining eg the certainty that culture
takes precedence over necessity (thus overturning a fundamental tenet of
leftist social studies curricula of the last 30 (?) years which have taught two
generations at least that the essential human necessities are first & in
order: air, water, food, shelter…) In these astonishing sites we see that
prehistoric hunters were constructing (Palaeolithic) monuments LONG BEFORE the
invention of farming, so that clearly CULTURE takes precedence over all else in
the human mind: an adamantine fact which policy makers everywhere need to
cleave to, utterly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe
17/10/2013: Absurd
Creature of the Week: This Prehistoric Elephant Had a Huge Spork for a Mouth: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/absurd-creature-of-the-week-spork-elephant/
17/10/2013: Quote of the
day: Tim Blair: ‘the IPCC warns. “Another 800,000 people will fall ill year
from contaminated food and water – while more than 270,000 homes will be at
risk of collapsing into the ocean from rising sea levels.” These IPCC
predictions seem remarkably precise, considering that they’re talking about the
deaths of people whose parents haven’t yet been conceived. Could we please have
the names of the doomed, so that future folk won’t bother getting too close to
them?’
17/10/2013: When you
realise that eg the Montebello Islands (Bikini, Moruroa, Nagasaki etc) can
survive nuclear bombs and bounce back, concerns about a few hundredths of a
degree of climate change, fluoride, shopping bags, bad attitude, etc, etc
shrink into insignificance: http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8736684
16/10/2013: Looking into
ways to ‘convert’ a wagon into a camper. There ARE some interesting products
out there, eg these two: http://www.gizmag.com/ququq-van-camper-one-minute/28009/pictures#1 & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMoUjjnZ5xE
16/10/2013: Farewell
Scott Carpenter: FEW of the space pioneers remain (John Glenn being most
prominent): http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/10/13/scott-carpenter-rip/ & http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/14/godspeed-scott-carpenter/#more-95584
16/10/2013: Seems there
are folks who can’t distinguish between disagreeing with a CULTURE, and
‘racism’, the newest easy ‘put-down’ – all too distinguishable from ‘thought’.
They have forgotten (apparently – did they ever KNOW?) that most of my and my
parents’ lives (this is litotes) was spent fighting the dreadful culture of
COMMUNISM, or that some years of my parents’ generations’ lives were spent
eradicating the culture of Nazism, or that my generation stamped out the
culture of cannibalism in New Guinea (and with it that fascinating parasite –
responsible for the dread disease ‘kuru’ – which more than anything I know of
proved that ‘life will find a way!), and so much more. Evil must be fought,
whether it is politically correct to do so or not. Not all cultures are equal,
certainly not all are good, and some are downright execrable. A culture which
supports extreme violence and sexual abuse of women and children for example,
MUST not be allowed to remain. There is ample evidence that there are some
cultures which do have horribly evil characteristics at their very core: they
MUST be eliminated. (I have NO time for the Saudis, for example). Traditional
‘aboriginal culture’ is an oxymoron. I am not (of course) advocating harming or
killing ANY human being when I say this. For example, I had a number of friends
who were ‘patrol officers’ in
17/10/2013: Reply to a
comment: What I can simply NEVER understand about Leftists is how you have no
moral sense: you simply cannot see the difference between right and wrong, so
you can engage in rhetorical dispute about eg wording whilst turning a blind
eye to mass murder - and that something could be done to prevent it, and to
make the people (otherwise wholly ruined) have a decent life. Factual knowledge
(eg hunting skills and plant use and identification) are utterly different
matters to the 'culture' which sees MOST children and women in 'traditional 'aboriginal
society molested and abused. Examinations of skeletal remains shows eg most
have now and in the past suffered from skull fractures. There would not be one
in a hundred (nay a thousand) in Western society who have similar skeletal
injuries...yet you quibble about getting rid of an obscene 'culture' which has
such awful outcomes. As I said before, you simply have no perception of right
and wrong. You can still support socialism when you see what the Pol Pots, the
Maos and the Stalins, do and have ever done. Shame!
16/10/2013: Quote of the
day: Sid Maher: ‘On day two of his leadership, Shorten is exactly where the
Prime Minister wants him. Voting with the Greens, which produced the carbon tax
as part of their alliance with Labor in the last parliament, and facing attacks
from the Coalition that he is defying the will of the people’.
15/10/2013: Frankly I
think e-cigarettes should be encouraged too: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/don%27t-discourage-vaping.aspx
15/10/2013: My thanks to
Prof Judith Sloan: The Draft Years 5-10 Australian Curriculum: Economics and
Business: In the first paragraph, there is a reference to “exploring the way individuals,
families, the community, businesses and governments make decisions in relation
to the allocation of resources and to consider the effects of these decisions
both now and in the future.” There are three priorities: Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander histories and cultures; Asia and
15/10/2013: Australian
farmers (and many others) have never been able to afford eg a High Court
challenge to the clearly unconstitutional various environmental & ‘native
species’ legislations which have stolen huge chunks of their land and deprived
them of their livelihood for more than twenty years (aka ‘dispossession’).
These laws are clearly unconstitutional in that they deprive people of their
private property without just compensation perhaps the only ‘right’ existing in
that document. Many have lost their farms completely. We personally lost over
$500,000 (which would have come in very handy in our retirement!) Meanwhile
though, our Government spends $74 million pa on ‘Aparthied Justice’ ie legal
aid specifically for ‘aborigines &
14/10/2013: Dogs
certainly have memories and feelings too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC5DXGIC8s8#t=109
14/10/2013: Spending like
a drunken sailor, and all wasted. WHEN will these Lefties ever learn: ‘When Mr.
Obama became president in January 2009, the total federal debt stood at $10.6
trillion. This week, it hit $16.7 trillion — an increase of 57 percent. In the
same time frame under President George W. Bush, total federal debt rose 38
percent. Under President Clinton, it rose 32 percent.’ I calculate the per
capita US Government debt at TEN TIMES the Australian Government’s which I have
long since railed about as being unwise and unsustainable.. Unfortunately it is
a little like the difference between owing the bank a little money and a lot of
money: the former is your problem, the latter is the bank’s. ‘If
14/10/2013: Air Marshal
Mark Binskin, at the weekly media conference on Operation Sovereign Borders,
says just 215 boat people have arrived in the first three weeks. That’s about
70 a week. We were running at over 100 per DAY under Ju-Liar. In fact back then
nearly that many people per week were DROWNING trying to get here. This is
(ALREADY) a drop of 90% under Tony. He clearly WILL ‘Stop the Boats!’
14/10/2013: A great
TRIBUTE: Miranda Devine: ‘THE state funeral for Rusty Priest; World War II
veteran, RSL president and keeper of the Anzac flame, was magnificent.
Dignitaries and old soldiers gathered at St Mary’s Cathedral and followed the
gun carriage carrying his coffin across a sun-drenched
It is the soldier, not
the minister, who has given us freedom of religion. It is the soldier, not the
reporter, who has given us freedom of the press.
It is the Soldier, not
the poet, who has given us freedom of speech.
It is the Soldier, not
the campus organiser, who has given us freedom to protest.
It is the soldier, not
the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial.
It is the soldier, not
the politician, who has given us the right to vote.
It is the soldier who
salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by
the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.’
13/10/2013: REALLY great
win, Bill. 30,000+ members voted you DOWN 60:40, but 80 Caucus members voted
FOR you 60:40. A triumph for the new Labor democratic way. Members at least had
enough sense to understand that someone who has knifed TWO PMs and who is
implicated in the soon to be prosecuted AWU affair is ‘not fit to shovel shit
upon a
13/10/2013: These hiking
poles are wonderful. ($175 per pair –recommended). At just over 100 grams each
they are about 150 grams lighter (per pole) than Leki (et al) which means for a
lot less work using them. I reckon they take 30% plus effort out of walking -
particularly over hilly and undulating terrain and they have prevented me from
having MANY nasty falls (and possible broken bones, an increasing worry as you
get older – and in remote areas. The number of people I have had to have ‘choppered
out’ with such injuries over the years would amaze you. Unbelievably one of
these poles will take all of MY weight. We also use them for tent poles, for
our zpacks and home made tents. It IS possible to remove a small round ‘plug’
from the handle of one and to insert the bottom section of the other pole there
to make an extra long tent pole (6’plus) such as might be needed for one of the
taller pyramid tents (egMountain Laurel Designs ‘Megamid’): http://gossamergear.com/trekking/trekking/lt4-trekking-poles-all.html
13/10/2013: For pumpkin
lovers: http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/20798-Pumpkins-are-tasty-food!.html
13/10/2013: 7 ½ hours
walking the ‘Grand Strzelecki Track’
doing a section (Jeeralang West Rd to Branniffs Rd) which is supposedly
12 km. This was the longest 12 km we have ever walked. I would estimate the
last four hours along Billy’s Creek was >12km. Della and the two Jack
Russells are stuffed! A bit more work (and thought) needs to go into this
track, particularly better suggested times, a few campsites would be handy (and
a LOT fewer stinging nettles). Other than that it IS MUCH better than Tasmanian
walks. http://www.grandstrzeleckitrack.org.au/
13/10/2013: We have found
THESE to be the best all-round sleeping bags (@624 grams) for a number of
years: http://www.moontrail.com/montbell-ul-spiral-down-hugger-3-reg.php Their temperature rating is VERY generous.
The older models used to weigh in at UNDER 600 grams. They are wonderfully
comfortable because they stretch (unlike other sleeping bags). I have been
quite comfortable down to minus 9C, though the addition of a Sea to Summit
liner increases warmth by 8C at a weight cost of @250grams (http://www.seatosummit.com.au/products-page/travel-sleeping-bag-liners/thermolite-reactor-liner/) I have noticed that Joe Valesko over at http://www.zpacks.com/quilts.shtml has just sarted making sleeping bags. His
equivalent bag would weigh 397 grams (plus 40 grams for a hood – sold
separately). We have a lot of Joe’s
other ultralight gear (packs, tents, etc) and have found them very good, so we
may just try one of these. I can see (particularly) that I can get Della’s pack
weight down substantially with a 1000 fill power down jacket (now even available
in ‘waterproof’ down) and one of Joe’s sleeping bags (more than 500 grams –
nearly two days’ food for her!)
12/10/2013: A couple of
years back we installed a ‘Solatronics’
automatic gate opener (www.solartronics.com.au ) on our front gate which has worked
flawlessly since, and which we can lock when we are ‘out’. When we are ‘in’ you
just press a button on a post to be let in. Chosen folks have a remote in their
cars. It HAS discouraged Jehovahs and petty thieves quite well. There has been
a complete drop-off in the number of cars mysteriously driving in and out of
our property, not that we have a lot which is worth stealing anyway (unless you
are an antique Subaru collector!) We are wondering if our front gate is now in
contravention of the new legislation banning domestic fortifications? We had
been planning installing security doors and screens, and possibly roller
shutters at a later date. We are already well armed, though the purchase of a
Rossi Circuit Judge (available Walmart: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Rossi-Curcuit-Judge-Shotgun-.410-Bore-.45-Colt/17200849?page=seeAllReviews) has been foreshadowed. Age seems to make one
more fearful, if not more paranoid. I am more than disquieted that our nanny
(Liberal?) State has banned people attempting to defend themselves from
malefactors whose numbers still seem to be increasing – possibly because they
have been paid to breed instead of being hanged for the last forty years?.
First they came for the bikies…
12/10/2013: Attention
ultralight hikers: this guy has some of the best alcohol stove anywhere and at
a good price. We have found his products excellent and have used them for many
years: https://www.minibulldesign.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=147&idcategory=2
12/10/2013: A truly
fascinating study of dogs’ brains: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dogs-are-people-too.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&
12/10/2013: Always
learning: I have known since Primary School what ‘a pig in a poke’ means (and
why one should avoid its associated porcine salespersons!) but I am grateful to
last night’s ‘QI’ for enlightening me that a ‘pocket’ is something to keep a
‘piglet’ in - which had not occurred to
me before, though it should have. I am yet to learn what ‘poke’ means on
‘Facebook’, and perhaps I don’t want to, knowing what it has always meant for MY
generation. We had to learn the meanings of many other strange mensurational
and venal terms at Primary School. I can still tell you how many ‘pecks’ there
are in a ‘bushel’, and how many ‘bushels’ there are in a bag of wheat, (and
that there are more in a bag of oats – something which I have put to good use,
as sheep LOVE oats, though I don’t know about ‘ivy’ - which might be poisonous
to ovines for all I know), and how many of those to a ‘ton’, for example. One
of my grandfather’s favourite sayings was, ‘You have to eat a peck of dirt
before you die,’ a most enigmatic and ambiguous admonishment which you ignore
at your peril!
11/10/2013: One thing is
SURE about ‘quantitative easing’ (aka ‘money printing’): it really puts the
stock market up. This morning: ‘Whoosh!’
11/10/2013: We have been
taking them since we read (somewhere?) that Vitamin B supplements can be
protective against Alzheimer’s Disease. This morning I (almost) forgot to take
them…this is deeply worrying…
11/10/2013: Matt Ridley
is coming to
11/10/2013:
11/10/2013: GREAT news:
Fusion experiment produces more energy tan it consumes: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/10/08/fusion-breakthrough-deals-malthusians-another-blow/
10/10/2013: Bill Bryson
has a new book on the year 1927, which is a very interesting idea for a book
(Review here: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/bill-bryson%27s-1927.aspx). I enjoyed his one about hiking the
10/10/2013: You can use
this handy calculator to see when you are going to die – and whether or not it
really is worth fixing that leak in the roof, booking that overseas trip or
starting on training that new master/mistress (https://www.livingto100.com/) and it will tell you that flossing will
extend your lifespan by a full year (whether this will be mainly spent sitting
in a wheelchair drooling and pooping yourself is a moot point). Attempts to
make flossing sexy have generally failed, though the picture below is a good
attempt. Unfortunately for OralB etc, the evidence for flossing is not
compelling, so maybe you can relax and tippy-toe quietly to that grave after
all: http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/10/the-shaky-evidence-for-flossing.html
10/10/2013: Christie Sims
seems to specialise in ‘dinosaur erotica’. This could be the fastest emerging
genre. It even comes with a warning: ‘Warning: This is a tale of beast sex. This
story was written to unlock your darkest fantasies and innermost desires. It is
not for the faint of heart and is not your mother's erotica. All of the sexual
descriptions found in this book are very explicit in nature. It's not suitable
for someone under 18 years of age. Read at your own risk.’ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FJOK42Q/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb
10/10/2013: As if that
wasn’t bad enough, there is a restaurant which seems to specialise in cooked
penises (NOT a la Miewes, YET!) What IS
the world coming to: http://www.businessinsider.com.au/heres-what-men-in-asia-eat-to-boost-their-libidos-2013-10
09/10/2013: Quote of the
day: ‘The future is certain, only the past is unpredictable’. Polish saying
from Soviet times, as AR5 crumbles and AGW slowly slurps its way down the plughole
into the dustbin of ‘history’…
09/10/2013: A case for
not recognising ‘aboriginality’ in the constitution. This was a SICK culture,
and its remnants remain sick. WARRNING: This is NOT a pretty story. NB Gary
Johns was a Minister in the Hawke Government: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/history-yes-culture-no/story-fn8v83qk-1226734337831
09/10/2013: THIS (in
reply to a comment: (‘The Fabrication of Aboriginal History’ has an important part to play.
You can get a taste for it here: (http://www.quadrant.org.au/...).
09/10/2013: And THIS, to another: Clearly
evidence and argument are meaningless to you people! I grew up with aboriginal
people (mostly half and three quarter caste) and have all my life had friends
of aboriginal descent. The people I grew up with (in coastal and Western NSW)
had (sensibly) WALKED AWAY from 'aboriginal culture) more than fifty years
before I was born. As is common (and understandable) the women went first, for
the same compelling reasons which (full blood) Bess Price MP talks about today
in regard to the dreadful behaviour of so many folk in Central Australia. She
had this to say on 19/05 this year: ‘Within the last four months, two more
young mothers related to me were killed in Alice Springs Town Camp. One was
injured mortally in the public, in front of several families. Nobody acted to
protect her. Dozens of my female relatives have been killed this way.
Convictions usually lead to light sentences. I was told by a senior lawyer that
no jury in Alice Springs will convict an Aboriginal person for murder if the
victim is also Aboriginal and he or she is only stabbed once’.
09/10/2013: Made my first
Gmail ‘hangout’ video call yesterday to a young friend in the
08/10/2013: A VERY
endangered kind of bare: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eryxAcsTcOA
08/10/2013: I notice the
Americans have been doing without a Government lately, which seems like a GOOD
IDEA. Maybe some more of us could try this trick, and if we like it go the
whole way and do without Governments ALTOGETHER!
08/10/2013: Vaclav Klaus,
President of the
08/10/2013: An
interesting idea: mind you I notice they just wasted the last $X million they
received from our taxes, but it might help balance the budget: http://catallaxyfiles.com/2013/10/06/voluntary-tax-bill-2/
07/10/2013: "The
average human being has one breast and one testicle."
07/10/2013: This shows
just what sort of scam artist Obama and his other lefties are: they are closing
over 1,000 public parks which are entirely privately run and funded. Meanwhile
they seek to squander vast amounts on a new health system which they refuse to
own up to funding. It is another thing entirely to have a publicly funded
health system. Mind you though it is very easy to introduce distortions into
the market with nationalised medicine which end up making it inefficient and
unaffordable. Ours has now arrived at the point where eg to have an essential
back operation we were more than 50% ‘out of pocket’ (so who know what this
means for those who haven’t saved for such eventualities – though mind you I
think people should and not weep over demands on the public purse!) even though
we have contributed to BOTH the public and private health systems for up to 50
years. Our own system is hardly fixed: have you tried to see a competent doctor
lately? Of course partly the problem is that people are unwilling to accept
their own mortality, or are not allowed to go peaceably when the time comes: http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2013/10/its-official-us-forest-service-closing-over-1000-privately-funded-parks.html
06/10/2013: After twenty
years of cooling (during which the world emitted more CO2 than at any other
time in human history) it should be clear to even the stupidest observer that
the whole anthropogenic global warming scam was just ONE BIG DAMNED LIE, as it
was. Here’s Don Easterbrook’s (Professor of Geology,
06/10/2013: "His
mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." - Mae West
06/10/2013: The poor WILL
inherit the earth (if we don’t stop them first!). From Jean Raspail’s brilliant and brutally
confronting 1971 satire (or indictment), Camp of the Saints (http://archive.org/stream/CampOfTheSaints/Camp_of_the_Saints_djvu.txt) :
‘Then, after a while,
there were too many poor. Altogether too many. Folk you didn’t even know. Not even
from here. Just nameless people. Swarming all over. And so terribly clever!
Spreading through cities, and houses, and homes. Worming their way by the
thousands, in thousands of foolproof ways. Through the slits in your mailboxes,
begging for help, with their frightful pictures bursting from envelopes day
after day, claiming their due in the name of some organization or other.
Slithering in. Through newspapers, radio, churches, through this faction or
that, until they were all around you, wherever you looked. Whole countries
full, bristling with poignant appeals, pleas that seemed more like threats, and
not begging now for linen, but for checks to their account. And in time it got
worse. Soon you saw them on television, hordes of them, churning up, dying by
the thousands, and nameless butchery became a feature, a continuous show, with
its masters of ceremonies and its full-time hucksters. The poor had overrun the
earth. Self-reproach was the order of the day; happiness, a sign of decadence.
Any pleasure? Beneath discussion. Even in Monsieur Calgues’ s own village, if
you did try to give some good linen away, they would just think you were being
condescending. No, charity couldn’t allay your guilt. It could only make you
feel meaner and more ashamed. And so, on that day he remembered so well, the
professor had shut up his cupboards and chests, his cellar and larder, closed
them once and for all to the outside world. The very same day that the last
pope had sold out the
& from the Australian folks pleading for
asylum so they can have boob jobs: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/policy/seeking-asylum-and-breast-job/story-fn9hm1gu-1226733279729
05/10/2013: I LIKE this
parallel argument: In February 2000, American philosopher Dr David Deming wrote
a letter criticizing Yale University student Joni Kletter's February 18, 2000,
syndicated article on gun control published in the University of Oklahoma's
student newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily—a letter for which the professor was
charged for sexual harassment. In her article, Kletter had claimed that
"easy access to a handgun allows everyone in this country . . . to quickly
and easily kill as many random people as they want." In his rebuttal,
Deming wrote "I just want to point out that Kletter's 'easy access' to a
vagina enables her to 'quickly and easily' have sex with 'as many random
people' as she wants. Her possession of an unregistered vagina also equips her
to work as a prostitute and spread venereal diseases. Let's hope Kletter is as
responsible with her equipment as most gun owners are with theirs."
05/10/2013: It is kind of
funny someone had to do a ‘study’ to find THIS out, as with so many things
(hopefully under Tony ‘research’ will return to the meaning we would expect it
to have eg scientific and medical research for the betterment of humanity).
Surely only a fool would want to be identified with these scummy people anyway?
Ho, Hum: http://www.salon.com/2013/09/26/study_everyone_hates_environmentalists_and_feminists_partner/
04/10/2013: Warren Meyer:
‘The IPCC does claim more confidence that warming over the past 60 years is
partly or mostly due to man (I have not yet seen the exact wording they landed
on), from 90% to 95%. But this is odd
given that the warming all came from 1978 to 1998. Temperatures are flat or
cooling for the other 40 years of the period. The IPCC cannot explain these 40
years of no warming in the context of high temperature sensitivities to
CO2. And, they can't explain why they
can be 95% confident of what drove temperatures in the 20 year period of
1978-1998 but simultaneously have no clue what drove temperatures in the other
years.’ http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2013/09/hearing-what-you-want-to-hear-from-the-climate-report.html
04/10/2013: Quote of the
day: “I was dissatisfied with the quality of humans available on this planet,
so I made my own.”
04/10/2013: Another Aussie
Jihadist: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/aussie-jihadist-accountant-sabirhan-hasanoff-jailed-18-years-in-new-york/story-e6frg6so-1226730514217
03/10/2013: Bad news for
me: the only one I own is the Leatherman (Micro, by choice). I am a failure: http://www.buzzfeed.com/justinabarca/things-every-self-respecting-man-over-30-should-own
03/10/2013: I have long
been a lover of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) (& A.E. Housman)
Requiem
Under the wide and starry
sky,
Dig the grave and let me
lie.
Glad did I live and
gladly die,
And I laid me down with a
will.
This be the verse you
grave for me:
Here he lies where he
longed to be;
Home is the sailor, home
from sea,
And the hunter home from
the hill.
Stevenson's Requiem is inscribed
on his gravestone in
R.L.S.
Home is the sailor, home
from sea:
Her far-borne canvas
furled
The ship pours shining on
the quay
The plunder of the world.
Home is the hunter from
the hill:
Fast in the boundless
snare
All flesh lies taken at
his will
And every fowl of air.
'Tis evening on the
moorland free,
The starlit wave is
still:
Home is the sailor from
the sea,
The hunter from the hill.
03/10/2013: Ultralight
cooking: I think one of these ‘Sierra Cups’ (hhttp://www.evernewamerica.com/EBY152.htm each) @ 60 grams (or these: http://www.evernewamerica.com/EBY265.htm @ 50 grams) would be good for when you need
to cook more than two things at once. I have the 900 ml pot set @ 125 grams (http://www.evernewamerica.com/ECA265.htm) which works well with the Bushbuddy Ultra (http://bushbuddy.ca/indexs.html ) woodgas stove @ 150 grams. I am wondering
whether I can fashion a ring of motorcycle tubing (or like eg http://www.traildesigns.com/accessories/beer-bands ) to prevent burning my lip. A titanium
spork, cut-down pot scourer and mini cigarette lighter completes the kitchen at
less than the weight (<400 grams) most folks would have in their ultralight
gas canister stove (inc canister) alone! PS: I usually carry a Minibulldesigns
7 gram side-jet alcohol stove (eg https://www.minibulldesign.com/ProductCart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=195&idcategory= ) and 100ml meths for when I get lazy ( and
a few esbits for fire lighting)
02/10/2013: I just LOVE this
camping mat: the Thermarest xLite Women’s @ 340 grams at R-3.9 is quite long
enough for someone of my height (@5’8”) and exquisitely comfortable - &
warm. For sitting around camp we pair it with the Big Agnes Cyclone Chair @ 170
grams: http://www.cascadedesigns.com/therm-a-rest/mattresses/fast-and-light/womens-neoair-xlite/product & https://www.bigagnes.com/Products/Detail/Accessory/CycloneSLChairKit
02/10/2013: This is a
good example of why I hate greenie, leftie, animal libbie rabid dogs with a
vengeance and think there should be an open season on them all. After ALL these
years of ruin and vilification the local Giles Bros Abattoir in Trafalgar has
been exonerated from any animal cruelty claims and the whole thing has been
shown to have been concocted by ONE such loathsome creep. Like so many others
our livelihood was dependent on this abattoir where our lambs could be
processed for the local supermarket. I you have ever tried to make a profit by
selling your lambs through the auction markets, forget it. A number of small
town butcher shops in Gippsland could no longer source bodies economically and
had to close, furthering the domination of the supermarket giants. Many
ordinary workers in small-town Traf lost their jobs causing who knows what
misery to their families – as to the Giles Bros themselves, the fact that one
is STILL in
02/10/2013: I have ALWAYS
been disgusted by Ju-Liar (and the sooner she is arrested and banged up the
better) but her sickening confessional to the sisterhood (chaired by the
appalling Anne Summers) was overwhelmingly nauseating particularly the
continuing ‘feminist ‘victimhood’ rhetoric. Look, you have just been Prime
Minister, you CANNOT continue to claim 2nd class citizen status
based on your genitals! http://pickeringpost.com/cartoon/2085 
02/10/2013: Listen up
sisterhood, THIS is misogyny – but you wanted there to be lots more of them
here, didn’t you? Wake up! Women really shouldn’t drive –or vote! http://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2013/09/29/news-you-can-use-37/
01/10/2013: Remarkable:
‘An acre of corn is a living machine drawing CO2 from the air around it. In
windless conditions, CO2 concentrations over a cornfield build up each night as
CO2 diffuses from higher air and the organic matter and bacteria create CO2
from the soil. A paper by Chapman et al from 1954, shows that as soon as the sun
comes up, to power-up those dormant photosynthetic cells, the plants rapidly
draw down as much CO2 as possible, and when the CO2 levels fall too low, plant
growth surely slows. On a windless day CO2 values rose to 410ppm overnight and
fell to 210ppm during the morning.’ http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/plants-suck-half-the-co2-out-of-the-air-around-them-before-lunchtime-each-day/
01/10/2013: You may have
MISSED this: the CO2 percentage in a field of corn varies by >200ppm in a
single morning – yet the ‘Chicken Littles’ (aka greenie fruitcakes) are worried
about changes of 1-2ppm in a YEAR!
01/10/2013: Quote of the
day: Willie Nelson: "I think it is just terrible and disgusting how
everyone has treated Lance Armstrong, especially after what he achieved,
winning seven Tour de France races while on drugs. When I was on drugs, I
couldn't even find my bike."
01/10/2013: Frankly I
find this TERRIFYING: The Bureau of Statistics estimates that the state's
population grew by 102,000 or 1.82 per cent in the year to March. At this rate,
30/09/2013: ‘ABC quoting
a survivor saying the passengers had been transported to the drop-off point by
soldiers. "The army took us,"’ If this guy is willing to identify the
Indo soldiers concerned who have ALWAYS been complicit in this dreadful trade.
THAT will ‘stop the boats’! http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/boat-rescue-claims-rejected-as-toll-rises/story-e6frg6n6-1226729603696
30/09/2013: Quote of the
day: Raymond Chandler: “I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out
for a beer and wakes up in
30/09/2013: When my Uncle
Pat, a Catholic priest, told me this in 1975 I thought he was speaking heresy,
but NOW we have it straight from the Pope himself: atheists like me CAN go to
Heaven. However, for atheists like me who are more than a little confident
there IS no Heaven and that all who believe in such nonsense as Gods and an
after-life are at best completely ‘away with the fairies’ and at worst
inexpressibly evil, it is a VERY academic question: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/pope-francis-assures-atheists-you-dont-have-to-believe-in-god-to-go-to-heaven-8810062.html
30/09/2013: Tim Blair:
‘Ten per cent of English court cases now involve the prosecution of citizens
who decline to pay for the BBC. That’s some 700 cases per day. We’d probably
see a similar number in
30/09/2013: I just LOVE
the wild places, and have long ago discovered Teddy’s various books about
hunting too; I think I started with a book about hound hunting mountain lions
in what is now
29/09/2013: Outspoken
atheist Richard Dawkins was involved in an online Twitter row on Thursday after
tweeting: ‘All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than
29/09/2013: I am often
gob-smacked by just how bright Willis Eschenbach is, but THIS observation was
astonishing. Could breathing OUT more combat the breathlessness you get by
strenuous walking uphill. I tried this out on my recent hunting trip, and it’s
TRUE. I was able to walk in one go to the top of hills I normally have to pause
several times to ascend and arrive completely NOT out of breath. Try it
yourself: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/23/catching-my-breath/
29/09/2013: One-third of
all the CO2 emitted since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was emitted
since 1998 (Yes, China - especially - HAS been burning A LOT!) yet there has
been NO WARMING AT ALL in that time. The AGW theory does not involve ANY delay:
the heat which is (supposedly) trapped, is trapped TODAY. CLEARLY, the theory
is WRONG. QED.
29/09/2013: Back from one
of my favourite places in Wonnangatta-Moroka: six hours walk in from my car
& five hours drive from here to the closest driveable location. This has to
be one of the remotest areas in
25/09/2013: How the rent
seekers and grant seekers flourished under Labor. You think it will be hard for
the Libs to make some savings? Read and weep what Krud, Ju-Liar and their whole
sorry lot squandered your hard-earned on (eg The Gwabba Yorga-Gabba Warra project received
$500,000 to organise netball competitions!): http://www.luckyculture.com.au/media-library/welfare-for-wowsers/
25/09/2013: Q & A
reveals Suzuki is a ‘complete phoney’: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/suzuki_revealed_as_complete_know_nothing_by_very_first_question_on_qa/
25/09/2013: Tim Flannery,
Will Steffen & etc vow to fight on as ‘Climate Commissioners’ without
(recently withdrawn) Government remuneration. Ah, noble rent seekers! I’m sure we
could afford the vast army of bureaucrats we are currently burdened with at
THAT price! It will be interesting to see just how long this lasts…
25/09/2013: Child
marriage is SUCH a dreadful evil for girls. If I could castrate every man who
does this, I would - & with a rusty knife! It IS so much more prevalent
amongst some religious groups whether you agree or not. Religious tolerance
MUST NOT extend to turning a blind eye to this obscenity. The death of this
poor child in
24/09/2013: TOP Gear
(Well, bottom actually): http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/09/this-insect-has-the-only-mechanical-gears-ever-found-in-nature/
24/09/2013: An important
review http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/climatism-watching-climate-science/2013/sep/10/science-based-rebuttal-global-warming-alarmism/ of an important report: http://heartland.org/media-library/pdfs/CCR-II/CCR-II-Full.pdf Everything you need to know to ascertain that
climate change alarmism is both wrong and silly, (& in my mind at least,
wicked!)
24/09/2013: Josh
Frydenberg is certainly (future) Prime Ministerial material: the parliamentary
secretary with responsibility for the Abbott government’s deregulation agenda,
has admirable intentions: ‘In little more than 5 1/2 years, Labor was
responsible for introducing more than 21,000 additional regulations… And the
Business Council of Australia has highlighted one resource development approval
process that took years, was extremely costly and required a 12,000-page
report, after which approval was finally granted with 1500 commonwealth and
state conditions and 8000 sub-conditions attached…A paradigm shift will soon be
under way…Two parliamentary sitting days will be set aside for repealing
legislation each year… And the performance of senior members of the public
service will be assessed in part according to their proven record in reducing
regulation, with their remuneration calculated accordingly…The Productivity
Commission will also be tasked to determine a framework for auditing the
performance of regulatory agencies.’ YES!
23/09/2013: ‘One woman
who doesn’t use accusations of misogyny and sexism to cover up her own
failures, who has judgement, who doesn’t lie, who gets on with the job and, as
a result, has the support of her people and wins an election in a landslide:
Angela Merkel wins third term in German elections’
23/09/2013: I notice
significant numbers of the jihadists responsible for the Kenyan massacre were
American, Canadian,
23/09/2013: SEE what I
mean: http://www.smh.com.au/national/18-years-jail-for-army-terrorattack-plan-20111216-1oy3f.html#ixzz2fehiChc2
23/09/2013: The renowned
Ghanaian poet and statesman Kofi Awoonor was also among the dead.
23/09/2013: SUICIDE
bombers have targeted an Anglican church in
23/09/2013: Thank (human)
goodness there are new Julian Lincoln Simons along to repudiate the idiocy of
the environmental orthodoxy: ‘Neither physics nor chemistry nor even biology is
adequate to understand how it has been possible for one species to reshape both
its own future and the destiny of an entire planet. This is the science of the
Anthropocene. The idea that humans must live within the natural environmental
limits of our planet denies the realities of our entire history, and most
likely the future. Humans are niche creators. We transform ecosystems to
sustain ourselves. This is what we do and have always done. Our planet’s
human-carrying capacity emerges from the capabilities of our social systems and
our technologies more than from any environmental limits.’ http://reason.com/blog/2013/09/16/overpopulation-is-sooo-over-explains-bio
23/09/2013: PROOF: the
most important resource is the human mind. Without it we would all be sitting
miserably in the dark: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/sep/15/maxwells-equations-electrify-world
23/09/2013: The Art of
the Comma: http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/arts/anonymous/pg-wodehouse
23/09/2013: Seems I was
wrong about the ‘Rudd effect’ & that he ‘saved’ at least 15 seats. Expect to
see him challenging for the leadership after Shorten/Albanese fails at the next
election: http://www.theage.com.au/data-point/rudd-saved-labor-leaked-polling-shows-20130921-2u6my.html#ixzz2fYkvKZBX
23/09/2013: Tim Blair:
‘Sooner or later, somewhere in the world a mainstream political party –
possibly from the left – is going to say: “Hey, we went along with all of that
global warming stuff for a few years. We were scared we’d lose votes if we
didn’t. But now we realise that no policies we devise can make any significant
impact. From now on, our environmental spending will be limited to the
environment that people live in. Here are all your taxes back. Sorry.” On
current trends, such a policy would probably do rather well.’
22/09/2013: AUTOBIKE: If
it can be coupled with a crank driven electric motor, this bike would be
PERFECT: http://www.gizmag.com/autobike-shifts-gears/29135/
22/09/2013: Obama
explained in another of his recent speeches, "Raising the debt ceiling,
which has been done over a hundred times, does not increase our debt."
There you ARE!
22/09/2013: Lots of bad
things happening out in the ‘big world’ this morning: massacres and violence
abound, but it all seems quiet and peaceful here at Jeeralang Junction. Perhaps
our spells, runes and incantations are working – or the sign on the front gate which
says, ‘Trespassers will be shot!’
22/09/2013: In those
circumstances I too would have had a sudden conversion to Islam: http://www.thestate.com/2013/09/21/2992827/gunmen-open-fire-at-nairobis-most.html
22/09/2013: Ah, Moby
Dick: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2013/09/call-me-migaloo-the-story-behind-real-life-white-whales/
22/09/2013: In memory of
U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt's foreign policy: ‘Speak softly, and carry a
big stick.’ http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/uploads/biggest.jpg
22/09/2013: Could not
have put it better myself: Terry McCrann: ‘The more bleating we hear from
Fairfax, the ABC, the Suzukis, Flannerys, Karolys and all the dreadful rest, the
more we will know that Abbott is succeeding in the fine art of restoring
rationality and even more basic sanity to government.’
22/09/2013: This may be
so: well past time many fantastic schemes were ‘undone’: ‘We have reached a
point of diminishing returns in our public life. Hardly anything actually needs
doing. We may in fact be past that point; not only does nothing much need
doing, but we’d benefit if much of what has been done were to be undone. What
useful work can I do with Windows 8 that I couldn’t do with XP? Politicians
make a living—a very grand living indeed at the higher levels—by saying there
are things wrong that need fixing. Are there, though?’ A case in point, local
company ‘Speednet’ have been offering 25 meg fixed wireless broadband here at
very reasonable rates for at least a decade to folks not near an exchange - or
anyone else who wants it. Evidently the NBN will, (at much greater cost) be
offering the same service SOMETIME in the future…
21/09/2013: THIS is Northumberlandia, the ‘Goddess of
the North’, the largest sculpture of a woman on Earth (note the size of the
cars lower left). It is a reclaimed open-cut coal mine – and YOU said you were
opposed to ‘King Coal’? Foolish mortal: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/northumberlandia.jpg?w=640&h=343
21/09/2013: Could it be true: alien bugs that look
like Julia Gillard discovered in space? NOW we know where she came from: http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/british-scientists-claim-to-have-found-proof-of-alien-life/story-fn5fsgyc-1226723186041 http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2013/09/20/1226723/186548-alien-life.jpg
21/09/2013: Quote of the Day: "What is wanted is not
the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact
opposite." Bertrand Russell
21/09/2013: Now THIS is an interesting approach to
take to the global temperature data. Ask a specialist in digital signal processing
whether any ‘signal’ can be discerned in the ‘noise’ of natural variability. I
have long argued that the natural variations are too large and too chaotic for
their to be any meaningful signal present in them, eg when daily temperatures
in one backyard can vary by up to 40C and when different areas in the same
backyard can vary easily by 5C or ore, where is the ‘signal’ from pretty shonky
‘world temperature records’ such as Hadcrut? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/11/digital-signal-processing-analysis-of-global-temperature-data-suggests-global-cooling-ahead/
20/09/2013: It IS SO unfortunate that so much which
passes as thought among the Left, literati, ‘progressives’ and other such
ninnies SO closely resembles these delightful sideshow clowns forever
open-mouthedly rotating in unison and emitting exactly like nonsensical
platitudes, pulchritudes et al:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_4xx7NrAfZs/UjZUhwJ175I/AAAAAAAAAto/buM2DwS1NH4/s320/fairfax+editors.JPG
20/09/2013: Quote of the Day: Tim Blair: ‘I
haven’t translated the health warning on my packet of French cigarettes, but I
think it says: “We are here for but a short time. Please, go right ahead.”’
20/09/2013: It IS JUST WONDERFUL: the awful
hypocritical, incompetent, unscientific wanker Tim Flannery sacked and his
whole Government Department (AND a number of like others, eg Ausaid, the
‘Social Inclusion Board’…) abolished – and it was only: DAY ONE. So many MORE
good things to look forward to…
20/09/2013: Getting out into the world of people
(which I do NOT often) IS interesting, though I feel a need for a goodly dose
of wilderness to assuage it…It is pleasant that there ARE many sensible folks
out there, but it is also unfortunate that there are so many who seem to have
got their ideas from (perhaps a Greenpeace?) recycling bin, or as a job lot
with a cheap set of steak knives…It IS bizarre to be lectured by folks about
BOTH eg plastic bags, global warming and greed who drive to funerals in
brand-new $60,000+ SUVs and who seem to be unaware that you can (if you feel
THAT way!) eg brew your own beer , have a vegie garden, drive a Landrover
which NEVER rusts/wears out as EVERY part of every LR ever made is readily
available (cheaply), and who are evidently unaware that the world has cooled
for 202 consecutive months or that it was MUCH warmer in the Middle Ages or
that ‘resources’ are created by MAN and NOT by nature: eg John D Rockefeller
CREATED the petroleum resource (in creating Standard Oil) a resource which had
until then only ever been a curiosity or a nuisance and that in so doing HE
SAVED THE WHALES (c 1880!). NEW resources are being created daily by human
ingenuity and enterprise as old ones fall into abeyance. So mote it be! How
such folks (others sustained handsomely on welfare yet who decry the
evils of capitalism) fail to understand the immense benefits which human
ingenuity AND capitalism have brought to the great bulk of mankind over the
last couple of centuries, benefits which, if anything, are only accelerating
(thank human Goodness!) today…
20/09/2013: Travelled to the Hunter the last few days
to attend a funeral for a wonderful man I have known since c 1954. Caught up
with many folk I have not seen for a VERY long time (having lived in Vic for
nearly 40 years DOES attenuate relationships and origins) and at last met MANY
delightful relatives for the very first time. Though I took my Samsung tablet,
my arthritis makes it almost impossible for me to type on it, hence the paucity
of posts. I thank the numerous people who evidently missed our disagreements,
my daily doses of madness – or whatever. I will probably try to take the opportunity
of a few days away hunting/hiking in Wonnangatta-Moroka as my chest has
improved and my sore knee somewhat, so our conversations might not resume in
earnest for another week or so…
20/09/2013: NOW 202 months without ANY warming: we
really need to spend all those ‘carbon pollution’ dollars on ‘global warming’
mitigation: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/11/rss-global-temperature-data-no-global-warming-at-all-for-202-months/
20/09/2013: The science is settled: the West Antarctic
ice shelf has recently been discovered to be 20 MILLION years older than
previously thought: this completely debunks computer models abut how heat exchange
works on earth over time, clearly throwing the whole AGW farrago further into
disrepute: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/04/more-settled-science-the-west-antarctic-ice-sheet-is-20-million-years-older-than-thought/
15/09/2013: I noticed the informal vote was up
slightly this year (to 5.9% - possibly due to the very complicated Senate paper),
but still probably enough to effect a change of Government if all these folks
had voted one way – or nearly enough for them to elect their own Senator
outright; an interesting idea: the Informal Party, which stands for nothing,
not that unlike the major parties perhaps! It is reasonable to think that if
5.9% of people can get it completely wrong (and taking into account the large
accidental vote for the Liberal Democrats in NSW (enough to give them a
Senator), then it is likely a similar percentage of votes were cast for a party
other than the one intended. It could be reasonable to assume that idiots of
all political persuasions cancel each other out (though I am more inclined to
believe there are more idiots who vote for the OTHER side of politics – as who
is not?), however, it is surely long past time that some simple instruction
about and testing of competence was implemented to augment the franchise. I
think it would also be useful to consider qualification for the franchise (eg
the far too simple fact of being born in Australia seems too little to me,
& failure to have ever paid taxes would suggest to me an automatic
disqualification), as we will soon approach a point where those voting for a
living outnumber those who are paying for them to vote – and then whence our
democracy? It is not hard to imagine a military takeover to put things right
(as happens in lots of other countries) were it not for the fact that
successive reductions in the Defence budget over many years might well mean
that there are not even enough in our military to take over the country, let
alone defend it!
15/09/2013: Further bad news for ‘warmies’ is this
evidence that ‘it’s the sun stupid’ is right after all - as the data comes in
to prove that changes in the cosmic ray count explain ALL the fluctuations in
climate previously erroneously attributed to homo horribilis. The BAD news is
it looks set to get quite a lot colder: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/04/svensmarks-cosmic-ray-theory-of-clouds-and-global-warming-looks-to-be-confirmed/
15/09/2013: I think it is good to see that Tony &
Julie will join Pope Francis in choosing a more modest style than their
predecessors (at the public expense). Happy to see an end of big spending
Government, apparatchiks with dachas & etc: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/new_pm_dosses_down_with_the_police/
15/09/2013: ‘Deconstruction’ is an ‘intellectual
phenomenon which ‘informs’ almost all Leftist ‘thought’ in this country (and
others). It is the ‘intellectual’ heir of Hegelianism and Marxism, and
ultimately traces its roots to Plato’s ‘sophists’ (Those whose task was ‘to
make the worst appear the better reason’ as Socrates puts it). It is in my view
the GREATEST EVIL OF THE MODERN AGE: its every intent is to invert everything,
to turn good into evil, evil into good & etc…to destroy every tradition,
every established truth - and replace it with its own perverted creeds. Every
‘issue’ it battens upon becomes weirdly distorted. It attacks time-tested
traditional views, describing them as the ‘orthodoxy’, shortening the phrase to
the ‘doxy’, so as to conflate them with a common word for a cheap prostitute,
and thereby further debase them. It does NOT take them on intellectually; it
just seeks to bury those views as somehow ‘no longer fashionable’. For example:
HUNTING has been seen as a GOOD for the majority of time and for the vast
majority of people alive today or who have EVER lived. (You can substitute for
the word, ‘hunting’ in the previous sentence other long recognised ‘goods’:
‘marriage’, ‘honesty’, ‘thrift’, ‘honour’, ‘truth’, ‘patriotism’…you GET the
point!) Today, the ‘deconstructionists’ in the guise of ‘Greens’, ‘Animal
Liberationists’, ‘vegetarians’, ‘Whole Earthers’…want us to perceive hunting as
generally evil, cruel, unnecessary, unwholesome, barbaric…It is a strange and
MONSTROUS inversion of values. Most people who have ever lived have valued
hunting highly, not only the many wholesome skills involved but the ethos of
providing for oneself and one’s family, independence, oneness with nature, the
continuity of a tradition and a sense of belonging in a tradition of one’s
forebears…More about ‘deconstruction’ later.
15/09/2013: Keynes was WRONG and it is long past time
we kept following him down the ROAD TO RUIN. Here in
14/09/2013: The Electoral Commission has the result
this morning at 92:54. However one of the ‘close’ seats (EM,
14/09/2013: At 102, vale Ronald Coase: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/ronald-coase.aspx
14/09/2013: Harry ‘Smith’ of the Wonnangatta: http://home.vicnet.net.au/~harryshut/pioneer.php Having discovered BOTH the murder victim’s bodies (many
kilometres apart), Harry was long under suspicion of the crime. We will
probably never know.
14/09/2013: The grey thrush is sitting on a nest of
eggs in the chink in the house wall where a brick has been missing (for this
purpose) the last 20+ years. She missed a couple of years lately as her mate
must have been killed by a fox/cat, but she has a new one now, and is working
hard at filling our little valley with their wonderful birdsong. The swallows
are back from China/Siberia/Korea – wherever they go, more numerous than ever.
Nice to think someone else loves them as much as I do on the other side of the
world. I sometimes wish I knew where they went - so I could visit them sometime
there in our off-season. Would be interesting to meet their ‘other’ people if
they have some. The wrens, blackbirds and thornbills are hard at it outside our
bedroom window in the mornings, and when I open the front door there is a
myriad of sparrow song from our archway straight outside. It IS Spring, after
all!
14/09/2013: Hang on to your mobiles, kids: speed is
getting faster every day (Now talking 450 megs): http://www.afr.com/p/australia2-0/telstra_trials_super_fast_mobile_DPkJYCDAhi3D4aS72RqknM
12/09/2013: As a Coalition supporter (currently), I
hope Labor hands ‘the poisoned chalice’ to Shorten rather than the clearly
better man, Anthony Albanese, who may have some chance of undoing the monstrous
corrupt wreck the once-great Labor party has become. It will be ‘interesting’
to watch Shorten reeling to the punches the promised Commission of Enquiry into
the AWU will surely inflict on him - which may even end in charges being laid
against him AS WELL AS Gillard and Wilson (which is a certainty!)
12/09/2013: I think Labor WILL roll over on the repeal
of the carbon tax when it becomes the first item on the agenda (as promised)
when Parliament resumes for the Spring Session because they will KNOW it will
be repealed as soon as the new Senators take their seats on July 1, and will
they really want the odium which will redound to them of forcing Australians to
pay this unnecessary and expensive impost on their electricity bills & etc
for a further 8+ months? They are ‘on the nose’ enough. Had it not been for the
Liberals’ ‘botched’ campaign in Western Sydney (read James Diaz & etc) ,
& the return of Rudd, Labor’s share of the vote would clearly have fallen
BELOW 30% (There was a stage in the dying days of Ju-Liar when 25% looked GOOD
for them!). Even in this election we had last weekend, their Senate vote has
clearly fallen BELOW one-third (12-13 sets out of 40) and conservatives will
have a majority in the Senate for the next SIX years: 40-41 Conservative vs
35-36 Left – that’s as good as it gets! The Greens are DEAD MEAT to the
Australian electorate. The Left/Green reform agenda; the whole climate lie,
& etc are FINISHED!
12/09/2013: Come off it Bill…Labor already HAS a GREAT
LEADER, ‘Andrew Fisher served as a Labor prime minister on three separate occasions.
Rudd has told three journalists at this newspaper that he wants to emulate
Fisher and become a three-time Labor prime minister. He has described himself
as a “determined bastard”.’ Well, he got half that right!
11/09/2013: Rise of the Micro Parties: I guess we’ll
have to see how it works out, but at the moment it looks like these groups
(mainly of the Right, I notice) have broken the stranglehold that Labor &
the Greens had on the Senate. If this is so, then Tony has nothing to fear from
a double dissolution and everything to gain - as it will guarantee his agenda
not just on those bills which serve as a trigger, but subsequent reform agenda
items like ridding ourselves of the bewildering array of quangos and other
outlandish bureaucratic hangers on which the Left have inflicted on us, mainly
to CONTROL us - but overwhelmingly to WASTE OUR MONEY!
11/09/2013: That’s ME: ‘And all I ask is a merry yarn from a
laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over’,
John Masefield, (Can YOU believe: 1
June 1878 – 12 May 1967?) ‘Sea Fever’, Ah, Yes! Lovely! http://allpoetry.com/poem/8495913-Sea_Fever-by-John_Masefield
& This: ‘Let no religious rite be done or read
In any place for me when I am dead,
But burn my body into ash, and scatter
The ash in secret into running water,
Or on the windy down, and let none see;
And then thank God that there’s an end of me.’
11/09/2013: Hiking Food: we are always adding to our
repertoire: on our last trip Della’s dehydrated savoury mince added to
Continental Dehydrated Potato Mash reconstituted to a very acceptable
‘Shepherd’s Pie’ for example. Lately we have been trying out several dehydrated
lentil meals. Coles have several under the name, ‘Celebrate Health’ (eg Indian
Marsala Lentils - quite nice). The BEST so far is Ainsley Harriott’s
‘Lentil Dahl’ which is SPECTACULARLY GOOD. We are eating this (&farting) at
home indecently often. Highly recommended!
11/09/2013: Infantile and downright nasty Leftists
have been (racially) abusing Warren Mundine who makes THIS point in return:
"Two million Labor people voted Liberal. That is a massive shift. They are
in big trouble and they haven't realised it." ‘Mr Mundine was overlooked
for a Senate spot by Julia Gillard in 2012 after she instead chose Bob Carr who
was parachuted in to be made Foreign Minister after Kevin Rudd's failed coup.’
Now become Paul Howes, apparently. THAT worked really well Ju-Liar! BTW,
11/09/2013: Don’t know whether you caught this, ‘The
Rise of the Continents’ (ABC 1 @ 8:30pm) wherein Prof Iain Stewart makes that slowest
of all the sciences, Geology EXCITING! This particular episode (‘
10/09/2013: Quote of the day: ‘Hayek, writing in 1945,
notes that it had become fashionable to downplay the wisdom of the streets and
assume that the experts, armed with lumps of aggregated information, knew best.
Yet, as he pointed out, ‘these facts are never so given to a single mind’,
which is why commentators, like central planners, so often get it wrong’. Nick
Cater. The Great Australian Public certainly ‘got it right’ this time!
10/09/2013: I am really sick of the INFANTILE
character of so many Leftists: I’m sure you have all seen the childish
caricatures of Tony Abbott as Gollum, gorilla, turtle, etc and the outlandish
warnings of all sorts of dictatorial and weird or evil behaviour from him and
his team – and these pinkos’ (unfortunately unfulfilled warnings) that they
will take their bat and ball elsewhere. Why cannot such folk grapple with the
real issues, articulate their political philosophy, explain how their agenda
might WORK in the real world? It is long since time they moved on from their
immature student politics, uni review sense of dependency on the public purse
and set out to get a real living in the real world. Australia faces serious
challenges to our future not least due to their favourite Government’s inability
to manage a buoyant economy into anything other than bottomless debt, its
endless corruption, disunity and disfunction, its endless ability to experiment
with long since debunked socialist schemes, its insistence in ‘scaring the
horses’ of economic growth, and especially its inability to take seriously the
prime tenet of Government: the Defence of the Realm!
10/09/2013: DNA design & synthesis, 3d printers,
virtual reality, computer gaming… mean that the distinction between matter and
information is disappearing: people ARE able to meaningfully ask the question,
‘Could the universe we appear to inhabit be a computer simulacrum?’ a la ‘The
Matrix’ & etc…Interesting times…
09/09/2013: The ASX200 was @ 6800 before Kevin ’07
when it crashed by OVER A THIRD. It fell again when Obama was elected in the
09/09/2013: Quotable quote: Philippa Martyr, Quadrant:
‘Take a stab, Bill. You're good at that. After Rudd, only one potential leader
genuinely represents the party's appetite for betrayal, intrigue, leaks and
relentless self-promotion.’
09/09/2013: You hear the Left intoning this pointless
mantra, ‘The rich get rich and the poor get poorer’ as if Redistribution was the
answer, as if you could carve up the pie into ever smaller pieces until
everyone gets their fair share – but after they have eaten their share, all
starve. You do not ‘make the poor richer by making the rich poorer’ as Abe
Lincoln was reputed to have said. You have to make a bigger pie if all are
going to have a bigger slice, and next day you need to bake an even bigger pie,
and so on. You have to GROW THE ECONOMY in order that everyone will be richer.
Far from being a greedy and mercenary goal (which the pious Left may blithely
and wilfully disdain), this is the ONLY way to make the world a better place.
It has been happening for a few hundred years now thanks to capitalism, and it
need to continue at least until ALL have a decent living.
09/09/2013: I would like to see MANY referenda (eg on
capital punishment, banning fireworks, the metric system, access to public
lands, one law for all Australians, gay marriage, & etc, etc…) but MOST OF
ALL, I would like us to be able to ABOLISH THE SENATE: I think it is absolutely
disgusting that this vile institution still exists which denies THIS basic
right: ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE! It is disgraceful that a voter in
09/09/2013: I REALLY like Lord Monckton, not least his
wondrous vocabulary…today I learnt this excellent word: ‘monopsony’ (which is
what it is if you only have one client – like so much that socialism builds),
and was reminded that the Royal Society’s motto is ‘Nullius in verba’, (roughly
translates as ‘We take no one’s word for it’ – a great motto) AND was reminded
that once there were great Islamic scholars, such as Abu Ali Ibn al-Haytham, or
Alhazen who was the founder of the scientific method: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/09/07/a-question-for-oreskes-but-what-do-we-mean-by-consensus/
09/09/2013: A volcano the size of the
08/09/2013: Well Done Tony: Look forward to MANY years
of adult Government – will be a pleasant change!
08/09/2013: Finally we can settle down to the more
important issues, eg GOLF CARTS SHOULD BE BANNED: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rn5Cbe8vVM4
08/09/2013: Or this explanation for the existence of
evil (from ‘Time Bandits.’ PS: John Gielgud as God – excellent casting): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw9IqUgGlzs&feature=player_embedded
08/09/2013: ‘Older’ folks might remember THIS: ‘It’s
Time’ (& weep!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jykIqQxEOw&feature=player_embedded
08/09/2013: Quotable quote (from Prof Bunyip): ‘The few
remaining readers of The Sunday Age who are brighter than Earth Hour’!
07/09/2013: This may be worse than a Labor OR Liberal
Government: http://www.news.com.au/travel/world/testicle-eating-fish-may-be-migrating/story-e6frfqai-1226712685556
07/09/2013: Thank you ‘Courier Mail’ for this GREAT
newspaper front page: the circus IS over: http://blogs.news.com.au/images/uploads/clownpage.png
07/09/2013: On the lighter side, some interesting
‘venereal’ terms ( a word which might NOT mean what you THINK it does. Clue: ‘a
column of accountants’): http://wordinfo.info/unit/3676
07/09/2013: A ‘Great Circle’ as most of you no doubt
know, is a circle that goes clear around the entire globe, and whose centre is
at the centre of the globe - such as the meridians of longitude, for example.
The ‘Prime Meridian’ passes through
07/09/2013: Education: Yes, there SHOULD be large CUTS
here; too much money IS being wasted already (but there won't be, alas!). If
people have been doing such a poor job (as results show) by an earlier doubling
of funding, the worst thing you can do is throw MORE money at them. One should
not REWARD failure. (One would have thought that this would be THE principal
tenet OF education! O, Pavlov’s Dog, ‘wither goest thou?’) It would be better
to dismiss incompetent teachers and put their unfortunate students in the
classrooms of competent ones - and pay the latter more. You might even pay
teachers per student success, so that those who were most competent could teach
more students and be paid more for doing so. Paying for computers for students
whose MINDS need to be improved was/is just a silly waste of funds (as with
school halls etc). Clearly the curriculum needs to be improved (and returned to
something more sensible which would emphasize literacy, numeracy, civics etc)
instead of preaching left wing ideology, causes etc and telling students from
poor backgrounds that they are victims, rather than holding up to them examples
of Aussie heroes who have triumphed over such backgrounds and gone on to be
outstanding contributors to our society (Doug Nicholls comes to mind).
Education should be about uplifting people, not reinforcing them in their
'misery'.
07/09/2013: Members of my family were on BOTH sides of
the Rothbury mine 'massacre' when numbers of workers were SHOT (near Maitland
NSW in the 1920's). I can still recall being told by a relative how his father was
shot in the head by a police special constable and how his dad tore the
revolver from the policeman and bludgeoned the cop into unconsciousness with it
- before passing out himself from loss of blood from the head wound. Another
relative was part of mine management (later killed in a dreadful mining
accident). His father drove the train which brought the 'scabs' to Rothbury to
'break the strike'. And so on. It is one thing to know your history (even to be
proud of it), and quite another to want to repeat the mistakes of the past,
continue with mistaken 'class war' nonsense and outdated Stalinist ideology.
Capitalism has brought immense benefits to all. Socialism has brought nothing
but misery, enslavement and death. You need to wise up to this, as I long since
have.
06/09/2013: Green ‘values’: Scandal-plagued
independent MP Craig Thomson has won a vote of confidence from the Greens, who
have put him second on their how-to-vote card and described him as “an
excellent local member”. And, of course billionaire coal miner Clive Palmer
also gets their support and will win a Senate seat in Qld as a result! A
triumph of morality over politics!
06/09/2013: It IS astonishing is it not, that the 200
months of cooling the world has just experienced (caused by the cooling in the
mid Pacific Ocean) could be because the heat is ‘hiding’ and will spring out to
fry us one day? http://www.nature.com/news/tropical-ocean-key-to-global-warming-hiatus-1.13620
06/09/2013: Serves her right. At least she alone took
the hit and not all of us as with Government ‘clean energy’ initiatives: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/bernie_getz_burned/
06/09/2013: Great article by Richard Lindzen a
pre-eminent climate scientist who sees AGW alarmism as the heir to other pseudo
sciences such as Lysenkoism, eugenics & etc: http://www.jpands.org/vol18no3/lindzen.pdf
06/09/2013: Where we would be today if we had not made
the foolish mistake of voting for Krud the first time around… First of all the
budget would be at least $15 billion per year better off as we would not have
had to pay the interest on the $300 billion debt he has run up (nor pay it off
– add another $30 billion a year for the next ten years at least). This would
have provided a lot of funds for really important investments like plugging the
huge gap in our marine Defence by the failure to have even one of the Collins
class submarines operational. Of course Kevin also inherited an economy going
‘gangbusters’ as Peter Costello described it and able to generate budget
savings of upwards of $60 billion per year. If these savings had been applied
to nation building, we could have built the NBN in one year or even done
something worthwhile – or just put the money away for a rainy day and reduce
people’s tax burden by $60 billion per year (or $2400 less for each man, woman
& child PER YEAR). It should be noted that Kevin inherited unemployment of
just UNDER 4% which he has managed to drive up to nearly 7% during the ‘
06/09/2013: Cuts, cuts, cuts: MILLIONS of dollars in
taxpayer-funded grants for obscure research projects - such as the role of
public art in climate change - will be scrapped or redirected to find cures for
dementia and other diseases as part of a Coalition crackdown on government
waste. So many of the cuts were to abolish hedgehog patting and telephone
sanitizing. Looking at the list, I was astonished we were ever funding all this
bullshit: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/coalition_is_not_just_cutting_but_ending_green_waste/
06/09/2013: Labor’s existing (and foreshadowed)
restrictions on fishing, hunting 4WDriving, camping and free speech would be
enough to see me vote for the coalition even if there were no other issues at
stake!
05/09/2013: Personally I really LIKE this: ‘My vision
for
06/09/2013: I think it will be uplifting to have a PM
who, when he uses the phrase, ‘the good life’ does not mean a life of trivial
pleasures, who does not confuse ‘happiness’ with ‘pleasure’ (as so many do) and
who does not equate ‘admirable’ or enviable’ with ‘pleasure’. Christ on the
cross was ‘happy’ because he was doing something worthwhile, but he was NOT having
fun! We are a fortunate country indeed which has produced so many whose (often
tragic) service has benefited so many, and who have set such a ‘good’ example
for other Australians to follow: Mary McKillop, John Flynn, John Simpson, Fred
Hollows, ‘Weary’ Dunlop, Sister Bulwinkel…
05/09/2013: Lord Monckton’s satirical article
nonetheless highlights why
05/09/2013: An interesting article about how the U2
spy plane was built (contract signed March 2 1955, delivery July 1955!) which
makes the point that (especially senior levels of) the bureaucracy have
increased obscenely, and that they serve mainly to obstruct and obfuscate, NOT
to facilitate and implement. If we are going to chop 12,000 civil servants (and
why stop there – is there any need for
05/09/2013: Our new TENT, (Thank you Della for the
father’s day present!) z-pack’s hexamid solo plus tarp (http://www.zpacks.com/shelter/hexamid_plus.shtml = 176 grams) mated with their double poncho/groundsheet (http://www.zpacks.com/accessories/groundsheet_poncho.shtml = 173 grams), Total 349 grams plus guys and pegs and carbon fibre
pole (57 grams) if not using a hiking pole, still totals less than 500 grams!
Pretty light for a two-person tent!
05/09/2013: So good to watch Clive James again and
have some intellectual stimulation on TV – which hardly ever happens. There is
NEVER any discussion of important ideas eg quantum theory and the multiverse:
With which I mind, if the universe is truly infinite AND there are is an
infinity of worlds where you and I exist (some having come instantly into
existence from nothing), then there must also be an infinite number of Gods (as
the Indians think) – of course there are none around here! However, given the
speed of light constraint, these ‘Gods’ will have enormous problems
communicating with each other (or anyone else) and will have long since all
have gone mad from loneliness – which serves them right, really!
05/09/2013: A VERY important video: Topher is GREAT!
Would YOU take out car insurance on your car if the annual premium was going to
cost MORE than your car? http://topher.com.au/50-to-1-video-project/#prettyPhoto[flash]/0/
05/09/2013: Timely warning from Jeff Kennett: ‘In
1999, at the start of the final week of the state election campaign, the polls
indicated my Coalition would be returned with an increased majority. I warned
the media at a press conference that we could still lose. They laughed. But
that is what happened …This election could still be won by Labor with a
minority government. The Coalition could still lose. We could be facing another
three years of the same sort of leadership we have been experiencing in
05/09/2013: Having trouble deciding which was the
funnier gaffe of the election campaign: Kevin’s ‘fart smoke’ instead of ‘smart
folk’ or Tony’s ‘suppository’ instead of ‘repository’ (of wisdom). No
correspondence will be entered into…
04/09/2013: It doesn’t get ANY better than this: Tony
Abbott Worshipped and Kissed at Flemington Markets: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/special-features/election-2013-abbott-worshipped-and-kissed-at-sydney-markets-flemington/story-fnho52jj-1226710279427
04/09/2013: Lo, how the mighty have fallen: in the
Fairfax Press: ‘Privately some Labor MPs concede the best thing for the party,
given the scale of the repudiation coming, would be for Mr Rudd to lose his
Brisbane seat of Griffith.’(many of us agree with them and are excited at the
prospect…only three more sleeps to go…): http://www.canberratimes.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/defeat-would-allow-party-to-rejuvenate-20130903-2t3dn.html
04/09/2013: Quotable quote: Voltaire: ‘Doubt is not a
pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.’
04/09/2013: Miranda is right: THIS is why Tony Abbott
will win and DESERVE to win: ‘Tony Abbott…is the candidate who connects with
Labor’s heartland. He likes a drink, he’s a volunteer firefighter and surf club
member. He doesn’t wear Zegna suits. He’s been going on holiday on the NSW
south coast with the same families for 20 years. His roots in student politics
were in the old Catholic arm of Labor, the DLP, not the toffy Young Liberals.
His ordinary rugged blokeyness, and his instinctively moral language, strikes a
chord in middle
04/09/2013: Rudd has fallen out with serious
Christians in his flippant misquoting of the Bible (on Q & A) as a result
of his sudden conversion to the ‘ungodly’ cause of homosexual marriage.
Claiming the Bible supports slavery may be the most stupid (and hypocritical)
thing he has done: http://matthiasmedia.com/briefing/2013/09/pm-verbals-the-bible/
04/09/2013: Historian, Keith Winschuttle: ‘Professed
Christian Kevin Rudd not only doesn’t know his Bible very well but had to stoop
pretty low to make the crack he did. This is particularly so given the
historical track record of Christianity in opposing slavery. In the
English-speaking world the two great milestones were, first, when in 1102 the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Anselm, called a national church council and
persuaded it to make slavery illegal and, second, when in 1807 the English
Evangelical Christian movement led by William Wilberforce persuaded Parliament
to make the slave trade in the British Empire illegal.’
04/09/2013: The man is just an idiot: he dropped his ‘ungodly’
bombshell just three hours after he and Tony addressed ‘the Christian
constituency’: http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2013/09/cynicism-thy-name-is-kevin.html
04/09/2013: Health Nazis are banging away this morning
about some Ozis having upped their incahol uptake from 3000 to 3140 drinks per
year. One such fool opined that this ‘might’ tip one over from being ‘healthy’
to ‘unhealthy’. Accordingly I have decided to up MY intake from 2500 to 3000 as
I haven’t been very well lately! What tosh and wowserish nonsense this nanny
state nonsense is - & what effect will it have on my
04/09/2013: Clive James (with Kerry O’Brien) ‘The Kid
From Kogarah ABC1 8:30 tonight was one of the finest pieces of television in a
VERY long while. Clive is presently suffering from two terminal illnesses (from
which he bears up just so admirably). You can still catch the programme on ABC
Online, and I recommend you do. Such a mind. Shall really miss him…
03/09/2013: Unsurprsingly, UN investigator Carla del
Ponte claims it was probably the rebels and not Assad who gassed and killed
over 1,000 people in
03/09/2013: Something else to thank chemists for: Just
when ‘the science is settled’, we discover scientists were quite wrong about
how the ‘carbon cycle’ actually WORKS. Someone should have TOLD us! Definitely
time for action! http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/31/co2-calculation-in-the-glovbal-carbon-cycle-may-be-off-due-to-a-depth-error/#more-92816
03/09/2013: And now for the REAL news: ‘Are big cat tracker's socks the
oldest in Gloucestershire?’ & ‘Is this the biggest chip in
Gloucestershire?’
http://www.gloucestercitizen.co.uk/big-cat-tracker-s-socks-oldest-Gloucestershire/story-19728100-detail/story.html & http://m.gloucestercitizen.co.uk/articles/news/article/19547377
03/09/2013: If Ju-Liar were still PM THIS might have
been a BIG HEADLINE today. The noose is drawing tighter. She WILL be charged
and she WILL go to gaol. Watch and learn: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/wilson-challenges-slush-fund-seizure/story-e6frg6nf-1226708617880
03/09/2013: Meanwhile, Hedley Thomas, The Australian:
‘VICTORIA Police Fraud Squad detectives have seized Julia Gillard’s
confidential personnel files, invoices, travel records and all documents
relating to legal advice she gave 20 years ago to help set up a union fund for
her then boyfriend, Bruce Wilson. Documents obtained exclusively by The
Australian confirm the former prime minister is a focus of the investigation
surrounding Mr Wilson, the former Australian Workers Union secretary who was
dating Ms Gillard while she was his lawyer at Slater & Gordon in the
1990s…The documents have been kept in a sealed box at the Melbourne Magistrates
Court pending claims of legal privilege, but Detective Sergeant Ross Mitchell,
who is leading the investigation, yesterday applied to have them returned to
police… His application said he would argue that any claim of privilege by Mr
Wilson “should be rejected on the grounds that the contents of the documents
prepared by Mr Wilson or solicitor/s at Slater & Gordon (or both), were
made in furtherance of the commission of a fraud or an offence”.
03/09/2013: A man of NO principle. Just back in
May Krud had the same view about homosexual marriage as the Christian pastor he
humiliated on Q&A last night. Similar back-flips on other important issues,
eg asylum seekers, carbon tax & etc: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/did_rudd_think_gays_were_abnormal_in_may/
He also admitted: ‘One in 13 people who come to this country by boat end
up drowning.’ ie 4,000 people dead because of his 2007 backflip on illegal
immigrants!
02/09/2013: Calling for suggestions for Krud’s ‘swan
song’ (early) this Saturday night. My suggestion, ‘It’s My Party And I’ll Cry
if I Want To’!
02/09/2013: Krud’s speech reached its nadir when he
said Labor was in favour of ‘industries we haven’t even dreamed of yet’. The
quality of Labor’s minions was shown by scattered applause.
02/09/2013: BILLIONAIRES: Here’s a group of folks for
the Left to love to hate. Some very interesting stories here. So MANY started
with NOTHING. There is hope for us all yet! http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/
02/09/2013: 23 years we have been here (at Jeeralang Junction)
and have not been able to see another house. NOW someone is building a
MacMansion 400 metres away on the top of the hill overlooking us. May there be
very big winds!
02/09/2013: From the Labor launch: Couldn’t be
trusted to buy a mozzie candle: ‘THERESE Rein meant her speech at the Labor
launch to show us a human side of her husband. Sweet, but the Kevin Rudd
she described yesterday sounded just like the Prime Minister who’s blown
billions of our money on trash. Rein told the sad crowd: “I want to introduce a
husband who was sent to Bunnings for a mozzie candle - one mozzie candle. “He
comes back with Roman flares, Blu-Tack, an extension cord, potting mix, a step
ladder, secateurs, but no mozzie candle.” How we laughed. Not. Remember how we
sent this same bloke out in 2007 to end “this kind of reckless spending”, only
to have him come back with school halls we didn’t need, roof insulation we
didn’t ask for, a thousand Indonesian boats we didn’t invite - and not one
mozzie candle? Sure, Rudd yesterday admitted he might have mucked up some of
the national handyman jobs we’d set him.’ Andrew Bolt. Newspoll is 54:46 this
morning. How come there are ANY folk willing to vote for these clowns – or
their vile minions, the Greens?
01/09/2013: Spring, Day #1: 24C on the verandah here
at Jeeralang Junction. Five days in a row forecast over 25C on the
01/09/2013: Vale Seamus Heaney: Someone else will have
to do the digging: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177017
01/09/2013: ABU SAKKAR, a monstrous evil CANNIBAL is
just one of the terrorists whom the West is being gulled into supporting in
01/09/2013: DEBT: the simple answer is that as a
nation we owe too much money (debt to GDP ratio 215% - who would have thought?)
The biggest slice of this has been the growth of household debt as bank
deregulation has allowed folks to bid themselves into bankruptcy on house
prices, a pointless folly. All this will have to change. An interesting article
by Don Argus : http://resources.news.com.au/files/2013/08/30/1226707/461940-aus-bus-nav-paradox-of-debt-and-growth.pdf
01/09/2013: Quote of the day: Tim Blair: “How puzzling
this comment would seem to citizens in genuinely repressed nations: ‘The
blatantly anti-government front pages of newspapers like the Daily Telegraph
have sparked huge debate around the country about whether our media should be
more regulated or not.’”
01/09/2013: How’s THIS for a title: ‘Model-based
evidence of deep-ocean heat uptake during surface-temperature hiatus periods’?
What an interesting concept: ‘Model-based evidence’ – would this be in contrast
to REAL evidence?
01/09/2013: Good Grief! There is hope for me yet!
Increasing CO2 is making people TALLER. Read all about it: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/08/the-looming-peril-of-global-talling
31/08/2013: Is Ju-Liar plotting a comeback NOW? This
week could get VERY interesting as the Titanic sinks slowly in the East… http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/special-features/gillard-in-canberra-as-rudd-campaign-struggles/story-fnho52jp-1226707021832
31/08/2013: What an amazing photo from the rover
Curiosity : a solar eclipse on MARS with one of its moons (Phobos) producing an
annular eclipse: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA17356
31/08/2013: The Politics of Envy: An excellent answer
to the fork-lift driver from Mt Druitt who despised the ‘pretty little lady
lawyer on the North Shore’, Derek: ‘Why should a hard-working lawyer, putting
in 12 hours a day provide any sort of assistance to a man who's going to throw
his carbon tax hand-out, family and healthcare rebates into the mouth of a
poker machine at Mt Druitt Workers Club?’ http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/comment/blogs/the-tiger-of-happiness/a-new-type-of-woman-to-hate-20130829-2ssau.html
31/08/2013: Must watch: ‘last’ Clive James ‘special’
on ABC 1 Tues 8:30pm.
31/08/2013: The petrochemical industry is just
wonderful: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/28/when-life-gives-you-fracked-water-make-methane-hydrate/#more-92516
31/08/2013: Meanwhile in the real world, folks post
interesting things like this: http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/molecule-of-the-week/archive/molecule-of-the-week-ethylene.html
31/08/2013: Wonderful that chemists are applying
themselves so diligently to some of the fundamental (no pun intended) problems
of the world like how to tell whether a coffee bean has passed through a
civet’s alimentary canal. Great stuff fellas: http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2013/acs-presspac-august-21-2013/first-scientific-method-to-authenticate-worlds-costliest-coffee.html
30/08/2013: Greenie sympathisers are banging away
about Tony’s pledge to scrap Labor’s Marine National Parks. Frankly National
parks are a bleeding disgrace: Since when did any National Park protect anything? I do multi-day hikes
in (eg) Wonnangatta-Moroka all the time. It is a disgraceful example of
introduced weeds and vermin proliferating, together with uncontrolled wildfire
causing widespread destruction of native plants and animals. National Parks are
a VERY BAD IDEA. Greenies did not discover them or ‘save’ them. Most have never
visited them (and never will) – as for going on multi-day hikes in them: well,
first of all under National Parks legislation it would be illegal unless one
was a deer hunter (I am), second: pull the other leg: these folks will never
get off their arses (or out of them!) The areas were obviously under perfectly
good management BEFORE they were made into National Parks, else they would not
have been there TO SAVE! A more piecemeal approach to land management (such as
would exist WITHOUT them) would ensure a greater diversity of opportunities for
plants and animals, and therefore be better conservation practice than the
wholesale approach which locking up land as National Parks is - which just
exposes the whole area to wholesale dangers (such as enormous wildfires) &
etc.
30/08/2013: Gobsmackingly Krud is saying he might
still go to the G20 on Sept 5-6 (to sort out the small problems in Syria - in my
personal opinion best handled by arming BOTH sides in the hope they will wipe
each other out!) Should just about be able to do that before he is no longer PM
the next day! SUPERKEVNI!
30/08/2013: Exactly: Should the West really bomb
30/08/2013: Treasury and Parliamentary Budget Office
officials confirm Rudd and Bowen LIED. Listen up Krud and Rat-face, lying to
the public makes you UNFIT FOR GREAT PUBLIC OFFICE! End of story. Goodness
knows, $10 Bill would not have been much to be out in the forward estimates
anyway (ie the next four years budgets -200 weeks) when total moneys will be @
$1700 Bill. After all over the LAST six years (300 weeks) your Governments have
overspent $1 BILION PER WEEK, so that NOW our debt is roughly $300 Billion more
than what Howard left you. In your first 30 days as PM (this time around) you
misplaced $30 Billion as I posted on 4/08/2013! Begone! You are no better than
your vile lying, thieving predecessor towards whom justice still marches remorselessly…
30/08/2013: Bounce Goes Out of Rolf’s Career: ‘She
touched my wobble board’, senile entertainer blubbers, ‘I was only trying to
put my joey in her pouch…’
29/08/2013: Clearly Abbott won the debates: Sportsbet
is paying out on the election results NINE DAYS EARLY with the coalition
favourites in 90 seats to Labor’s 56: http://www.sportsbet.com.au/blog/home/sportsbet-pays-out-early-on-coalition-to-win-2013-election?CarouselSB1
29/08/2013: The best line of the 2013 election
campaign, from Tony Abbott: ‘If you want to know my character, ask my
colleagues. If you want to know Mr Rudd’s character, ask his colleagues’.
Touche!
29/08/2013: Satellite records now show 175 straight
months of GLOBAL COOLING: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/27/the-200-months-of-the-pause/
29/08/2013: What CAN you say about a man who threw our
troops’ Xmas mail (presents) off the plane so he could fit the full complement
of his media lackies on…KRUD!
29/08/2013: Bizarre that a man who called the Chinese
‘rat f---ers’ (& other gaffes too numerous to mention) has a better
‘temperament for diplomacy’ than Tony…not the greatest intellect of our
time… http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/rudd_accuses_abbott_of_lacking_the_temperament_to_call_the_chinese_rat_fers/
28/08/2013: Captain Cook observed (way back in 1770)
that it (
28/08/2013: Not the greatest intellect of our time;
even though Labor is clearly losing
28/08/2013: It IS interesting how the Left want to
begrudge the Paid parental Scheme to WORKING women (& men) apparently
especially those on high incomes, whom surely any rational society would want
to ENCOURAGE to reproduce – as compared with Labor’s perverse idea that the
best we can do is pay the lame the halt and the indigent to proliferate
endlessly – what, just in case the day comes when we actually need MILLIONS of
such folk? But, as the ABC’s Fran Kelly (a fitting recipient of employer
largesse herself apparently) reveals here, factory workers and other lowly
folks ought not be paid to reproduce. Of course MANY more ABC presenters,
telephone sanitisers etc ARE needed: Bring on the giant space goat to devour
them all (with apologies to Douglas Adams)! http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/an_abc_entitlement_is_not_fit_for_the_little_people/
27/08/2013: Understand THIS: Government is FORCE; it
is not charity, avuncular, earth mother. Its role is NOT to succour and
support. It is TO CONTROL and DEFEND. To think otherwise is perversion. THIS is
our prime duty: ‘SUPPPORT YOURSELF’. Crying out to Government for ‘support’ is
ALWAYS just some ghastly selfish THEFT, an insisting that one’s fellow men and
women OUGHT support you because you won’t support yourself. Whence comes this
‘owing’, this ‘debt’? I can understand it in relation to care for the elderly (perhaps)
as they (surely?) can be expected to have spent a lifetime working, maybe
building up some ‘social credit’ (but might they not also have been expected to
have put away a little for a rainy day – or just such a certain eventuality as
old age)? But the great majority of those who clamour for ‘support’ just want
to suck at the public teat because it is there and it is easy, while ‘work’ is
a four letter word best not discussed. They are ‘owed’ nothing. A debt presumes
a corresponding credit which they have NOT built up.
28/08/2013: Government is FORCE #2: Further to my post
of yesterday: Indeed the ‘great’ dependent unwashed clamourers have it the
wrong way around: having been raised on a lifetime diet of dependency, eg free
education, health care, welfare, public housing, all sorts of publicly provided
services and checks and balances, law and order, defence, museums, public
transport…the list is almost endless…THEY have a debt to REPAY: eg by service
to their society: by joining our defence forces, working for the dole,
caring for the disabled, child minding, cleaning working folks’ homes, or
etc…They have already been well paid for doing nought!
27/08/2013: Quote of the day: ‘Demanding we observe trivial distinctions
of “race” - rather than stress our common humanity - is itself racist. I just
wish some people claiming to hate racism didn’t actually insist on it.’ Andrew
Bolt.
27/08/2013: It AIN”T half hot, Mum: numerous
studies of Arctic ‘data indicated that after the termination of the glacial
period, temperatures steadily rose to a maximum of 2.5°C warmer than at present
during the Holocene Climatic Optimum (4,000 to 7,000 years ago). The Medieval
Warm Period (MWP) and Little Ice Age (LIA) were also observed in the record,
with temperatures 1°C warmer and 0.5-0.7°C cooler than at the time of their
writing, respectively. After the Little Ice Age, they report that temperatures
once again rose, but that they had “decreased during the last decades,” thereby
indicating that the MWP in this part of the Arctic was significantly warmer
than it was just before the turn of the century’: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/23/the-medieval-warm-period-in-the-arctic/#more-92205
26/08/2013: In the end, THIS IS what it comes down to;
one man is a gentleman, the other a self-opinionated krud who has never done
anything for anyone else other than ‘selfie’, and all too often tramples those
whom he considers ‘lesser’. Which kind of man do YOU think should be leader of
your country? http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/
26/08/2013: I am NOT in favour of melanoma, but I AM
opposed to State interference in our life choices. I think the Vic Govt’s
announced ban on solariums (without compensation! THIS IS TYRANNY!) is one of
the most unjust acts a Vic Govt has promulgated in a long while…The overall
lifetime risk of melanoma is about 2%. This presumably includes those with
‘bad’ behaviour (solariums, beach burning, etc) so the non-tanning number is
maybe lower, but we will use 2% as our base risk understanding that it is
likely high. The 5-year survival rate from these cancers (which by the
way tend to show up after the age 60) is 90+%. (AND a cure is just around the
corner). So a teenager has a lifetime chance of dying early from melanoma of
about 0.2%. (obviously MUCH less with the imminent cure!) A 50% increase to
this would raise this to 0.3%. An extra one in one thousand chance of
dying early from something likely to show up in old age -- is that "so,
so, so, so, so, so, so bad"? For some yes, for some no. That is what
individual choice is all about. Some would LIKE to have what we once described
as a ‘healthy tan’! Will there be a ban on going outdoors soon? Curiously I
understand that melanoma is higher in office workers than outdoors workers…
26/08/2013: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) The Gods of
the Copybook Headings (1919):
‘As it will be in the future, it was at the
birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social
Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns
to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wobbling
back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new
world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay
for his sins
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will
burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and
slaughter return!’
(NB The "copybook headings" to which the
title refers were proverbs or maxims, extolling virtues such as honesty or fair
dealing that were printed at the top of the pages of 19th-century British
students' special notebook pages, called copybooks. The school-children had to
write them by hand repeatedly down the page.)
http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_copybook.htm
25/08/2013: This is the go: always hated the smell of
the gym, and the very idea of exercise is, well, BORING – but a tab: ‘Yes.
Please’: http://www.gizmag.com/scripps-drug-sr9009-exercise-mimic/28651/
25/08/2013: About time anti-fracking nutjobs and
like-minded loonies repudiated the Industrial Revolution: http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/frackpic1.jpg?w=640
25/08/2013: YOU DECIDE: Would you rather watch Krud
and Annabel Crabb EAT (rather than deal with the ‘Syrian Crisis – as alleged)
OR watch: ‘The Hillbilly Slide And One Mad Coon’. No brainer, really: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8rnHXV7A8Q
24/08/2013: ‘Don’t mention ze poster’: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/10261658/Kevin-Rudd-commits-political-gaffe-as-he-is-pictured-in-front-of-Hitler.html
24/08/2013: I have to admit that one of the cruellest
crimes committed by our ‘emerald’ brothers and sisters has been the banning of
‘golden rice’ (amid other life-giving GM crops) which has led to the
unnecessary annual BLINDING of hundreds of thousands of children. The crop was donated
free to the world by its inventor (No, NOT Monsanto!) Read all about it here: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/gm-crops-don%27t-kill-kids-opposing-them-does.aspx What PUNISHMENT is deserved for folks who will intentionally blind
millions of children? I can think of SOME anyway!
24/08/2013: Cleaner air: who would have thought it
might lead to AGW? My own observations looking West up Parramatta Rd from
Sydney Uni attest to this. Between my earliest observations in the mid sixties
and when we left fro NZ in 1974 (at the time fearing imminent global
catastrophe I am shamed to remember) the distance I could identify a bus coming
along the road diminished by hundreds of metres. During the same period it
became impossible to ride a motorbike without glasses because of the sheer
amount of crap in the air getting in one’s eyes. I WAS surprised when I took
the children to the same spot in 2000 that I could once again see as far as I
had been able to in eg 1965. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/19/shocker-global-warming-may-simply-be-an-artifact-of-clean-air-laws/#more-91909
24/08/2013: This Greens’ attack ad is about as bad as
it gets (who would WANT to wake up beside these folk the next morning either?) Mind
you it says something about the intelligence of the ‘emerald folk’ that THEY
have to wait until the NEXT morning to get the election results everyone sat up
and waited for the night before. (Of course, in the case of the current
election, I suspect the result will be in by about tea time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14vBe-PrJ-E )
23/08/2013: WHO is the
woman hater: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/rudd_revealed/
23/08/2013: Sleeping with
the enemy: The Greens (in the pay of Big Oil & etc) do a deal with coal
magnate Clive Palmer. Such PRINCIPLED luvvies: http://www.news.com.au/national-news/federal-election/mining-magnate-clive-palmer-and-the-greens-in-election-deal/story-fnho52ip-1226699523115#ixzz2cQAEjSS9
23/08/2013: In a similar
vein the actress depicted in Labor’s attack ads is nothing like the woman she
portrays: instead in reality she lives in a posh house in ‘Paddo’ with her
doctor husband, expensive Spanish tiles, sci-fi dishwashers & etc: http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/bagging-tony-abbott-all-in-a-day8217s-work-for-actress-susannah-hardy/story-fni0cx12-1226700958998
23/08/2013: Rudd is
trailing his Liberal opponent (Bill Glasson) in his own seat by about 4% and is
avoiding debating HIM: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/22/kevin-rudd-trails-seat-griffith-poll
24/08/2013: And today it
got even worse with Liberal volunteers eager to rush to
23/08/2013: New oil
drilling technologies could increase the world’s petroleum supplies six-fold in
the coming years to 10.2 trillion barrels (about ten times what we’ve used so
far): http://qz.com/117504/new-drilling-technologies-could-give-us-so-much-oil-the-climate-wont-stand-a-chance/
22/08/2013: The Guardian’s Sophie McNeill talks to voters in
22/08/2013: Astonishing: ‘GLOBAL warming is causing apples to lose some of their
crunch but is also making them sweeter’, a study has found: http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/food/apples-losing-their-crunch-to-global-warming-study/story-fneuz8wn-1226698097349#ixzz2cMezpCyo
22/08/2013: Good Lord: Sea level has been FALLING the
last couple of years, so let’s explain this by saying it’s not because the
world has COOLED but that all the missing water fell on Australia (and stayed
there!): http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/20/climate_change_made_sea_levels_fall_in_2010_and_2011/
22/08/2013: Bleeding hearts might weep over Bradley
Manning’s fate, but I think he should have danced at the end of a rope
for his treason and the guys he caused to be killed in
24/08/2013: Or ‘
22/08/2013: Personally, if I had been Tony I would
have pushed or king-hit the posturing bore who continually strutted up and down
in front of him, motor-mouthing, interrupting, attempting to completely
dominate the ‘debate’, and just before being told to ‘Shut UP!’ was right
IN HIS FACE!
22/08/2013: Just guessing, but I’m thinking Obama
won’t see quite so much resemblance between his younger self and these young
thugs: Chancey
Luna, James Edwards & Michael Jones (whose future hopefully involves
potassium chloride) after they murdered Australian, Christopher Lane…
21/08/2013: Fair Point: Patrick Moynihan: ‘You are
entitled to your opinions, but not to your own facts.’ The anti-fracking
loonies ARE just making it up as they go along: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-five-myths-about-fracking-%281%29.aspx
21/08/2013: Such cogent points made by the English
anti-fracking nut-jobs: http://www.kernelmag.com/features/report/exclusive/4596/i-met-the-fracking-protesters/
21/08/2013: Matt Ridley very cogently destroys the
fear campaign that is AGW: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/28/matt-ridley-a-lukewarmers-ten-tests/
21/08/2013: The PROBLEM with
‘renewables’; they are going NOWHERE: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/14/lomborg-renewables-are-stuck-although-green-hopes-keep-rising/
21/08/2013: New word for the day: PROTIST = eukaryotic
microorganism: in an interesting article explaining the dangers of chemophobia
(which is certainly a widesperead malady): http://www.sciencecodex.com/chemophobia_shouldnt_be_on_the_menu-117586
20/08/2013: And NOW: Time for some REAL fairy stories:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/05/five-hundred-fairytales-discovered-germany Here’s one: The Turnip Princess: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/05/turnip-princess-discovered-fairytale Can’t wait for some more translations…
20/08/2013: In the ONE month since Krud announced the
‘PNG Solution’ 2764 illegal boat migrants have arrived. That would make 33,168
for a full calendar year or 99 per day. THIS is a SOLUTION?
20/08/2013: Maurice Newman, former chairman of the
Australian Securities Exchange, warns against falling for a scare campaign
against cuts to government spending: ‘After the 2010 election, prime minister
Julia Gillard expanded Kevin Rudd’s agenda. The people-smuggling industry,
climate change complex, trade union movement and public service, which expanded
by 13,000 full-time positions, enjoyed enhanced patronage at great expense to
the wider population. Indeed, to pay for these ideological flights of fancy,
Australians have picked up an open-ended tab currently running at more than
$13,000 per person. That’s from zero in six years. For a family of four, this
is equivalent to an unwanted debt of more than $52,000 with little tangible to
offset for it. True, ...
20/08/2013: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are:
‘Pestilence, War, Famine & Death’. Modern society & science have done
much to banish three out of four of them, but WAR still looms as ever more
terrifying. AND I still maintain that the roots of war lie in BELIEF. If we can
rid ourself of this pestilential folly, and make people far more rational, I
think the dangers war will recede. Of course there will have to be far more
fact and logic based education: Science, History, Mathematics, etc and we will
have to rid ourselves of all those ideological faculties: women’s studies,
human rights, politics…you get the point!
20/08/2013: FAR too many Victorian women murdered this
year by ‘parolees’. Let’s ‘bite the bullet’ (sic) on this one. Harvesting these
guys for organs could have saved 30+ lives already this year. (Hopefully) they
will spend the rest of their lives in gaol anyway. Instead, let’s at least give
them the option of voluntary euthanasia and organ donation – if you cannot come
at a compulsory death sentence. Many of these guys attempt (or succeed at)
suicide in gaol anyway, which is a needless waste of the lives of others who
could have been saved with their organs.
20/08/2013: Some examples: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/evil-is-free-to-walk-our-streets/story-fni0ffxg-1226668447141
20/08/2013: NBN discovers that it has ‘lost’
another $5 BILLION! Why worry? It’s only money! AND Malcolm Turnbull says
Albanese is sitting on a report which shows NBN cost is blowing out to $94
billion (from $37!). This report should certainly be released BEFORE the
election so that voters can decide whether they DO want such an expensive
scheme – even if it may be (perhaps, still, at the moment) technically
superior… http://www.afr.com/p/technology/contractor_demands_cause_billion_2mtA80DzIsfpCsngike2aI
19/08/2013: The Climate Commission says this morning
that Tony has a few million deficit in his ‘climate policy’. Oh Dear…Well, it
won’t be hard to find the savings to FIX that. I note that
19/08/2013: Newspoll at 54:46 this morning! COME ON
folks. You can do better than that! 60:40 is a much better number;
19/08/2013: If architects, designers, builders,
electricians etc knew anything at all about what we actually use a house for,
there would be NO sales of extension cords – yet is there ANYONE who does NOT
own at least a dozen of them? The Space Goat has more work to do yet!
19/08/2013: This IS a problem: There are ‘dozens of
Muslim Brotherhood sympathisers in
19/08/2013: Quote of the day: Greg Sheridan: ‘There
are things people dislike about Abbott, but he is always the same man. In a
decade as a minister and four years as opposition leader, there are no stories
of mistreating staff, no stewardesses in tears. There is one episode in
Abbott’s life I witnessed but don’t often recount because my own role was so
utterly unheroic. In 1977, Abbott and I were lying on the sand at a surf beach
some distance out of
19/08/2013: It is difficult to even IMAGINE Krud
braving an ocean rip to save another person - though not so hard to
imagine him TALKING about it at some length: just as he recently revealed that not
only had he gone 'beyond the wire' in Afghanistan but had also served in the
Kokoda campaign. What an astonishing blimp! Character WILL out!
18/08/2013: Labor take note: Another clownwards
spiral: A Chinese zoo's supposed "African lion" was exposed as a
fraud when the dog used as a substitute started barking: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/08/15/china-zoo-under-fire-for-disguising-dog-as-lion/
18/08/2013: Hot babes: http://blogs.news.com.au/images/uploads/billtoon.png & http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/sexy_gate_enough_already/
18/08/2013: Greens withering on the vine: the major
parties (+ Xenophon, & Katter etc) are preferencing against them already in
SA & Qld. (So, thankfully: GOODBYE Hanson-Young - & your childish art
& other tantrums!) This strategy SHOULD be implemented nation-wide so
that we will be rid of them. NB, without gaining a percentage large enough to
form a ‘quota’ ensuring they take the fifth Senate seat in each state, they
have to gain ‘surplus’ portions of the quotas of others (particularly the major
parties), so that if everyone else preferences against them they will (after
the next but one election) have DESERVEDLY disappeared from the political
landscape. And LONG SINCE TIME – we cannot afford such a disastrous destructive
menace in our political system as these (ex?) communists represent! But Labor
will squib on this just because they ARE their commie mates!
18/08/2013: Babies are being made into soup in
18/08/2013: A poll to decide what
the next ‘new’ term for ‘global warming’ should be (now that ‘carbon pollution’
has become ‘old hat’). ‘Climageddon’ is nice. Also ‘Irritable Climate Sydrome’.
There should be a prize for the best. Maybe ‘Chicken Little Effect’, ‘The Green
Disease’… http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/15/lexicon-shift-alert-global-warming-gets-another-name-change/#more-91685
18/08/2013: Brain Activity Shows
Basis of Near-Death Experiences (Forget religion!): http://www.newsmax.com/SciTech/Science-US-psychology-research/2013/08/12/id/519971
17/08/2013: SEX appeal is not such
a bad thing apparently. Liberal candidate Fiona Scott is polling 60:40 in David
Bradbury’s Western Sydney Labor marginal of Lindsay. Across the country similar
swings are happening, eg in Coorangamite in Victoria, Aston, Bennelong, Forde
& etc. This is turning into a rout. They WILL lose over 20 seats, quite
possibly 40. Labor desperately needed a NEW leader. Trouble is, ALL the decent
folk resigned or refused to serve under Krud. Some are currently on holiday:
Combet in
17/08/2013: Great torch. Della
bought me one for my birthday: Max 260 lumens. Weight 55 grams (with battery,
78 with headband too). A great little torch. Highly recommended. US$69 inc
freight: http://www.zebralight.com/H502w-AA-Flood-Headlamp-Neutral-White_p_108.html
17/08/2013: The interesting adventures
of Stavros ‘Chicken’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eZIJhVRN4w
16/08/2013: What Labor MPs
deservedly think of Rudd’s gutlessness in not preferencing the Greens last: ‘What have the greens given us apart
from electoral Armageddon…If we do any dirty deals with them we might as well
give ourselves Ebola as well. And Kevin should be taking the lead on this’ http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/labor-seeing-red-as-kevin-rudd-woos-greens/story-fni0cx12-1226697415884
Meanwhile his star is sinking slowly in the West (Sydney) where Labor is set to
lose a swag of seats: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/rudd_now_struggling_to_stop_a_gillard_sized_loss_in_nsw/
And we start to see what Tony will (AT LAST) do to STOP THE BOATS. THIS will
work: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/coalition_to_deny_rewards_to_our_30000_asylum_seekers/
16/08/2013: Bad news this morning: You KNOW you’re
over the hill when this link appears on your newsfeed: http://www.finalexpensesinsurance.com.au/
16/08/2013: Jason John Dinsley: Another bastard deserving
ONLY to be made into spare parts. When will we STOP this? http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/legal-quirk-allowed-parolee-jason-dinsley-to-rape-and-kill/story-fni0ffnk-1226697826615
16/08/2013: LED Light Globes UPDATE: New Phillips
13watt 1055 lumen available at Bunnings are GREAT (and more than 50% brighter
then the previous model though only using one extra watt). $20. NO 20+ watt CFL
ever worked as well as this. Highly recommended.
15/08/2013: Kids are having fun with a new App on
their ‘smart’ phones which allows them to remotely adjust television sets &
etc: turning off security cameras at shopping centres, Musak & etc. Trouble
is it won’t be long before they graduate to being able to adjust hearing aids
remotely, turn off pacemakers, open garage doors, turn off car ignition systems
on the freeway, or aircraft auto-pilots & etc. I suspect this technology
will soon be banned.
15/08/2013: PEFO shows Government debt will breach
(the agreed limit of) $300 BILLION in Dec this year. Great economics from guys
who started with a $60 bilion SURPLUS. The NBN is also exploding, but Albanese
will not release the latest figures which clearly show that there is a cost
blowout there of roughly DOUBLE ($94 BILLION). Simultaneously, people are
abandoning their home phone lines in droves (Something like 250,000 gone in the
last year alone), so where is the revenue FROM the NBN going to come?
15/08/2013: VERY interesting… http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/13/new-peer-reviewed-paper-shows-only-36-of-geoscientists-and-engineers-believe-in-agw/
14/08/2013: GREAT ad. Sure DOES bring tears to the
eyes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D3rwe-386c
14/08/2013: THANK GOODNESS for THIS. Let’s hope Labor
comes to its sense and does the same. This Green EVIL must end: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/special-features/tony-abbott-set-to-banish-greens-from-the-lower-house-of-parliament-by-preferencing-them-behind-labortony-abbott-to-banish-the-greens-from-the-lower-house/story-fnho52jj-1226696675037
14/08/2013: Bleeding heart racist ‘aboriginal’ camp
followers are always opining about how BAD it is to be black in Oz today. What
nonsense fellas. Get a life! Get an education! Get a job! Try being black in
12/08/2013: ASYLUM seekers have found their own PNG
Solution with two Somalis the latest to sail from
12/08/2013: DEATH and THIS come to us all, I guess. I am
tidying up the garage and shed, things which I can well understand the reasons
for never having had time to do in the past. I will NOT be making painted
backboards with outlines of all my tools to festoon the walls with. I have
always delighted breaking into the sheds of those anal people who delight in
such things, and hanging all their tools in the wrong places! I only hope
my next trick is not to go through all the old photo albums and annotate them.
Such activities almost always in my experience indicate a fatal boredom, and
such folks as engage in them are usually well on the way out…SO, perhaps I will
find something else, interesting, to do TODAY…
12/08/2013: HERE is another serial rapist (Gary John
Barker, aka Gary Collingwood) set free to pillage again (http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/serial-rapist-strikes-months-after-prison-release/story-fni0fee2-1226694858752). I have a view which I describe as ‘moral economics’. This holds that
such folks ought to recompense society for their crimes (instead of adding
further costs TO society). So, for example, if such folks are killed and
harvested for their organs, each death of such guilty bastards can give life to
MANY innocents. In this way they repay their debt WITH INTEREST! This
rebalancing of moral debts is what I mean by ‘moral economics’. Again, it is
astonishing to me that we should spend upwards of $100,000 pa rewarding such
scum with LIFE (eg in prison) when that money could be spent rewarding the
INNOCENT with life, eg by paying for their cancer therapy, operations &
etc, when at the moment we are rewarding the innocent with DEATH. To continue to
REWARD THE GUILTY AND PUNISH THE INNOCENT is just so clearly WRONG! If you have
done EVIL, you should be made to repay this debt (not so much with punishment,
though I have no objection if such folks suffer TOO), but by DOING GOOD! Surely
we have already decided (by incarcerating such people and denying them physical
freedom) that their BODY is the property of society, to be used for the BEST
purposes society can devise?
11/08/2013: Tony was SO much better than Krud who is
now definitely TOAST!
11/08/2013: YES: http://blogs.news.com.au/images/uploads/ruddad1.jpg
11/08/2013: About ‘oaths’ and ‘words’: Marriage as an
institution is redolent with many ancient, tested practices such as the
swearing of oaths. Traditionally oaths are/were sworn on that which you hold
most sacred – in this case and many others that meant ‘on your life’! That is
the origin of the phrase ‘Till death us do part’. You are swearing ‘on your
life’. ie ‘on pain of death’ to be TRUE to your WORD: in this case, ‘I DO’!
Many folks today want to hijack or dilute these ancient customs. This is MOST
unwise.
11/08/2013: In another example, a ‘naturalised’
citizen is BETTER than one simply ‘born and raised’ because the former HAS
sworn a binding oath. Many older Australians swore these oaths at the beginning
of every school day - though I doubt many under about forty have EVER sworn
fidelity to their country which has given them so much. Too many have NO
LOYALTY, but only expectations that their country will PROVIDE for them:
nothing about DUTY enters their heads at all. The daily oaths my generation
swore spoke ONLY of our duties (‘I honour…I salute the flag’ etc) and NOTHING
of our entitlements. ‘Entitlements’ are always provided by the hard work of our
fellow citizens: they are always CHARITY. A citizen should avoid (on their
life) becoming a recipient of charity. Similarly, the swearing of an oath (on
your life) means that you hold that which you are swearing on more precious
THAN your life. New citizens have thought carefully about this. Old citizens
should too. We do right to honour our soldiers who have placed their lives
between us and our enemies. Those who think otherwise are quislings and
traitors, never citizens. Citizenship should be revokable, and ostracism should
accompany its revocation.
11/08/2013: Bizarre Fact: The SA Premier, MR Jay
Wetherill is Penny Wong’s Ex! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Weatherill
11/08/2013: Clearly, Ju-Liar, Tim Flannery and Al Gore
are all true believers in climate change as they have all bought expensive
houses within a stone’s throw from the beach! http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/changing_her_ways/
10/08/2013: THIS is a really GREAT story: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/why_we_do_love_migrants/
10/08/2013: Little Bo Peep would not have lost THESE
beauties. Perhaps a niche market we could exploit as retired sheep farmers? http://www.news.com.au/technology/sci-tech/glow-in-the-dark-sheep/story-fn5fsgyc-1226631407233
10/08/2013: I noticed yesterday that Krud’s
democratisation of the ALP does not extend to allowing the membership to
pre-select the potential ALP Member for Forde! The man is SUCH a liar, cheat
and humbug. Can’t wait until he is GONE. Happily Nielsen has it at Liberal
52-Labor 48% this morning, so things are moving in the RIGHT direction! 'Souffles do not rise twice' - A
Bolt. In a major turnaround since July, 47 per cent of voters now rate Mr
Abbott as more trustworthy than Mr Rudd.
10/08/2013: The GOOD NEWS is she WILL, ‘when I’m 64’!
10/08/2013: As Della already posted we camped at
beautiful Blond Bay, Gippsland on Tuesday night & at the Glasshouse, Lake
Tyers on Wednesday night. Winter is always the BEST time for camping as it is
solitary and you can have a warm fire if you want (our camper has a as heater,
so we are always toasty!) Most of the night we were lullabied by swan song: it
is only the Northern Hemisphere swans who are mute (and give voice reputedly only
in the moment of their deaths). Ours have many interesting vocalisations… AND the dogs
bailed a hog deer not twenty yards from our caravan... AND, the deer
BARKED back like dogs too!
10/08/2013: For nearly all of the ‘history’ of life on
earth CO2 percentages have been MANY TIMES what they are now. Only one period
(quite recently, when life almost stopped!) had a lower level. So, RELAX: http://s90.photobucket.com/user/dhm1353/media/GeoCO2.png.html
09/08/2013: Green Deaths per annum amount to millions
worldwide: Malaria (where the unnecessary & illegitimate ban on DDT cost
over a million lives pa for thirty+ years), support for biofuels (200,000+ pa
from starvation as we burn food rather than allow the poor to eat it),
opposition to food irradiation (100s of 1000s pa from food poisoning pa),
opposition to nuclear power (deaths from radon, Carbon 14, coal mining
etc), opposition to GM crops, diversion of money (from eg health, shelter,
food) to global warming ‘mitigation’, opposition to Western farming methods
(& especially in the Third World = mass starvation), support for national
parks before people…These folk are simply the most evil bastards EVER (making
Stalin, Hitler, Mao etc look like patsies). AND it is not just people whom the
greens murder in their millions. Animals and plants are destroyed by their
policies in their billions: millions of hectares have been destroyed to make
way for palm oil plantations and generally to grow ‘Biofuels’. Other millions
of hectares are routinely destroyed by wildfires because of their insistence on
a completely ‘hands off’ approach to forest management. At the same time vast
numbers of creatures are destroyed by introduced vermin such as foxes, cats,
pigs which they will not allow to be shot. Add millions of wildlife deaths pa
from windfarms and from paving over land with solar collectors & etc…
Astonishing that 8% of voters say they will still vote for their policies. How can
so many folk fail to be able to distinguish between good and evil?
09/08/2013: WONDERFUL headlines I have known,
including ‘Whitstable
Mum in Custard Shortage’, ‘Oven removed from home’, ‘No flood warnings for
North Somerset’, ‘Smug swans attack Dalmatian’, ‘Mystery of wheelchair left in
Shoreham pub’, ‘Road stays open’, ‘Man Found Nailed To Bench’, ‘Elderly
terrified by food fight’, ‘Woman found in Germany’, ‘Guides delighted with
their rubbish award’, ‘Goldfish catch sparks debate’, ‘Youth Found In Phone Box
With Fork’, ‘Cat hops into delivery van’ ‘Rudd tries to buy voters’ love with
borrowed billions’, and many others… http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/node/47913
06/08/2013: Meanwhile the NDIS looks set to blow out
by at least 50% (from $15 billion pa to at least $22 – as much as we spend on
Defence!). Bemused service providers in both
06/08/2013: Let’s not have this happen to us: http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/uploads/hiroshima-detroit-lesson.jpg
06/08/2013: We must beware the Fifth Column which is
so rapidly growing within us: ‘Per capita, the Islamic community is sending
three terrorists off to fight with Islamist groups for every soldier the rest
of this country sends overseas to wage war against them…Later this year,
Australia will withdraw most of its troops from Afghanistan…the Islamic
population in Australia has doubled during this war.” Presently they represent
2.2% of the population having doubled in less than a decade. At the current
rate of growth they will be the majority in about FIFTY years (2 to the sixth
power = 64; 6 x 10 = 60). Some European countries (eg
05/08/2013: Commonwealth receipts as a percentage of
GDP ($1379 billion) are expected to be 0.4 per cent ($5.5 billion) higher this
financial year than last, spending as a percentage of GDP has risen two and a
half times that: an even larger rise than at the height of Kevin Rudd’s
stimulus. I repeat: ‘There will never be a surplus under a Government I lead’.
05/08/2013: Meanwhile in
05/08/2013: The ‘Decline of the West’ – something I
have long been concerned about. THIS looks like a very good read about the
topic by renowned historian Niall Ferguson: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-great-degeneration-niall-ferguson/1113833127?ean=9781594205453
05/08/2013: Well I WAS WRONG. Clearly Krud believes it
is now as good as it gets. Reachtel (taken AFTER the announcement) has it
Coalition 52: Labor 48%. Newspoll this morning has exactly the same figures.
Greens at just over 8% still look like a party in decline (Thank Gaia!). Katter
at 1.4 and Palmer at 1.8 are interesting and might make for some excitement in
04/08/2013: Journos have been banging on all weekend
that Krud will call Sept 7. Only if Monday morning’s poll puts him in a hugely
winning position; otherwise he is desperate to attend the G20. Think late Oct
or even Nov. He is lovin’ bein’ the man! However, the 2010 election was held on
21 Aug, so we are already two weeks overdue with a Sept 7 date. The earliest he
will go after that is Sept 21 (FOUR WEEKS LATE). See how this leaves Labor open
to valid the criticism of desperately (and illegitimately) hanging on to
power…PS: an election can only be held on a Saturday at least 33 days after it
is called – Sept 7 is now the earliest date (the latest possible date is Nov 30
– so don’t hold your breath!): http://www.aec.gov.au/faqs/Elections.htm
04/08/2013: ‘There will never be a surplus under a
Government I lead’: Krud’s ‘Swan Song’? How did they lose ANOTHER $30 billion
dollars in just ONE MONTH? ALL the figures are extremely dodgy, no wonder at
all coming from this most duplicitous of human beings: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/there_will_be_no_surplus_under_a_government_rudd_leads/
04/08/2013: Practically everything you ever wanted to
know about hammock camping (plus a little more): http://theultimatehang.com/archives/
04/08/2013: Ain’t it so: ‘Put bluntly, failure
attracts more money than success. Politically, failure becomes a reason to
demand more money’, (Thomas Sowell, http://www.tsowell.com/speducat.html ) Hence the need for Gonskis, the NDIS, the PNG ‘solution’, the ‘new
car industry plan, more money for ‘renewables’, Depts of ‘indigenous’ affairs
& so on ad nauseum… Meanwhile (eg) in the
04/08/2013: The greatest food in human history: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_greatest_food_human_history_5bikMtD5ZJ50x1KMCyGfTJ
04/08/2013: PS: Given youth unemployment just hit
27.3% I would have thought we could use a few more Maccas (and the like) so I
have little sympathy for the bizarre protesters at Tecoma!
i
03/08/2013: Couldn’t agree more: http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2013/08/the-sanctimonious-barbarism-of-mutilating-little-girls-and-the-creed-that-drives-it-have-no-place-on.html
03/08/2013: TOP TIP: You know how you can’t cut
through the roots of trees with a chain saw as it goes immediately blunt when
the chain hits dirt? If you want to cut a tree right down to the ground (or
below) a sabre saw is the answer (eg http://www.klika.com.au/trade/cordless-tools/makita/makita-cordless-reciprocating-saw-bjr182.html?gclid=CPnHn8Ps2rgCFSFgpgodpi4AVw) . PS: I have found my cordless Makita angle grinder to be just about
the best thing I have ever had and strongly recommend one for your beloved’s
Xmas pressie. PPS: Some brands of cordless sabre saws take a pole attachment
which would be good for tree pruning.
03/08/2013: I notice Krud has appointed THREE new 457
Visa folk to head his re-election team. The guy is such a humbug: Tom McMahon,
the former executive director of the Democratic National Committee, Joon Kim of
the consulting firm New Partners and British social media expert, Matthew
McGregor, will be part of Mr Rudd’s election campaign team for 2013.
02/08/2013: The pencil is mightier than the sword: http://directorblue.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/the-progressive-and-pencil.html
02/08/2013: TOP Environmental stories: the Neo Nazis
get all the hot chicks (& best underwear!), and Al Gore’s environmentally
sensitive office is the most energy inefficient in
02/08/2013: Now here is a neat gift for the executive
geek, Tetris Lights: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f034/
02/08/2013: Taxing smokers (I include excise
generally) is unfair and discriminatory. It is targeting the poorest with the
highest levels of taxation and making them pay the bulk of (eg everyone’s
health care) costs whilst simultaneously discriminating against them in the
provision of services. I think the Opposition should announce that it will
abolish excise altogether and maybe make up the difference by increasing GST or
income taxes which are a much fairer revenue measure. I have long since written
to every Opposition member with this suggestion but received the usual silence
in reply. NB I do not smoke.
01/08/2013: Just LOVE Dr Google who has shown me how
to cure the incurable (computer invisible) engine problem in our new TD5
Defender which now goes like a rocket!
01/08/2013: AND should you need to make your own
machine gun out of those stray plumbing fittings in the garage (surely a DIY
must have?), this guy has some excellent plans (I would be careful about
downloading them though…): http://thehomegunsmith.com/index.shtml
01/08/2013: If you happen to need a lock pick (and who
des NOT?) these folks have them. Their lock pick gun @ $69.95 would make lovely
gift for any of your outlaw relatives: http://www.gadgetsdirect.com.au/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=160
01/08/2013: These folks have some pretty neat stuff,
suitable for presents (NOT a hint), survival & etc, eg miniature compasses
& signalling mirrors, springers for fishing, a great range of knives -
& this is ‘peanut lighter: http://www.countycomm.com/splitpea.html
31/07/2013: Take an eight-minute break to restore your
faith in humankind: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiLDMBDPCEY
31/07/2013: Back from the DEAD: the massive heart
attack which has kept me silent for a couple of days turned out to be a freaky
infection on the outside of my heart now (hopefully) completely cured by antibiotics…still
a very scary and bizarre experience especially coming as it did on the 50th
anniversary of my own father’s death!
31/07/2013: Mind you, I was more than a little
sceptical of the hospital giving me Endone for the pain something surely more
suitable for euthenasia!
31/07/2013: Hard to believe, but there you go... <iframe
src="https://www.facebook.com/video/embed?video_id=637858169559064"
width="320" height="240"
frameborder="0"></iframe>
31/07/2013: Snuffy the seal’s triumphant return to the
sea (goes wrong!) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_i3PPe3i9Y
28/07/2013: "Perhaps the essence of the Liberal outlook
could be summed up in a new decalogue, not intended to replace the old one but
only to supplement it. The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish
to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:
1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.
2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by
concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.
3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure
to succeed.
4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be
from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and
not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and
illusory.
5. Have no respect for the authority of others, for
there are always contrary authorities to be found.
6. Do not use power to suppress opinions you think
pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
7. Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every
opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
8. Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in
passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former
implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
9. Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is
inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
10. Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who
live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.
Bertrand Russell
(18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970)
28/07/2013: Pie in the sky: Chinese authorities shoot
down world's first cake drones
The authorities in
28/07/2013:
28/07/2013: Unexpected consequences: If this proves to
be true then the medical establishment’s injunction against salt intake must be
leading to a reduction of intelligence – I suspect this has already happened,
as evidenced by the increase in credulity amongst mung bean munchers and other
intellectually challenged greenies: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/07/23/how-adding-iodine-to-salt-boosted-americans-iq/#.UfBcJW33zJV Interestingly, not everyone is in favour of reducing salt intake: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/7/prweb10950859.htm
27/07/2013: Could Percy have been made to confess
using Sodium Pentothal? Could Camilleri? Could Dupas? Could Milat? Could
Brady?...Should we find out? There ARE lots of dreadful unsolved crimes out
there, and many grieving relatives longing for closure…
27/07/2013: Quote of the day: Mark Awerbuch: ‘Many of those
who gravitate to the Left have failed to achieve success in life and seek
solace in providing succour to a side of politics willing to mitigate their
failure by punishing those who have succeeded. We understand, but it is
tiresome’.
28/07/2013: 'Success' could be as little as the
ability to get up in the morning, shower, dress in clean clothes and be at a
'workplace' at a designated time...and anything moving upwards from there. We
have OVER 1.5 million folks on the public trough who can't 'succeed' at that
most simple of tasks - YET THEY VOTE - you can guess what side of politics they
vote for!
26/07/2013: Since Wednesday night when Krud announced
his
28/07/2013: CORRECTION: Latest figure indicate 1260
arrived in the 7 days, quite an increase in the ‘usual’ average of 100/day!
26/07/2013: Remembering Otis Redding… http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/the-songs-otis-redding-could-have-sung/278007/
26/07/2013: Like: BJORN LOMBORG: the environmentalist
whom the ‘climate crazies’ love to hate: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/20/lomborg-lets-get-our-priorities-right/#more-90194
26/07/2013: Astonishing: the (very temporary) Federal
Treasurer, Chris Bowen encouraging people to evade tax ( a gaolable offence):
"Within the first 12-month period the individual concerned can pick the
three months they want to maximise their chances of getting the maximum tax
concession ... we would like some evidence that the car is being used for
business purposes." http://www.news.com.au/national-news/salary-packaging-and-car-fleet-representative-leigh-penberthy-corners-prime-minister-to-extract-meeting-promise/story-fncynjr2-1226684649855#ixzz2a0XGtw14
25/07/2013: EVEN MORE good news: Scientists have
managed to turn off the defective chromosome which causes Downes Syndrome. The
future of GM is SO wonderful: http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-turn-off-down-s-syndrome-genes-1.13406
25/07/2013: MORE good news: the world is awash with
food and the situation is likely to get even better: http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/the-age-of-plenty http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home-graph_4.jpg
25/07/2013: ‘Today I give sincere thanks to Prince
William and his lovely wife Kate for naming their baby son Kevin Michael in my
honour. They’re bonza people. A most appropriate gesture that’s for sure. I
can’t wait to take a selfie of yours truly and bonnie prince Kevin Michael.
We’re cooking with gas now. That’s a fair shake of the sauce bottle: imagine
King Kevin Michael Windsor with Prime Minister for Life Kevin Michael Rudd!
I’ve got to zip’.
25/07/2013: It WAS just such an astonishing (not to
mention its racism incitement) thing for a president to say (ie that 35 years
ago he could have BEEN Trayvon). So, does this mean that Obama’s past includes
king-hitting guys, sitting on their chests and smashing their heads against the
sidewalk (as Trayvon was PROVEN to be doing)? Who would NOT have blown him away
in such circumstances? He was apparently 4” taller than Zimmerman: we have only
been shown photos of a much younger Trayvon, not the nasty hulk Z shot. Where
DO folks GET these awful names anyway: ‘Trayvon’ – I note that the late
hooligan’s mother’s name is ‘Tracey’ – perhaps we should have called our kids
‘Stedell’ or ‘Dellstee’? This MAY be worse than naming your kids after the
latest sitcom – apparently there has been a rash of ‘Kaleesis’ after ‘Game of Thrones’!
What a heartbreak old world… http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2013/07/obama-whistles-up-up-a-lynch-mob
25/07/2013: ONLY 145 folks in the
25/07/2013: CORRECTION: 60 folk have been left on
24/07/2013: WHAT a STUNNING photograph: our solar
system is brilliant – and look how small all our concerns really ARE (Earth
& Moon arrowed): http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/saturn_earth_cassini.jpg?w=640&h=419
24/07/2013: Your taxes at work: “...Three years of
improvisation, research, discussion and imaginings resulted in a chimerical
narrative about the Hindu deity travelling to Germany to reclaim the swastika,
an ancient Sanskrit symbol, from the Nazis. ‘We sat on that storyline for about
a year, thinking there is no way that a small theatre company from Geelong made
up of six actors with intellectual disabilities can re-write European history…”
http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/coming-soon-muhammad-versus-tall.html
24/07/2013: Meanwhile NBN contractors are demanding
they be paid 40% more pushing the total cost to over & $70 billion – one
more huge black hole in the budget to join all those already there. This guy
Krud can REALLY manage!
24/07/2013: As if it was not bad enough PNG is planning
to ban Islam, but also have huge penalties against homosexuality (eg 14 years
gaol) so who knows what penalties these people would face there:
http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013/men-who-were-raped-kept-in-same-facilities-as-assailants-former-guard-20130723-2qhie.html#ixzz2Zt2merax
23/07/2013: I notice PNG are considering voting to ban
Islam. This could prove interesting... http://cathnews.co.nz/2013/07/19/catholics-oppose-proposal-to-ban-non-christian-religions-in-png/
23/07/2013: ‘Whatever happened to the rangakanga,
The rangakanga caused much anger,
Send him to the donga to become a sanga,
And into the slammer with the awful ranga!’
23/07/2013: It is interesting that Walmart (@ 25:1)
has many more applications per vacancy than
23/07/2013: It's official: Krud apogee passed...going
down. Newspoll this morning: Coalition 52: Labor 48. My guess is his ego will
ensure he will hang on as long as he can as he enjoys being 'the man':
Come ON November!
23/07/2013: It's a boy! No urgency to change the
constitution this CENTURY after all with THREE kings now in line!
23/07/2013: Just wondering how (well?) Moslem illegal
immigrants will enjoy PNG’s ‘traditional’ dish of ‘long pig’… Some of them may
well find out! Today’s mystery: ‘Would Moslem ‘long pig’ be halal?’
23/07/2013: Today’s OTHER great mystery: Don’t forget
the KANGAROO! What ever HAPPENED to the rangakanga?
22/07/2013: Here are just a few of PNG’s new citizens.
They are welcome to them…Perhaps machine gunning wasn’t such a bad idea after
all…http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2013/07/some-great-aussies-live-on-christmas-island-meet-a-dead-set-patriot-shaz-with-the-telephoto-lens.html
22/07/2013: It becomes ore obvious by the day why half
of the ALP hate him…and Tony Burke – if Krud had changed the policy to sinking
the boats and machine gunning the occupants in the water (as the Japanese used
to do so charmingly to us), Krud & Burke could put a positive spin on it…
21/07/2013: The trouble
with sacred cows is they turn out to be such bum steers!
22/07/2013: ‘In 1936, aged 24, (Alan) Turing wrote: “We
may now construct a machine to do the work of this computer.” It makes no sense
today, but that’s because of what Turing wrought. In 1933 a computer was a
person, usually a woman, who knew how to compute.’ This was the man who broke
the ‘Enigma’ code (there is an excellent film of that name), but he was also a
great scientist. So great was his contribution to society that Henry VIII MAY
have been wrong to declare that homosexuals should be ‘boiled in oil’ (the
traditional punishment – but I don’t wish to be hasty about this)! Nonetheless
his homosexuality led to his death. The British Parliament are debating a
‘pardon’ for him. (PS ‘are’ IS correct in this case). An interesting article
here: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/alan-turing,-a-great-scientist.aspx
22/07/2013: Like: BJORN LOMBORG: the environmentalist
whom the ‘climate crazies’ love to hate: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/20/lomborg-lets-get-our-priorities-right/#more-90194
22/07/2013: APOLLO 11! Still thrills me 44 years
later. These WERE the rocket engines which took those three brave men to the
moon back when
22/07/2013: Cost of Howard’s ‘Pacific Solution; $300
million over 6 years = $50 million per year. Cost of Krud & Ju-Liar’s
illegal immigrants = BILLIONS each year (AND GETTING WORSE) Axe this clown!
22/07/2013: ‘Drab, pietistic uniformity is the curse
of the collectivist age. Today, with a fearful and unanimously acquiescent
docility, the hive mind tediously hums the Party Line, now rebranded
“consensus”. Imagination, initiative, inquiry, inspiration, intuition and
invention are not merely discouraged but hated. Individuality in any form is
not merely loathed but punished.’ Lord Monckton. A VERY important essay. DO
find time to read it through: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2013/04/the-triumph-of-the-individual-over-the-hive-mind
21/07/2013: Can’t find any
Government waste to cut? Read on; this is actually TRUE: ‘LABOR'S former climate change department didn't know
whether it was hiring or firing before the agency itself was sacked. The
abandoned stand-alone climate change bureaucracy spent $2.2 million sacking 49
public servants in the months before it was swallowed by another government
department in March. But figures show the agency also hired 62 people in the
same period before the merger, with the new salaries estimated to cost up to $5
million annually - based on average public sector wages. After the merger, the
department changed tack again and embarked on another savings drive and made 12
staff as redundant at cost of $555,000’. http://www.news.com.au/national-news/disbanded-climate-change-department-defends-cutting-staff-at-the-same-time-it-was-hiring/story-fncynjr2-1226681614995
21/07/2013: THIS is art #2: And YOU said there could
be no possible Government savings: Well how about this: The Australia Council
has awarded $38,000 to a lady named Linda Dement (I kid you not) for
photographing herself having sex with a skinned rabbit: http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/a-poultry-sum-for-talent-such-as-this.html
21/07/2013: Quote of the day: Lord Monckton: ‘A
governing party incapable of balancing the books should be automatically
ejected from office and debarred from standing in the consequent general
election.’ Hear, hear!
20/07/2013:
20/07/2013: Illegal immigrant boat arrivals have been
averaging OVER 100/day. In just ONE MONTH we will exceed the 3,000 projected to
go to
20/07/2013: VERY disturbing reflections. We all guilt-trip
about whether we are/were ‘good parents’…It’s a simple question really: ‘Do we
spend enough time WITH the kids?’ http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/why_virtual_parenting_raises_virtual_children/
20/07/2013: THANK YOU Miranda: What a GREAT Bio: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/mirandadevine/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/a_true_giant_of_this_nation/
20/07/2013: HOW he will be remembered, (or best
forgotten): ‘Kevni of the thought bubble’! East
20/07/2013: Three years ago (after she had backstabbed
Krud) Ju-Liar had three important to-dos before she could call an election:
carbon, illegals, mining tax. After he backstabbed HER, Krud obviously had the
same list: IF YOU BELIEVE HIM ANY MORE THAN YOU SHOULD HAVE BELIEVED HER,
YOU’RE A BLOODY IDIOT!
19/07/2013: Great unanswered questions of our time
(esp. with Will & Kate's babe imminent - indeed overdue; how dare it keep
us waiting. PS I predict a boy to deconstruct all the inheritance stuff which
will then be three generations away): 'Did Jules finish the kangaroo?'
19/07/2013: Fair Point, Tim Blair: Last night’s State
of
19/07/2013: Greg is right: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/zeg/2013/07/oh-brother
19/07/2013: The dominoes are falling here, REALLY: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1QtdPfz_faM
19/07/2013: PREDICTION: the greenies will love this
one – it may even become compulsory: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/video-urinepowered-mobile-phone-charger-lets-you-spend-a-penny-to-make-a-call-8713564.html
19/07/2013: Krud’s APOGEE has been reached! Two week’s
running polls had Labor:Coalition at 50:50. No leader has EVER improved on his
‘honeymoon’ period during an election campaign. It will be all DOWNHILL from
here as he makes ever more fly-by warm fuzzy split-second crazy decisions, and
folks become more and more sickened by his glib fatuous spin and the ever
increasing numbers of live and DEAD illegal immigrants. The sharks in the
19/07/2013: The grip of Middle East oil over the
18/07/2013: STRANGE (?) the way these ex trade union
Labor has-been types are found to be the most suitable types to head up huge
industry super funds (eg both Combet and Crean are scrambling to head up CBus)
and Bracks is pegged to be our next Consul-General in New York. The rats are
fighting over the fallen plums before they are available to Liberals too!
18/07/2013: Labor’s 1917 Manifesto: http://michaelsmithnews.typepad.com/.a/6a0177444b0c2e970d01901e378f2a970b-800wi
18/07/2013: ANOTHER latter-day Kaspar Hauser? http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/16/health/amnesia-swedish/
17/07/2013: KRUD HAS BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR 1,000
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DROWNING: 220 THIS YEAR ALONE! APPROXIMATELY ONE A DAY SINCE
HE BECAME PM AGAIN 20 DAYS AGO. HE IS A MONSTER!
17/07/2013: Quote of the day: Adrian Rogers: “You
cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of
freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work
for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the
government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get
the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take
care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to
work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear
friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing
it.”
17/07/2013: NO. I am not joking: I was working
full-time 7 day roster shift work in a heavy metal refinery at age 15 and
paying my own way full-time though University. Over the years we have always
had to pay for everything ourselves and also pay for other people's nice
taxpayer funded treats. NOW we are not entitled to an Old Age pension (and
would not accept the charity even if we were) because we have saved too much
money even though we have paid more taxes than all the bludgers we have
supported over the years and are still supporting. I do not believe in free
stuff! Someone has to pay. I am sick of people wanting to live off other
people's efforts and other people's money as if it was their RIGHT. They have
no such perverted right. The important right they have is the right to WORK
HARD AND MAKE SOMETHING OF THEMSELVES.
17/07/2013: Last night’s 4 new deaths at sea take to @
20 the number of deaths of illegal immigrants Krud is responsible for since he
became PM again 19 days ago ie @ ONE MURDER PER DAY! Since he abandoned the
‘Pacific Solution’ back in 2007 (which had shrunk the number of folks in
detention to FOUR) Krud has been responsible for over 100 deaths! Making him BY
FAR THE WORST MASS MURDERER in Australian history! Still there are folks who
would like to see him WIN the next election. Of course there are also people
who wish ALL the illegal immigrants should DROWN!
16/07/2013: After @300 revisions (before word
processors), THIS is probably my favourite poem: FERN HILL by Dylan Thomas:
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was
green,
The night above
the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the
heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple
towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and
leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers
of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the
barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that
is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the
mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the
calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear
and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of
the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the
hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys,
it was air
And playing,
lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under
the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm
away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the
nightjars
Flying with the
ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it
was all
Shining, it was
Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew
round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple
light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses
walking warm
Out of the
whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay
house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was
long,
In the sun born
over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced
through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time
allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning
songs
Before the
children green and golden
Follow him out of grace,
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time
would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my
hand,
In the moon that
is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him
fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless
land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my
chains like the sea.
16/07/2013: THIS is ART? ‘The Hungry Vagina…In three
vertical screens, the vagina is a decorative flourish in boastful public
self-gratification. It makes its own proscenium arch, pumping in languid spasms
that make you wonder about the cause of the pulsations’: http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/female-nude-given-a-major-makeover-20130625-2ov3s.html
16/07/2013: The tenth Commandment exhorts ‘thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's
wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass.’ I am not sure whether that last is a misspelling, but the current push
to have gay marriage and bestiality brothels & etc adds a certain
poignancy…I prefer the eleventh Commandment myself, ‘Thou shall not GET
CAUGHT!’
15/07/2013: The Greens at least/last seem to be
acknowledging they have run out of other people’s money to spend and want $43
billion dollars worth of new taxes. They seem to think the banks and the rich
have lots of money that should belong to someone else! They will spend our
past, our present and our future until there is absolutely nothing left…Clearly
they are so driven by that covey of baby boomers who having spent their
parents’ humble bequests have pissed all their own money up against the wall
and have left nothing for their own children: so admirable!
15/07/2013: I see Rio’s new copper mine in
15/07/2013: FORMER Labor Party president and
indigenous leader Warren Mundine has accused KRud of trying to destroy two
years of work to create bipartisan support for an indigenous recognition
referendum. Mr Mundine warned the Prime Minister to butt out and leave
Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin to build the cross-party support for
the major change and determine the question to be put to voters, after KRud
this week accused Tony Abbott of delaying the process. “Rudd has threatened
bipartisanship support on the referendum with his political negative spin,” Mr
Mundine told The Australian yesterday. “Macklin had been working hard with Tony
Abbott and the opposition for the referendum to succeed. In one stupid
brain-explosive sentence, KRud has almost destroyed all that work. “My message
to Rudd is to shut up and get back on board and stop using indigenous people
and the referendum as a political football. We’re sick of being used.”
15/07/2013: MANY questions settled: Oh, so TRUE: http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/uploads/settled.png
14/07/2013: Dog Goldberg Machine by Beneful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA56LgpFbSw
14/07/2013: THIS is so embarrassing: http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2013/07/the-rudd-receives-supplicant-emissaries-from-fearful-nations-in-newly-minted-ceremony-the-idi-amin-v.html
15/07/2013: ‘The best lack all conviction while the
worst are full of passionate intensity.’ How true: WB Yeats: THE SECOND COMING
Turning and turning in the widening
gyre
The falcon cannot hear the
falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre
cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the
world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is
drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while
the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at
hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those
words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus
Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of
desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head
of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the
sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while
all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant
desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I
know
That twenty centuries of stony
sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a
rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come
round at last,
Slouches towards
14/07/2013: Krudd once said global warming was “the
great moral challenge of our generation”. Now he is Abbottlite, axing the tax
(albeit replacing it with a lower price through emissions trading). I repeat:
‘The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate
intensity.’
14/07/2013: I know there are those of you who will
consider me a pretentious tosh if I claim I only consume large quantities of
Dimensions Cab-Sav because it contains Resveratrol…In other news scientists
claim that lots of sex keep one looking younger…You may have wondered at my
continuing emulation of Peter Pan…Oh…Wendy…Veni, Vini, Vinci!
14/07/2013: Some things that really ought to be
BANNED: whipped peanut butter, Lindt chocolate, pistachio nuts, beer, cream,
crumpets…
14/07/2013: Graham Richardson on the KRudd’s proposed new
Labor rules that would make him virtually unsackable as Prime Minister: ‘The
idea that a spill could not occur unless 75 per cent of the caucus agreed
effectively means that no leader could ever be defeated...There are plenty of
examples of why such a cumbersome mechanism makes no sense. HV Evatt was in the
process of succumbing to the early stages of dementia. Mark Latham had an
almighty meltdown, refused to take calls from anyone and disowned everything he
previously stood for. What if these problems occurred during a three-year term
of an elected prime minister? What if on top of the 70 per cent requirement
there would still be a need for the entire party membership to vote in a
leadership ballot? I can only guess on how long such a vote would take, but
four to six weeks would be a reasonable guess. There is no doubt to how the
voters would react to the nation being held hostage for the six weeks because
of the Labor party’s rules’.
14/07/2013: The Dunning-Kruger Effect: I’m sure we all
know SOMEONE who has this defect, (reminds me of ‘pronoia – the delusion that
people LIKE you) where ‘unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly
rating their ability much higher than average’ – Do you also suppose Krud is a
sufferer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
13/07/2013: Senator Carr said asylum seeker numbers
had spiked and 20 per cent of Australia’s immigrants now arrive courtesy of people
smugglers …and they are coming from as far away as Africa with huge
proportional representation among boat people of land-locked countries such as
Sudan and Afghanistan: http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/youre_on_your_own/
13/07/2013: Fatal warnings of ‘Howard Lite’: Back in
2007 Krudd promised to ‘turn back the boats’, he was ‘a fiscal
conservative’…every Howard policy which he thought was popular was embraced
warmly by the slithy tove. As soon as he was in power the Australian stock
market dropped 30% (AND HAS NEVER RECOVERED!) NOW, Krudd wants to blame this on
the GFC (which we didn’t have to have, given China – only the inordinate costs
apparently) but it was HIS policies which wrought economic ruin: unemployment
is now 2-5 times what it was under Howard (when it had a 3 in front of it – and
the unemployed were paid the SAME amount as pensioners!); we had a national
CREDIT then: now we have debt of nearly half a year’s GDP and NOTHING to show
for it; Yes we have low interest rates: this is because growth has slowed;
there is no demand for money; people are saving their every last cent because
they are fearful of the future; the economy is going over a cliff –
particularly the mining industry: some of the companies whose shares are worth
between ONE SIXTH and one Half of what they were ONLY a year ago when the
carbon and mining taxes were introduced (Remember these were key Krudd
policies): BLY, ASL, FMG, WHC, NCM, AAX, TSE…There are heaps more whose value
is STILL less than a quarter what it was before the GFC – but read before
‘Kevin ’07’! NOW, he is once again pretending to be ‘Abbott Lite’ stealing all
of the Libs most popular policies, but is that what we will get if we vote for
this opinionated wrecker? Not on your Nelly: he will accelerate the Australian
economy over that cliff and fill our country with unwanted Moslem extremists and
other undesirables. WAKE UP
13/07/2013: I have always been astonished at the way
the Left can’t distinguish between good and evil: Like him or loathe him Jeff
closed down many schools and sacked many public servants & etc in order to
rescue
13/07/2013: Some say, ‘Tolerance is a virtue’ but I do
not. There may be a million religions and at least as many ‘gods’. Clearly not
all can be true, but all can (indeed must) be false. I would say, ‘There is no
God’ (not Allah, Jahweh, Ba’al,
13/07/2013: Well done Malala, and Happy Birthday: http://www.malala-yousafzai.com/
12/07/2013: So for eleven days in July, we’ve seen 15
illegal maritime arrivals transporting 1,379 illegal arrivals which costs
taxpayers $96,530,000.When will Rudd do something to stop the boats like he
promised? Oz navy taxi service and merchant ships being hijacked by self-harm
threatening Ozzie wannabees from INDONESIAN waters have cruelled his ‘Tampa’
moment just as he was luxuriating with his ‘mate’ BSY!
12/07/2013: Meanwhile Krud’s shaving mishap was
clearly staged to appeal to the bogan element (rapidly growing – but I wonder
does anyone consider themselves a ‘bogan’. Reminder to self: ‘Must look in
mirror’) …back to the story: but does anyone really believe that Krud cut
himself shaving at 9:30am when he had been up for hours or that the cut had
mysteriously disappeared minutes later?
12/07/2013: Can CO2 harm the oceans? This is the
ultimate fear campaign waged by the ‘carbon police’. THIS rticle debunks it from
a chemical engineering background. It is fairly hard going, however the bullet
points at the end are worth reading. Here is an example: ‘It is essentially chemically and
biologically impossible for carbonate dependent organisms to suffer from CO2
increases… The organisms most susceptible to ocean acidification from CO2
evolved at a time when concentrations were 15 times higher than today’ and here the complete article: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/08/ocean-acidi-what/#more-89532
12/07/2013: And you thought Auntie wasn’t biased? Come
on now: THIS is how the ABC previously saw the delightful gay parents (who last
week were gaoled for 40 years for paedophilia): http://gaydadsaustralia.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/abc-far-north-queensland-two-dads-are-better-than-one-by-sam-davis/ More thoughts on this matter here: http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2013/07/the-story-the-abc-doesn-t-want-you-to-see
11/07/2013: Your pet cat, ‘Tibbles’ may soon have
something more to worry about f this global warming goes on and on: http://berkeley.patch.com/groups/local-connections/p/will-global-warming-supersize-lizards-berkeley-fossils-offer-clues
11/07/2013: And, further to that: good news for
junkies; all that CO2 is increasing the amount of morphine in poppy plants –
indeed they may soon become giants and take over the world: http://mindaberbeco.scienceblog.com/2013/07/09/hot-smack-climate-change-and-heroin/
11/07/2013: DEEPLY disturbing. Before you jump to a
conclusion, please note that the blogger Bob Parks, IS a black American. ‘What happened to large numbers of
American blacks between the beginning of WW2 and 1970? Before WW2, blacks,
mainly in the South at the time, led aspiring, family-oriented, church-going,
bourgeois lives (despite social segregation). How and why did this sub-cultural
transformation happen?’ Similar sub-cultural transformations have happened and
are happening here – and THEY MUST BE AVOIDED: http://www.black-and-right.com/2013/07/01/before-its-deleted-of-the-day/
11/07/2013: Six Reasons Why Men Are Avoiding Marriage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoXQf2f2Yxo and below is a seventh!
11/07/2013: Interesting: ‘Every day American culture is a
little more like a Black Mass against nature and manhood and anything decent or
beautiful or noble or worth saving. Western Civilization has become a Black
Mass for Western Civilization. Everything our better fathers believed in has
been spit on and placed like a tainted Host between the yeasty thighs of a
giggling whore’. http://alternativeright.com/blog/2013/6/26/gay-marriage-what-the-fuck-ever
10/07/2013: I’m afraid THIS is us, Bing Crosby, ‘Busy
Doing Nothing’ from ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court’ (1949):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuxSl_4yLz4#at=150
10/07/2013: The AWU refuse to toe the line on Krudd’s plans
to change ALP rules – of course it would interfere with their intention to axe
him AFTER the election and install their ‘svengali’, Bill Shorten. I expect
they will succeed (in both) and that (unfortunately) the unintended consequence
will be even higher electoral support for (doomed) Krudd!
10/07/2013: As the old joke goes: what’s the opposite
of diversity? University: A new book ‘Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies About
Climate Change’ (http://www.taxingair.com/) by Bob Carter,
who retired from James Cook University before he got interested in the global warming
debate but remains an emeritus fellow looks interesting. He recently found
himself deprived of even an email address by colleagues resentful of his
failure to toe the line.
10/07/2013: This is how
09/07/2013: Can’t WAIT for this stuff to hit the
supermarket shelves here. The world just keeps getting better and better
(despite the tyranny of choice!) : http://www.geek.com/science/neverwet-superhydrophobic-spray-hits-stores-this-week-1560808/
09/07/2013: Another great product: Ultra Ever Dry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfUaKXasdD4
09/07/2013: I was a bit taken aback by this lady
shrink’s bizarre lament over capitalism’s failure to ration choice (http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/06/27/Renata-Salecl-The-Tyranny-of-Choice).
Was Christ right, ‘the Statists will always be with you…’ ? Matt Ridley has an
excellent riposte (‘There are poor teenagers in Indian villages who have none
of these choices: I do not envy them.’ – Well, Yeah!): http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-myth-that-choice-overload-is-a-cause-of-great-misery.aspx
09/07/2013: The fabulous NBN
has made very little difference to the town where it was first rolled out four
years ago (Midway Point, Tas), but now the 50%+ of folks still NOT connected to
it are worried what will happen to them when their phones are cut off very
soon: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/nbn-suffers-failure-to-communicate-20130706-2pive.html
08/07/2013: Unbelievably Morgan
now has Labor at 55.5% and Coalition at 45.5%. Krudd should call an election
immediately while this dead cat bounce lasts but as he wants to go to the G20
on 7 September he likely won't go till October or later - and will (hopefully)
lose: http://www.roymorgan.com/findings/morgan-poll-july-8-2013-201307080647
08/07/2013: Meanwhile Krudd and
Rein clean up on the unemployed; they are now taking the Brits down for
hundreds of mills, just as they did the Australian taxpayers (if you remember –
and you should!). Naturally the unemployed get no benefit from all this ruddy
welfare capitalism AT ALL: http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/rudds_wife_makes_fortune_from_workless_britons/
08/07/2013: I DID like this
comment (at Catallaxy): ‘Every day, every minute, every time Rudd opens his mouth, Labor voters –
like beer fairies when someone drinks a Canadian Club – explode and die. It’s
the mind-boggling condescension; the grotesque narcissism; the pretentious
over-analysis of everything; the ludicrous thesaurus-mined vocabulary, that
makes his every speech a weird froth of verbiage devoid of actual meaning; the
overwhelming smugness; the insufferable conceit; the off-the-scale self-regard;
the insane, all-consuming craving for unanimous awed recognition as the
smartest person in the room (and any room); the teenage levels of
self-aggrandisement; the hilarious bigging-up name-dropping; the crass,
bathetic, utter inability to relate to anyone below his perceived level, AKA everybody;
the primed-to-explode grievances that fester behind the rictus smile; the
ridiculous OCD of the just-so white-shirt-coloured-tie-and-navy-suit – unless
it’s a weekend and it’s the ridiculous OCD of the
just-so-khaki-chinos-and-chambray-shirt; the painful fakeness of the
manufactured persona; the desperate fist-clenching as he suppresses the anger
that ordinary people make him feel; the lightning speed to perceive a slight;
the drawn-out hundred-fold revenge in return; the delight in humiliating those
beneath him; and the cloying, fulsome, gushing insincerity of his fawning over
other world leaders. Does anyone seriously think this man can be voted in as
Prime Minister again by an electorate now wholly and painfully aware – which it
was not before – of all of the above? Sorry, Kevin, it’s over. Yes, those cool
kids at school that got all of the girls’ attention, with their pathetic
muscles and dumb macho posturing and stupid, smart-arsed lines – how could
those morons have laughed? – while you – YOU!
– went ignored for all those years! You tried to
hide your superiority and suck up to them, those nobodies!
But you showed them, you showed them, how dare those stupid cows ignore YOU, you were
smarter and better than all of them! You showed them! You showed them all! Yes,
you did show them. Be happy with that. Because it’s over.
08/07/2013: The Spider's Web (aka "Natural
History"): E. B. White
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.
And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.
Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.
(White, never one to waste words, wrote this poem in
1929 as a love letter to his wife).
08/07/2013: The BIG drillers Eg Ausdrill, Boart Longyesr…)
are so cheap here at the moment (BLY is at one sixth of it 12 month high for
example). You would think the world was going to end…yet we are on the cusp of
an energy revolution (as soon as there is a change of Government anyway). Read
about it here: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-dash-for-shale-oil-will-shake-the-world.aspx
08/07/2013: Just suppose the ‘Little Ice Age’ is on
its way back…what effect would a growing season which was ie one month late and
only 2.5C cooler have? Answer: harvest down OVER 50%! Result: BILLIONS starve.
And some folks are still worrying about global WARMING? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/05/further-to-a-1740-type-event/
08/07/2013: Oh, Kevin, YOU KNOW something? http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2013/07/every-bent-coal-mine-owner-with-union-roots-and-their-media-mates-have-known-for-months-the-icacs-re.html
06/07/2013: SO many of them today: http://cdn.spectator.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/SACRED-COW_HEATH.jpg
06/07/2013: If only OUR judges were like this:
‘Remember the guy who got on a plane with a bomb built into his shoe and
tried to light it? Did you know his trial is over? Did you know he was
sentenced? Did you see/hear any of the judge's comments on TV or Radio? Didn't
think so.! Everyone should hear what the judge had to say.
Ruling by Judge William Young, US District Court.
Prior to sentencing, the Judge asked the defendant if
he had anything to say His response: After admitting his guilt to the court for
the record, Reid also admitted his 'allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam,
and to the religion of Allah,' defiantly
stating, 'I think I will not apologize for my
actions,' and told the court 'I am at war with your country.'
Judge Young then delivered the statement quoted below:
Judge Young: "Mr. Richard C. Reid, hearken now to
the sentence the Court imposes upon you.
On counts 1, 5 and 6 the Court sentences you to life
in prison in the custody of the
On count 8 the Court sentences you to the mandatory 30
years, again to be served consecutively to the 80 years just imposed. The Court
imposes upon you for each of the eight counts a fine of $250,000, that's an
aggregate fine of $2 million. The Court accepts the government's recommendation
with respect to restitution and orders restitution in the amount of $298.17 to
Andre Bousquet and $5,784 to American Airlines.
The Court imposes upon you an $800 special assessment.
The Court imposes upon you, five years supervised release simply because the
law requires it. But the life sentences are real life sentences so I need go no
further.
This is the sentence that is provided for by our
statutes. It is a fair and just sentence. It is a righteous sentence.
Now, let me explain this to you. We are not afraid of
you or any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We
have been through the fire before. There is too much war talk here and I say
that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court, we deal with
individuals as individuals and care for individuals as individuals. As human
beings, we reach out for justice.
You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist.
You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that
reference, to call you a soldier, gives you far too much stature. Whether the
officers of government do it, or your attorney does it, or if you think you are
a soldier, you are not-----, you are a terrorist. And we do not negotiate with
terrorists. We do not meet with terrorists. We do not sign documents with
terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.
So war talk is way out of line in this court. You are
a big fellow. But you are not that big. You're no warrior. I've known warriors.
You are a terrorist. A species of criminal that is guilty of multiple attempted
murders. In a very real sense, State Trooper Santiago had it right when you
first were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the
press and the TV crews were, and he said:
'You're no big deal. '
You are no big deal.
What your able counsel and what the equally able
I have listened respectfully to what you have to say.
And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable
hate led you to do what you are guilty, and admit you are guilty, of doing?
And, I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you, but as I search this
entire record, it comes as close to understanding as I know.
It seems to me, you hate the one thing that to us is
most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual
freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not
believe as we individually choose. Here, in this society, the very wind carries
freedom. It carries it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we
prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom,
so that everyone can see, truly see, that justice is administered fairly,
individually, and discretely. It is for freedom's sake that your lawyers are
striving so vigorously on your behalf, have filed appeals, will go on in their
representation of you before other judges.
We Americans are all about freedom. Because we all know
that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties. Make
no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bear any burden; pay any price,
to preserve our freedoms. Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world
is not going to long remember what you or I say here. The day after tomorrow,
it will be forgotten, but this, however, will long endure.
Here in this courtroom and courtrooms all across
America , the American people will gather to see that justice, individual
justice, justice, not war, individual justice, is in fact being done. The very
President of the
See that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United
States of America . That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten.
That flag stands for freedom. And it always will.
Mr. Custody Officer. Stand him down."
So, how much of this Judge's comments did we hear on
our TV sets? We need more judges like Judge Young.
06/07/2013: Such charming folks: Islamic militants
(Boko Haram, whose name literally means, “Western education is sin”) have
attacked a boarding school in northeast
06/07/2013: Hours worked per week per Employable
Person. An Employable Person is the sum of those employed and unemployed. This
does NOT include the HUGE increase of folks on the ‘disabililty allowance’.
May 2010 - 32.16 hours per week, May 2011 - 30.24 hours, May 2012 - 29.16
hours, May 2013 - 28.77 hours. It shows a massive increase in underemployment
under Labor (12.5%!) Some may remember that unemployment was down to around 4%
under Howard (of course that was before the GFC we didn’t have to have); it is
now 5.5% and RISING. No wonder the economy and the market are in the doldrums:
05/07/2013: "Terrorism's great achievement isn't
hijacking jetliners, but hijacking the debate," wrote George Jonas in
05/07/2013: After a week I remember exactly why
Ju-Liar knifed Krudd. He is just bloody awful! Just cannot stand
the glib, sanctimonious little weasel. I hate his girlie hands and his horrid spittle
dripping cock-sucking lips… I NEVER thought I would say this, BUT, ‘Bring back
Julia!’
05/07/2013: FINALLY the tree ring data which provoked
the infamous ‘hockey stick’ is GONE. In its place we have a VERY flat
temperature scenario for the last CENTURY (See: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/28/hey-ya-mal-mcintyre-was-right-cru-abandons-yamal-superstick/). The important graphic is here: http://climateaudit.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/yamal_chronology_compare4.png?w=680&h=480&h=480
05/07/2013: Latter-day hippies should read Willis’s
latest post. The problem with RENEWABLE energy is STORAGE. To store the amount
of energy needed by a city the size of
05/07/2013: ‘A paper published in the
International Journal of Climatology finds that aging of the solar radiation
screens on weather stations is causing a large positive bias in measured
temperatures of 1.63°C, which by way of comparison is more than twice the global
warming of 0.7°C recorded since the end of the Little Ice Age in 1850’ : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/29/aging-weather-stations-contribute-to-high-temperature-records/
04/07/2013: Such born liars: KRudd on the 7:30 Report
claimed we have the refugee problem because HE implemented the policy he took
to the 2007 election (which was he’d turn back the boats, NOT scrap the
‘Pacific Solution’!) and claims the influx of refugees was caused by a
‘unexpected’ civil wars In Sri Lanka and Afghanistan which had both been going
on for DECADES! Over 1,000 folks drowned because of him, the glib bastard!
04/07/2013: Charming ‘married’ couple. Forty years is
NOT ENOUGH by a long shot: http://www.smh.com.au/national/named-the-australian-paedophile-jailed-for-40-years-20130630-2p5da.html#ixzz2XjkG3rE5
04/07/2013: “In 2010 I did a story on two gay dads,” writes
the ABC’s Ginger Gorham. “Those two men turned out to be pedophiles of the
worst kind.”
04/07/2013: Of course the 40 year sentence was
delivered in the
04/07/2013: More than one way to think about ‘marriage
equality: ‘membership in a culture best noted for offering oral sexual services
to strangers in public lavatories entitles you to have the government invent a
parody version of marriage just for you…If indulgence in vice makes you special
and gives you status and privileges, why are only sodomites being so
favoured?... If
sodomy is worthy of federal recognition, approval, and protection, why not
polygamy, bestiality, and incest? There are doubtless people in
04/07/2013: The Daily Mail has abandoned the AGW
orthodoxy – hopefully our media will soon follow suit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2294560/The-great-green-1-The-hard-proof-finally-shows-global-warming-forecasts-costing-billions-WRONG-along.html
03/07/2013: Kevin…He’s NOT the Messiah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plZRe1kPWZw
03/07/2013: There is a world of difference between Ed
Husic and these men, just as there is a huge difference between the average
Christian and Timothy McVeigh: Migrants we don’t want: During a lecture last
month, Campbelltown Sheikh Jamil el-Biza said Shiites should be destroyed,
‘’either with our hands or with our blood’’. He berated young Muslims for
caring more about the Canterbury Bulldogs NRL team than what is happening to
their ‘’brothers’’ in Syria, Chechnya, Kashmir and Somalia…Zaky Mallah, who runs
an office for the Free Syrian Army from his Parramatta garage, promises he can
get young Australians into Syria in less than 24 hours but strongly denies he
is recruiting people for the resistance… Zaky Mallah’s aim is to die
in
03/07/2013: Deaths of 19 firefighters in Arizona NOT
caused by global warming! The ‘real’ explanation for heat waves, the
existence and position of deserts and the various huge ‘permanent’ high and low
pressure systems found in large areas on earth: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/01/heat-waves-validate-the-skeptics/#more-89113
03/07/2013: In the article ‘Many cultures in southeast Asia used
fire pistons to start fires by simply squeezing air in a tube.’ This is true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_piston and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtJn-mgmlq0&feature=player_embedded
Get one for $70: http://www.campingsurvival.com/fiplfipi.html
03/07/2013: Meanwhile in Egypt 22 million have signed
a petition seeking Morsi’s resignation whilst only 13 million voted FOR him, so
perhaps fundamentalist Islam WILL fall to democracy and common sense after all
and the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ may not be a total disaster after all?
02/07/2013: Fair point: Samuel J at the Cat tips a
late election: ‘The G20 is being held this year in
02/07/2013: I was interested to see in the paper
yesterday that someone had a 27 year old wombat. This is much older than such
an enormously destructive giant rabbit would live around here, but it is
surprising how long some of the critters we live with DO live. We have had the
same grey thrush nesting in a hole in our wall ever since we have been here (23
years) – and she was here when we came – as was a pair of blue cranes, a pair
of wedge-tail eagles, welcome swallows who nest in our garage (who winter every
year in Siberia) and are no doubt quite contemptuous of OUR sedentary ways, a
VERY annoying flock of sulphur crested cockatoos who I’m told will likely
outlive my children (but NOT unless they cease their destructive habits!) and
so on. Often you can recognise individual animals (such as the English
blackbird with a solitary feather in his tail who haunts the slope outside our
window…it is not just OUR home.
02/07/2013: Unbelievable: Morgan: Labor 51.5, Liberal
48.5! Wake up
02/07/2013: Nelson Mandela’s favourite poem (and one
of mine too):
Invictus (Undefeated) : William Ernest Henley
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
01/07/2013: Labor’s primary vote is the same as it was
the weekend before Rudd was dumped – 35 per cent. AND GOING DOWN. Watch and learn!
01/07/2013: I’d like to see him try this now – Daring
aviator lands on White House lawn: http://www.whitehousehistory.org/whha_history/white-house-stories/white-house-aviator-atwood.html
01/07/2013: ‘Beam me up Scotty.’ This guy is seriously
working on building ‘warp drives’ – and about time too: http://www.space.com/21721-warp-drives-wormholes-ftl.html?cmpid=514630
01/07/2013: AND an interesting take on immigration:
‘...the Bill authorizes somewhere between 30 million and 60 million new legal immigrants
over the next ten years, 90% of them low-skill and low-wage. The Democrats hope
this will create a mammoth and permanent underclass that will be forever
dependent on government for security, and will reliably vote Democrat for
generations. Certain business interests hope the bill will deal a crippling
blow to America’s working class, driving down wages and providing an
inexhaustible supply of cheap labour.’ http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/06/the-gang-of-eights-bill-will-never-become-law.php
30/06/2013: Death is probably cheaper than divorce, but it is still completely unaffordable: ‘In that Medicare spending, between one-fourth and one-third goes to medical bills for a patient's final year of life, most of it in the last 30 days’. Most of this could be avoided if people accepted they should die quietly at home. We should get over it. We are not so unique and precious that others should have to pay over most of their taxes just to keep us alive (without even interesting bon mots as a reward in most cases! I DID like the General whose final words were reputedly, ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant from th…’). Face it, some really big sav