Sunday, November 26, 2006
SCIENTISTS BELIEVE
The New York Times reports a collapsed consensus:
Twenty years ago most scientists believed that deforestation was an inexorable result of industrialization and that the earth would soon be virtually denuded of trees.
To which the Waterbury Republican-American replies:
OK, no big deal, all those doomsaying scientists were wrong and the big trees are making a comeback. Yet the same people who are ready to dismiss the passionate and presumably well-researched beliefs of experts just 20 years ago view it as sacrilege when skeptics try to rebut today’s global-warming alarmists. May we stipulate it’s possible for scientists—even “most scientists”—to be wrong?
BIGGEST LOSER
The ABC’s audience share is shrinking:
Channels Seven and Ten may be tussling over who deserves the title of TV’s biggest winner for 2006, but there’s no dispute about who is the biggest loser. That’s the ABC - down 9 per cent in average audience ...
No surprise there; the vast number of ABC Glass House viewers have all committed suicide. Why, it’ll swing the next election!
VEHICLE HARMED
The December edition of Wheels magazine tells the whole terrible story of how I drove a $400,000 Bentley GTC from California to Las Vegas via Death Valley and, well, broke it. At 140 mph. No link; print only. Some shots from the trip:
(Images courtesy of Lyndon Conrad Bell, editor-in-chief of OnWheelsInc and one superb driver)
SIDE TAKEN
Robert Fisk reports:
I receive a call from a friend, Amira Solh, who is with another Al Arabiya crew, asking where I am in the crowd. “I am on the mosque side of the church,” I shout, and Polikavic collapses with laughter. “Fisky,” he roars, “that really is the story of Lebanon. Aren’t we are all now ‘on the mosque side of the church’?”
Fisky’s been on the mosque side for years. In his previous column, Fisky took a shot at French colonialism:
By the way, when did we ever see an ethnic map of Paris and its banlieues?
Here’s one, Bob. Happy to help.
WALK AGAINST WARMING
“Only the left,” observed Art Vandelay, “would be stupid enough to protest against the weather.” A lone Australian gal—possibly not stupid, but definitely ill-informed—now plans to walk against warmth:
A university student will walk 1000km from Brisbane to Sydney to try to pressure the Federal Government to fight harder against global warming.
Sarah Bishop, 22, will begin her trek on January 27, finishing at Kirribilli House - Prime Minister John Howard’s Sydney residence.
I bet she flies home. The Calgary Sun’s Ian Robinson also expresses his environmental views in a highway context, although prissy Sarah might not appreciate Ian’s style:
I drive a Dodge Ram 1500 V8 crew-cab pickup—alone and in the fast lane, mostly because the Green Party told me I shouldn’t.
Nice try, Ian, but you’ll have to drive that Dodge a long way before you match George “Jetson” Monbiot’s awesome London-to-Vancouver environmental footstomp.
HE’S A SHE
Reuters—your world leader in news distortion—believes Tzipi Livni is a man:
Israel said the truce did not cover the West Bank. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said it was too early to say if the Gaza agreement was unravelling.
“We have to see this as the start of an opportunity,” he told Army Radio.
Hey, easy mistake to make. Even renowned Israel experts sometimes fall for the old “Tzipi is a guy” trick.
(Via Dr Sam)
SHERO SHALUTED
Florida Cracker salutes Margaret Sanger, a true Shero of Herstory:
Before Robert Altman, before Eddie Vedder, before Alec Baldwin, a woman’s voice rang loud and clear with the threat to leave the country if a candidate she didn’t like were elected president.
She also pioneered backtracking on that threat. Here’s to you, Margaret!
EMBRACE THE WARMENING
Another reason to love global warming—it’s rescuing Australian wine:
Global warming may have delivered Australia’s embattled wine industry a much-needed boost, with this year’s unfavourable weather conditions expected to significantly reduce the damaging wine glut.
“Damaging wine glut”, eh? A shortage would surely be more damaging, but there you go.
(Via Hal G.P. Colebatch, who notes that Australia is dodging Europe’s death spiral)
UPDATE. In other heartwarming warming news, a type of polar bear has been located that is entirely resistant to ice shrinkage.
CEASEFIRE CEASED
No more rockets:
Palestinian militants will cease rocket attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip, President Mahmoud Abbas told Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in a telephone call ...
Well, maybe not:
A Kassam rocket, fired from the Gaza Strip, landed in open territory in the western Negev on Sunday morning, less than an hour after the ceasefire declared by the Palestinians became effective.
UPDATE. More rockets:
Israeli troops withdrew from the Gaza Strip as a last-minute cease-fire deal took hold Sunday morning, but two major Palestinian militant groups, saying they had no intention of stopping their attacks, fired volleys of homemade rockets into Israel.
GEORGE SWIMS
Anti-flying womble George Monbiot bragged last month that he hadn’t flown for a year, and demanded similar austerity of his green colleagues:
If even the leaders of the green movement are not prepared to live without flying for pleasure then how can we expect that of other people?
Monbiot turned up in Vancouver a week or so back to promote his new book. I wonder how he got there.
MERCINDY’S CLEVER FRIENDS
Stop US military bsae expansion! Vote for Mercedes-Benz!
(Via Instapundit and Achillea)
UNREAD IDIOT DEMANDS RESPECT
Antony Loewenstein takes offence at being described (accurately) as a mere “anti-Zionist blogger”:
Have these people no respect for a best-selling author?
Seeing as Loewenstein has so little respect for himself, why should he expect it from others?
(Via Dr Sam)
Saturday, November 25, 2006
FIRST TEST, DAY FOUR
Australia declares following Justin Langer’s 23rd Test century. England set a target of 648.
UPDATE. Strauss caught hooking off Clark. England 1/29.
UPDATE II. First innings holdout Bell falls to Warne, lbw for 0. England 2/36. Warne’s first wicket of the series.
UPDATE III. Stuart Clark—sometimes described as a Glenn McGrath clone, although he’s more like a speedier Terry Alderman—is currently unplayable.
UPDATE IV. Warne has Alastair Cook caught for 43, then bowls a series of perfectly straight deliveries to Kevin Pietersen. A trap is being set. England 3/91.
UPDATE V. Great catch by the scoreboard attendant off a Paul Collingwood six hit over the wicketkeeper’s head.
UPDATE VI. Huge Pietersen/Collingwood partnership (153 runs) ended by Collingwood’s stumping. Pietersen has eluded any Warne trap; now on 78. England 4/254.
UPDATE VII. Top-edged Flintoff slog caught by Langer off Warne. Out for 16. England 5/271.
FEMALE ACTIVISTS MOBILIZED
An Hamas granny may have blown herself to pieces, but, as Associated Press reports, Palestinian feminists still face many years of struggle before liberation is achieved:
A grandmother-turned-suicide bomber, a small army of women marching into a battlefield, thousands of veiled volunteers hitting the streets in an election campaign - the Islamic militant group Hamas is increasingly mobilizing its network of female activists.
Correction to my intro: the grandmother wasn’t blown to pieces. She was mobilized.
Yet the Hamas women, known as the Sisterhood, say such high-profile missions have not changed how the group is run: the men make decisions, the women have a supporting role, at best.
It’s so unfair. Why should men get to kill all the Jews?
But even in the rigidly conservative [ahem—ed] movement, whose manifesto defines women as “manufacturers of men,” some female activists are demanding a say in politics and in Hamas’ military wing, which has carried out scores of deadly attacks against Israelis in recent years.
Say it loud, sisters! Say it explosively loud!
A suicide bombing on Thursday by a 64-year-old grandmother who blew herself up [was “mobilized”—ed] near Israeli soldiers in Gaza was an exception, not the rule, said Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’ military wing. He suggested she was chosen because it would have been more difficult for a man to approach the target.
Mere tokenism. True equality will only come when the Sisterhood lies dead and bleeding all over the Middle East. Also, what’s with the sexism of that 72 virgins deal? (By the way, note the hilariously mild headline on this piece: “Hamas women seek bigger political role”.)
UPDATE. Oh, this is just lovely. LGF reveals that AP’s writer, Diaa Hadid, is Australian—and so hateful of Israelis she can’t stand to look at them:
The intensity of Hadid’s involvement over the last nine months has had a strong impact on her views. When she first arrived in the Middle East, Hadid expressed a desire to make more Israeli friends. Now she has trouble separating the personal from the political.
“I can’t look at Israelis anymore. I can’t separate your average Israeli citizen from the occupation, I don’t want to be friends with them, I don’t want to talk to them,” says Hadid.
Allowing Hadid to report from the Middle East is like allowing a Klansman to report from Alabama in 1963.
UPDATE II. Canada’s National Post on Hamas’s gran-based terror tactics:
The good news is that al-Najar was unsuccessful: She didn’t kill anyone except herself. And we suppose it’s also good news that Hamas is so short of recruits that they must now resort to brainwashed grandmas—much as the Nazis conscripted young boys and old men in the waning days of the Second World War.
The bad news is that—well, the bad news is that there are Muslims on this earth who think Allah wants them to turn grandmothers into walking bombs. It seems the harder Israel and the rest of the world try to give the Palestinians their own country, the harder they try to prove that they don’t deserve one.
Some grandmothers choose life.
SWORN OUT
The Weekly Standard’s Joseph Epstein vows to kick his swearing habit:
I decided to banish profanity from my conversation because it began to seem indecorous, especially in a man who is a grandfather. A clue that it was time to cease was when I began to part words in the middle with the F-word: as in unf——-believable.
I completely underf——-stand. (Read Joseph’s enf——-tire piece, by the way; very funny.) I’m a moderate swearer by Australian standards, and absurdly mild by Australian journalist standards; you’d be particularly surprised at the conversational sweariness of some ABC presenters. It isn’t unusual for Australians to use the f-word as an “umm” substitute:
“So I went to the ... f——- ... supermarket, and I bought some ... f——- ... lightbulbs to replace the ... f———... bulbs that blew out on the ... f———... porch.”
No particular emphasis is placed; it’s just a pause device while one gathers one’s f——- thoughts. (Please think no ill of my grandmother, supplier of the above quote.) Journalists—especially female journalists—are among our finest swearmongers. The Australian’s Elisabeth Wynhausen recently turned up at News Ltd’s Sydney office wearing a burka; although disguised, everybody knew Elisabeth was the burka model because of all the cursing and ranting coming from inside of it.
(Via auntie kc, a recovering Florida swearstress)
UPDATE. The Age’s Jason Koutsoukis reveals Labor’s meek little Kevin Rudd to be a lively swearboy:
Asked to write a story about who the Liberals might fear the most, I dug up this quote about Rudd from a senior Liberal strategist: “Rudd is the class prat, the sort of guy who would have worn a bow tie to the high school quiz contest,” said my source. “He might know all the answers, but everyone would want to beat him up after school.”
The phone started ringing very early on the day the story appeared and before the receiver even reached my ear I could hear someone shouting at me.
Amid liberal use of the f-word and several colourful references to me being some kind of very smelly, very fat and very stupid walking genital not fit to breathe the same air as human beings, I realised that it was none other than the bow-tied class prat himself.
The problem, it took me some minutes to work out, was the bit about the bow tie.
“I never even knew what a f—-king bow tie was when I was in high school, let alone how to put one on,” Rudd bawled down the phone.
Rudd went all the way through high school without knowing what a bow tie was? Worldly!