Monday, June 25, 2007
SEE IT!
Business Week’s David Kiley:
Look around any public school today, and you can see the effects of junk food on kids. It’s an issue that’s easier to see than even global warming.
Global warming can be seen now? Does it look anything like this?
(Note: above link is to last Saturday’s column, which previously was wiped from the web in some kind of tube mishap.)
GOTTA BE A RECORD
Days since Tim Flannery has mentioned either climate change or global warming in the Australian press: 21
UPDATE. Flannery did turn up here 13 days ago, but not to discuss anything warmenish:
Professor Flannery first visited the area in the early ‘70s as a young fossil.
(Extract slightly edited in the interest of unfairness.)
UPDATE II. Hold everything! Dylan Kissane locates a not-online SMH interview dated June 18, at which point Flannery’s no-water-for-Sydney prediction was already out by nearly one million megalitres. Includes this Q&A:
Q: What do you think will happen to Australia’s water supplies under climate change?
A: The supply is going to get more and more limited. The soils are getting hotter and that means more water evaporates from the soils, which means there’s less water to run into the rivers. Water is just going to be in shorter and shorter supply.
It’s raining again as I write this:
NOTHING NEW IN NINETY-NINE YEARS
From our Chicago pal Fred Butzen:
My wife was paging through a bound edition of “Punch” from the beginning of the last century, and ran across a cartoon that looks like it should have been published yesterday, despite having appeared in the October 28, 1908, issue. I thought you’d enjoy it.
Readers will enjoy it, too. In other pictorial developments, Andrew R. sends the menu from Guangzhou’s curiously-named Milan Restaurant: chow down, people, on Onion Cigarette Pulp Draws Cuttlefish Juice Face.
DOES WALL STREET HAVE DITCHES?
Mother Sheehan moves on to her next phase:
Helping humans who have been hurt by US corporate imperialism.
CITIZENS AUDITED
The SMH’s Michael Dwyer previews a series based around the attractive theme of home invasions by bossy pod-people:
What if our planet was under siege by some omnipotent celestial foe but television stations were unable to acquire footage compelling enough to galvanise the required response? That appears to be the inconvenient truth confronting green TV shows.
Our foe is celestial? It seems Dwyer buys into the solar theory of global warming. Good for him!
This year we’ve already seen two well-intentioned environmental awareness shows come and go - or rather we haven’t, judging by the ratings for Eco House Challenge (SBS) and Channel Ten’s Cool Aid: the National Carbon Test.
Now the ABC braves the precarious balance between worthy and watchable with a six-part domestic challenge series titled - with an admirable lunge for some of that hot sci-fi, CSI intrigue - Carbon Cops.
Run for your lives, carbon scum!
Our real-life Mulder and Scully are scientists Sean Fitzgerald and Lish Fejer, two passionate believers in the unseen perils of climate change, dedicated to enlightening a sceptical and passive populace.
This can’t possibly fail.
Each week they don their orange monogrammed shirts to cordon off the toxic home of an Australian family. They arrive with energy-auditing gadgetry, sobering statistics and lips and eyebrows curled in withering admonishment. They rate these people, shame them, then challenge them to do better.
Well, first they could smash all Sean and Lish’s television cameras and sound equipment. That’d cut carbon outputs by heaps, I bet.
“One of the things I loved was when you tell them the audit result,” says Carbon Constable Fitzgerald, whose daytime cover is head of the science department at Geelong’s Oberon High School. “Most of them were expecting to come off pretty well but they were all genuinely, absolutely floored. They can’t believe it. It’s a great moment.”
I’d love them to audit Live Earth.
How do you think the Barries rate in episode one? Let’s just say that between their squillion perma-blazing light bulbs, Dad’s overseas business travel, their swimming pool and boat, their shame is acute.
Scroll to UPDATE XXXVI; business travel is exempt! These people don’t even know the rules.
Taken together, the case studies are not about individual scapegoats as much as an indictment of Western affluence, negligence and self-obsession.
How will we tell it apart from usual ABC programming?
TWENTY SEVEN
Australian Alan Jones won the world F1 championship 27 years ago; his number that year was 27; Australian Casey Stoner’s number this year in the world MotoGP championship - which he currently leads - is 27.
PERHAPS THE TRUTH LIES SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN
Competing views are held over the aims and effectiveness of this new road safety advertisement. On the one hand, academic Glen:
Maybe if they asked some people who actually do research on young male drivers and car culture, etc they would know that cars within car culture operate as part of a homosocial institution. So the car, instead of a woman (original homosocial relation), as an object is the third term that mediates sociality between men or those who are performing masculinities. Questioning the size of a young male driver’s penis may seem like a tremendously funny neo-freudian way to punish young male drivers by way of inference but it fails to grasp the difference between homosociality and homosexuality. Homosociality may involve homoerotic undercurrents or be part of a homoerotic libidinal economy but this is always mediated by a third term ...
The whole relation between risk - or exploiting the contingencies of social life - and expectations of masculine behaviour needs attention particularly if we are trying to move towards ‘sustainable’ modes of sociality. I don’t see this ad doing that work.
In fact, it is no better than Howard’s modus operatum to target populations within which a problem exists rather than targeting the problem itself by recognising that probelm exists across a whole range of different populations (alcohol abuse, sexual abuse, etc). If someone wants to ...
Thank you, Glen; you raise several very important-sounding points. But so too does YouTube commenter jspecmaz:
i think the ad states that everyones pissweak and needs to try harder. MORE SMOKE…MORE ANGLE!
Further study of the issue is probably required.
Sunday, June 24, 2007
AND THEN THEY GOT MARRIED
Anne Summers in the SMH:
The last Australian political leader who invited the opposition to help handle a national crisis was John Curtin, who persuaded Robert Menzies to join his wartime cabinet.
What the hell?
(Via Hal G.P. Colebatch)
FRIENDS OF THE ABC
The ABC’s Media Watch received some unacknowledged assistance in composing last week’s attack piece on internet commenters. Note these June 12-13 posts from Ahmed, one of the freewheeling chuckleheads at Muslim Village:
For those who thought collecting these racist comments wasn’t going to achieve anything, watch Media Watch (ABC TV 9:15p.m est) next Monday ... consider this as research and watch next Monday’s Media Watch to see the result of collecting such data.
Salaam
Ahmed
And after the program was broadcast, on June 18:
Alhamdoulillah we were able to help the Media Watch researchers with this story. So there was a great benefit to collecting these quotes. Please keep them coming.
Look at for another “interesting” story on Media Watch in the near future, Inshallah
It’s a little unfair - possibly unethical - for Media Watch not to have credited the help of their Muslim Village volunteers, don’t you think? Perhaps Media Watch was put off by the fact that many MV commenters are anonymous, although they could have used some of the contributors’ charming screen icons:
Given that Media Watch’s focus was on “prejudices”, “bigots”, and “race hate”, it may be illuminating to examine some of the comments at their new associate site:
the sky is blue. i am feeling blue. so i must be the sky. fly a few planes through me on your way to a skyscraper. superb. ijtihad at its best.
Nice.
Its about time we Muslims said it brazenly, unashamedly and proudly that YES, ... we DO want the world to be run by Islam. Violence is NOT wrong! Injustice IS!
No prejudice there.
May every Zionist be cut-off at the elbows and develop a lifelong itch in their shorts that they’re not able to scratch… damn them all...
Why, it’s non-stop love at Muslim Village! Plus heartwarming olden-days fables:
Safiyyah died in 20 A.H. at the age of seventy-three. The was of Trench was fought in 5 A.H. She was therefore 58 then. These days a lady of that age is hardly able to do her domestic work. But look how Safiyyah (radhiallaho anha) goes and kills a Jew all alone.
So old, but still able to kill a Jew! There’s a lesson there for all of us. Muslim Village hopes today’s youngsters might follow her example:
i will bring my children up to believe that there is no better thing in life than to struggle in the path of God, whether its with their speech, their wallets or their hands in fighting.. and that there is no better honor than to die as a martyr.
Those taxpayer-funded geniuses at Media Watch have somehow overlooked a motherlode of internet-comment rage here; all of it moderated, too.
when a Palestinian dies fighting for their freedom, their abode will be Jannah. When a Zionist dies oppressing a fellow human being, their abode will be the hell fire. And that is where they belong.
They really don’t like “Zionists”.
We have no room for Zionist sympathisers in our hearts nor any respect for them and what they think or feel.
Sometimes commenters at Muslim Village ditch “Zionist” and use another noun:
our prophet has prophesised that eventually every single Jew will be eliminated from the face of this earth by the Muslims, after a major war between us and them (kafirs) ... and the Messenger of Allah says nothing but the truth. Just a matter of time I guess.
Every so often, MV commenters venture opinions that might be thought “redneck” by Media Watch were they to appear at conservative sites:
• My store got robbed like 3 -4 months ago one of my managers got stabbed… and guess wat it was leboes!!! They spoke in arabic to top it off and the manager there was lebo as well they are soo stupid sometimes i swear they did it all for a few hundred dollars.
• I am against the Death Penalty…except when it comes to peadophiles…but they should be tortured first…very very slowly…then butchered!
• why is there such outrage to the Hamas Mickey Mouse when it’s simply a propoganda tool and it’s a technique used by several countries in the past (including the US). Here’s an example, i once watched a bugs bunny cartoon where he was fighting against Hitler. It portrayed Hitler as an incompetent fool and was very offensive to Nazis.
Anyway, let’s look forward to Muslim Village’s next Media Watch contribution - once they’ve unchained themselves:
I got Idea Why dont be chain Outside the Dailytelegraph Office or the Office of ACMA until they hear us
(Via the Zapper in comments - wicked, awful comments.)
UPDATE. Media Watch takes credit for MV’s work:
The examples selected were those we could find. Similar hate posts against other groups would have been considered. We didn’t find them on these sites, but would welcome submissions from viewers if they have them.
(Via Ripclawe)
UPDATE II. News.com.au reports:
The ABC’s Media Watch is fighting claims of hypocrisy after its website published anti-Semitic comments mocking the Holocaust and claiming a Jewish conspiracy ...
When asked about the racist comments, Mr Palmer told The Daily Telegraph: “You’re easily shocked.”
While admitting the comments were inappropriate, he said Media Watch was “caught by surprise by the sheer volume” of emails to the site last week.
There were two contentious comments. The first - shown unedited in an update here - went up within twenty minutes of last week’s broadcast, presumably in advance of any huge number of responses.
Mr Palmer claimed the posts remained on the website for a “few minutes” before being taken down.
Not so; the first comment remained unaltered for several hours. The second hasn’t been removed at all.
LANCET DOES BRAKE DISTANCES
The Age reports:
The risk of drivers crashing doubled if they were speeding 5 km/h over the 60 km/h limit, the Transport Accident Commission said.
Ridiculous. The TAC also claims that the “stopping distance of a car with good brakes travelling in dry road conditions” at just 50 kmh (30 mph) is 35 metres, or 115 feet.
Hmmm. This Michelin site reports 40 metre stops from 50 kmh on snow-covered roads using winter tyres; you’d expect much better than a 5-metre advantage in the dry. And a road test of the large Chevrolet Silverado reports a stopping distance from 100 kmh (60 mph) of 39 metres; only four metres further than the TAC believes is typical for a well-maintained car braking from half that speed.
Subaru’s 2002 Outback Sport is a reasonable example of a routine road machine, such as might be found on Melbourne’s streets. Its measured stopping distance is 38.7 metres - again, from 100 kmh. With rear drum brakes. What pedal are the TAC’s testers hitting?
(Much thanks to reader Blink, who raised doubt over the TAC’s claims after I’d cited them in an earlier post.)
FLANNERY SLIGHTLY WRONG
It’s still raining in NSW, and dam-dryness visionary Tim Flannery looks stupider every day:
Storage levels in Illawarra and Shoalhaven dams, on the New South Wales south coast, have been boosted by heavy rainfall over the past week.
Avon Dam, which supplies Wollongong, is up 14 per cent to 66 per cent of capacity, while the Nepean, Tallowa and the Fitzroy Falls dams are overflowing.
And overall storage levels in the Sydney catchment have reached 50 per cent for the first time in three years.
The magnitude of Flannery’s error began at 922,500 megalitres, grew to more than 950,000 megalitres, and now stands at 1,250,000 megalitres - or 330,215,064,051.95 US gallons.
BRITS SURPRISED
Mark Steyn on revived enthusiasm for grilled Salman:
It’s slightly depressing to read that Her Majesty’s Government were entirely taken aback by the hostile Muslim reaction to their decision to knight Salman Rushdie. One assumed they had factored into their calculations at least a bit of pro forma Death-to-the-Great-Satan prancing in the livelier quartiers of Pakistan - or even, with classic Brit cynicism, figured that enraging hundreds of millions of Muslims over an imperial bauble was a cheap way to look courageous and tough and determined after the recent humiliations inflicted on the Royal Navy.
But no: the whole burning-effigies-of-the-Queen routine took them completely by surprise. It really is impossible to exaggerate the depths of self-delusion within which the multiculti bien pensants exist.
It’s also difficult to exaggerate the historical hypersensitivity of certain people, as Alexander Chancellor recalls:
These troublemakers are not new. They were around in the 1970s when the late Auberon Waugh, in a column in the Times, made a flippant remark about the baggy trousers traditionally worn by some Turkish men, that was deemed to be insulting to Islam. A mob in Rawalpindi, unlikely to have been Times readers, burned down the British Council building, and Waugh lost his column.
NEWS BRIEFLETS
• Actress Emma Booth will play Germaine Greer “in Hippie Hippie Shake, the screen adaptation of Oz magazine founder Richard Neville’s memoir.”
• Christopher Essex, professor of applied mathematics and director of program in theoretical physics at University of Western Ontario, asks: “What’s the average of a phone number?”
• Ed Driscoll: “You never heard about global warming when Sinatra and Dino were playing Vegas and Miles Davis was Kind of Blue, did you? I rest my case. Especially since it’s becoming too hot, and I need to put it down.”
• Here’s to National Columnists Day!
• Bruce at Gay Patriot emails: “I don’t know if you heard about the scandal in South Carolina with their coke-dealing State Treasurer ... That’s all fine and good, but here in North Carolina we have a $14,000-a-year State Legislator driving around in a $200,000 Ferrari!”
• Another one for the list: “In May, Mr Hardy had blamed global warming for a collapse in annual profits from £22m to just £100,000.”
• Big article on malaria, from National Geographic.
• Some glass-nearly-empty gloom hunting from Tim Dunlop: “The PM claims that is ‘Very, very hard in the current economy’ to believe someone can’t get a job. There are surely some remote areas, for instance, where this simply isn’t true.”
• No racism at Larvatus Prodeo: “When these communities have engaged with economic ‘realities’, will they build a nice chamber of commerce in every township and camp? I’d suggest they call them all ‘Noel Pearsons Cabin’.”
• No racism at Larvatus Prodeo, part II: “I think a more apt description of Pearson would bbe to use a term of derision used by indigenious people to denigrate some of their own who aren’t true to their racial origins a ‘Coconut’ - Black on the Outside, but White in the Middle.”
• Reassuring news from senior Shia Muslim cleric Kamal Mousselmani: “Sheik Mousselmani said all of Australia’s approximately 30,000 Shi’ites were avid supporters of Hezbollah (Party of God) and haters of Israel.”
• Annoyed by power cuts? Destroy a KFC. You know it makes sense.
REASON REVEALED
The Age’s Traceeee Hutchison:
Perhaps it is just my natural suspicion of authority ...
Why do big-government types so often identify themselves as suspicious of authority?
... but could the real reason the Victorian Government has been hell-bent on blowing open Port Phillip heads to gouge deeper into the bay’s shipping channel have been revealed with this week’s announcement that Tenix will build two massive amphibious warships at its Williamstown dockyards?
Note the word “amphibious”; these are landing ships, and therefore unlikely to require exceptionally deep waterways. Specifications on a similar vessel here. Those with a knowledge of shipping are invited to consider Traceeee’s theory.
UPDATE. The maximum draft for ships in Port Phillip Bay’s major shipping channel is currently restricted to 11.6 metres without tidal assistance, and 12.1 metres with. Proposed dredging would increase this to beyond 14 metres. The draft at full load of a Navantia vessel similar to the warships Traceeee’s concerned about is reported here as just six metres.
UPDATE II. Traceeee doesn’t know the difference between depth and weight.
UPDATE III. Curious George: “Her next article will be about her rage at the Defence Force having to extend their runways after buying Harrier Jump Jets.”
Saturday, June 23, 2007
99% OF INTERNET OWNED
Very near the end of this interview with journalism lecturer and spokesman for the Friends of the ABC Professor Alan Knight, the Professor volunteers his view on internet content:
Look, 99% of the stuff that’s on the web is rubbish. It’s basically Tim Blair going on with his mates about how we need more guns. You know, it’s nonsense.
ABC types are a little obsessed with this site lately. Still, Alan reminds me how neglectful we’ve been of gun issues lately ... so, just for him:
The founder of an antiviolence group called No Guns pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal weapons charges.
Hector “Big Weasel” Marroquin is accused of selling an assault rifle, a machine gun, two pistols and two silencers to undercover federal agents last fall. He could face up to 50 years in prison if convicted.
UPDATE. Mark Steyn: “I love America! Even the anti-gun groups are full of gun nuts packing totally awesome heat.”