Friday, August 31, 2007
FAITH MAINTAINED
Alan Ramsey, October 11, 2004:
Latham’s time will come. Believe it.
Alan Ramsey, August 31, 2007:
Kevin Rudd will be prime minister by Christmas. Bet on it.
UPDATE. Andrew Bolt has much more on Al’s predictive genius.
RIGHTS RIGHTED
Latest column.
SCIENCE QUESTIONED
Suddenly environmentalists are questioning science:
TONY JONES: But of course, that’s exactly what he says he’s doing. He hasn’t given any formal approval, now he’s got an independent inquiry by the chief scientists. Is that not good enough?
GEOFFREY COUSINS: No, it’s not good enough because it doesn’t allow a proper public inspection of all of that and debate of the scientific evidence and it doesn’t allow all the voices to be heard, and you don’t want a situation where the chief scientist looks at these issues and makes a determination and then shortly thereafter, somebody says, but you’ve missed this point, you know, if only you’d thought about that. And the scientist says, oh yes, OK, now I see it. I mean, this deserves a proper public hearing.
People openly debating scientists’ views on the environment. What will they demand next?
(Via Alan R.M. Jones)
Thursday, August 30, 2007
USEFUL PARENTING ADVICE
Are your children going through that awkward phase when all they want to do is kill Jews and impose Muslim law? Yes? Then join Terry Hicks next weekend at the Mullumbimby Fatherhood Festival to hear him discuss “challenges in parenting”.
(Via Raffi)
HOUSE OF CORRECTION
The BBC’s latest means of population bossing:
Joanna, Dan and Andy descend on a household of wasters to assess just how bad they are based on what they see in the house, by ‘interrogating’ them and from the evidence of a waste diary that the family has compiled.
The family then spends up to five days living at ‘the house of correction’ - a purpose built eco-camp of large traditional Mongolian yurts (tents) - where they live without creature comforts and have Joanna and Dan teaching how them to waste as little as possible and how to live off the land.
(Via Murph)
JOHNS JUPITERED
Andrew Johns was rugby league’s finest player - despite, as he now reveals, being all punked up on Jupiter oil many times throughout his career.
KITTY HARVEST
Hey, Al Gore! Job for you down in Australia:
An Australian has come up with a novel solution to the millions of feral cats roaming the Outback: eat them.
THE CONTINUING STORY OF BUNGALOW HILL
Some poor Paws lend Hillary a hand:
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign aides yesterday said they won’t return tens of thousands of dollars contributed by a seemingly low-income family living in a tiny bungalow tied to one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors.
The campaign’s response came a day after The Wall Street Journal reported on the donations from the Paw family of Daly City, Calif.
The father, William, is a mail carrier, and the mother, Alice, is a homemaker. They live in a one-story green bungalow - yet six Paws have given a combined $45,000 to Clinton’s Senate and presidential campaigns in the past two years.
In total, the Paw family – haven’t the Paw done well under George W. Bush? – donated around $200,000 to various Democrats, possibly as a cover for clothing magnate Norman Hsu. Which leads us to the sensationally-named Winkle Paw:
Winkle Paw told the Journal that he had sometimes given money at Hsu’s request to candidates, but that what he spent was his own.
A man who answered Winkle Paw’s cellphone yesterday hung up on a Post reporter.
No need to get catty about it, Winkle Paw. Reporters may have better luck with Winkle’s sister … Dimple Paw.
UPDATE. An election expert picks his winning team:
Add another name to the list of political observers who think a Clinton-Obama ticket would be unbeatable: Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
They’d sure be an interesting team, what with Clinton’s rigid on-message pathology and Obama’s freewheeling crazy-talk.
MORE THAN MUTTON
Paco considers the Al Gore Muttonburger:
Somehow, this just doesn’t seem to do Big Al justice. The man has put on a tremendous amount of weight, and I hear that, if his global cooling efforts don’t succeed in saving the planet, his Plan B is to become one himself, and invite the inhabitants of earth to colonize him.
More from Paco and other Crittenden invaders here.
TONY WANTS TROUBLE
Leftist Tony Hartin is inspired by rioting Bangladeshi students:
There is certainly inspiration and the knowledge that no matter how crap things seem, protests and protest movements find a way of spilling out of control. I sincerely hope a similar way is found at the APEC demo.
That way might be easier found now that police horses are out of the game:
All 36 of the state’s police horses have been ruled out for use during APEC after they were quarantined at Redfern’s mounted police complex due to the EI virus outbreak that has devastated the state’s racing industry.
Ball-bearing and marble manufacturers will be devastated.
UPDATE. In other horse-flu news, one horse has died and the Sydney Spring Carnival has been cancelled.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
SPEAKING OF THE MEDIA, TRY READING IT
Artists are stupid:
[Priscilla] Bracks told The Daily Telegraph her double portrait was not meant to compare Jesus with bin Laden, but was a commentary on the way the terror leader was treated in the media. She was concerned bin Laden would be unintentionally glorified in years to come.
Describing him as a “common criminal”, Ms Bracks made the bizarre assertion bin Laden - whose whereabouts are unknown - should be extradited and put on trial.
ACTION TAKEN
George Monbiot calls for the largest economical and political transformation the world has ever seen:
We’re not talking anymore about measures which require a little bit of tweaking here and there, or a little bit of political tweaking here and there. We’re talking about measures which require global revolutionary change ...
We have very very little time in which to act. We have very very little time in which to bring about the largest economical and political transformation the world has ever seen.
In response to this emergency, Monbiot recently bought a secondhand Renault.
EVILS TO AVOID
The Philippines’ Father Roy Cimagala:
Sometime ago, a close friend of mine came to me in deep distress after attending Mass where the celebrant (a bishop) mentioned globalization, without any qualification, among the evils to avoid, together with abortion, contraception, pornography, etc.
“I was more ashamed of my bishop than bothered by what he said,” this friend told me. “He just showed complete ignorance of the issue. Incredible!”
I had to clarify the matter and disabuse him of a creeping cynicism about to engulf him. But this is not the only example. There are many others.
Someone told me the other day how dismayed he was when in a seminar a nun acted like a calamity prophetess talking about the impending doom that will be brought about by “global warming.”
“When I checked the Internet,” he said, “I found out that the issue is still a subject of intense debate as to whether there’s real basis for alarm or not. And here we have a nun already blabbering as if everything about it is already settled.”
“Calamity prophetess”! Father Roy has coined a noun for the ages.
“STATE OF TRUTH” FELT
A dissenting view is denounced:
Adriane Carr, deputy leader of the federal Green party, is perplexed as to why the Kamloops-Thompson school district plans to show its secondary school students The Great Global Warming Swindle ...
“You don’t have a demand to show the other side of slavery or mass murder or drunk driving,” she said. “Some things we just know are true and we go from there. We feel we are in a state of truth [on global warming] and we need to get on with trying to solve the problem.”
WE’RE THE ENEMY
Associated Press reports:
“We have met the enemy, and he is us,” the comic-strip character Pogo said decades ago. A new analysis of last year’s near-record temperatures in the United States suggests he was right.
Soon AP will be citing illustrated anthropomorphic velociraptors as prime enemy sources.