Saturday, November 03, 2007
TIME FOR REFLECTION
A 66-year-old Sydney man was allegedly murdered three days ago by an ecology-minded fellow who objected to his water use in a time of drought. Let’s check the forecast for the coming week:
Saturday: Rain periods. Chance of thunderstorms.
Sunday: Rain clearing in the morning. Chance of an early thunderstorm.
Monday: A few showers.
Tuesday: A few showers.
Wednesday: A few showers.
Thursday: A few showers.
Friday: A few showers.
Wherever the accused killer is being held, I hope he’s able to hear that rainfall, day after day. Chances are he won’t be able to feel it for a while.
(Via Alan R.M. Jones)
Friday, November 02, 2007
LABOR’S BIG JOKE
The Age’s Michelle Grattan advises:
Peter Garrett maybe should spend the rest of the campaign in a forest somewhere. Labor HQ will arrange accommodation and pay all expenses.
They were forced to do this back in 2004, too.
UPDATE. A Labor supporter calls for silencing:
Labor need a new policy with their candidates, it should be called “Sit down and S T F U.”
UPDATE II. “Trouble with Peter is,” writes Rob Bresca, “that he thinks he is way smarter than he actually is.” Absolutely; as made particularly evident by Garrett’s 2002 debate with Bjorn Lomborg.
CRICKET EXPLAINED
Latest column, presented in cutting-edge Portable Document Format, might be slightly tricky to locate; try here if the above link isn’t helpful.
PREDICTIONS ASTRAY
Time magazine, April 1965:
Men such as IBM economist Joseph Froomkin feel that automation will eventually bring about a 20-hour work week . . . thus creating a mass leisure class.
Many scientists hope that in time the computer will allow man to return to the Hellenic concept of leisure, in which the Greeks had time to cultivate their minds and improve their environment while slaves did all the labor. The slaves, in modern Hellenism, would be the computers.
Hasn’t really worked out like that, has it?
RAY HITS TOWN
Achewood’s Ray Smuckles is in Sydney! Staying just down the road from me, as it happens.
CHANGE GARRETT
Peter Garrett ‘fesses up:
Labor frontbencher Peter Garrett has told a radio host his party’s “me too” approach to policy would only last until the election, then they would “change it all”.
Steve Price, a presenter on Sydney radio station 2UE, has claimed Mr Garrett told him during an on-the-record discussion in an airport this morning that Labor would “change it all” once in power.
”(He said) the ‘me too’ tag will not matter after the election because, quote, ‘once we get in we will just change it all’,” Price said on radio today.
He’s always been seven feet of pure liability, this boy. Rudd can’t say he wasn’t warned.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
PAUL TIBBETS
Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets Jr, pilot of the Enola Gay, has died at 92. Some background on his training here.
FOLLOW THE ADVANCED NATIONS
The Age’s Kenneth Davidson plays with numbers:
Australia spews out about six times the pollution of China and 12 times that of India ...
We do? Really? Please continue, great Kenneth:
... on a per capita basis.
Easily solved; instead of cutting pollution, all we need do is increase our population!
The developed countries, including Australia, are responsible for 76 per cent of the greenhouse pollution now in the atmosphere.
Australia’s share of that total: just 1.4 per cent.
Australia even manages to contribute more than twice the level of emissions of countries such as Germany, Britain, Japan, Italy and France, which are all far more advanced industrially than Australia ...
Still with the per capita. But Kenneth may have helped us on the path to climate goodness here without realising it; what do all those countries (besides Italy) have in common?
NATURE’S CRUELLEST JOKE
The claim: global warming caused the California wildfires.
The reality: California wildfires cause global warming:
In one week, Southern California’s wildfires spewed the same amount of carbon dioxide — the primary global warming gas — as the state’s power plants and vehicles did, scientists figure.
Solution: replace those fire-prone polluting forests with clean-burning hybrid trees! C’mon, tree manufacturers; modernise, and stop living in the carbon-generating past.