Friday, January 18, 2008
TRACEEEE TO CITY: DROP DEAD
Furious that nobody supports her anti-dredging campaign, Traceeee Hutchison lashes out:
No one in Melbourne cares ...
Melburnians have never valued the bay as an asset. Still don’t. Because, in the end, Melbourne is a port city and port cities aren’t about aesthetics. They’re about business and infrastructure and Melburnians — in their silent complicity in backing this project — have turned back the clock 100 years. Forget about Melbourne being a dynamic, forward-looking aesthetic city rich in culture. It’s a fantasy. It’s a big, ugly, smelly port that is about to get bigger, uglier and smellier.
Nonsense; Melbourne is a beautiful place. In other seabed news:
Britain’s own underwater “Atlantis” could be revealed for the first time with hi-tech underwater cameras.
Marine archaeologist Stuart Bacon and Professor David Sear, of the University of Southampton, will explore the lost city of Dunwich, off the Suffolk coast.
Dunwich gradually disappeared into the sea because of coastal erosion.
That was back in the 13th century. Notably, Dunwich never ratified the Kyoto Protocol.
JOURNALIST MAKES EXCUSES
This week’s column deals with an unavoidable subject. Illustration by Dave Follett.
UPDATE. The world’s funniest cancer column! Well, it’s not exactly a crowded field.
CARBON IN COURT
This could be entertaining:
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) alleges car manufacturer GM Holden has breached the Trade Practices Act by claiming that one of its products is carbon-friendly.
Holden supplies and markets Saab motor vehicles in Australia and in an advertisement says 17 native trees are planted for every Saab sold, as a carbon offset.
The ACCC is taking legal action, saying the claim is misleading as the trees would not offset the emissions from any vehicle.
Australia’s ridiculous carbon neutral industry - last year business was up 300 per cent - will be watching with interest.
(Via Kaboom)
LIMIT REACHED
The Spectator’s James Delingpole:
My resolution this year is to make huge sums of money, buy a vast country estate, surround it with a moat and spend the rest of my life hunting, driving fast cars round my private race track and generally trying to maximise my carbon footprint ...
I seem to remember my resolution last year being pretty similar, but that time I was being tongue-in-cheek whereas this time I really mean it.
Delingpole has reached the Nilknarf Limit.
REWRITER BITTEN
A senatorial stealth edit is exposed. Greens should know that not everybody is as dim as their supporters.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
SHOUTS UNDAMPENED
Gaia, you prankster, you:
It snowed, but they still came. A heavy snowfall blanketed a global warming protest outside the State House in Annapolis this morning, but it did not dampen the shouts of about 400 activists who urged lawmakers to pass the nation’s toughest greenhouse gas control law ...
Click for the usual shot of freezing warmenists. Meanwhile, Global Warming is a winner at Canterbury.
UPDATE. The Daily Telegraph’s Garry Linnell enjoys global warming in China:
TRAIL OF DEATH III
Iowahawkian genius:
(Trail of Death I, Trail of Death II)
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
BLOODLETTING COMPLETED
Peter Roebuck wishes Australians and Indians could just get along:
At last the bloodletting has been completed and it’s time to get on with the cricket. Beyond argument, the debate sparked by Anil Kumble’s devastating remark has been fierce but it also has been productive.
So Kumble’s to blame, is he? Roebuck’s own publishers seem to think Peter had something to do with this bloodletting “debate”, which Roebuck was talking up even after his notorious column:
ABC cricket commentator Peter Roebuck says there are still serious doubts about next week’s Perth Test going ahead.
Roebuck says there is little chance of the two captains being part of any conciliatory talks.
“These two sides are so far apart right now that I think the Perth Test has got no more than a 40 per cent chance of taking place ...” he said.
Good call, sir! About his reaction following the last Test, Roebuck now writes:
To my mind, the fifth day resembled events at the Oval in 2005. Readers may recall the exception taken in this column to the grandiose excesses laid on by the host when supposed bad light stopped play on the Sunday of that fifth and final Test of an epic series. Wild-eyed supporters cheered this apparently regrettable and certainly idiotic turn of events and the organisers sent out a lady to lead the crowd in renditions of Land of Hope and Glory and Rule Britannia. The triumphalism was objectionable and the point was forcefully made in papers on both sides of the world. Thereabouts, your correspondent was not quite so easily cast as an English snob, a designation wider than Devon Malcolm’s loosest delivery!
What a snobbish thing to say about Devon Malcolm. And in conclusion:
Everyone needs to move beyond the reprisal mentality.
Writes the guy who called for one quarter of the Australian team to be fired. Unbelievable.
UPDATE. India cleaning up in Perth; Australia 5/61, Instant Karma 2/4.
BUSH EFFECT
Poor Al Gore. First he has the presidency stolen from him by evil George W. Bush, and now Bush has stolen the famous Gore Effect:
It’s been a chilly welcome for America’s president: The Mideast, known for blazing sun and scorching winds, has been hit with an uncharacteristic wave of heavy rain, frigid gales — and even a smattering of snow ...
The weather affected Bush’s trip from the get-go. During his first stop in Israel, morning fog grounded his helicopter, forcing him to take a motorcade to the West Bank from Jerusalem. His plane touched down in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday amid heavy rains. In the Saudi Arabia capital of Riyadh on Monday and Tuesday, the president was greeted by overcast skies and temperatures hovering around freezing.
Bush is even hanging out with a crowd who seem much like Gore’s brigade of wealthy environmentalist hypocrites:
The president was escorted into the wood-paneled, marble-columned hall by the king’s son and preceded by two men carrying silver incense holders that left a trail of pungent smoke.
He’s in Al Gore’s house!
TRAIL OF DEATH II
Further to the NYT’s trail of death, here’s the WSJ:
A platoon of Times reporters “found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war.”
The Times didn’t try to establish a causal relationship between war service and homicide. It didn’t even try to establish a correlation. The 7,000-word article contained no statistics on the size of the veteran population, or on the prevalence of homicide either in the general population or among young men, who are disproportionately represented among active-duty and recently discharged service members.
Various commentators performed their own back-of-the-envelope calculations, including Ralph Peters of the New York Post, who estimates that if the Times figures are accurate, recent war vets are only about one-fifth as likely to be implicated in a homicide as the average 18- to 34-year-old.
Which leads to a fine suggestion from John Hinderaker:
Next time, why don’t they undertake a research project to identify all murders and other forms of homicide committed (or allegedly committed—no finding of guilt necessary!) by people who are, or recently have been, employed by newspaper companies?
Monday, January 14, 2008
A VISIT TO THE INFIRMARY
Feeling poorly for some time. Saw a doctor a few weeks ago, who sent me to a specialist, who booked me into hospital for tests.
It’s cancer.
Major abdominal surgery next week. If all goes well, the remaining non-cancerous section of me will be home by early-mid February. No idea yet how long a full recovery might take beyond then. Medical advice is very positive, but that wouldn’t count for much in the absence of care and love from family and friends. I’ve been overwhelmed. I’m lucky.
Luckier than I ever knew.
Usual posting to continue shortly.
*WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE* Results of Monday’s CAT scan are in. There is no spread of the malignancy; zip, zero, zilch. It’s entirely localised. Medical science may disagree, but I think credit should go to readers and fellow bloggers. Your thoughts and prayers have eerie powers.
Massive thanks to all.
WIZARD ENJOYED
Iowahawk’s new group blog features Treacher and a whole lot else besides - including stellar Ball of the Day nominees and the best pinball promotion line yet retrieved from Bally archives:
Ann-Margret enjoys the company of WIZARD
WHY? WHY?
Melbourne writer and union activist Jeana Vithoulkas asks:
Why does being a Leftie in Australia have such a bad name?
Beats me, Jeana. Maybe you should ask Robert Manne, Tim Palmer, Christopher Sheil, Terry Lane, Hugh Mackay, Bob Brown, Wayne Sanderson, Phillip Adams, Margo Kingston, David Marr, Andrew West, Catherine Deveny, Bob Ellis, John Doyle, Traceeee Hutchison, Nick Dyrenfurth, Mark Latham, Tim Flannery, Alan Ramsey, Michael Leunig, Adele Horin or any number of bad Australian leftoid names. Search ‘em up on the searcher.
LIVE BY THE BACKPACK ...
In an attempt to break the world irony record, an apparent suicide bomber targets Hamas:
Forces at a Hamas rally earlier in the day found 4 kilograms of TNT in the backpack of a man during a search after he was stopped at the entrance to the gathering, Hamas security spokesman Ihab Ghussein said.
Maybe they’ll build a wall.
STOP THESE MURDERERS
According to 50 Facts That Should Change the World , by BBC journalist Jessica Williams:
Global warming kills 150,000 every year.
What a terrible thing to have on your conscience. Environmentalists must be distraught:
A survey of travel habits has revealed that the most environmentally conscious people are also the biggest polluters.
“Green” consumers have some of the biggest carbon footprints because they are still hooked on flying abroad or driving their cars while their adherence to the green cause is mostly limited to small gestures.
Identified as “eco-adopters”, they are most likely to be members of an environmental organisation, buy green products such as detergents, recycle and have a keen interest in green issues.
But the survey of 25,000 people, by the market research company Target Group Index, found that eco-adopters are seven per cent more likely than the general population to take flights, and four per cent more likely to own a car. The survey found similar trends in France and the United States.
One eco-adopter identified by the report: British conservative leader David Cameron, who combines green speechifying with flights in private helicopters and planes.
(Via Ross)
UPDATE. Still in the UK, funmaster Sir David King turns against nature bunnies:
The Government’s former chief scientific adviser has accused green activists of putting the fight against climate change at risk by wanting to take society back to the 17th century.
Sir David King, who is credited with convincing Tony Blair of the urgency of global warming, told the Guardian newspaper that tackling the problem without using technological solutions - including nuclear power - was hopeless.
He said: “There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves ‘green’ are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century.”