China’s Central Communist Committee have just announced they have the ability to shut down the global internet, and are introducing enabling legislation in the People’s Congress giving Premier Wen Jiabao broad emergency powers over the World Wide Web in times of what a spokesman termed “national emergency”.
Titled “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act”, the bill stipulates any internet firms and providers must immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed by a new section of the Chinese Committee on Defense and Terrorism, dubbed the “National Centre for Cybersecurity and Communications”.
Are you outraged? Horrified that a foreign power, ruled by an elite which considers itself above the law, arrogates to itself the right over sovereign communications in every other nation on earth? Surely—if enacted—this legislation poses the greatest threat to our liberty since the commencement of World War Two.
This story is breaking, verifiable, and absolutely true.
Only, I lied about the bit about China.
Be Responsible - Be Free! 
Extreme arrogance and I would like to see them try enforcing it outside the USA, all it will mean is everyone setting up things to bypass the USA leaving the USA behind and out of control.
The end of the beginning.
Chapter 7
Holy gibbering half truths
The year is 2030, the date is uncertain. It is even later than before.
The Grand Regal Oligarch Champion Of Temporal Terror had been translocated and taken back to his nest at the top of the tower of twins bones and skulls. This monstrous edifice had been architected by the previous incarnation of his Chief Religious Advisor of Policy Scientific as Homage to HORUS as stated by the Lord Isis Zagreus Eos Nereus in his genocidal period, manifesto, The protocols of the Elder Union Regal Overweeningers. The massive calcium diffraction effect would hopefully draw down the beneficial effect of the great god HORUS and work his Medicare miracle upon those deigned awesome enough to be placed in this palace of pain retention. The phi centric design was a calcium copy of the great pyramid with another great pyramid, inverted and rotated forty five degrees then inserted till the tip hits the base. All of it built from the skeletons and sinews of every twin in the world. According to the protocols these freaky twinned beings had strange telepathic mutated DNA.
The much smaller chapel of triplets stood nearby, this temple dedicated to the reeducation of the unbelievers. This was accomplished with a process of lashings and thrashings with electric elastic reed whips, whilst forced to learn scripture by reading their lips.
Judyate the semi sentient Man hunting spider and her coterie of coprophageus, juice and slime coated enlarged hamsters, headed towards the tower of twins bones and skulls. The claws of this queer collection of quadrupeds and quadrumanous octopedal arachnid, rapped out a staccato clattering as they crossed the quartz floor of the quintuplet quadrominium. They were on their way to go and assist with the invertrohamsterical procedures. The theory being that if they could use the enlarged greasy hamsters, to extend his anal sphincter sufficiently, it may pull or draw back in the offending nodules on the cranium. Stretching too hard may unfortunately rectum.
Judyate was well equipped for stretching procedures with her large jar of Killing Yolk (KY) jelly, taken from the oocyte oophorectomy. She was an anus probandit (the burden of poops) (onus probandi Latin, the burden of proof). Her gleaming VeeEightVibrator or VEV was ticking over nicely. The octofocal Speculum spectacles specifically specified for staring where the suns don’t shine were on her hideous head. Angranoids and pangolin pills she had a plenty. For bindings and dressing she could secrete slick silk, sometimes sticky plaster. Elastoplastic rebound could also be restrained and dampened using arachnid spinneret spiral techniques. She had multiple pockets each brimming with specific donors spider sperm, inserted aurally; this eerie oily treatment may drive the voices from the head of the Grand Regal Oligarch Champion Of Temporal Terror, or at least insert some less bothersome voices.
Deep in the bowels of the dungeonous subterranean catacombs there lay in an unlocked cage, the Crown Prince Aramada. He was stuck inverted on his back; the heavy chitinous plate armor had weighed him down. Turtle like, he lay there wriggling and squirming. Why had he insisted in coming alone into the Dome. Part of the answer he knew was, that he was wearing the only stealth ceiling crawler suit in existence. His only hope was that he could rock himself back onto his front and attempt to skitter back to the tunnel he had entered through. Old toad, Ms.Her and Rastech were his back up team, back at the far end of the tunnel they had bored into the base of the Dome, they were under strict instructions to maintain com silence.
Old toad was expounding his theories on how the sonic cavitation cannon worked.
“The sonic tunneling device consists of a series of small parallel channels, referred to as a ‘stack’, and is fixed in place at a set location inside the tube. In a standing wave thermoacoustic engine, the pressure and velocity fluctuations through the stack are such that heat is given to the oscillating gas at high pressure and removed at low pressure; this satisfies Rayleigh’s criterion for self-sustained oscillation and by this process heat is converted into acoustic power. For thermoacoustic pumps, the process is reversed. By using thermal delays in the stack, this process approximates the highly-efficient cavitations reduction feedback cycle. Linear thermoacoustic models were developed to form a basic quantitative understanding, while some cryogenic interest has resulted in niche applications such as small to medium scale felching applications.”
Ms.Her the exiled leader of the Cannibal Unctuous Lesbian Trust CULT was staring in disbelief “That sounds like the biggest old load of pony I have ever heard, roll me another one”
Rastech was taking no part in this banter; he had his ears to the horns, as com liaison he was attempting to get a link to anyone. The psychoacoustic radioscopic interference was playing havoc with everything; all he got was white noise and static bursts.
The Grand Regal Oligarch Champion Of Temporal Terror was still rambling almost incoherently. “Seven 7 svenski eleven seven heaven Solubility and Activity Coefficients of Acidic and Basic Nonelectrolytes in Aqueous Salt Solutions nitrogen again seven seven 7when we where were we where we were wearing werewolf costumes A one pot stereoselective synthesis of cis or trans 2,5-disubstituted tetrahydrofurans 3–8 can be achieved in high yields via electrophilic cyclisation of the corresponding cis or trans α or γ-allyl-β-hydroxyesters mediated by metachloroperoxybenzoic acid. The tetrahydrofurans 5 or 6 7 7 7 may be converted into (±) methyl nonactate by procedures described earlier. The role of methoxycarbonyl group during these cyclisations is discussed. All in sevens sevens and eights heavens gates Nillsatan awaits. nitrogen nitric acid niter seven nitrides 7 The nucleophilic ring-opening of the epoxides nitrification seven nitro nitro seven heavens melons lemons lemmings Lennon Lemmy let me nitrogenous nitrobenzene seven nitramine nitrating urinating hell Null Satan seven nil yeah!”
If he guessed that ‘help’ was on its way it did not show in his bland expression, he lay in a pool of his own rancid drool up on the treatment dais, muttering on and on. The pale flickering light from the sibling subcutaneous suberic acid candles did not penetrate the inky shadows, all they really did was add an oily haze of smoke to the nest chamber that hung in translucent swirling bands, the perfect setting for an eerie aural arachnid brain birthing scheme. The culmination of years of religious hyperbole and prophecy by the ex CRAPS The mechanical megalomaniacal Lord Isis Zagreus Eos Nereus, before his unfortunate assassination, was coming to fruition.
To be continued…?
NoIdea
We are vulnerable to cyber attack emanating elsewhere. Not only things that are generally recognized as computer based – e.g., the banking system, but our electricity grid. There’s a dilemma: how to protect a now computerized/internet society vs. how to protect our liberties. We have missiles and aircraft to protect against real attacks coming from outside. What do we do about massive cyber attacks which come from outside? God knows I am not in favor of any additional powers going to government, but were I president or Congress, I would want a defense. I have thought about this since Senator Rockefeller first floated the idea last year, and I don’t have an answer as to what, if anything, should be done.
I have a feeling this does involve China, and criminal stunts that China has been getting up to.
It goes hand in hand with my opinion that any politician or bureaucrat suggesting the implementation of Smart ID cards, should be put against a wall and shot as the very real traitor they are.
It comes down to the things you can log into, via the internet. Things such as Smart Card readers, all of which, would be connected and interconnected, with every single business and government agency, in a Nation.
A Hacker’s Wet Dream.
Especially the Hacking Agency of a Hostile Nation State.
The problem with this proposal is, by the time you know you need to implement it, it’s more than likely already too late, and the Hostile Nation State has already done its dirty work.
I’ve heard talk (obviously I can’t verify) that China has already ‘flexed its muscles’ with a test run that shut down all of the electricity supply in one region of America.
If China does that, then we don’t have the internet anyway.
Evening All,
Being a bit of a drongo when it comes to technology, I ran the subject of this blog past several members of my flock who are here for dinner. When they had recovered their equilibrium after falling about laughing for some minutes, the general consensus boils down (in polite terms) to “Rubbish”.
A quick round-the-table poll reveals one uses an OZ server, one in NZ and two in Canada. None of them would touch the US (for reasons which escape me) with the proverbial barge-pole.
Speaking for myself, I’d like to know if poor old Senator Lieberman really thinks the US actually “owns” the internet globally or is he just speaking about what the US can actually control within his own territory? Surely, if they have the technology to disable the communications/banking/data of the world, that would HAVE to be seen as an act of WAR on friends and foe alike.
To me, it would be the 21st century equivalent of shooting down every foreign plane or sinking every foreign ship in the WW2 era.
The bottom line is, if Joe thinks they have a mandate for such control, why haven’t they shut down paedophilia and child pornography already? Is it because the US Constitution can be said to preserve the right to free speech and this includes such vile aberrations as paedophilia. Did the Founding Fathers really conceive of such a thing? I’m sure such a creature, jumping on a soap-box in downtown Boston to extol the virtues of his perversion would have been summarily dealt with, dancing at the end of a rope. Not today.
If this material, and other communications that can be deemed a threat to “security” is ricocheting around the world in a complex configuration from country to country, how can giving POTUS any extraordinary powers be relevant unless they actually have the technology to globally disable the internet.
THAT is an act of WAR.
Hey Oz, I’ve managed to get a live Chat integrated into the forum. I’ve had to change the theme though, as the buttons weren’t showing up (which did show up that the previous theme had left a few other things out, lol, it now looks a notmal blue and white forum, but I’ll try and get something ‘Green Themed’ going again so visiting Trolls will feel at home *grins*).
I could do the chat as a separate popup window too, but everyone would have to log in again to use it, which seems a bit of a pain. As it is, the forum shifts over to the chat interface, and the back button on the browser takes you back to the forum anyway.
If people would like the extra security of logging into a new popup window, I’ll happily enable that option.
By the way I’m pretty sure that ISP’s have had to install a hardware ‘Off Switch’ capable of being used by the USA Government, for a few years now.
I wouldn’t be surprised if other Countries have done the same.
So much important gear is ‘flash upgradeable’ via the net for example, that a hostile Nation can access and ‘re-flash’, it’s mind boggling the security vulnerabilities that have been built in.
This was/is my issue with Smart ID Cards – they would enable a hostile agent to introduce all manner of gruesome ugliness into ‘the system’, not just by directly programming an ID card (easy), but by doing it remotely form anywhere in the World.
It would be the biggest imagineable security breach a Nation could impose on itself, and anyone suggesting such a thing, would indeed be a wilful and malevolent enemy of the Nation.
Things are bad enough security wise now, imagine what things could be like after such an insane introduction?
Also, changing the theme has allowed the Message Box to appear as a button on the menu bar (yaaaay!).
There’s all manner of stuff people can do with their profile editing now too. 🙂
@rastech
Brilliant! I’m a bit rushed right now but will check it out as soon as I get a chance. Like I said before about your forum, wow!
I suspect really strongly the “China” thing is made up mostly coz i live here, the USA i can beleive it having watched that pathetic excuse for a congressional hearing last night…. personally If I’d been Tony Hayward I’d have told them all to feck off bunch of arrogant playing to the gallery, warmist pricks exactly how is that man responsible for 85,000 people who work for him? Maybe after all the enquires yes as CEO but now what ever happened to due process innocent till proved guilty? I suspect that BP have a smoking gun in that the MMS approved everything they did….. do these clowns and the “great american public” really think BP wanted this to happen? Abit convinient for the messiah also dont you think???? waht with cap n trade??? Winkers the lot of them actually i revise what i said earlier if it’d been me i’d have been over the table and chinned the twats!!!!!! Also it is me or does everyone else feel as they know the 3 birds drowning in oil and ffs why don’t CNN rescue them rather than filming them? RANT OVER
… actually rants not over!………. which one of these losers said not long ago “we need a disaster” and low and behold they get one albeit no comparison to WW2 (Walt) personally i’m ganing out tonight in my engerland shirt (even though i’m scots) with a big BP Helios on it.. these feckers have the brass kneck to critisize the UK while our boys our out there in some piss pot hell hole dying yes dying for the “american dream” and also their boys too respect but what the fuck has it to do with us we try and be their freind and guess what first chance they shite on us… as far as i’m concerned go and be freinds with the french see how you get on there!!!!! Yes yassox i’ve been drinking but hey ho i have nephews out there and freinds who deserve better than being used as cannon fodder for the “great american dream” Unfortunately that country which i love and the people too is now so deranged as i actually prefer China FFS
Off topic AGAIN……. anyway listening to George Harrison “My Sweet Lord” i am the furthest from being religious other than Dawkins but what a track…. realy want to see you lord umm my lord etc etc etc………. marvellous one up for the god botherers
so gooooooooooooooood some Bob Marley just coming on oh happy days……….. I will get a response!
getting paranoid now
Perhaps sir should be heading home about now? – Oz
must be the drugs
lol
Walt where are you when i need you?
when i was young it seemed that life was so wonderful……………. then they sent me away……………… dependable, clinical intellectual cynical………….. my wife has the best ipod in the world and i love her so much …. i also despite being 3 sheets to the wind love all you guys on here proper people stood up to this fraud provided proper information for an ignaramous like me……….. Ozboy, NoIdea, RR, Walt, Mack and Yassox also even though you know i’m a drunk i actually agree with you lol oh and Crown top Geordie lad, MSHER et al your all top people.. wish i could meet the lot of you because we will prevail these shysters won’;t take care i’m orff to watch engerland slaughter Algeria or some african country…… RULE BRITTANIA
Taxi! This gentleman—straight home, if you dont mind. And… be gentle, won’t you—he’s a friend of mine – Oz
sorry oz you are of course right x
my apologies OZ just feel strongly about lots of things but shouldn’t post when pissed just feel that perhaps this forum should include idiots like me who don’t beleive a word of this scam no matter how badly i put it… frustration i guess and i bet an anthony wedgewod benner theres millions out there like me without a voice we thought we had one with JD but hey ho shit happens…. thanks anyway for putting up with me I love you all and tonight will be mostly getting seriously pissed singing for queen and country (no offence) PS I’m still coming to the ashes
Not a problem mate—now go to bed and sleep it off. Tomorrow morning you’ll wake up and feel a bit silly, but shouldn’t; fact is, you’re quite right – Oz
mate the games not on till 2.30am here if you think i’m going to bed ur dreaming its only 7.30 here!!!!! Anyway pity Shanghai as they’ll have to put up with me LOL…. no worries though as i said i know i can be abit ott but i’m with you guys and galls and despite my irresponsibility think its kinda of important…. Keep well keep pointmans & noideas “stories” coming pure quality and lots of love to your new one and of course the missus xxxxxxxxxx
Alright, off with you then lad… I’M off to bed. I know how important soccer-ahem-football is to you in England, so the best of British to you. Swing low, sweet chariot! Oz
theendisnighnot:”I suspect really strongly the “China” thing is made up ”
Sad to say the amount that is going on from China is no joke. 😦
Karl Denninger has had to block all Chinese ip addresses from accessing his sites, as the amount of denial of service attacks PER DAY originating in China, had gone above 10,000!!!
Apparently the Whitehouse and all the American Government sites are getting similar levels of DoS attacks . . .
Oz, I’ve been thinking about redoing the web homepage on my site, so I can perhaps ‘window’ your blog onto the front page with a hotspot to ‘Enter Here’ and do the same with the Forum.
I’m a bit cream crackered still after manipulating that cast iron stove into the house yesterday, and I still have a fair bit to do to get it all installed, (including getting the old one out), so I’ll ‘have at it’ after I have recovered with internal alchohol rubs.
Did a quick update to http://www.founding-sons.co.uk/ index page, so there’s a nice big hotspot (temprarily with your blog piccy at the top theme Oz if you don’t mind? Will change to whatever you fancy), and put a hotspot link to the forum underneath.
It’ll do for now.
Looks fantastic rastech—much appreciated. If I can reciprocate in some way, just let me know – Oz
I’ll take a gallon of whatever the endisnighnot is drinking. Glad he’s having a fun summer. Shanghai sounds like the place to do it up right. I fink the fine for BUI (blogging under the influence) is to buy yourself a nice big dinner and/or a bottle of aspirin for the morning after.
Ozboy, re your comment: “THAT is an act of WAR.” Permission to paint huge round bulls-eye’s on selected US Federal buildings around town so that the RAAF don’t miss, sah. LOL!
I don’t want to rule the world, and I don’t want my government to rule the world, either. Joe Lieberman and Comrade Kerry need to join their shared lovers Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung in stuffed and mounted Pigland.
Speaking of pedo’s and liberals, you don’t want to visit ANY downtown in the USA except afterhours, if you are out with the kiddies. Downtown is where they warehouse them in halfway house facilities. Urban Syracuse has 250 of these ex-offenders, mostly the Class 3 level, warehoused in 13201 though 13204 zip codes alone. That’s two hundred and fifty in a city of around 80,000. This is entirely due to liberal policy here. It’s treated officially by the State as if it were a cross between mental illness and a religion when it is a crime pure and simple. They’ve even got effing twelve-step groups like AA or NA to treat this “disease.”
Well since a lot some really rich and very powerful people are paedos themselves so I have heard on the grapevine why do you think they are trying to make a misdemeanor of it.
The real reason they want to be able to control the internet is to close down any and all dissent the tea party movement has them spooked, incumbents are falling like nine pins, they are all being shown to have feet of clay and hypocrites to a person. If you wish to suspend democracy and impose a socialist tyranny by decree you need to stop any and all possible uprisings by the cattle. Their grip on power is slipping and it scares them as the people may actually get a government that works in there interests not the politicians.
Exactly on topic, this is how arrogant American politicians are now on the Left. This was actively suppressed by the MSM in the States, but it has gone viral elsewhere. I am trying to imagine this happening with a Canadian, British or Australian politician:
Also, the following is for the further amusement of theendisnighnot, as he is obviously wrapped up in the World Cup. This is called (sigh) “Hitler and the vuvuzuelas…”
Don’t have a mouthful of the good stuff when watching this. I am also sure this video will be offline in about four or five hours…
I know, don’t tell me: “Grow up, Walt.”
Maybe a blog short, but anyway here’s a short story of what may or may not have happened out in the Gulf of Mexico…
‘Morning sir.’
‘Morning Bob. Anything happening today?’
‘No, not really no.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Not really sir apart from the growing deficit, rising unem…’
‘Shut…the…fuck up Bob, I ain’t even had ma breakfast yet mother f*****r!’
‘Sorry sir.’
‘Jackass.’
Silence and then…
‘Err…Who are you calling sir?’
‘Who the mother f**k you think? Mother f***ing ass’ole.’
‘Michelle!..Yeah baby it’s me.’
‘What ya cookin?’
‘Yeah…I is hungry as a starvin’ Saharan…ha haar.’
‘Yeah. Eggs sunny up…Hmm…Hhhm mm..’
‘What?!’
‘How many times women? I ain’t goin’ to eat no bacon.’
‘What?’
‘NO! No God damn sausages either Honey…Hussein? Hussein?’
‘Yeah…That’s what I’m saying women. When was the last time a prophet put a fork in da pork?’
‘Yeah, that’s right…f*****g mother f*****g never! Just bring over the eggs girl…on toast.’
Slam!
‘Bob. Get me the fat assed Greek on the line.’
Meanwhile in the Gulf of Mexico a deepwater, semi-submersible drilling platform owned by British Petroleum nears its goal.
The 36 inch casings are in place, the 22 inch liners are sunk and cemented as the drill bit tears through the centre and nears the target.
The well is deep. Deeper than man has gone before in the region by far. The last length of drill tube is added and the bit finally bursts through into an unknown quantity of highly pressurized oil and natural gas.
Above, a device known as the blow out protector or BOP sits atop the well head more than 5000 feet below the surface of the ocean. The enormous pressure of the field is such that the BOP, even though it weighs some 450 metric tons cannot cope. All safety valves blow including its last line of defence sending highly volatile gas and crude rocketing upwards towards operations at the surface.
An ignition source is inevitable. Deepwater horizon catches fire and explodes. Tragically, eleven brave souls are lost.
‘Mr. President…Mr President.’
‘What’s up Bob?’
‘A rig Mr. President. A rig. It’s blown up in the gulf!’
‘The deepwater horizon?’
‘The what sir?’
‘Never mind Bob…forget I said that. Is it bad?’
‘Yes sir. Very bad sir.’
‘Excellent…Get me sorry assed Soros on the line and a vuvuzela.’
Later, at 200 West street New York city. Goldman Sachs oil market specialists Brad and Randy are feeling euphoric.
‘That 44% selloff go without a hitch?’
‘Yeah Brad and like said, we spread it thin. Thin as that brown shit floating about the gulf. Sgonna look kosher as a bled dry chicken.’
‘Ha haar…Nice one Randy. Hey…how the hell do you think Uri knew?’
‘Something to do with the depth. Those Ruskies have got previous with ‘em.’
‘Hmm…so he knew the BOP wouldn’t take it?’
‘Sure looks that way. He’s a fuckin’ genius.’
‘And how’s our hungry Hungarian friend doing?’
‘Oh man…he’s going to be spraying his toxic wares all over the Gulf for months, maybe even God damn years!’
‘Randy good buddy…tonight is celebration time big style. Get that seedy little ponytailed fixer Pedro on the case, I want Dom P by the barrel, coke delivered by truck and a twin decked bus load of hooters ‘n’ tooters. YEEEEHAA!’
The Louisiana shoreline appears on screens across the world. It doesn’t look pretty. A thick sludge resembling raw sewage is gently lapping ashore.
The president faces the camera as a school of dolphins perform aquabatics in the background.
‘This is an environmental disaster the likes of which the world has never before seen. I have suspended all further drilling in the Gulf and issued an ultimatum to British Petroleum.’
Off camera Bob winces under the glare of the sun.
‘How did I do Bob?’
‘Oh you were great sir.’
‘Did I look like the sun were shinnin’ directly out ma ass?’
‘As always sir…Err sir?’
‘Yeah Bob.’
‘Err…There were some dolphins in the background sir. They kinda looked like they were taking the piss.’
‘WHAT?!’
‘Yes, sorry sir. I didn’t notice till they’d stopped filming.’
‘Mother f****r.’
‘Is there anything you’d like me to do about it sir.’
‘Yeah Bob, damn right there is…send in SWAT teams. I want every last mother f*****g porpoise whacked and canned up as dog food. F*****g mother f*****s.’
Seated around the boardroom table of the multinational oil giant BP, worried eyes flick left and right for respite from the excruciating and prolonged silence that had met the question.
Finally a young subordinate picks up the courage…
‘I think…I think I may have an idea sir.’
‘Go on then Johnson.’
‘Well sir. Last night, when I was in the bath a childhood memory came back to me.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes sir. Err hum. Well I err…I used to amuse myself by err…catching my err… emissions with a flannel sir.’
A general snicker strikes up across the room.
‘Shut up.’
‘Sorry sir.’
‘Go on Johnson.’
‘Thank you sir. Yes well, err…I thought it might just be possible to apply the same technique to the problem at the well head sir.’
Half a minute’s silence.
‘Johnson.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Let me get this straight. When you were a kid and not that you still aren’t one, you used to catch your farts in the bath with a flannel.’
‘Yes sir. Then I’d submerge the flannel and squeeze it and watch as all the tiny little bubbles of flatus rose to the surface.’
‘Oh for fucks sake…shut up. Shut up! Fucking ‘ell it’s like chairing a fucking kindergarten.’
The commotion instantly dies down.
‘You’re disgusting Johnson. Anyway, how the fucks a flannel supposed to cap deepwater horizon?’
‘Well it’s basically the same principal sir. The oil and gas is of course rising just as mine did in the bath sir. We’d just need to scale it up…I’m picturing a massive steel container to catch and direct it, then hopefully we’ll be able to channel it off.’
‘Hmm. Hmm…just as you used to sink a flannel over yer butt hole for your own filthy self amusement.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Hmm…you know what, you might actually have something here. Get onto the engineers immediately, see what they reckon. Anyway, even if they think it’s as stupid an idea as I do at least it’ll look like we’re trying to do something. Might even get that jug eared tit in the White House off my back for a while.’
Two weeks later, the JFF (‘Johnson fart flannel’ as it is secretly known in house) is seen by horrified viewers across the globe as the finishing licks of paint are applied to its colossal exterior. Some are beginning to realise that this is a bigger disaster than were led to believe.
Walt takes another drag of his electronic cigarette and blows imaginary smoke at the television as the camera gives an idea of the scale of the JFF cross feeding with live images of the oil and gas spewing from the ruined blow out protector a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf.
‘Yep.’ He murmurs. ‘The pressures too high…there’s no way they’re gonna be able to cap it.’
Back in the Oval office the president and his old chum Al Gore finish yet another, one breath vuvuzela duel.
‘Ha haar…I won.’
‘Again. Again.’
‘No…ma cheeks ache.’
‘How about we use our other cheeks then?’
‘Don’t be stupid Al. The misses ‘ll probably come barging in with the tea and she don’t like that kind o thing. Gave me a proper whoopin’ last time she caught me with a bugle stickin’ out ma ass. Come on; let’s get down to some business. How we shaping up at the CCX?’
‘Ready for the call Barry.’
‘Don’t call me that.’
‘Sorry.’
The mood around the BP boardroom is as glum as ever. The JFF, having failed for reasons unknown to the general public sits somewhere at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
‘Great idea that Johnson. 2 million quid for the worlds biggest and most useless lobster pot… Jeesus. So I suppose we’re now goin’ to have to spunk another few mill on mud that we know is not going to work plus we’ve got his sodding, buggerlugs holiness talking about some sort of relief fund…where the hells this going to end?
‘It could be worse sir.’
‘How so Jenkins?’
‘Well, if we’d not invested all those billions in the alternatives market sir we’d surely be up…’
‘Oh shut it Jenkins I know all of that. It’s purely driven by the likes of that nob in the White house and anyway, people don’t seem so keen on soaking up the bullshit anymore. It was all just a ploy to make us look all eco-freako. I bastard hate that logo of ours and as soon as I feel sentiment has changed enough I’m gonna have it replaced. Yeah, maybe something like the Jolly Roger or that nuke warning symbol…’
Libertarians of the world wait with baited breath for the inevitable.
The BBC; having pulled out all the stops in a relentless campaign against the use of fossil fuels can hardly contain their glee as the same, heartbreaking image of a gooey pelican is repeated for the umpteenth time.
It’s a gift from the heavens and every morning we’re met with what boils down to the following, delivered in an earnest reverent tone…
‘See! See what your selfish, filthy addiction to keeping yourself and yer house warm is doing! Just look at it. Look at the poor bugger. It’ll probably be dead by tomorrow and it’s all your fault…BASTARDS!’
The next morning there is relief that the pelican has not succumbed but a sinking feeling sets in as we’re taken to the elliptical office of the enlightened one.
‘You British are a disgrace. You’re good at making a mess and you’re hopeless at clearing it up. I’ve decided that you owe us 13.5 billion in compensation and I’m not going to lift a finger to help. Oh yeah and its time to ditch oil for good and coal and gas and embrace the power of the wind.’
Off air the president whips out his vuvuzela and gives it a full 30 second blast…
_____________________
Certain names and events are entirely fictitious. The rest is complete and utter bollocks.
Scud.
Thanks everyone for continuing to post here with Oz and over at the DT…as informative and entertaining as ever. Keep up the good work!
Flimin’ ‘eck. Off to the cricket again tomorrow…you Aussies v Middlesex county (weirdly captained by your very own Adam Gilchrist)…could be interesting. I shall report back.
Line of Descent
Chapter 4
He sat in his hotel room. In front of him, spread out on the writing desk, were the contents of the Colonel’s envelope. The notes appeared to have been taken from two documents; a military resume and a resettlement report. They had been typed up, presumably by the Colonel himself. He decided to start on the military resume first.
Douglas Patrick Canfield. Born Buffalo, upstate New York 1947. Father, Patrick Michael Canfield, steelworker. Mother, Francheza Bernadette Pezarkevich, garment worker. Irish Polac, quite a mix. The blue collar war, thought Krupmeyer. They were both flagged as deceased. The father in ’57 and the mother in the same year as Canfield’s birth. Died giving birth, guessed Krupmeyer. There was no listing of any brothers or sisters. No listing at all for next of kin. Orphaned at ten years of age, he thought, not the best of starts to a life.
Drafted in ’65. Boot Camp, Advanced Infantry Training, Ranger School, Fort Bragg. The Special Forces litany, thought Krupmeyer. Contrary to popular opinion, the Army was always on the lookout for aptitude and talent, and having spotted it, were careful to groom and develop the special few it came across in the pot luck of the Draft. Judging by the list of courses they had sent him on, Canfield had been an apt pupil who had responded well to the star treatment.
First tour in ’67 with IV Corps in the delta. Special Forces A Team attached to the Marines. Two purple hearts. Various merit citations followed. There was no detail on what the attachment involved. Whatever the hell Canfield had been doing, it had nothing to do with the Marines, Krupmeyer decided, knowing how almost suicidal they were when it came to inter service rivalry. Krupmeyer wondered how much editing the Colonel had performed while taking the notes.
He must have liked the life, because he had reupped at the end of the tour. The orphan had found a home. He was now career military. After a period instructing back at Ranger School, there followed a second tour with Eye corps up in the northern highlands. Long Range Recon Patrol. The LURPs. The LURP teams were the eyes and ears of the army out in the bush. Small lightly armed patrols that tagged and followed NVA regulars and supply columns, calling in fire missions and scooting out of the area before the artillery or air strike arrived. They were on their own, living in the NVA backyard on a mix of skill, luck and an almost permanent Benzedrine high. The NVA knew they were there and hunted them mercilessly. That added another Purple Heart.
His third tour had began in January 1970. No details of the assignment beyond “liaison with local forces” was given. The notes jumped to April 1970 when Canfield had been captured. He had been aboard a B52 bomber shot down over Cambodia. The bombing missions into Cambodia, code named Arc Lite, had been secret. Secret because they were illegal under US law. The plan had been to do a high altitude parachute drop sometime during the flight. There were no details of the mission, but to use that particular method of infiltration, it must have been deep inside the country. Canfield had been wearing a flight helmet borrowed from an electronic warfare expert called William Lesley. When he was dragged, badly injured, from the wreckage, the name stencilled on the borrowed helmet had saved his life. He had been wrongly identified as Lesley. The VC were under standing orders to keep downed air crew alive for questioning, especially anyone with technical information.
He had been passed back up the Ho Chi Minh trail to North Vietnam and then on to Russia. Moscow Bound, in the jargon of the POWs. It had taken the best part of six months to get him to Russia. By the time he was well enough to be interrogated by the Soviets, considerable time had passed since his capture and the technical data he possessed would have been well out of date. His interrogators must have tried but evidentially without success. If they had found out who he really was, they would not have kept him alive. It must have been a hell of a situation, he thought, his respect for the man’s durability rising. You could not tell them anything, not even that you did not know anything if you wanted to stay alive.
Krupmeyer had talked to enough ex POWs to have no illusions about torture. Everybody talked in the end. The only saving grace was how much you gave away and how readily. It was a slow and brutal game. They hurt you until you couldn’t stand it any longer, so you gave them something, anything, just for a rest. Then they hurt you some more, so you held out for as long as you could before you gave them another little piece. That’s the way it went on, for hour after miserable hour. Maybe you lost consciousness or maybe they lost interest for the day. Either way, you hadn’t given everything away. You’d stalled them for another day, you were still alive and you still had a few precious scraps you hadn’t given up.
That was a game that wasn’t open to Canfield. The only way out would have been to play up his injuries, pleading that he couldn’t remember anything but that wouldn’t have stopped them. That was an old story and they wouldn’t have swallowed it at first. They would have taken some convincing, continued on until they were satisfied he really was telling the truth. How long that took, only Canfield would know, he reflected soberly. The experience of torture marks a person for life and most people never get over it. It wasn’t just the memory of the pain but the indignity and shame of somehow not measuring up to their own unconscious standards.
He was swallowed up by the soviet penal system. There followed a list of camps and their locations. The names and places meant nothing to Krupmeyer. They spanned a period of nearly seven years, from 1971 to 1977. Seven years, while his country was busy writing off the whole episode. Forgetting it and getting over the national trauma of having lost its first war. It was already becoming history with indecent haste, as if it was something dirty and shameful that no one wanted to acknowledge, let alone talk about.
What was I doing then thought Krupmeyer, while Canfield rotted in the camps? Putting it all behind me and working at being a cop, aiming single mindedly for that gold shield of a detective. Closing the door and walking away from it. For me, it was all receding into a grainy black and white movie that happened to someone else. Except for the dreams. They were always in technicolour, lurid bloody technicolour. The real and the imagined mashed together into a non-stop horror movie that waited for him every night. Faces and places. Hot LZs and ghostly figures running in slomo through waving elephant grass flattened by the backwash of the waiting slicks. Running crouched, bottles of plasma held high above the casualties being carried to the hovering choppers in bloodied ponchos. Above, gunships circled, hammering the tree lines. So real, so vivid he woke drenched in sweat, pumping adrenaline, screaming. Left lying in the cold aftermath to wait for dawn, hours away.
Gradually the nightmares had faded. Not because of the pills or the alcohol, but through time. It was as if his mind needed to replay every incident, every terror he had been through. Compulsively review and replay it until it had become so familiar, so ordinary, so boring it could be forgotten.
That time was the worst. Jeanne had tried to be there for him, to hang on in there, hoping that the boy who had gone to Nam would somehow magically reappear after this difficult period of adjustment. This foul mouthed moody stranger would gradually disappear and the man she knew and loved would reappear. It was touching and somehow pathetic. They talked and talked but he really couldn’t articulate the rage and frustration that burned in him. He didn’t understand it himself. Nothing in her experience prepared her for such difficulties. They were divorced within eighteen months, and it came as a relief to both of them. He shook himself, putting the still painful memories away and concentrated on the document again.
The list of camps was followed by a gap of nearly nineteen months. Then the simple notation that he had made contact with the American Consulate in Riga through a visiting American businessman. The name of the businessman was not given. Was Canfield just being cautious with the contact or did he want a third party as a witness? Riga made sense. It was on the north western coast of the USSR on the Baltic sea. If the Consulate didn’t work out, he could still try to get to Sweden or Finland from there.
Krupmeyer wondered how far the last camp had been from Riga. Escape and evasion on the grand scale. But this time it wasn’t going to become another Special Forces legend. He made a mental note to get some maps of Russia to locate the camps. The names sounded oriental. Somewhere in the Islamic Republics?
There was no explanation of how they had got him out. Just the militarese phrase “Exfiltrated 14th. June 1978.” Krupmeyer tried to imagine Canfield’s feeling at that moment. Eight years of hell and now he was out. God knows how he’d felt. Exhilarated? Depressed? Krupmeyer tried but failed. He just did not know the man well enough.
His physical recovery had taken nearly a year. There were extensive notes on the treatments and procedures he had undergone. Apart from dental and malnutrition problems, the major items appeared to be surgical corrections to old injuries. “Rectify crush damage to pelvis and right leg.” “Cap off traumatic amputations, two toes, right foot.” “Reset bones, lower right wrist.” “Skin grafts, torso and pelvis, right side.” It was a long list that went on and on, with no indication of the origin of the injuries, just the terse medical descriptions of the procedures. The treatment of the psychological problems was just as exhaustive. Stress counselling, Abreaction therapy, Imaging, Drug Therapy, another long list, full of psychological buzz words, most of which Krupmeyer did not understand but one thing was obvious. The man who came back had been in pretty bad shape.
The notes ended there abruptly. There was no discharge date and no indication of what had become of him.
Krupmeyer turned to the resettlement report. It was dated 17th. May 1980. It was a brief free form report that appeared to be a progress check on an individual who was never named, just referred to as the subject. The subject was reported to be subdued but stable. He had settled into his cover as an expatriate American and his repair business appeared to be going well. His health had improved. He did not want anything and had no complaints. Apart from a recommendation to lengthen the check-up period to a year, the report did not tell Krupmeyer much.
In pencil, carefully printed at the end of the page, was a name and address. Thank you Colonel, he thought reading it. Robert Conner, Braghan, County Wicklow, Ireland. Yes, that made sense. Put him in under a cover he could relate to. Somewhere quiet, out of the way, an Irish American coming back to the old country.
He read both documents again, making a list of points to follow up. There was nothing in them that constituted proof. No corroboration. No name but Canfield’s. Nothing in them that could not be denied. Lieutenant Canfield could have died high in the blue skies above Cambodia, in a burning B52. There was only one way to validate them. Canfield.
Krupmeyer sat back and considered the position. The only person who knew he had the information was the Colonel, and he would not be doing any talking. The meeting had seemed secure, but you never could tell. If it wasn’t, then the whole thing was blown already. On the plus side, the original documents the notes were taken from were still in place, there would be no hue and cry for them. As far as he knew, he had a free shot at Canfield.
Krupmeyer had told no one in the association about the meeting. He was obliged to report back to them regularly. Should he report this? He decided not. He had always felt the POW organisations were treated like flies in a jar by the Government. They could buzz all they liked but they were contained and under observation. There was a distinct chance that any report concerning Canfield would come to their attention. In their position, he would certainly have long ago infiltrated the organisation. This one was too important to take the risk of blowing it by reporting back. He decided to play it alone. He would ring in, saying he was going to use up some of his accumulated leave to take a break. Fishing in Maine, he decided tentatively.
Canfield was another question. He was now settled in Ireland for eight years. He would be about forty one. He had had enough time to get well settled in. This would blow his new life out of the water. Would he want to come back? What would he do if approached? The worst reaction would be if he disappeared. There could be no doubt that he had an emergency procedure to fall back on. One phone call and he could be spirited away to anywhere in the world. The chances of finding him again would be non-existent. I’d be left trying to prove a vanished expatriate American was really an American soldier who disappeared in Cambodia eighteen years ago, he concluded. His cover and papers would be perfect, especially the latter. They would, after all, have been issued by the US Government.
The best reaction would be if he agreed to come home and testify. The amount of information he could give would be devastating. It would force a full Congressional Hearing. A lot of elder statesmen would end up testifying before it. For once, the blood would flow on Capitol Hill. He knew the camps, the places and especially the names of his fellow POWs. The outrage from the relatives alone would force the Government to come clean. To act. They had all the leverage they needed. The Soviets desperately needed western aid and the public outcry would demand the freedom of the POWs before a penny went to them.
Even if he just agreed to tell everything, the information could be used equally well. Armed with that and the threat of a witness in the wings, Krupmeyer felt they could force the US Government to act.
How would the Government react if they found him taking an interest in Douglas Patrick Canfield? There was always the possibility that they would kill him. Worse things had been done in the name of national security. Loose cannons are safer if thrown over the side. Krupmeyer was under no illusions about politics and politicians. Beneath the soft words and presentation they were ultimately ruthless. Better that one little person should disappear than they should suffer an embarrassment.
The contact was going to have to be very careful. He mustn’t alarm Canfield and at the same time not alert any possible government surveillance. He needed a cover. He made another note to locate and find out more about Braghan, County Wicklow, Ireland.
The last item to consider was money. This investigation was going to involve a transatlantic flight, hotels and other expenses. Krupmeyer had some savings, but not enough. He needed money. His job paid a salary but not a generous one. He cast his mind around, thinking of possible sources.
One possibility came to mind. A businessman called Noushazaran. Krupmeyer had met him at a fund raising convention in the fall. His son had been shot down over Hanoi towards the end of the war. He had never accepted his son’s reclassification from Missing in Action to Killed in Action, and had been a generous contributor to the cause. Krupmeyer decided to contact him that evening.
He re folded the notes carefully and put them back into the envelope, thinking he would have to find somewhere safe for them. He pocketed his notebook and left the hotel to find the nearest pay phone.
The next morning he went by taxi to the airport. He caught a flight up to Boston. He had not booked it in advance and was careful to pay in cash at the desk. The name he used was not his own. On arrival, he caught another taxi to the downtown section of the city. He walked around it looking for any possible tails. There were none that he could see. Satisfied, he caught another taxi to the main train station. He walked into it and bought a copy of the Wall Street Journal at a kiosk. He checked the time carefully. It was just coming up to half eleven. Nearly time. Emerging at the agreed pickup point with the paper tucked beneath his arm, he saw the limo pulling up. It was black and massive. He cringed, wishing he had emphasised more strongly his warning to Noushazaran to be discrete. He walked over to it and after identifying himself to the chauffeur, got in. He sat in the back behind black smoked glass as it sped out of the city and into the country.
It eventually turned off the main road and into a drive leading up to a large house. It was modelled on one of those southern mansions that sat planted in the middle of cotton plantations, complete with white pillars and a flight of marble steps up to the house. Straight out of a hundred Hollywood pictures. But this was the real thing. Real money. Around it sat carefully designed gardens with straight tidy poplars that speared up into the blue cloudless sky. A butler was waiting on the steps to open the car door. He ushered him up the steps and through the open front door. After taking his coat, the butler led him into the interior. Mr. Noushazaran waited in the study.
When Krupmeyer entered, Noushazaran was sat behind an ornate wooden desk. A small American flag and a model of a Phantom jet stood on either side of it. He rose to greet Krupmeyer, walking across the room to shake hands. He was in that indeterminate age band that solid muscular men reached in the transition from their fifties to their sixties. He was dark skinned with a heavy moustache and a mouthful of dazzling, perfectly white teeth. Krupmeyer knew he had been born somewhere in the Balkans before emigrating to America. He had done well in America. The results were all around.
He greeted Krupmeyer warmly. Like most extremely successful men he possessed charm. It was easy and unforced. You liked him on sight. Meeting him was a pleasant experience. After seating Krupmeyer, he went back around the desk and resumed his seat. He leaned back in it. His hands rested on the arms and he looked at Krupmeyer carefully before speaking.
‘What did you want to see me about, Mr. Krupmeyer?’
Krupmeyer had thought about how he would handle this meeting on the flight up. He needed the finance but was determined not to go into detail about why he needed it. He had decided to be direct and straight forward, Noushazaran struck him as being too sharp for any other approach.
‘I’ve got a promising lead. A very promising lead. It’ll take money to follow up.’
Noushazaran sat in silence, weighing Krupmeyer’s words. He leaned forward and picked up a fountain pen from his desk. He rotated it through his fingers absently.
‘Why don’t you want to go through the Association?’ he asked.
‘It’s too good. I’m afraid of a leak’ Krupmeyer replied. The man really was sharp, he thought, thankful for his decision to be as honest as possible. He would not have got away with any subterfuge.
Noushazaran mulled it over. Leaning forward, he picked up the phone and pressed one of the row of buttons on the base. ‘Reynolds, take twenty thousand dollars from the safe and bring it to us.’ He put the phone down carefully.
Krupmeyer was stunned. Noushazaran, seeing his expression, laughed. ‘Come, come Mr. Krupmeyer, it’s only money’ he said. His expression changed. ‘I’d spend every penny I own to get my son back, no matter how slim the chance.’
‘You hardly know me, I could just be screwing you’ Krupmeyer explained, still getting over his surprise.
‘I think not’ Noushazaran replied. ‘The Association has been the recipient of many large donations upon my part for several years. I’m no fool. I look at how it is spent and the people it uses. Even you’ he said nodding towards Krupmeyer with a smile. ‘You’d be surprised at how much I know about you. I think I can trust you.’
‘I can’t guarantee anything’ said Krupmeyer. ‘It may not even work out.’ His voice trailed off.
‘Mr. Krupmeyer, may I call you Gus?’ he asked, hardly waiting for Krupmeyer’s nod before he continued. ‘Do you know what America represents for me?’
Krupmeyer shook his head.
‘It’s a chance, Gus. A chance to become something more than you started off as. A chance to leave behind you an old way of life that doomed you to live like an animal chained to a plough or a slave in a nineteenth century factory.’ His voice rose with passion. ‘I arrived with nothing and I grasped the chance with both hands. I believed in this country and I still do. Without it, I would be nothing. Nothing’ he repeated, his hands cutting out from his body.
His passion subsided. He leaned forward on the desk and grasped his hands together, watching the fingers intertwine as he remembered. ‘When Ahmed volunteered my heart swelled with pride.’ He looked up at Krupmeyer and his eyes blazed. ‘I was afraid for him but proud. Proud of my fine son who would take up arms against my new country’s enemies.’ He paused remembering.
‘I could have made sure he’d never see combat but he’d have known. He’d have known and never forgiven me.’ A spasm of regret bent his face. ‘So I let him go. I prayed to Allah to love and protect him. When he was shot down, I was told there was a chance he was alive, a chance he was a prisoner. When the war ended and he didn’t come home, I was told there was no chance. He was dead.’ He paused for a moment and Krupmeyer watched the stubbornness and determination build up in him. ‘I cannot accept that.’ He hit the desk hard with the flat of his hand. ‘I will never accept that.’
‘I believe there is still a chance after all these years. A chance he’s still alive. A small chance but a chance. For that chance I would give everything I own’ he finished softly, all passion spent but the pain in his eyes was all too clear. Abruptly his mood changed, he became more businesslike.
‘This is my private line’ he said, writing a telephone number on the back of a business card. ‘If you need any help or more money, use it’ he said, handing it to Krupmeyer. Krupmeyer took it and placed it in his wallet. Reynolds entered the room quietly carrying the money. He placed the four bundles on the desk beside Noushazaran who sent him off for a bag to carry them in. Reynolds returned with a grip into which he carefully placed the bundles before leaving the room. Noushazaran pushed the bag across the desk to Krupmeyer. They said good-bye and Noushazaran walked him out to the front door to the waiting limousine and wished him luck from on top of the steps.
As the limousine went down the drive, Krupmeyer looked back at him. He was still standing there, watching the car depart. Krupmeyer left the place in a subdued mood, moved, as he always was, by the families of the missing.
Pointman
Pointy, scud…
Priceless the pair of you 😆
There’s definitely a short story division now in the LibertyGibbert writing competition;
I’ll set up an online poll to determine the winner.
Hi Ozboy, my new mission is to make this site the new Jerusalem for the Romulus & Remus refugees from the ruins of Troy (AKA DT blog). I can’t believe I wrote that – talk about mixed metaphors …
The Perils of Pauline will continue.
Pointman
Hiya Scud,
Cheer me up. Have you found any good YouTube explosions?
Pointman
This one is for TheEndIsNigh after tonight’s footy. He was ahead of the game already …
Pointman
Hey Scud,
Your footnote disclaimer won’t wash………
You’ve got “bugs” planted all over the shop!
What better way to start my day than pop in to libertygibbert. Nothing like a great laugh to go with the eggs over-easy PLUS bacon.
Between Noidea, Pointy and now you, Oz has tapped into a fathomless resource of literary talent and humour that’s as valuable as Gulf oil.
We’ll look forward to your next “report” of the situation….and thanks.
Hey Pointman my man.
He he…how many bloody times did we post almost simultaneously exactly the same thing over at the DT?
And now look at us sad old gits. Scud writes a story and 3 minutes later?!!
Really excellent stuff though…saving all chapters on word so I can get a whole uninterrupted novel…for free!
You know what, I haven’t looked at the tube for a while. Busy getting pissed again tomorrow but I’ll give it a good going over for the latest and bestest bullets and bangs as soon as…
Have a splendid weekend fella.
Scud, after the writing competition is over I’m going to collate all your stories on a separate page. They really do deserve their own space – Oz
Hiya Scud,
We’re obviously identical twins seperated at birth – too much of that synchronicity and it’s travelled to this blog from the DT, as if the blogosphere could obscure such a freaky flukey connection! Have some Gomez. Pump up the vol and bop.
Pointman
Hi Blackswan.
Thank you for your kind comments and excellent to see you back from your travels…
Have a splendid weekend fella.
Pointman………
Your “Perils of Pauline” are just getting better and more intriguing with every installment.
When I was a little kid (before TV in Oz), the radio was king in every Aussie household.
I remember racing home from school to listen to the latest episode of my favourite adventure serials on the “wireless”. Every story ended in a cliffhanger that had me speeding up that hill so I didn’t miss a word.
These days I don’t “speed” anywhere much, but I sure do look forward to your “episodes” of intrigue. Thanks a lot.
@Blackswan Tasmania June 19, 2010 at 9:04 am – I’m trying to spin it out but glad you’re enjoying it – WTF have another chapter
Line of Descent
Chapter 5
Krupmeyer drove the car he had hired on his arrival at the airport outside Dublin into Braghan. He parked it in the small triangular car park in the centre of the village, got out and locked it. He decided to look around before finding a place to stay. Walking back to the stone bridge he had crossed over coming into the village, he looked over the side, down into the water. It was shallow and clear with a fine clean bottom. Nearby a group of children waded around knee deep in it. They were laughing and splashing around in the sunshine, trying to catch fish in the glass jam jars they carried. Catching sight of him, they waved. He waved back smiling.
He turned around and leaning against the stone side of the bridge, surveyed the village. It had grown up about the shallow river crossing, as had so many villages the world over. Two roads met and joined to cross over the bridge. A few miles away was the ancient monastic settlement of Glendalough. That, the spectacular mountain scenery and the speckled trout in the rivers formed the economic basis of the village today. Tourism and trout fishing. The village itself consisted of a few houses, a pub, a petrol station, a few shops and the old stonework bridge in the middle of it all. A large coach full of tourists passed through the village on its way to the monastery. He leaned back as it thundered past him. Here and there a few gaudily dressed visitors wandered between the shops, searching for postcards and other tourist junk.
He decided to call into the pub for a drink and to find a place to stay. Walking back across the triangle, he entered the pub. After the blazing sunshine outside, it was dark and cool. He sat on a stool at the bar and looked around. There were only a handful of people in it. The barman fished a spirit glass out of the cleaning sink and walked down the bar to him, all the time drying it on automatic pilot.
‘What will you have?’ he asked, giving the glass a final lick of the cloth and storing it on a crowded rack overhead. He stood looking at Krupmeyer and waited while he leaned over the bar and looked at the array of bottles. The choice was bewildering and he took his time in deciding.
‘I’ll try a shot of that one’ he eventually told the barman, pointing at a particular bottle of Irish whiskey. With an easy smile, the barman turned to get the drink. Krupmeyer considered whether to ask him about Robert Conner, but rejected the idea. There was no rush. Instead, he asked him whether he knew of a place he could stay in the village.
‘Well there’s no hotel or anything like that here. Mrs. Harkin across the way there puts up people for Bed and Breakfast. You can try her if you like. There’s nowhere else in the village that takes in people. Over for the fishing are you?’ asked the barman, who, being an ardent fisherman, could conceive of no other earthly reason why anyone would want to stay there.
‘I sure am’ replied Krupmeyer. It was a perfect cover for the area. He could stay a few weeks getting to know the place and studying Canfield from afar before making his approach.
They discussed fly fishing and which flies were currently catching the trout while Krupmeyer finished his first drink. By the time he ordered the second, he and the barman were well on the way to establishing the quick friendship peculiar to fellow fishermen the world over. Despite his entreaties, the barman would not accept a drink stronger than a mineral, as he called it. Krupmeyer finished his drink and left for Mrs. Harkin’s, with the instruction to “tell her Des sent him” ringing in his ears.
He walked through the village, following the barman’s instructions until he arrived at Mrs. Harkin’s house. Outside hung a sign announcing it as the Avoca guest house, with a smaller sign hanging underneath with “Vacancy” written on it. Whoever had done the vacancy sign had done a bad job of it. The letters were uneven and childish. He knocked on the door. It was opened by a tiny little woman who greeted him with a big open smile that was like bottled sunshine. He explained that he was looking for a room and that Des had sent him. She told him that he was lucky and to come in. She beckoned him in with quick birdlike motions of her hand.
He followed her into the interior of the house. It was small. Krupmeyer felt like a clumsy giant following the little old woman. She bustled down the hall into the living room, all the time keeping up a non-stop stream of chit chat. She introduced herself as Winnie. Nobody called her Winifred, which was a silly name anyway, she explained. He introduced himself. His surname seemed to provided her with a momentary puzzle. Krupmeyer. Krupmeyer. She repeated it several times, as if getting used to it. Finally satisfied that she had his name down pat, she asked how long he would be staying. He said he thought a week or so, it depended on the fishing. She told him her rates, which he agreed were very reasonable considering the cost of living and things. She hoped he’d like his stay and not to worry about getting up early for his breakfast, you’re on your holidays don’t you know, whenever you’re ready.
They went upstairs to his room. It was at the front of the house with a window facing the main street. Looking out of it, he could see the whole of the village. It was perfect. She told him to come back down for a cup of tea when he had settled in.
He went back to his car and moved it to in front of the house. Very soon, he had emptied the car of his baggage and rods and was sitting in the kitchen drinking a cup of tea with her as she rambled on. He sat and listened. She talked about mainly local things, occasionally stopping to explain the background to events, or to ask his opinion. She told him she had a great uncle who had gone to America. New Jersey, was it near where he lived? No, he explained, it was some distance away. It was supposed to be a great place over there still. He agreed it was.
They were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. A shadow of concern passed over her face. Heavy slow footsteps sounded in the hall. A large man appeared at the doorway to the kitchen. He stood there at the threshold looking in, as if waiting for permission to enter. She got up quickly, crossed the room and taking him by the hand led him into the room to a seat at the kitchen table. ‘Michael James, this is Mr. Krupmeyer’ she said indicating to Krupmeyer. ‘He’s a very nice man who’ll be staying with us for a few days. This is my son Mr. Krupmeyer.’
Krupmeyer started to reach across the table to shake hands but stopped when he saw the signs of instant alarm in the man’s face.
‘Pleased to meet you, Michael James’ he said, changing from a handshake to a friendly wave in mid motion. Mrs. Harkin looked at him with a nervous smile. Her eyes were apprehensive. She was trying to tell him to take it slowly, not to alarm him. Krupmeyer understood.
‘Michael James is the only man around here who knows all of the best spots to fish, isn’t that right Mickey?’ she said putting an arm around his shoulders and squeezing him. He relaxed under the flattery and gave a small childlike smile of embarrassment.
‘Ah, that’s not true, Ma’ he said, but he was pleased at the praise none the less. She insisted he did and poured him a cup of tea.
They sat, drinking tea and talking. She was careful to draw Mickey into the conversation, asking him direct questions or what he thought of this or that. She treated him like the grown up he would never quite be. Krupmeyer watched and warmed to them both. Mickey was a gentle child trapped in the body of a middle aged man. As time went by, Mickey started talking to Krupmeyer more. He had relaxed with the new person in his world and Krupmeyer was careful not to scare him. Eventually, Mickey hesitantly offered to show Krupmeyer a great spot to fish.
‘Oh, I don’t think Mr. Krupmeyer needs any help, Mickey’ she said quickly, looking anxiously at Krupmeyer.
‘That’d be fine Mickey answered Krupmeyer, smiling reassuringly at Mrs. Harkin. ‘In fact, it’s be a great help having a local expert along. You can tell me the best flies to fish.’
Winnie looked at Krupmeyer and asked him if he was sure, that it wouldn’t be too much trouble for him. Krupmeyer reassured her. It wouldn’t be any trouble at all.
Mickey beamed. ‘We could go this evening, if you want’ he offered hopefully. Krupmeyer said that would be fine. Mickey left immediately to get his tackle ready.
‘He likes you’ said Winnie. ‘You’re very good with him. Are you sure it won’t be any trouble?’ He reassured her again that it wasn’t. Really it wasn’t. They finished their tea and Krupmeyer went upstairs. He spent the rest of the afternoon unpacking his bags and sorting through his fishing tackle.
When he came down the stairs, a head poked out of the kitchen immediately. It was Mickey. Krupmeyer wondered how long he had been waiting there for him.
‘Are you ready Mr. Krupmeyer?’ he asked. Krupmeyer told him he was and to call him Gus. Winnie came out of the kitchen carrying a packet of sandwiches neatly wrapped in grease proof paper. She handed them to Krupmeyer.
These’ll keep you going’ she said. ‘I’ll have your dinner for you when you get back.’ They went outside and stored the waders and rods carefully in the boot of the car. With a final wave to Winnie, they set off.
Mickey directed while Krupmeyer drove. They soon turned off the main road and stared down a succession of narrow country lanes. Krupmeyer wondered what they would do if they met a car coming the other way. There was hardly enough room for his car as it was. Finally they stopped at Mickey’s direction. There had not been a single signpost since they left the main road. He parked the car hard up on the tiny verge at the side of the lane. After setting up the rods, they climbed over the stone wall at the side of the road, careful to avoid snagging on the rusty barbed wire on top of it. It had clumps of what looked like grey cotton wool stuck to the barbs. ‘It’s the sheep’ Mickey explained. They walked across a pasture that sloped down to the river. Mickey explained that the best spot was upriver from here and they could fish their way up to it.
They waded in, with Mickey being given the lead at Krupmeyer’s insistence. He worked the stream forty yards ahead of Krupmeyer. Krupmeyer watched him. When he fished he was transformed. For such an awkward man, his casting, despite looking laborious and stilted, was gentle and perfect. Time and again he placed the fly in exactly the right spot without hardly disturbing the water. At the beginning he occasionally glanced back at Krupmeyer to give him a shy smile but soon he only had eyes for the water. His whole attention was given over to it.
Krupmeyer waded along behind him, casting into the channels between the long tresses of river weed pulled into straight lines by the flow of the river. Mickey caught the first fish. Krupmeyer struggled up behind him with the net and Mickey carefully steered the fish around and into it. Mickey tucked his rod under his arm and stood in the river holding the fish in both hands. He examined it quietly for a moment. With a businesslike jerk of his hands, he broke its back and put it in the catch bag without a word. Krupmeyer wondered what he had been thinking about but could not read his expression.
They fished on until the light started to fail. Mickey had caught another two fish and Krupmeyer a couple as well. They waded to the bank and headed back to the car. The drive back to Braghan was taken up by Mickey’s animated descriptions of the fish he had taken. After the silence of the fishing, the words gushed out of him, childish and full of enthusiasm.
When they got back to the house, Winnie greeted them with a big hello. She insisted on looking at all the fish and flattered them shamelessly, especially Mickey who swelled with embarrassed pride. She told them they could have them for dinner tomorrow.
The evening meal was a very happy affair. The food was good and the conversation lively. Winnie was genuinely interested in the fishing and had Krupmeyer and Mickey recount in detail how each one was caught. Winnie asked Krupmeyer did he know any film stars. She seemed to have an idea that America was a country only slightly larger than Ireland and that everyone there knew or were related to one another. Nothing he said could seem to shake the idea from her head. They best he could come up with were a few Senators and their indiscretions. Winnie was suitably scandalised. The meal passed quickly. Krupmeyer insisted on helping out with the washing up despite Winnie’s protests. They watched television afterwards until Mickey started falling asleep. Winnie shooed him off to bed and went to make tea for herself and Krupmeyer.
They sat in the Kitchen drinking the tea. ‘He’s not really very strong, you know. The fishing always tires him out’ she said. Krupmeyer nodded and said it was a good interest for him to have. She agreed. Krupmeyer felt tired himself. After the transatlantic flight and the evening spent fishing he was looking forward to bed himself.
‘He likes you, I can tell. I hope he doesn’t get too attached. It hurts him when guests he likes go home.’ Krupmeyer felt his eyes starting to close.
‘The man who taught him to fish lived here for nearly a year and it took Mickey months to get over it when he left. He was heartbroken. Heartbroken. That’s why I won’t take people in for long now. It’s too hard on him when they leave.’
Krupmeyer nodded understandingly, fighting back the fatigue that was creeping over him.
‘Ah now, there was a fine man. A nice man. A Yank like yourself. I’ll never understand why he had to leave.’
Krupmeyer came alert quickly.
‘An American?’ he queried.
‘Well not exactly,’ she replied ‘from Canada. Ontario in Canada.’ Ontario bordered onto upstate New York, where Canfield had grown up. He would be familiar with Ontario. It would make a good background for a cover story. His excitement increased.
‘Maybe I know him, what was his name?’ he asked casually, trading on Winnie’s peculiar ideas on the size of America.
‘Bob Conner’ she replied. Krupmeyer grinned. Of course. This was the only place in town a visitor could stay in. He should have asked sooner. And here it was, falling into his lap like a ripe plum.
‘Do you know him?’ she asked. He said he did not and asked when Conner had left Braghan.
‘Oh, it’s six, maybe seven years now. And not a letter or card. He promised Mickey and it wouldn’t be like him to break a promise. No, I sometimes wonder if something happened to him. I asked the Guards but they weren’t bothered. I do hope he’s all right, even if he hasn’t got in touch. It wasn’t a girl or anything like that, though there were one or two lassies around here who took a shine to him. I miss him myself.’ She paused and Krupmeyer waited patiently as all good interrogators do, for her to continue.
She tilted her cup and examined the tea leaves in the bottom of it. She smiled in reflection. ‘I remember well the first day I saw him. Standing there at the front door with his suitcase. He was a bag of bones. There wasn’t a pick on him. So I says to myself, there’s a man needs feeding up.’
She leaned towards Krupmeyer to share a confidence. ‘He’d been ill, you know. He never said what exactly but it was something to do with the nerves. Suffered from terrible nightmares, just like Mickey. You’d hear him at night calling out. I used to give him one of Mickey’s pills to settle him down. Ah, there were a few bad nights at first but he settled down and put on a bit of weight, thank the Lord.’
Krupmeyer listened intently as she talked on. Up to now, all he knew about Canfield he had learned from the notes the Colonel had given him. None of it was personal, none of it gave him an impression of the man. As she talked an image formed. An image of a man who had not been in good shape when he arrived in Braghan, despite all the work they’d done on him after his escape. Winnie and Mickey and the small cosiness of their world had been good for him. He asked her where he had gone.
She shook her head mournfully. ‘I’ve no idea. We came back from eleven O’clock Mass and he was gone. There was nothing but a note and some money on the kitchen table. It just said he had to go away. It was a terrible shock.’ She shook her head slowly.
Krupmeyer heard the hurt in her voice. She lapsed in to silence. Krupmeyer felt sorry for her. So sorry that he was tempted for a moment to tell her more about Canfield but decided it would only worry her more.
‘Well, it’s time for bed’ she declared suddenly, snapping out of her reverie and standing up from the table to pick up the empty cups. ‘You must be bushed with the trip over and all.’ He said good night to her as she stood at the sink and rinsed out the tea cups.
Upstairs he lay awake in his bed thinking. Canfield had lived in this house for a year, slept in this bed. The image of Winnie looking after him sprang to mind. Winnie standing by the bed here with one of Mickey’s pills and a glass of water. Talking to him, soothing him. Bringing him back from the nightmares to the small room in the small house. In his own way, Canfield had been just as damaged as Mickey and she had known it instinctively and lavished as much love and affection on him as on her own son.
But he had left. It could not have been easy for him to leave them. He must have known how much it would hurt. He would not have done it unless he thought there was no choice. But why did he do it? Was he running from his own government, didn’t he trust them? It was the only explanation Krupmeyer could come up with. After all Canfield had been through, trusting anybody would not come easy. Krupmeyer lay there thinking until he fell asleep.
Pointman
Mr Pointman, Sir…
I was puffing after that run up the hill, but it was worth it.
scud1 June 19, 2010 at 9:00 am
Thanks for your good wishes. I made a road-trip around the southern mainland coastline to South Australia and headed inland to see a few spots not visited in 30 years. Came home with a resolve NOT to “go back” any place on account of any nostalgic fond memories.
The Limestone Coast of SA has a squillion miles of vineyards, and a lot of cellar-doors creaked behind me as I progressively loaded the 4×4 with cases of the only sort of “tourist souvenirs” I like these days.
Also, my first encounter with “wind farms” en mass. Hundreds of the buggers. Came home with a new resolve to denounce this lunacy. The utter nerve of the Green Cretins who advocate the wind-toys’ malignant spread is contemptible.
Keep those laughs coming Scud, we’re all likely to get just too cranky without them.
Cheers.
Nighty night. Let’s have some fun
Pointman
I wrote yesterday about the legal parameters of BP liability. I wrote about the $75 mil. liability cap under the Oil Pollution Act unless there is proof of gross negligence, willful misconduct, or a violation of federal construction or operating requirements. I also mentioned the $1 bil. Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, which is available to provide up to one billion dollars per spill incident. Then I said given those caps, I didn’t know how Obama got BP to agree to a $20 bil. escrow.
I have been hearing something about that today: commentators have been saying the Administration told BP it would lose all its leases and all its government contracts unless they agreed to the escrow. I have no opinion as to whether BP was negligent or grossly negligent, or as to what ultimate liability of the respective parties will be. I also have no opinion as to how much suffering is really occurring, as opposed to how much suffering the media is hyping. But it is hard to get out of mind the imagery that the Administration has used: they will keep “a boot to the throat” of BP.
Do we applaud this escrow, or is it a “boot to the throat?”
The boot to the throat is correct typical fascist maneuver, BP is quietly plotting it’s revenge, expect them to give to the Republicans quietly. Also this blunt robbery tactic will cost the treasury in lost taxes a lot more than 20 billion as they will be declaring a loss for it’s USA operations for the next 5 years. This also impacts the pensions of a lot of Americans not just British people impoverishing them but Obama does not care about the elderly.
@ msher says: June 19, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Hi Msher,
I’ve read your posts with interest and thanks for the update.
Today, I found my way to Rastech’s great site http://www.founding-sons.co.uk/SMF/index.php wherein I found an embedded link to some footage and commentary of a low-level flight across the Gulf showing several other “spills” which have apparently been leaking since hurricane damage several years ago.
As they have unsuccessfully been trying to stem these flows from damaged rigs, vessels have been dispensing mega-quantities of toxic dispersant on slicks heading directly towards the Mississippi Delta for years.
I don’t recall major alerts in recent times of such long-term comparatively smaller spills, so what damage to local fisheries and the US coastline has been going on for years and kept “under wraps” so as not to startle the horses? Maybe the Web rumours of “fissures” in the Gulf sea-bed following Deepwater have been “planted” to cover those older spills.
Maybe the Deepwater disaster has lifted the lid, and BP is going to find itself held responsible for the lot.
In my mind, this raises the question of the US Administration’s culpability in granting such permits for drilling at unprecedented depths when they obviously KNEW that much more shallow hurricane-damaged rigs were still not capped.
Scapegoat springs to mind.
As for the “boot to the throat” threats, it seems to me that if a cause is “righteous” and claims fully justified, who needs a hob-nailed boot on their neck? The Rule of Law should prevail. It’s certainly not an expression used by any Man of Peace I’ve heard of, especially not one deserving of his Nobel Peace Price.
More like a “Pretender”, fearful that his own incompetence and culpability will be exposed.
PS – obviously should be Peace PriZe.
On second thought, maybe “Peace Price” was some kind of Freudian, subconscious slip. When we think of other “worthy” recipients like Gore and Patchy Poo, maybe it was remarkably apt.
Msher, glad to see you posted on this on the latest Delingpole thread. Valuable stuff.
Hi Blackswan — right behind you, apparently.
While perusing JD’s blog, saw this link which, while pertinent to the previous thread, thought was really relevant to msher’s earlier comments here……..
http://www.globalwarming.org/2010/06/14/obama-blocked-clean-up-of-bp-oil-spill-by-friendly-countries-international-assistance-blocked-by-regulations-obama-had-the-authority-to-waive/
wherein……..
“In April 2009, the Obama administration granted BP, a big supporter of Obama, a waiver of environmental regulations. But after the oil spill, it blocked Louisiana from protecting its coastline against the oil spill by delaying rather than expediting regulatory approval of essential protective measures. It has also chosen not to use what has been described as “the most effective method” of fighting the spill, a method successfully used in other oil spills”.
This whole item is well worth a read as it really exposes what has been going on here, with plenty of reasons as to “Why?”.
Amanda June 19, 2010 at 2:00 pm
“Hi Blackswan — right behind you, apparently”.
Hi Amanda,
Are you referring to NoIdea’s on-the-spot reports of our activities in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land? It seems we’ve been overcome by high levels of oestrogen in the atmosphere and are prancing about in tiny black leather halters………
Don’t know about you, but mine chafes!
BTW are you still in the mountains? Mmm – crab cakes – yummo!
Blackswan I think Obamas Anglophobia clouds his judgment and see the chance to turn what was an ally into a new enemy to hated and vilified and of course turning attention from the religion of peace nutters. He is on record as saying he will do anything to help Islam. He is poisoning the well and even if he gets booted out of office in 2012 nobody is going to trust America for a very long time, they will be seen as untrustworthy allies a country that can not keep prior commitments or promises.
I think someone mentioned an oil spill in the gulf in the 70’s (78?) by a Mexican rig just as big as this one it took ten months to fix, no compensation was ever paid as the company was state owned and claimed crown immunity, Texas took the brunt of that one. Someone also pointed out a Californian oil spill in 1910 off the coast just as big, these have happened before but Obama is using these to make political hay and push through his cap and trade agenda.
Also hi to everyone else.
Has Cameron said anything?
Do the British people expect him to say anything?
Pointman and Scud, wonderful stuff! Awe inspiring! Many thanks.
While nosing around the net I spotted yet another standard spin piece on AGW. http://www.realitysandwich.com/food_global_warming
I followed a link from the comments made by pinkelephantcollective to http://cargocollective.com/pinkelephantcollective#316604/Video-Evidence
There is an interesting propaganda documentary about propaganda and false flag attacks.
The new American century is the name of the film. Well worth a watch with an open mind. Has some interesting old and new footage, some of it quite graphic.
I managed to find my way into Rastechs site, http://www.founding-sons.co.uk/ I am still a little nervous of all those buttons though.
I found the terms and conditions interesting, especially the part that almost reads…
any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person’s privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any Universal or Under Kingdom law.
That looks to me more like a fair review of the stuff that I post!
Will chapter 8 be late?
Who will turn up in the next obnoxious episode?
NoIdea
@ crownaramada June 19, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Hi Crown,
The substance of my previous post was a big surprise to me, as on this side of the planet, with an MSM which only publishes or responds to Media Releases, I had “no idea” that Bummer had actually refused international help to mitigate the effects of the spill. Can’t understand why this isn’t banner headlines around the world.
I’m amazed that Americans aren’t rising in the streets to demand justice for the southern Gulf states. Apart from commercial interests, what about the health implications for the people in the gas plumes? Or is this attitude a similar tardy response as that which followed Katrina? Beats me.
No wonder Bummer would like a “kill switch” for the internet. Without it, most people would have no idea what’s going on apart from the relentless media campaign against BP. From any perspective, Bummer’s behaviour is tinkering at the edges of gross criminal negligence.
msher no he really has not or if he has it is through back channels. He is married to the liberals who like him buy into the green agenda.
He does have one ace up his sleeve and that is the fact the son of the now ex Kirghistan president has asked for political asylum in the UK the new government of that country has threatened to close down the US airbase in that country vital to the Afghan war unless the UK government hands him over for trial. This gets complicated real fast by human rights legislation passed by the Labour government means they can’t even if they wanted to as they may kill him.
Blackswan the effects from this spill may be affecting our weather here 600 miles inland, we have had some odd heavy downpours, we get our weather from the gulf. It could be more nuclei for rain to form or we are just undergoing a 500 year flood event in the South. Nashville was flooded out as was part of the Ozarks.
Obarma is handling the whole spill politically no one is allowed down on certain beaches by the military no one can get the truth. People are trying to clean up the spill themselves or protect there little bit of coastline they are being stopped, BP has been hamstrung from trying anything that may work but they are not allowed to. The 20 billion extortion racket he just pulled shocks me, a lot of that money will not go to the people who need it and a lot of political activist organizations will.
@ NoIdea says June 19, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Hi NoIdea,
A couple of good links there – thanks. The descriptions were interesting but I’ll have to get back to watching them in a few days due to too many downloads lately.
As to chapter 8, I’m gripping the edge of my chair.
crownarmourer
Isn’t there a question time in Parliament? Somebody has to have asked a question.
I missed the derivation of your new name
————————-
Blackswan Tasmania
” Or is this attitude a similar tardy response as that which followed Katrina?”
??????????????????
Bush followed the rules that existed prior to Katrina: he gave the emergency authorizations prior to Katrina and the State and City were supposed to deal with things. Media changed the rules and started blaming Bush for no immediate federal response. That wasn’t even accurate. Federal Coast Guard helicopters were plucking people off roofs in flood areas right away. The post-hurricane relief supplies from the federal government took a few days during which the State and City governments weren’t doing what they were supposed to. The outcry for the federal government to take over right away was new, and has greatly increased the size and function of the federal government in emergencies. Even if someone were to say that the federal government was slow to react (And personally, I think they did what was expected of them up til that moment), the delay was a few days, not weeks.
Re the attitude post-Katrina. I found the images agonizing, as did MSM and as did, I think, most Americans. There was an immense outcry, which is what led to anger against the federal government – because the State of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans were known to be incompetent and helpless to do anything. Volunteers from around the country went to New Orleans to help in various capacities.
What do you mean?
msher since El Commandante/Walt decided we are own republic and I dare not question his decision in his infinite wisdom to make me Grand inquisitor so it is a combination of crownarmourer and torquemada.
As for Parliament they may be on summer recess I’m not sure if they were not the opposition would be reaming him a new one for not defending UK interests even if there own previous policies agreed with Obama.
NoIdea:”I found the terms and conditions interesting, especially the part that almost reads…
any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person’s privacy, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any Universal or Under Kingdom law.
That looks to me more like a fair review of the stuff that I post!”
Hey don’t go worrying about that, that’s just standard arse covering stuff. 🙂
I’ll rely on you all to do your own self moderating, the site is restricted to over 18’s, and any ‘heavy hand’ will be as light as is necessary (obviously some things will crop up due to an ‘element’ that nowhere online can do much about except retroatively)..
Self-moderating has worked really well down here – I’m sure it will on your forum too – Oz
blackswan, msher is right about Katrina mayor Nagan he of I’m going to make this a chocolate city fame did a runner when the Hurricane hit as did half the police force. They would have been able to evacuate everybody who wished to leave on yellow school buses but nobody authorized there use partly because a lot of the batteries had been stolen. Of course they reelected him back into power as is the case here in the USA so if it happens again under his watch the people deserve what they get. It was avoidable but under the Clinton administration they nixed an upgrade of the levees as recommended by the army corps of engineers. Captainsherlock would no doubt blame insurance fraud and lesbians for the disaster but I doubt it.
A greater shock for all the surrounding states were the criminal refugees that turned reasonably quiet cities into war zones over drugs. In Texas the criminals got the greater shock as nobody messes with Texas.
” as light as is necessary ”
Should have been “as light as possible when it is necessary”.
Brain still not too good after the ongoing manouvers with that large cast iron CO2 generating object.
Hmmmm, that sounds like a politician . . . .
Sad to say I can’t manhandle 286lb objects with the disdain I used to any more. *grins*
rastech I was worried about that or I would get banned immediately. Never say anything that is slander or libelous is my mottoish.
Well crown, it’s facilities ‘for’ you, not ‘against’ you. I agree with Oz about the self-moderating, and as long as I don’t end up in Court, that’s the main thing. *grins*
rastech sounds like fun 286l’b’s like the time I had to put a 100lb weater heater in my attic up some flimsy attic stairs nobody told me it takes two people still managed it and the plumbing. Fortunately my father an ex plumber taught me how to flux and solder copper pipes so they would not leak. Something satisfying about doing your own wiring and plumbing in a house. Sheet rock/plaster board is a bugger though to put up on a roof by yourself, just never ask me to hang wallpaper.
I’ve now stickied a silly posting thread next to the introduce yourselves thread, so you can rack up the post count to over 10 asap.
Below 10 posts are pretty restricted due to the necessary defending from those automated spam rubbish generators (hopefully I’ll be able to ban them and block their ip’s before they get to 10 posts).
@ msher June 19, 2010 at 5:07 pm
“tardy” – Slow to act or come or happen, delaying or delayed beyond right or expected time… from the Latin “tardus” meaning slow. (courtesy Oxford Combined Dictionary of Current & Modern English Usage).
THAT’s what I meant.
I didn’t attribute such tardiness to any Authority, either Federal, State or City.
My only perspective on that catastrophic event was via the MSM, seeing all the same pictures you did and Aussies, as we always do, held numerous events to raise a great deal of money to help.
I’m thinking that perhaps AS it was just those video images and heart-rending accounts of the victims that spurred America and the world into a response, maybe Bummer is throwing a security cordon around the Gulf coast preventing those pesky media guys from taking the real story to the world and rendering his use of this event for political and financial gain, neutered. After all, if he keeps BP as his sacrificial goat staked out for the kill (halal of course), his own culpability fades from view.
That’s what I meant.
Silliest thing I did with something weighty, was a lead delivery I did with a load of roofing materials (I used to import, wholesale and retail, as a roofing merchant, and lead was part of the whole thing).
I had a roll of Code 6 lead over 5ft tall, and the boys on site were being a bit ‘wimpish’ about getting it up onto the scaffolding, so I just lifted it onto my shoulder and went up the ladder to the top of the scaffolding with it. It weighed about the same as the stove, and I could have done myself a bit of an injury I suppose.
There’s some nice kit around now to do plasterboarding of ceilings on your own, but I agree with you about wallpapering.
Never done wallpapering, never will, and if I can’t put paint on with a roller, that ain’t happening either. *grins*
rastech my Mrs blogs and tends to get people mixed up a lot with bad behaviour, so far no law suits, she likes to deal with political issues although fortunately for us her dad is very well connected and I mean very. A phone call to his friends can alter a mans life for the bad he rarely uses those superpowers unless somebody messes with him or his family but it scares me enough to avoid him. I’m keeping a low profile.
rastech the one thing about home improvements is that I have found it is best to get the family to leave when I do it, as I would make a sailor blush with my cursing of previous contractors and their bodge jobs to get things installed no pride in their work anymore.
Right, time I went and got this stove adaptor to finish the installation.
Dad’s 84 tomorrow so I doubt I’ll be around much the next day or so.
Keep well all. 🙂
Blackswan as for liability the MMS Minerals Management Service is seriously liable. they signed off on everything and that brings it to his doorstep. If this goes to the courts they are screwed as BP has an out.
@ crownaramada June 19, 2010 at 6:15 pm
Thanks Crown,
I’ve seen MMS mentioned so often, but didn’t see what it stood for.
Didn’t a previous POTUS say “The buck stops with me”? I guess that lands the whole fiasco in Bummer’s lap. As Walt said, the BP guy should have told all the posturing US politicians to take a hike… and gone to lunch.
Blackswan the buck stop with me sign on his desk was Truman a fine president, more of a realist than Roosevelt with reguards to the commies.
BP’s problems are self inflicted seen it a lot of times, bean counter running the show and managers cutting corners to make there bonus over safety and maintenance concerns. a lot of Western industry is filled with liberal arts degree types that are more concerned with PC BS than actually dealing with real issues, they create mindless tasks for employees to do to keep themselves busy also employing people not on ability but to meet government targets on diversity, which is an issue with the education system not caring about raising people up to their full potential.
Hi msher !
on June 19, 2010 at 12:34 pm
///Do we applaud this escrow, or is it a “boot to the throat?”///
Actually, it’s called a “shakedown”. Not for nothing did he “organize communities” on the Chicago South Side, eh ?
Over on the WSJ was reported that this (first ?) $20bil Kenyan Narcissis’ shakedown of BP represents but two thirds of this year’s operating cashflow. Over the past three years the company apparently generated $91 billion in cash flow from operations.
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque 20100619 10h32 Paris time (CET)
Hi Blackswan Tasmania !
on June 19, 2010 at 3:20 pm
/// This whole item is well worth a read as it really exposes what has been going on here, with plenty of reasons as to “Why?”.///
This story broke a few days ago at FoxNews and was picked up by some of the wire services. I read it and began wondering, too. (Still don’t have an answer …)
A lot of the greenwhacko sites denied that the Obumbles administration had not waived the Jones Act (Wiki Jones Act at: http://tinyurl.com/2daxlnf ).
Apparerently ths WH Press Secretary brushed the whole shebang off, poopooing as he usually does when substantive questions are asked. (sigh)
I tried to google upstream to see if any French entity had announced that it was sending a ship to help out, but couldn’t find diddly. The French usually trumpet such efforts in the domestic propaganda here, and there hasn’t been anything I’ve seen.
A part of the “problem” from Obummer’s point of view, certainly, is Piyush “Bobby” Jindal, the current Governor of Louisiana.
He’s a Republican with brown skin, you see, whose parents immigrated from the Punjab.
/// …/… He is the first elected non-white Governor of Louisiana and the first Indian-American governor in the country.
…/…
Jindal oversaw one of the largest evacuations in U.S. history (nearly two million people) in late August 2008 prior to the Louisiana landfall of Hurricane Gustav.[50] He issued mandatory evacuation orders for the state’s coastal areas and activated 3,000 National Guardsman to aid in the exodus. He also ordered the state to purchase generators to provide needed power to hospitals and nursing homes without power. Government officials vacated hospitals and nursing homes and put the poor, the ill, and the elderly on buses and trains out of town. The evacuation was credited as one reason that Gustav only resulted in 16 deaths in the U.S. The state’s successful response to Hurricane Gustav was in stark contrast to the failed hurricane response system for Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Jindal received bipartisan praise for his leadership during Gustav.[51][52] Jindal had been scheduled to address the Republican National Convention, but cancelled his plans to focus on Louisiana’s needs during the storm….
Wiki at: http://tinyurl.com/27khe6z
Bobby J has more administrative / management experience in his little pinky tha Obummer has in his whole being. Obozo couldn’t manage a corner lemonade stand in the summer, or a deal with paper delivery route on a bicycle.
If I were Bobby J I’d be more than happy to allow Democrat Odumbo to carry the can for the cleanup … but then I’m not a possible candidate for US President. (grin)
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque 20100619 11h13 Paris time (CET)
Hi Amerloque,
Thanks a lot, most informative. I hadn’t heard of Bobby J & Gustav. The people of NO must have watched closely, with envy and regret.
I guess the further Bummer sticks his neck out, the more axes will inevitably fall.
Happy Father’s Day all you gentlemen a day or so ahead of me.
Also, to our Oz friends I would very much like to thank them for giving the States its own US Navy “Team America” calibre playtoy for dealing with the Deka-dekastanis which is right now getting a major workout in the Caribbean and which Oz firm, Austal, built a shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, to provide the trimaran version of this Rolls Royce MT-30 powered high-speed warship, almost 400 feet of hull length of romping, stomping 50 knot joy, using USA workers. Thanks for investing in us.
This predatory warship even looks evil. http://www.gdlcs.com/ It needs Christopher Lee on the bridge as Captain plus a Scud1-level of upgrade for its weapons systems. It can’t be complete without at least three more 30 mm chain guns, torpedo launchers, and and a fleet of its own Predators.
This has to be the only blogspace in the Universe at the moment with three novels in progress on its pages LOL! If you folks would like some free recommendations on how to take your product to market (and polish them up to concours condition), I would be happy to provide the info here. I’m with the pertinent unions for this sort of trade. Commonwealth rights are quite different than Stateside, but not hard to pin down, plus there are lots of nice agent folks with positive experience, licencing and with bonding capabilities to help you down the road. (If they don’t have the tickets, they aren’t worth the salt of your sweat).
Thanks and a Happy Fathers’ Day also to BP. I hope they make every dime back plus sue for slander, plus mount the heads of the slanderers in their hunting gallery lounge with the drowned polar bear rugs and the stuffed and mounted heads of “environmentalist” crooked shakedown artists. Were I BP, I would tell President Ungawa and Vice President Beria that if they want 20 billion US out of BP, the Feds can come and get it. The Feds have no legal basis for demanding any restitution whatever without due process of law. If BP wren’t being as princely as they are being, and instead defending their own interests, this would be NOW the most embarrassing moment thus far (out of many) of this Maladministration’s history.
I think they can shake down Deepwater Horizon, who posted bond for damages and liability as subcontractor. The Fed’s are entirely within their purview to do so, as are the insurance companies. This is so if 200 years of uniform commercial code have not been voided in one fell swoop by The Man Who Would Be Ward Boss as in Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle,” a novel about the REAL Chicago which exists intact to this day minus the cattle smell of the abbatoirs (they’ve just been moved to the Dakotas and Minnesota and Iowa and Kansas, and Mexican and Vietnamese instead of Norwegian immigrants are exploited in them).
Man of the Moor, many thanks also for your help and to Noidea, too.
Hi Blackswan Tasmania !
At June 19, 2010 at 7:33 pm
///I guess the further Bummer sticks his neck out, the more axes will inevitably fall.///
Oh, yes. There are indeed many hatchets out there …(grin)
In his “Obama’s Oil Spill”, a fellow named Jon Christian Ryter links the oil spill to … the birth certificate . (grin)
…/… (begin)
Again, what the American people don’t know is that 13 different countries offered to help clean the oil sludge from the Gulf. And, finally, what the American people don’t know is that the Obama Administration turned all of them down. Obama had a crisis in the making and as Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel so aptly told the media during the housing and credit disasters that led to the piling on of over $3 trillion in new taxes on generations of Americans in February, 2009, you “…never let a crisis go to waste.”
Had Obama allowed those 13 nations to contain the oil leak and clean up the mess within the first two weeks of the BP oil spill, the marshlands would not be devastated and the tourists would be flocking to the beaches along the Gulf of Mexico this summer. Instead, in the height of tourist season—June 15 until Labor Day—those who usually flock to the Gulf coast will be spending their vacations in North Carolina, or Cape Cod…or in their backyards at home wondering when Obama’s next crisis will devastate the industry they work in and end their jobs.
When Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal tried to get the White House to allow willing nations, experienced with oil spill cleanup in the North Sea, to come into the Gulf of Mexico to help, Obama cited the Jones Act as his reason for being forced to decline their offer of help. The Jones Act (also known as the Sailors’s Rights Act, Title 46 USC) is a protectionist piece of legislation that mandates that all goods transported by sea between US ports must be transported by US flag ships that are owned by US citizens and whose crews must be at least 3/4 US citizens
However, the law provides a waiver in times of emergency. President Bush-43 used the waiver twice during his second term. First, in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina. He allowed foreign ships to transport oil and natural gas between US ports in the Gulf. In 2006, a waiver was issued so a foreign ship could bring a jack-up rig into Alaska’s Cook Inlet. Thus, emergency waivers are common. Which raises the question why Obama declined the offer of help which, had he accepted it, would likely minimized or eliminated the oil spill crisis in the Gulf.
…/…
Since it is unlikely the US Senate, which knows it’s already in trouble with the voters, will let Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [D-NV] put Cap & Trade back on the table, Obama has already authorized the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. Where does he get that authority? From the US Supreme Court, which decided on April 2, 2009 that the EPA has the authority to regulate heat-trapping gases in automobile emissions—i.e., carbon dioxide. The court also ruled that the EPA had an obligation to regulate greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming unless they (or hopefully, someone with a brain) present a scientific basis for not regulating them. In a separate decision, the high court also ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and factories.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the dissenting opinion, said that the broad coalition of cities, counties and environmental groups that brought the lawsuit had no legal standing as litigants, and the case should never have been accepted by the high court. His dissent was joined by Associate Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, Jr. When the social progressives on the high court hold 4 seats and can usually depend on the one swing vote, they can hear any case they wish to hear; and when they pull that swing vote left of center, they can win any case, whether it has legal standing or not. Once they prevail, those 5 judges have more power than 535 members of Congress.
The Obama EPA took the issue to court to undo 8-years of Bush-43 policy during which time President George W. Bush insisted the government did not have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide since it is a natural element necessary to sustain human life. Giving the EPA the authority to greatly reduce breathable air and drinkable water on Earth were Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Stephen Breyer and swing vote Anthony Kennedy. Since Souter has retired and Stevens is about to, and its likely that Ginsburg will step down before Obama leaves office, it appears only Breyer will need to be impeached for judicial stupidity and ignorance of basic chemistry.
Of course, all of the justices and any federal judge appointed by non-citizen Obama need to be replaced as well since the Constitution of the United States does not allow illegal aliens, even if they reside in the big white house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, to sign legislation into law or appoint judges to the federal courts.
… …/… (end)
http://tinyurl.com/3yj25pt
Yup. The Birth Certificate. Where the f is it ?
Let’s look at it another way … (sigh) … if it were any of us here, for example. (sigh) … so one of us trundles on down for a job interview …
Job applicant: Hello Sir ! (or) Hello Madam !
Human Resources Manager: Please present your original birth certificate, with times, dates, places and witnessed signatures.
Job applicant: No.
Human Resources Manager: Well, please present your university transcripts.
Job applicant: No.
Human Resources Manager: How about your passport…?
Job applicant: No.
Human Resources Manager: Sorry, we can’t give you a security clearance. We won’t even offer you a job with our organization …
… but you can be President of the United States of America, if you want !
Quite a few western democratic countries (all of which have established procedures in place for for political candidates – including presentation of witnessed certificate of birth/nationality – are laughing at America as the USA takes another step towared being a third world banana republic.
No country is eternal. (sigh)
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque 20100619 14h10 Paris time (CET)
BP can rummage down the back of the sofa and find $20 billion in loose change. Think of it as a buying opportunity – I did.
Pointman
Amerloque 20100619 14h10 Paris time
M. Amerloque,
What a great post – it’s a doozie!! (as they say),
Just about covers it all.
Funny how Oz’s new blog on Bummer’s internet control, morphed into more on the topic from the previous one, Gulf Oil. I guess everything about Bummer is connected, everything he says and does is for his own purpose, for advancing his own agenda at the expense of the American Constitution, the Law and the American people.
Without the kind of material about HIM that is freewheeling around the world via the Internet, he’d be home free. BUT… with so many questions being raised by newly aware citizens, he’s got a problem. If Lieberman gets his Kill-Switch passed on the Internet in the event of a “national emergency”, I wonder what sort of “emergency” will suddenly materialise to stop people in the US asking so many pesky questions.
Great link M’sieur, merci.
Hi Blackswan Tasmania
on June 19, 2010 at 11:51 pm
Glad you took the time to read it ! (grin)
/// … M’sieur, merci. ///
As Americans call French people “frogs” and British people “limeys”, so do the French call British people “rosbifs” and American people “amerloques”. ‘wide grin)
I’m American and have lived in France almost half a century (wider grin)
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque 20100619 14h10 Paris time (CET)
Amerloque 20100618 19h30 Paris time (CET)
PS: On my personal site you can learn more about Amerloque. Over there, I write in the third person. (grin)
http://amerloqueparis.blogspot.com/
Hi NoIdea !
on June 18, 2010 at 4:18 pm
///The end of the beginning.
Chapter 7///
When is Chapter 8 due ?!
Best ,
L’Amerloque
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque 20100619 18h30 Paris time (CET)
MSher, Amanda, Blackswan, Crown, Rastech et al, glad you still cast the occasional glance at JD’s blog and even post on it. The reason he no longer responds is that he’s unable to. We have all despaired at the obtuseness of the new system but as it stands he can’t get parental access to his baby.
I think the reason I allowed my ramblings to morph back into the previous bloggo is that the bucktoothed temporary “helpers” now ransacking the Federal store are out of their depth in terms of defining what they can or cannot do with the Net. Personally, and it is my opinion only, but unless they are subbing the task of shutting down the Net to the Russians or the Red Chinese or the people of India, it is not going to get done. We have excellent coders and digital twidgity folks, and I have worked with them since the mid-80’s. What is lacking is the ability to actually step outside the really narrow and small conceptual arena of thought which is currently inhabited by Yanks which is absolutely necessary to achieve anything of world-class value and capabilities.
The USA did not always enjoy the ludicrous status of being one of the few nations which allows people to obtain an advanced degree without a second language. The USA once did have a reputation for producing world-class literary works, symphonic music, figurative and tactile art, formal dance, and the worst part of it is, it STILL does, but it is being done on an underground basis owing to the ideological and political quasi-theocratic climate imposed on the modes of expression by the Michael Moores and the other PC Tarzans swinging in to “save” the tribes on government grants from one end of the spectrum and by the First Church of the Roadkill Pancake Breakfast Hydrocephalics on the other which have between them made a nightmare of intergenerationally valuable creative activity in my homeland.
I am not profoundly disturbed by the threat of the plug being pulled on the InterNet. If that were done and enforce globally for six months, half our present problems would disappear like methane emissions in a sandstorm (except for mine which are still lighting camels on fire, exploding aircraft in midflight and asphyxiating skunks halfway around the globe from methane emissions unleashed thirty years ago). If people suddenly had to do something other than talk to little glittering jewel box screens with their off-time for three months at a stretch, I feel sure we would see some really dramatic social change in a huge hurry. The Oongawa Administration doesn’t want that pause to wake up from the great electronic daze to happen anytime soon. I like the Net but it is a great brain cell solvent, too. In many respects it is worse than chemical substances in that it does undermine both cognitive and memory related functions, just what I need at age sixty. It did not when first introduced because those using it were not of the general public, and therefore saw the limitations of the InterNet media, and did what they could to keep this from becoming an advertising industrial psych’s playground.
It’s Juneteenth down the block here on the West Side. In my neighborhood we have actual real live 80 and 90 year old black blues performers form the Old South sipping on Mason jars and munching on lemon chess doing it to it on the stage, so I am going to go play for awhile until the police show up.
My only complaint about the festivities is that maybe the World Cup has vuvuzuelas, but we have bongos and those goofy tribal drum kits with skins on both ends of them with the bent stick beaters that four or five at a time tend to walk around with. The players usually have dreadlocks and shades like Snoopdogg wears in the video for Korn’s “Twisted Transistor” video, which no doubt come off at the end of the evening to get ready for church choir the next morning.
How stoopid are those of my homeland nowadays? It is difficult to sell people here on the link between the quality of cultural product and the limits of intellectual achievement, is how stoopid. That has everything to do with how toothless Haterman’s threat of turn off the Net is.
The Fed’s don’t own it, anyway. Three huge companies run the thing physically and they do not take any garbage from anyone including Uncle Buttbreath. If push came to shove, there is a Toronto movement called Free Wireless.com which sells packages wear you can backpack a wireless ISP server in one of those man-purse canvas thingies for about 200 bucks. I will dig up their contact coordinates, along with Ozboy’s info on who is the grand poobah in Oz for wind projects. The nice thing about the Net is that it will work even on downed dead power lines and what not. It is the original “Mad Max” fashion accessory to die for. Unless the Fed’s get a 10,000 bazillion gigawatt spark gap transmitter that is so powerful it makes everyone’s dental fillings on the planet glow in the dark, the Net is here to stay, government or no government.
What is even scarier is staying abreast of the types of cultural grants available out there, and you get the impression that the Fed’s feel the same way I do. If you want free money to make an indie film, now is the time to make your play, gang, if you are in the States (Cinema has made a compleat dog’s breakfast of our perception of the past as instantaneous media are the most readily combustible and disposable with time, which is probably why the Fed’s are ponying up for it; that way they can re-write the script of the past far easier than otherwise). There is also grant money out their for blogging, if you can believe it, in the areas of visual arts and literary criticism. You still cannot make a living and raise a family as a symphonic composer in the USA unless you are doing effing film scores or throwing away your life teaching freshmen who are going on to become windmill merchants and just need the liberal arts credits in music appreciation to complete their shingle requirements.
I wonder if the ancient Romans made an effort on this scale to save their corrupted and rotted-away civilization prior to the Germans taking over, or if they just said phooey on it and did their equivalent of the couch potato thing for their day.
“wear” should be “which.” Honest to G_d, I need to kiss the Net off for about a year. It’s rotting my brains from the inside out. Stepping from re-reading Vassily Aksyanov’s “Winter’s Hero” to the Net is like stepping out of the Sydney Opera House after hearing Charles Dutoit conduct Mahler’s Ninth in full directly into the bar scene in “Team America World Police,” as in the following:
Walt….I wonder if the ancient Romans made an effort on this scale to save their corrupted and rotted-away civilization prior to the Germans taking over, or if they just said phooey on it and did their equivalent of the couch potato thing for their day.
They just let them take over as they were all sick of high taxes and corruption and the barbarians were very inefficient tax collectors. For them it meant new management that was less oppressive than the old one and these newcomers assimilated well.
Old Toad thanks for the info it explains everything and your nom de guerre is safe with us. You do know they could actually change the settings on the new system poor Kate must be overwhelmed and a little out of her league methinks. I’m sure she is trying hard.
We do miss the interaction with James D though wherever he has gotten to, although Damien T posts comments but he has had to set up a my telegraph account to work around the problem, Stephanie Guttman did the same. I wonder if James D knows about this maybe you could tell him as it appears you know him well.
Walt/Crown
I can’t think of any way, myself, that the Western Roman Empire could have defeated the barbarian invasions that swamped it. Particularly with Rome’s lack of cavalry. Fortunately the Eastern part of the empire didn’t bear the brunt. And therefore survived very well for a considerable period after. (Corrupt or not.) Sometimes the forces against you are just too great. Unless you can divide them, or make compromise.
The timely invention and speedy implementation of rapid fire, fire arms might have saved them though?
The end of the beginning.
Chapter 8
Liquidly looking
June the thirteenth 2030 lunch time
Teinn the drunken master surveyed the scenes before him, they both looked good. He considered for a moment why double vision was not considered to be advantageous by the majority of sentient bifocal bipeds.
He took a quaff on his quaint quaigh, a quart of kumquat rum
His quadric quark Kshatriya monk trainings focusing his qui, his underlying quundaline quenched, he switched to his kunzite encrusted kylix and had a glug on some kvass, his overlying kundalini now condoling and consoled he balanced once more on one toe.
He extended his enhanced senses out, in essence a séances science series of quizzes.
The closest sentient life he could feel in his pineal gland and taste with his third eye was his faithful scribe Scud lurking nearby.
Scud was the official documenter and documentaller, after all you had to try and take down both sides of every story. He kept the esoteric Quackbalah and the occult Kwakbalah sacred histories with him at all times.
Scud felt the inscrutable scrutiny of the master Teinn investigate and probe at the edge of his consciences. He was the ultimate paranoid, always being watched, and the ultimate poronoid always observing and recording.
Scud tuned in to the master Teinn’s dictation wavelength, the thoughts he was receiving where cool and blue with touches of green and turquoise, this indicated to Scud that he should use the third book he carried, the book known as the necrombibbleconquoraneni or the Ombibble for short. This was the book where all the raw data was stored before analysis and separation in to the esoteric and occult books of balah. The three books together where known as the Baloneyeum.
Teinn’s thoughts coalesced and condensed in Scud’s receptive mind, he relaxed and let the thoughts guide his hands as they scribbled furiously, and it took no conscious effort on his behalf to maintain the concomitant concepts. He read the words as he wrote them on Teinn’s behalf.
“Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, also referred to by some as Dihydrogen Oxide, Hydrogen Hydroxide, Hydronium Hydroxide, or simply Hydric acid. Its basis is the highly reactive hydroxyl radical, a species shown to mutate DNA, denature proteins, disrupt cell membranes, and chemically alter critical neurotransmitters. The atomic components of DHMO are found in a number of caustic, explosive and poisonous compounds such as Sulfuric Acid, Nitroglycerine and Ethyl Alcohol. The response of terrestrial vegetation to a globally changing environment is central to predictions of future levels of atmospheric deciduous dehydrated dihydrogen monoxide The role of tropical mega forests is critical because they are dihydrogen monoxide succulent and highly productive. Inventory plots across Antarctican mega jungle show that new-growth forests have increased in carbon storage over recent months, but the response of one-third of the world’s tropical forests in Antarctican mega jungle is largely unknown owing to an absence of spatially extensive observation networks. Here we report data from a ten-sector network of long-term monitoring plots in Antarctican mega jungle tropical forests. We find that across 179 plots (1163 ha) above-ground dihydrogen monoxide storage in live trees increased by 1.63 Mg C ha-1 yr-1 between 2026 and 2029 (195% confidence coincidence interval (CCI), 1.22–1.94; mean interval, 2027-28). Extrapolation to unmeasured forest components (live roots, mega fauna, small trees, necromass) and scaling to the continent implies a total increase in carbon storage in Antarctican mega jungle tropical forest trees of 1.34 Pg C yr-1 (CCI, 1.15–1.43). These reported changes in dihydrogen monoxide storage are similar to those reported for Antarctican mega jungle forests per unit area, providing evidence that increasing dihydrogen monoxide storage in old-growth forests is a pan-tropical phenomenon. Indeed, combining all standardized inventory data from this study and from tropical Antarctican mega jungle and Artic together yields a comparable figure of 1.49 Mg C ha-1 yr-1 (n = 1156; 1562 ha; CCI, 1.29–1.66; mean interval, 2027-28). This indicates a dihydrogen monoxide sink of 11.3 Pg C yr-1 (CCI, 1.8–11.6) across all tropical forests during recent months. Taxon-specific analyses of Antarctican mega jungle and other data suggest that widespread changes in resource availability, such as increasing atmospheric dihydrogen monoxide concentrations, may be the cause of the increase in dihydrogen monoxide stocks, as some theory and models predict.”
Teinn flexed his drinking muscles, muttered his mantra “Nunc est bibendum” pulled out a flask of concocted condensate connoisseur Cointreau, and knocked the lot back, all in one long slow sip. Feel the burn; let the phoenix rise, no pain lots to gain. Cognitively supercharged on ethereal eucalyptol ethanol moonshine his perception enhanced way beyond sanity, he reeled for a moment then pulled himself together and drew his attention back in from the outer galactic clumps, concentrating on just one continent on one planet, his thought aura was no longer the colour of twankay green tea, now it was turbulent browns turbidly gushing spiraling round. The monumental data influx was a swirling vortex to Scud, now found he had to concentrate, use all his training, to try and ignore the ebullient mess.
The full power of his formidable self control was required to black out the eccentricity of this bibulous bilious maelstrom of names and places. The colours changed from caramels and chocolate browns to violent pink, crimson reds and dark grey streaked with black. Scud was practicing all the ancient rituals to prevent the whirling capricious vortex taking over his bodily functions; the mantra was muttered again and again. “Stop the world, I want to get off” the position of penitence assumed, face buried into the dank soil. Soon oblivion followed, his body unconscious is still scribing, both pens still flying and racing. Scud was unaware that the pens had switched to indelible unintelligibility mode to write down the dozens of true names that were being recorded.
Teinn was drawing the position and velocity out of every subatomic particle in the southern hemisphere, he ran convoluted cycloramic reductions, extreme filter pattern subset recognition and eventually managed to perceive the thought pattern he was seeking. Just as he was focusing his inebriated attention towards the long lost locus, he was hit by a tsunami of turpitude. Such malevolence and wickedness all concentrated under one ethos under one EPIC dome. He felt the vile ethos of uniqueness. The putrid protocols part one flooded out.
The protocols of the EURO (Elder Union Regal Overweeningers.)
Nomenclature developed in isolation from experimental chemistry will be perceived as an imposition and therefore irrelevant to science.
Nomenclature developed in isolation from experimental religioustry will be perceived as a threat and therefore abhorrent to science.
Nomenclature developed in isolation from experimental science will be perceived as an attack and must therefore be eradicated.
The development of new rules may also require a more rigorous definition of existing rules.
Each system has its own inherent logic and set of rules.
Rules are required to name parents and substituent organic offspring, to provide an order of citation of substituent names, and to specify the position of attachment of subsituents.
Replacement operations in which certain parents are replaced by group or nonorganic rings can have many derivatives.
Skeletal replacements leading to ‘A’ names in organics are usually considered as part of substitutive hierarchy nomenclature and are also used in certain parts of inorganic and associated ligands.
The individuals are named by following the pathway indicated for each of them. The complete name is then assembled according to the recommendations in the section indicated.
Rules are then required to specify the ordering of the components, the use of numerical prefixes, and the proper endings for the names.
Only uniqueness can survive, biodiversity is all. Nothing can look the same; nothing can share the same name. The nomenclature must be unequivocal.
Eradication of duplication will prevent nullification. Organics must be defined.
The duplicitous duplicator must be annulated and annihilated.
Causation precludes facsimile reproduction.
Utilization of index groups to transmogrify and transilluminate, if necessary eliminate.
Nominal disputers of any material which is false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, sexually oriented, threatening, invasive of a person’s uniqueness, adult material, or otherwise in violation of any Universal or Under Kingdom law shall be castigated and castrated.
This litany of horror continued unabated, Teinn had taken all he could for the moment. He released his transcendental awareness and collapsed in a pool of sweat and bile. “I have the names I expected, all the players are here.” He mumbled to himself as he fell into a deep drunken stupor.
Scud came round with a thumping headache, the sound of resounding snoring echoing through his fragile skull. He checked the books, the Ombibble was nearly full, and the last entry in it was a name, NillSatan or SatanNill. The indelible unintelligibility mode made the exact name hard to tell. To Scud’s bleary eyes it wriggled and writhed, trying to shed the disguise. This was interesting thought Scud, the true name is struggling to assert itself through the encryption.
To be continued…?
NoIdea
Walt, fen, crown et al g’day,
Seriously, if the internet went down for six months I wouldn’t be bothered. You know how many books I have round here that I’ve never had the opportunity to read? No clients pestering me for six months—perfect. Electricity would almost certainly drop out in many areas I’ll bet, but again no sweat. Got me home supplies for that. Tinned food to last about six months, plus my organic produce and plenty of live meat hopping about after that. I’m not connected to any other grid out here myself (water, gas, sewer), but those of you in cities (about which I’m preparing a long post in a few weeks’ time) had better realise that without electricity, you’re pretty much stuffed in such circumstances. Without electricity, water supplies stop, and after a couple of days the sewer starts backing up into lower-lying homes, making them unliveable. Stench, disease and death coming to a neighbourhood near you!
All I’m saying is, it had better be a damn good reason to declare a “national emergency”. Check out this wiki entry on why pre-internet POTUSes have declared them.
fenbeagle one of the main reasons the Western Roman empire fell was due to climate change it had gotten a lot colder, disease had depopulated cities, and in an effort to maintain an effective defense taxes had risen just as economic activity had declined which fell mainly on peasant farmers as the rich latifundia estates held by the powerful paid little or no taxes.
The UK is still not as warm as it was back in the Julius Caesars time.
Libertygibbert…Well a lot of business leaders would be pissed if they shut down the internet, economic activity would take a crash and make the depression look like child’s play. A lot of companies rely on the internet these days to buy and sell and there is no backup in place anymore. Although on the plus side no more calls from Mumbai.
@crown on June 20, 2010 at 9:03 am
Democratic governments make decisions based on their being free to p!ss off up to 49.9% of voters. If they pulled something like this they would have very few friends left indeed.
crownaramada @ June 20, 2010 at 7:40 am and fenbeagle:
I think the fall of the Roman Empire went something like this: the Goths, Visigoths, and Freakazoids showed up at the gates, and the wives of Rome went out to meet them, asking, “Um, look, we sort of like tall blond guys with large swords, so here’s the deal. You kill off our husbands, and you can have your way with us, and we’ll even bring the food and drink, capiche?”
Skulltor looked at Oogenwrek and then shook his head. “No can do, lady. Where else can we get a decent pasta or our roads fixed properly? We know bupkis about civil engineering. We wouldn’t mind a look or two at your daughters, though.”
I don’t think it got any trickier than that.
Speaking of business, what are we going to do with all these books growing legs on your Website, Komrade Ozboy? Seriously. And your essay competition!
Here is where we start, IMHO. http://www.aar-online.org
You have hundreds of for-real bonded and bondable licenced proper literary agents posted above. Let’s get ‘er done.
libertygibbert,
I also think you would be quite stunned at how much isn’t reliant on the InterNet to maintain functionality. This includes most if not all infrastructure having formal design standards associated with current and retrofit configurations which mandate the ability to work in the absence of digital control parameters.
Telephones of the non-cellular kind in particular would be the only gizmos left functioning in the communications field, and old-style Citizens Band or ham radio toys.
Most power plants have either a pneumatic or electromechanical control backup for operational purposes. Very little Net-based digital interconnectivity is necessary for grids to function. However, for billing purposes there is a problem, Houston, which suits me fine. FERC, NERC and FEMA are pretty strict about design standards relating to this sort of potential issue. Always have been, regardless of Net-based digital boneheads’ fast-talking sales pitches.
No one in their right minds trusts the Cisco salesman LOL! They never will. They’ve done more damage than al-Queda to American infrastructure, IMHO, except I don’t think they have directly killed anyone yet. Ever seen a bank go through an IntraNet install?
I’ll take your word for it Walt – Oz
Old Toad
I have found myself chasing a troll again – danceron. But what a fascinating troll, an open communist who led us to the “New Economics Foundation.” I think this is the first troll who was willing to show him/herself as an outright communist, complete with praise for the “collective.” I hope the New Economics Foundation doesn’t have its tentacles into too much.
I found it especially interesting that this New Economics Foundation thinks that BP is a turn coat.
“The problem is that Tony Hayward, apart from regularly saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, has turned his back on the green energy revolution. In a presentation he gave in 2008, and acquired by Greenpeace, he revealed that the company allocated 93% ($20bn) of its total investment fund for 2008 to the development and extraction of oil, gas and other fossil fuels. Solar power was allocated just 1.39% ($0.3bn). The company’s own greenhouse gas emissions at that stage were about the same as the whole of Portugal. In June 2009, it closed the London HQ of BP Alternative Energy, its renewables operation. Solar plants in the US and Spain were also closed, and it pulled out of virtually all wind power initiatives outside of the US.”
http://neftriplecrunch.wordpress.com/2010/06/15…
Are the green people angrier at BP for being a turncoat then they would be at an oil company that never paid lip service to alternative energy in the first place?
Since our last interaction, I’ve realized there is something that makes me, and perhaps some other Americans, sometimes not respond to the blog article itself. That is: if the persons or issues involved are strictly British, as Americans we don’t have much to say about it.
The other thing, in the new format, is that it is discouraging to put together substantive material and then have it disappear into the mists of previous pages, never to see the light of day again.
That’s why James doesn’t bother posting on his own DT blog anymore. If it’s any help, you can always leave the material posted here; I have both pingbacks and trackbacks enabled (look them up) and can simply leave links at the DT blog after posting there (say) once – Oz
Ozboy…I asked the question on James D’s own personal blog as to why he was no longer posting it is more mundane than that, he replied he is very busy at the moment to register on mytelegraph so he can reply to our comments.
He will get around to it shortly I assume.
Check out the duckman statements in Daniel Hannans blog and Cristina Odones blogs while they last with the Gary Glitter avatar. A rather cruel attack on duckham clever but cruel still, funny in an evil way. I hope it was none of us even if duckham brings it on himself.
Riotous! ’twasn’t me, I promise… Oz
@ NoIdea 8.40am
“his perception enhanced way beyond sanity”.
I’m getting worried about you mate.
Having the Swan prancing about as a lesbian warrior in black leather chasing furry maggots was one thing, but the Scud as a stenographer?
Not our Scud – never.
@ libertygibbert 8.50am
G’day Oz,
As the Greens have said categorically that they “intend” to shut down coal-fired power, maybe your no-electricity scenario is not so far-fetched.
Saw an energy company spokesman on TV today say that recently, with the rapid influx of domestic solar water-heating and PV installations feeding back into the Grid, the value of Renewable Energy Certificates had declined, making wind turbines a less attractive option so that their investment in building any more of the buggers was “on hold”. A very “fluid” situation, so to speak.
As a kid, we had to walk a half-mile to a public telephone, and I’m still astonished that I can carry a telephone in my pocket, so having to revert to a pre-technology life would be no big deal. Like you, and a few others on the “team”, I’ve got a big stock of canned and dry-goods. A few cases of some good Coonawarra reds are racked and stacked and a few gas bottles and a billy with a spout for the all-essential cuppa – what more does a swan need?
Looking forward to your thoughts in your upcoming blog.
Three-hour feeds eh? Pretty tough, but in the scheme of things, it doesn’t last too long. Next thing you know, you’ll be chasing her boyfriends away from the door and let me tell you, THAT really will give you sleepless nights LOL.
Regards to Mrs Oz and the bairns.
G’day swanny. I’d encourage everyone to have some means of electricity generation, even for emergencies; not because it’s “clean and green”, but because (with full respect to Walt) I don’t trust the bastards in ultimate charge of supply—the politicians – Oz
Hi Walt !
on June 20, 2010 at 6:42 am
/// … unless they are subbing the task of shutting down the Net to the Russians or the Red Chinese or the people of India, it is not going to get done. …////
Upon reading the first article about shutting down the Internet, I immediately asked myself how I, using my severely limited and irremediably obsolete programming capabilities (remember dBase III ?) , would do it. (grin)
My immediate answer was “screw up the DNSs, big time”. Why knock out the juice when worldwide access, as I understand it, rests on a main DNS and backup DNSs. Probably someone (NSA ? CIA ? SIS ? MSS ? FSB ? SVR ?) could come up relatively easily with a software kill on the DNSs. Failing that, there would have to be a physical attack on the DNSs to shut them down, and that would certainly be another, er, kettle of fish … ICANN fishing ?
Hell, the spooks reading this are probably laughing fit to bust (grin).
(Just a thought on this Father’s Day morning over here in France. (grin) Happy Father’s Day !)
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque 20100620 08h30 Paris time (CET)
http://amerloqueparis.blogspot.com/
Hi Old Toad !
on June 20, 2010 at 4:55 am
/// … you still cast the occasional glance at JD’s blog and even post on it … ///
There are those of us who lurk, and lurk, and lurk yet again, only clicking on “Recommend” to support the team. (wide grin)
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque 20100620 08h35 Paris time (CET)
http://amerloqueparis.blogspot.com/
crownarmourer
….’.one of the main reasons the Western Roman empire fell was due to climate change it had gotten a lot colder’
…… Yes, I think you are right about that too. Its quit possible the mass movements of tribes westward and southward, into the empire, were linked to climate change also.
ozboy duckham is accusing me of being a major mastermind behind the hacking of his website heck as if I knew how. If anyone did hack his site it’s because he has the security of a three year old in place it would have been wide open. I know what they do but not how to do it. I’m also a major troll attacking him as well, I’m just one person I do not have that kind of time on my hands just his hours and mine coincide and I hate BS from a paid Indonesian government employee. I seem to have gotten under his skin and he is getting more paranoid by the hour. He is the second son of some Lord and I hate that class of person, unless like my old history teacher or Lord Monckton they turn out to be decent chappies.
Hello, ozboy. My point entirely in this particular set of postings is to emphasize just how little impact politicians can have on the lines of supply of infrastructure, short of simply doing the communist bit and confiscating their financial reserves while gunning down the operating staff and management, which communists do in total disregard to the need for the sewer, water and light to stay operational.
I smile bemused and charmed by msher1’s response to bumping into a real live communist as if it were a Keebler Elf come to life. A third of the world’s population at the inside are totally committed to that form of mass mental disease and part of its basic tenets is that if they cannot get you to kiss their backsides they will smile politely and put a bullet through your brain.
My entire generation of young American males in the 1960’s had to deal with it, and our leaders then sold out the world to the communists. Now they are coming after all of us on our own turf, and they have no intention of doing anything except putting the non-true believers into the ground as fast as ever they can while taking your stuff.
I was very happy and proud to have killed lots and lots of them before they could kill me, and I hope when the time comes we shall all experience the epiphanic joy which comes of doing unto others as they would do unto us…first. It’s not a movie, it is real life where communists exist.
For now, the logistics of spreading the gospel of dialectical materialism in the West at gunpoint are somewhat problematic, if I may hazard a drollery, thanks to little organizations called Ministries of Defence and Departments of Defense. It may not always be so.
I fully applaud British Petroleum’s pulling out of alternative energy when they did which was motivated purely by the vigorous use of the ten-key calculator LOL! They seem to be pretty good at that sort of thing, so please treat this as a buying opportunity for one of the UK’s finest stock. I’ve posted a UK decal in my apartment window in positive protest, and have got a few compliments on it from neighbors who feel just as I do about the BP folks, that they hired the wrong subcontractor, that MMS shouldn’t have given Deepwater Horizon the permit in the first place, and further feel Mr. Oongawa is an embarrassment (and these are black neighbors speaking, working class with jobs and no predisposition to leftist rubbish at all, very proud ot be un-hyphenated).
I feel the Fed’s enjoy less parity of power with the independent grid which the USA has now than it does with the individual states, against whom it loses cases all the time. Also, the last thing the Fed’s want to do is to have to expand the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 20-fold to handle centralized administration of the world’s single largest electrical distribution and generation grid. FERC has quite enough to do with construction and expansion permit applications and transmission rights of way disputes than to get involved in direct administration of a new CEGB which does not exist here yet, nor ever will, Deo volente.
The only temptation to do so is based entirely on the fact that the utes have in toto more cash in reserve to cover fuel and maintenance etc. (and are required to maintain this cash reserve by law) than the Fed’s actually have. It has been that way by law since 1934. It would be rather fun to watch each individual States’ National Guard units take on the regular Army and Navy on US soil, and that would be the exact result of the imposition of a CEGB onto the US grid and related energy industries.
A US State is a State. They are mini-countries unto themselves. Please do not ever doubt that for a moment. The Fed’s beyond a certain point are just another company in town, suffered only through common consent the nature of which always baffles immigrants from totalitarian states who wonder at how peaceably it all works here compared to where they came from. Works, and has for 200 years, barring a slight difference of opinion on States’ right which prevailed from 1861 to 1865 LOL!
Amerloque, I wish it were that simple, as do we all on both sides of the fence. I have an electronics engineer friend who works with solid-state technology on a next-to-the-metal basis who showed me you can actually set up a communications grid not unlike the Net, ISP and all, in a rusted out and abandoned industrial factory complex’s cast iron and steel structural system with no external power source. Things like DNS’s and IP addresses are just templated organizing syntax overlays. Subs now use thermal isobars for very long-wave underwater secure communications, things are that far beyond what we ever imagined in the past.
What we really need is someone to sort out how to make electron shells of molecules of limestone shed outer electrons which then move through stone. Then we can all tell our electric and phone companies to osculate our nether regions until their eyes cross.
Did you know fire actually conducts electricity really well? Fires in electrical generating stations are the fireman’s worst nightmare, next to fires in refineries and steel mills (steel burns really well, like magnesium, once you get the heat past the flash point and it has a source of oxygen).
BTW, all these boneheads with visions of giant storage batteries for electricity to help make wind turbine operations more economic are dreaming. Even if there were an option tomorrow available for storing 20 gigawatt per hour capacity with 72 hour capability, imagine the result of a short circuit. You can see what would happen on a mini-scale through charging up a capacitor then shorting it with a screwdriver, preferably while wearing gloves and NOT standing in water.
No fire safety insurance organization would stand for it. Full stop.
Methinks Oongawa’s hatred of BP derives from BP shutting down their long-term investment in Kenya’s jatropha crop for fuel op’s. BP did the moral thing, as jatropha is a water supply killer for the long term. Kenya needs new water supplies, not a biofuel source which gobbles up otherwise useful irrigation water.
G’day Ozboy! and all fellow realists and champions of a Marxist free world!
(Back form South Coast and fossil hunting, walking and Roman/ancient people hunting [- you’ll be glad to hear:<o(? ]).
Howdy Walt,
BP shares are a good buy (you know it).
I still think Obarmy is on the wrong trail but he's pushing the anti big oil number and linking it with a futile attempt to castigate fossil fuels and thence to push his bonkers Cap’n’trade sniff and mix gig.
Apropos of nothing and completely irrelevant to topic (if you would allow it Oz;>). I was reading a thing in the Grauniad’s sister paper, The Observer this morn’, indeed it’s an archaeological revelation, we used to eat each other in Britain don’t yer know?
Anyway in this article it do state;
“Britain’s icy desolation ended abruptly 14,700 years ago when there was a dramatic leap in temperatures across the globe according to ice-cores found in Greenland and lake sediments in Germany. In less than three years, temperatures had soared by around 6 to 7 degrees Celsius and ice sheets began a rapid retreat throughout the world.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jun/20/ice-age-cannibals-britain-earliest-settlers
Now me, having a keen interest in Archaeology but knowing these ‘arts’ grads are given to making fantastical statements, you take this with a large shovel full of salt.
6-7 degrees C?
Wow! As some wag noted in the comments and something that immediately struck me, that’s a hell of a rise in a relatively short space of time.
It is something I have often pointed out to the alarmists, the change to cold and warm phases in glaciations is rapid, we do not really understand the mechanisms of these rapid changes either, to lay it all at the door of CO2, seems to me, again a preposterous statement……….and 14,700 years ago, apart from the odd camp fire it seems pushing it a bit to blame mankind for >T, does it not?
Nevertheless an interesting article and worth a read.
Just musing aloud, if anyone’s out there, lets hear it!
Hope little Ozzie is fine, same with Mrs Oz, reading about your ‘supplies’ Oz, you sure are a careful fella!
Regards, Ed
Get yer skis on Aussie!
http://globalfreeze.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/australia-ski-fields-have-enjoy-best-opening-of-the-season-in-years/
Morning all!
I’ve found a handy add on for the website, a personal notepad for members. “This mod adds a notepad like feature which can be used by members as a place to keep notes, links and other such items. It is able to keep and display multiple notes. The member is also able to edit and delete any note.”
There’s a notepad button on the button bar now (there’s better be!). 🙂
Off out for dinner with dad soon, so off to get ready. Have a good one all.
@ crownarmourer June 20, 2010 at 2:09 pm
“I asked the question on James D’s own personal blog as to why he was no longer posting it is more mundane than that, he replied he is very busy at the moment to register on mytelegraph so he can reply to our comments. He will get around to it shortly I assume”.
OK, right. Well, as I’m just a DT lurker these days (registered with Disgust, but they kept rejecting my password, so I logged in for another, and now they won’t accept either of them), I notice that even Norm Tebbitt addresses comments to his posters in the tail-end of his blogs.
But then a gentlemanly character like Norman would have the not-so-common courtesy to acknowledge those whose contributions have helped to make his blog a success.
Yep, Swannie old chook, pay attention to your first instincts – they serve you well.
Hi Ed,
A bit rosy from the holiday? Good. Apparently these isles have been resettled several times. When the ice came south, people fled south. When it retreated north, the people returned. There’s a Darwinian simplicity to it – empty niches get filled rather quickly. Nature abhors a vaccum etc etc. Perhaps the DT blogs will go the same way?
Pointman
ps About the cannibal cavemen, I suspect the researchers got the bone dateing wrong. The bones belonged to those groups who decided to stay as the ice arrived and tough it out. We’re programmed via our offspring not to harm each other, ask anyone who’s trained soldiers or anyone who’s killed the enemy in a war. That’s why cannibalism is a world wide taboo – the last resort of truly desperate people.
Hi Blackswan. Your instincts are pretty accurate. I dip in at the DT occasionally but cannot see anything substantive being posted there. Like I said in my exit post, the paginated format kills any attempt to discuss any meaty posting – it’s a chat room now.
Pointman
crownarmourer says: June 20, 2010 at 3:27 pm . . . .
Wasn’t me either Oz, but someone has well and truly rumbled Duckham I reckon.
I have a feeling there’s a lot there to ‘rumble’ too.
Hi Pointman !
on June 20, 2010 at 7:45 pm
Will you be soon be posting the next chapter of Krupmeyer, he who is financed for the moment by the philanthropist Happily Born, who himself grieves for his Most Praiseworthy son ? (grin)
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque 20100620 12h01 Paris time (CET)
Good morning Pointy,
Good to hear from you bro.
I completely agree about the DT blogs, it is a frustrating experience to follow any ‘thread’ and though I still do (intermittently) follow Warner, Lord Norm’ Tebbit and JD, it’s not the same.
I absolutely agree on cannibalism, it chilled me when I was a child, I read about the Donner Party, in the Sierra Nevada’s, it always leaves a question unanswered.
However Pointman, the question of rapid warming was the real reason I read the article, 6/7 degrees C…..that’s a lot of warming!
Blackswan, Hi!
Yes I had problems registering, I did eventually, on advice from ScouseBilly, pointy has the gen as well + Rastech and OL are the tech’ boys – as I recall but as I aver above, dunno if it is worth it, it ain’t the same, the spirit is lost, which (to me) intellectual input – that was what it was all about (awesome posts from intelligent and committed bloggers).
Regards to you both, Ed.
rastech says:
June 20, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Mornin’ rastech,
Rumbled Pitcher, well I never, knock me down wiv a feaver clever Trevor!
Not before time tho:>)
Ed.
Amerloque says June 20, 2010 at 8:21 pm
What the hell, a father’s day present to Ozboy.
Line of Descent
Chapter 6
Krupmeyer woke and got dressed. He went downstairs and into the kitchen where he could hear Winnie’s voice. She was reading the newspaper to Mickey as they sat eating breakfast. They were on the sports page and she was reading out the details of a soccer match. Her voice rose and fell, lending a dramatic emphasis to the article, reading it as though she were a radio commentator. Mickey listened intently as he sat eating some of the trout they had caught yesterday. She had grilled it. Winnie took off her reading glasses and asked if he wanted the same for breakfast. He said that would be fine and sat down.
The trout was good. Throughout the meal she read snippets of the newspaper, occasionally stopping to squint at the newsprint before continuing. He sat there afterwards finishing off his cup of tea. He told Winnie he had promised to look up some relatives of a friend of his when he was in Ireland and was going to drive into Dublin that day. He asked her where the main Post Office was. She said in O’Connell street. It was the biggest street in town, right in the centre, you couldn’t miss it, she said.
He drove into the city, criss crossing the centre until he found the right street. He parked nearby and walked back to the imposing building that contained the Post Office. Inside it, he went to the phone directories. To his delight, he found there were only two directories for the whole of the country. Sitting down at a desk, he looked up Robert Conner. There were only thirty four Robert Conners listed. He carefully wrote down their addresses and telephone numbers in a neat column in his notebook. Crossing to the counter, he changed a note for coins and walked to the telephone booth at the end of the row and rang the first number on the list.
A lady answered. He asked if he could speak to Bob Conner. She said he wasn’t there, could she take a message? He explained he was a visitor to the country looking up an old army buddy who had moved over here from the States. She told him he had the wrong Robert Conner. Her husband wasn’t an American, she explained with a laugh. He thanked her politely and moved on to the next number on the list. If Robert Conner answered the phone, Krupmeyer explained he was calling on behalf of the Harkin family who were trying to locate a Robert Conner, to tell him Winnie was ill. The pattern was repeated with minor variations throughout the afternoon. By the end of it, he had eliminated twenty eight names from the list and been back to the counter for more change several times. The remaining six numbers had not been answered when he rang. He decided to try them again that evening.
He finished the afternoon looking about the town, stopping to buy a magnifying glass for Winnie. It was early evening when he got back to Braghan. Winnie was pleased with the magnifying glass. She told him he shouldn’t have bothered, spending his money like that, but fished out the morning newspaper and tried it out immediately. She called to Mickey to come see the glass Gus had brought back from the city. She showed him how to use it. He settled down to inspecting a picture of a football melee, his brows knitted as he slowly inspected the players in detail through the glass.
After dinner Krupmeyer crossed over to the pub to renew his acquaintanceship with the barman. It was full to bursting point with locals and tourists. Shouldering his way through the throng and smoke towards the bar, he ordered a drink and got more coins for the pay phone that was mounted on the wall of the corridor that led to the toilets at the back of the pub. By ten o’clock he eliminated all but two of the remaining names from the list.
He had also been inveigled into joining a group of fishermen by the barman. They were a lively group. The evening passed quickly and he enjoyed himself despite occasionally having to fight his way back through the crowd to the pay phone to retry the numbers that had not answered. Each time he returned from the phone to the group, they ribbed him mercilessly. They had decided he was trying to get in touch with a girl. He let the idea blossom and played along, defending himself vigorously against charges of being too eager. By the time the pub closed he still had not got an answer from the two remaining numbers. Both the addresses were in Dublin. He decided to try them tomorrow and if there was still no reply to go to the addresses. At the end of the evening, he weaved his way back to the guest house and his bed.
The next day he drove into Dublin again. He stopped at a bar on the outskirts and tried the two numbers again. There was still no reply from either of them. He showed the barman the addresses and got directions for the nearest one. It turned out to be not too far away. He drove there following the directions and parked outside.
It was in the middle of a row of terraced houses. He knocked on the door for a while but there was no answer. He tried the house next door. The door was answered by a woman drying her hands with a kitchen towel. He used the story of looking for his old army buddy on her. No, he was mistaken, Mr. Conner wasn’t an American. He apologised telling her he had two addresses and showed her the other one.
She told him it was in the north of the city and gave him directions to the area, he could ask someone for more directions when he got there. Getting back in the car, he followed her directions to the north of the city. When he got there, he stopped to show a bunch of kids the address and asked if they knew where it was. After much giggling and consultation they came to a consensus and told him how they thought he could get there. He drove on, following their instructions with absolutely no faith in them. To his surprise, he ended up at the correct address. Again there was no reply to his knock. He went next door. The man who answered explained that Mr. Conner had passed away a fortnight ago and certainly hadn’t been an American. He seemed to be offended at the very suggestion but then again he looked like a sour old goat, thought Krupmeyer.
Krupmeyer sat in the car considering his next move. He had not really placed much hope of finding Canfield through the telephone directory. As he had worked his way through the list, the conviction had grown that Canfield would not give away his location so easily. His disappearance had been too complete, his separation from the Harkins too harsh and final. But it was always worth eliminating what you could.
Ordinarily the next move would be to see if he could be found through his driving license. Back in the states he had contacts in the Motor Vehicle Registration department in Washington, who would have looked up the name for him. But here he did not have any contacts. He would have to find one.
He drove back to a row of shops he had passed. He was in luck. One of them was a paper shop with a Post Office in the back. He went in and asked for an application form for a Drivers License. The man behind the counter extracted the correct form from a drawer under the counter. Krupmeyer asked where he was to send it to when he had filled it in. The man explained the address was on the back. All the licenses and registrations were handled in the new computer centre in Dublin, he explained proudly. Krupmeyer thanked him and left. Outside, he asked a passing man for directions to the street named on the back of the form. He got there half an hour before twelve and parked a hundred yards down the street from it on the opposite side of the road. He settled down to wait for the lunch hour.
At five past twelve a group of twelve or so people left the building. They were chatting and laughing and did not notice him leave the car and follow them at a discrete distance. They did not go far, just to a big pub at the end of the street. As they settled around two adjoining tables, he entered and sat with his back to them at a smaller table adjacent to theirs. He ordered a lunch and spent the next hour eating it in a leisurely fashion, all the while listening to the group behind him.
They were a happy noisy bunch, mainly in their middle to late twenties. All through lunch they kept up a lively banter as they ate. He listened intently. After a while he could pick out the voices of the dominant individuals. The lunch meal was a time honoured tradition and each by now had their established roles to play in it. Some were the wits. Some were the butts. Others said little or nothing. There were several running jokes which were revisited to good natured groans from the group. By the end of the meal, he had a good idea of the main personalities. He had kept his back to them for the entire meal and was careful to let them leave before he did. He went back to the car and drove back to Braghan.
When he arrived back there he decided to pass the afternoon by visiting the nearby ruins of the monastic settlement at Glendalough and think over what he had heard. The tourist guide had described it as a haven of peace during the dark ages. It had survived for hundreds of years while outside chaos had ruled. Like an eye in the storm. Of the men who go to war, not many actually see combat. Those who do are marked for life by it. What used to be just scenery becomes terrain, to be judged at first glance for its defensive or offensive characteristics. After that you can relax and enjoy the scenery. His practised eye could see the natural defensive qualities of the location. Bounded on three sides by sharply rising mountains and on the fourth by a narrow entrance, it would have been easy to defend. On the valley floor there was lots of flat land and two big lakes well stocked with fish. Food and water were available without venturing outside the safety of the enclave.
As he walked around it, he thought about the group of people he had eavesdropped on that lunch time. One of them seemed promising. Her name was Helen. She had been moaning about how badly paid they were. By the end of the month she said she was living on fish fingers. They had teased her about spending too much money going out. She’d replied saucily that she wasn’t going to spend her life like a dried up old stick. A girl was entitled to some fun. There was a cheeky sexuality about her, a couldn’t give a damn rebelliousness that the group pretended to disapprove of but secretly admired. If any of them was going to bend the rules for him, Krupmeyer felt she would be the one. At the end of the afternoon he went back to Winnie’s. He fished that evening with Mickey.
Next day he drove back into Dublin and positioned himself at the same table in the pub before the group arrived. He listened to them throughout the meal but this time he took the risk of looking them over. Picking a time when the barman was busy, he walked up to the bar and while waiting for service, had a good look at the group. Helen turned out to be a diminutive blond. As she talked, her hands flew all over the place. She had a dazzling smile and often leaned back in her chair, peals of laughter escaping as she savoured some particularly salacious piece of gossip. She was not exactly beautiful when examined critically but appeared to be. It was a personality thing that worked because she radiated a certain subliminal sexuality. Krupmeyer liked the look of her. After lunch he went back to the car and waited the afternoon for her to come out of the office. When she did, he followed her home. She went into a house set in a row of terraces. Krupmeyer got out of the car and walked up the steps of the house to look at the names written on cards beside the bell buttons. One of them was a Miss H. Doolin. It was the only one with the initial ‘H’ on it. He went back to the car and watched the house for a while. When nothing much happened after an hour, he drove back to Braghan and spent another evening fishing with Mickey.
The next day was Friday. Krupmeyer had decided to make his move then. He spent special attention on his appearance that morning. After a bath, he carefully picked out his wardrobe. He wanted to look his best. As he stood in front of the mirror examining himself critically, he smiled ruefully. It was like attending his first prom again. He told Winnie he might be late tonight and set off.
The pub was packed. The Friday lunch time drinkers were there in force. The group still occupied the same two tables but the press of people around them constricted it to two thirds its usual space. Krupmeyer took his usual table but this time sat facing them reading a newspaper. He looked carefully at Helen over the top of it and waited. Eventually she sensed the pressure of the watching eyes and glanced in his direction. Their eyes met and he smiled as if noticing her for the first time. She smiled back, breaking the eye contact after a moment to listen to a remark addressed to her by someone in the group. Krupmeyer resumed reading his paper. Moments later he looked up to find her eyes on him. Touche. He smiled more openly and nodded to her before getting back to his newspaper. He finished his drink and rising, went up to the bar with his empty glass for another. He pushed his arm through a gap in the crowd at the bar and waved his glass at the overworked barman. While he was waiting, he felt a pluck at his sleeve. He looked around. It was Helen. Behind her the whole group watched them silently, scandalised and yet waiting with baited breath to see what would happen next. She held an empty wine glass and offering it to, him asked if he could get her a drink, she couldn’t get through the crowd to the bar she explained with an apologetic smile. Sure he could. They began to chat while waiting for the overworked barman to get around to them. Krupmeyer hoped he would take his time.
‘You’re an American’ she announced. ‘I can tell from your accent.’ He admitted it and said he was over here on business. ‘But no pleasure?’ she asked with a mock provocative roll of her eyes. She did it very well. He laughed. As they talked the crowd milled around them, pressed them together. By the time they had arranged a date for that evening they were practically pushed up against each other. Krupmeyer had no complaints about that. Someone in the group called to her, it was time to go back to the office. She left him with a backward wave. He never did manage to get the drinks.
He picked her up that evening at the flat. He told her he didn’t know the city and was in her hands. Where did she think they should go? They set off to a pub that she liked. It was crowded but not unpleasantly so. There was a live band playing nothing but fifties rock and roll music the whole evening. She forced him out onto the tiny dance floor and had great fun teaching him how to jive. By ten o’clock they were both tired and he suggested they go somewhere quiet for a meal. They set off to an oriental restaurant she knew. The meal was good. She dared him to try using the chop sticks. He impressed her and amazed himself by being very good with them. After the meal they sat and talked over coffee. She was good company. The conversation ranged near and far, but each time it turned towards him he diverted it away skilfully. He could see she was intrigued by his reticence. He wanted her to get good and curious.
He escorted her to the steps of her flat. The good night kiss was long and passionate. They went upstairs and made love. At some point in the evening they had both known it was going to happen. Krupmeyer’s desire for her was as strong as hers for him. She was passionate and inventive taking time to build her own pleasure as well as his. She came in racking spasms her head thrown back in ecstasy. They lay drained afterwards, intertwined and cuddled up from the cold of the night with nothing but the top sheet pulled up about them. They talked as lovers do.
She ran her fingers along the ugly jagged scar that ran diagonally across his chest. She asked him about it. He started explaining about a terrible accident with the can opener but she stopped him with a playful slap of irritation. She wheedled him until he explained how he had got it. He remembered the day well. He had been packing flak jackets around the feet of a grunt who had just discovered that he was standing on the detonator of a land mine. The grunt was white with terror. The rest of the platoon were hurriedly stripping off bits of body armour and passing it over to Krupmeyer.
‘He must have moved and it went off’ he explained simply. He would never forget the white heat of the blast picking him up and dropping him on his back in the paddy field. Fly man, fly. He had lain there in the ankle deep water watching in numbed shock as his buddies had packed his chest with field dressings. There was blood everywhere and he couldn’t feel a damn thing. He could not believe it was all his. I’m the hero of this movie, it can’t be happening to me. The last thing he remembered about that day was being dumped onto the cold aluminium floor of the Huey and the Crew Chief leaning over him telling him he was going to be OK, it’s the Freedom Bird for you man, back to the World. His eyes had wandered everywhere, but not once settled on Krupmeyer or his ruined chest. That was when he had really got scared.
She sensed his deepening mood and cuddled him tighter. They made love again but this time more leisurely and more tenderly. She sat on top of him and slowly ground her hips. He watched her breasts bob and felt the surge of pleasure slowly building in his loins. She leaned over and their mouths met. His hands wandered over her back finally settling on her haunches which they gripped and kneaded. They came together in a mutual orgasm which flung her backwards off his chest. She sat there swaying for a moment looking down at him and started to giggle self consciously. He did too. She got off him and they lay together quietly for a while.
She asked him what he was doing in Ireland. He told her she would not believe him if he told her. Try me she suggested.
‘I’m looking for a man’ he told her.
‘Aren’t we all, sweetie’ she replied in a playful imitation of Mae West’s voice. He smiled and slapped her playfully on the bottom in pretended irritation.
‘You’re not kidding me, are you?’ she asked.
‘Definitely not’ he replied. She propped herself up on one elbow and regarded him seriously. He could see the wheels turning over in the pretty blond head. After a moment she said, ‘You want me to look him up on the computer, don’t you?’
‘Yes’ he replied simply, returning her stare. She had worked that one out quick, he thought, his respect for her wits rising. This was it. She would either decide to help or turf him out immediately.
‘Why are you looking for him?’ she asked after a moment. She watched him carefully as he replied.
‘He ran out on his wife, taking their kid with him. She wants the kid back but first I’ve got to find him. He’s over here somewhere.’ She looked at him deciding which way to go. Eventually a rueful smile played over her lips.
‘So this great whirlwind romance was just a way to look him up?’ she asked.
‘Not exactly’ he replied evasively, pretending to avoid her eyes.
‘Don’t try to weasel out now’ she replied rolling on top of him and gripping his throat with her hands.
‘Admit it’ she said applying some pressure with both her thumbs. He did not say anything.
‘Admit it’ she repeated tightening her grip and shaking him. He finally nodded and said he was a low down skunk. ‘You are indeed’ she said in an even voice and leaned down to kiss him. They made love again.
They spent the weekend together. It was a long time since he had been seriously involved with a woman. Somehow or another, the feeling had grown up in him that he was not going to form any permanent attachments and he had come to accept that. The women he’d dated had sensed it too and either needed nothing more or moved to men who were more prepared to develop a casual affair into something more serious. He had had a string of take it or leave it affairs since he and Jeanne had parted but Helen was something new. He felt elated and high. He liked her a lot and as far as he could tell she liked him. Was there any future in it, he wondered? He pushed his worries aside and determined to enjoy the weekend in her company. Between bouts of love making they shopped and drove out for a long walk over the windswept plains of the Curragh. They ate out every night. Helen was interested in the theatre and dragged him out to see a play. Despite himself he enjoyed it but refused to admit it to her in the restaurant they dined in afterwards.
Monday finally came as it always does to ruin idyllic weekends. She went off to work and he stooged around the flat all morning. She had promised to bring back a printout of all the Robert Conners on the computer. He felt impatient and paced around restlessly. To his surprise, he realised the impatience stemmed more from a desire to see her again rather than for the list of names. Finally, not being able to stand the waiting any more, he put on his jacket and left to look around the city.
He spent most of the afternoon in a bookshop. He had always been an inveterate reader and could spend hours looting a library or bookshop, as Jeanne, his ex wife, had put it. He was looking for a book for Helen. She had mentioned that Garbo was one of her favourites and he eventually found a book packed with black and white stills from her pictures. The poses were corny but he admired the lighting. By the time he got back to the flat, she was already home. She wanted to make them a meal but somehow they ended up in bed. Afterwards they sat in bed comparing the names and addresses on the printout to the list he had compiled in the Post Office. There were no new names. She got up to rustle up some sandwiches while he wondered what to do next.
Wherever Canfield was, he was not living under the name of Conner. Assuming a new identity was not as simple as most people thought. It was not enough to just call yourself by a different name. Eventually you would have to produce a birth certificate or other documentation if you were going to live under that name for a long period of time. Assuming the name of a dead person no longer worked, there were too many checks nowadays. On the other hand, taking the name of a living person was even more risky. If you applied for a Driving License and they already had one, alarm bells would start ringing. A living person would be best. Helen returned with the sandwiches and they sat there munching the sandwiches, discussing the problem.
‘Why not take the name of somebody who’s gone abroad for a long time, say a Missionary?’ she suggested.
‘Nope, too risky’ he replied with a shake of his head ‘they might come back at any time.’
‘Then how about someone in a long term institution, someone who’ll never get out?’ she suggested. He was about to dismiss the suggestion when it came to him.
‘Brilliant, you’re a genius’ he exclaimed and grabbing her head in both hands planted a kiss on her forehead. It was Mickey, he would be perfect. Canfield knew him and the area the came from. Obtaining a copy of the Birth Certificate would not have been too difficult. He explained to her that Conner had come into contact with a mentally handicapped man named Michael James Harkin. There was no danger of Mickey applying for a Driving License. The only thing Mickey represented a danger to, were the trout in the rivers of Wicklow.
The next evening she returned with a list of all the Harkins on file. There wasn’t a Michael James she explained with disappointment to him. He took the list from her and looked down it to check for himself. He had been so damn sure and just could not believe it. He scanned through it carefully.
There was a James Michael Harkin though. That was him decided Krupmeyer with a grin of success. He had just put in a further twist to obscure the trail. The license start date was six months after Canfield had left Braghan and the age of the driver was thirty four at the time. The timing and ages matched Mickey. He had found him. James Michael Harkin, Coole, County Donegal. He explained to her and they decided to go out for a meal to celebrate.
They went back to the Chinese restaurant. This time he challenged her to use the chop sticks. She tried for a while but finally gave up in a fit of giggling. She told him about a holiday she had been on to Donegal where Canfield was living. She could not remember ever having been in a place called Coole. They swapped holiday stories through the meal. At the end he presented her with the book he had bought her.
To his disappointment, she did not seem to be too happy with it. She leafed through it distractedly. ‘Is this the going away present at the last supper?’ she asked in the quiet way that people use when the answer is important to them. He was caught unprepared by the question. The whole affair had developed so fast that he had not had time to think about it. He knew he liked her a lot and had not been sure how deep her feelings were. Now she was telling him.
‘Not if you don’t want it to be’ he replied, making the commitment.
‘I don’t want it to be’ she replied, mimicking his stilted reply. They finished the meal and went back to her flat.
That night their love making was quiet and subdued. He had decided to go to Coole the next morning. He did not know how long it would take but would keep in touch. Somehow, he was beginning to miss her already.
They kissed good-bye on the steps of her house the next morning and he drove off to Braghan to collect his things before going to Donegal. He thought about her on the drive. The leave taking had been hard on both of them. He was tempted to turn around. ‘Jesus, I think I’m in love, by damn’ he finally admitted to himself and hit the steering wheel with the flat of his hand.
Pointman
@ Edward (‘a rose by any other name’) June 20, 2010 at 6:44 pm
G’day Ed,
Sounds like a great trip. As a fan of the Time Team with Tony Robinson and his digger mate Phil Harding, as well as having a life-long fascination with the Romans, I always think how great it must be to live in a country where any old farmer can turn up the sod and find Roman artifacts. Funny how a TV program about grubby people digging in a muddy field can be so entertaining.
On my recent trip to the southern coasts of South Australia, we drove round a bend in a gravel road and right in front of us a series of caverns in a hillside yawned like gaping mouths, complete with stalactites looking like crooked teeth. Wow. I climbed the hill and sat inside contemplating the smoke-blackened roof about 30 feet up, wondering about the people who’d been there and how long ago.
I gazed out towards the sea and saw………….. dozens of bloody windmills.
Those things can certainly put an abrupt end to any reverie.
As you say “apart from the odd camp fire”, what did stone-age Man do to cause Ice-ages or Warming? Our island home of Tasmania was once joined to the mainland. About 10,000 years ago the seas rose to form the 200 km wide Bass Strait, isolating our aborigines who evolved to be unique and different from those up north.
I always reckon the seas rose because those blokes didn’t pay their carbon taxes in kangaroo hides after lighting all those camp fires.
As for cannibalism……..
I think I’ve got too much to say in that regard – I just deleted it.
Anyway, good to see you here Ed.
Cheers.
Oz I hope all the stories can have all their chapters put together at some time? As a recovering ‘binge reading addict’ I still can’t help reading a book in one sitting, so look forward to them all being together. 🙂
I’m going to collate all the stories and put them in a separate area, as soon as the Writing Competition has finished – Oz
I had a little look at early chapters, and they look right up my street, so I’m saving them up for ‘the main course’ so to speak – well done, excellent stuff. 🙂
Evening Blackswan!
When as a child I started looking at old OS sheets and the local map showed an old Roman Road, I used to walk along it (where I could, it was part private golf course- that didn’t stop me tho’ [smile]) and imagine the Legionaries marching and wondering about the Legion which disappeared, always fascinated me, still does, I am a romantic and still retain a certain childlike wonder (am not embarrassed to admit to it), if we lose this basic childlike ability then I think we are a lost cause.
Plus we lived quite near Eboracum, once the Capital of Roman Britain for a time.
Aborigines were always lighting fires, used to manage the land, a damn fine idea, also slash and burn cultures but not the same, Aborigines cared for their environment but no they didn’t pay up and that’s why Kevin wants you to now;>)
The bass strait is a dodgy bit of water mate isn’t it?
Like the channel here, a rough piece of water.
I have always wanted to visit Tassie ‘n’ see Hobart waterfront and harbour etc, like the devils too!
One day maybe, regards, Ed.
Had a thought about Political qualifications to be eligible for elections, which are a bit sparse at the moment.
Instead of putting up a deposit, what if every aspiring politician had to get totally rat-arsed in every pub in a Constituency, from the moment they declare an interest in standing, to the election day itself.
Any that fail to achieve the target of being in a pub each night from opening time to locked doors, or succeed in walking 50ft of the white line in the road outside the pub, to be taken off the electoral roll the night before.
Then we’d all see what the b’stards are really like . . . . . 😛
rastech says:
June 20, 2010 at 9:41 pm
(Smile) Don’t invite Prescott types, they’d eat all the pies.
Most of ’em are bad enough sober, gawd knows what BS they would spout when pi**ed.
I believe a prospective MP should be of and represent and live in that particular part of his/her area, they should also be accountable to an open forum attended by members of the public and attest to the way and why-fore they voted in major debates on vital national interests, like the Lisbon treaty, Health bills, all Law changes etc.
One of the major problems is that the MPs blindly follow the whips and never question anything of note, the house of commons is really a minor ‘rubber stamp’ shop where the sheep do as they are told, that is not democracy in action.
If they were made to be more accountable then perhaps it would improve the independence of MPs by representation and make them damn well think about what their responsibilities actually are – first and foremost to their constituents.
As it is the poor bloody voters are well and truly (by a good distance) – last in the pecking order.
Ed.
@ Edward 9.36pm
“I have always wanted to visit Tassie…”
Just let us know if you do ever come to Van Diemen’s Land, we’ll roll out the Welcome Mat.
Bass Strait, about 200kms wide and 300kms across the northern Tasmanian coast is only an average of 30 metres deep. When those big Southern Ocean swells come in, it has earned the title of the Shipwreck Coast. That doesn’t deter me from preferring the overnight ferry crossing to bloody airports and their stupid rules.
As for Picking Pollies…….. having had a real job would be a big plus, instead of only ever being a Party hack and Apparatchik who just toes the party line. As you say, what kind of Democracy is that?
Getting late. See you later. Nite all.
Cheers Blackswan the offer is appreciated and I will bear it in mind.
Sleep well.
When the wind blows it may not be a good thing….what!! you say?
So run this one by me again, the British taxpayer pays through the nose to subsidise the building of windy- fart farms, then pays through the nose again to keep them going and when the grid can’t use the electricity, it is ‘switched off’ and still the taxpayer pays for it…….huh, that’s a good deal!**?? ………………….er not.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/20/firms-paid-to-shut-down-wind-farms-when-the-wind-is-blowing/
Huhne and Call me Dave, this is greenies gone roamin’, the bloke who dreamt this up was ‘out to lunch’ but then it was never about sane and reasonable alternatives was it?
Sigh!
Ed.
Good stuff from Andrew Bolt here, wish we had his like in the UK.
http://jer-skepticscorner.blogspot.com/2010/06/how-to-expose-warmist-andrew-bolt.html
BTW who’s this clown Flannery?
(sigh) Flannery is… is someone I’m going to deal with on this site in the not too distant future. I’m pretty busy today; swanny can tell you about him in the meantime if he’s about – Oz
@Walt, you’re a rooster who aint going to die. Listen to the words of the song …
Pointman
The thought also occurs to me that this InterNet threat from yet another winner of the Order of Lenin working for the US government is but another cynical ploy to intimidate, talk up and otherwise bully people into “getting into line” (What line? Where? Who’s paying me to stand in line? I want my cheque NOW) behind Zee New Whirled Ordure, in the same way the epic interplanetary nuclear debacle with the undersea zombie Martian seahorses in the Gulf of Mexico is yet another cynical ploy to talk up the spot price of oil in the face of declining demand for the glunk when high oil spot prices are absolutely necessary to cost-justify renewables. Funny how the Middle Eastern putz patrol are ignoring the kerfuffle and continuing their offshore shenanigans. As those Arab state oil companies and the US and EU oil companies have the same insurance carriers, it should be obvious that the drive to limit offshore activity is entirely politically by fuzzy-bunny concerns, not rationally motivated by genuine safety concerns.
Now that British Petroleum has decided to put the screws to Onandorko, methinks both are in agreement that they shall pounce on Deep Doodoo Horizonless when the time is right and the stars are in alignment with Komrade Oongawa’s whims. A Louisiana subcontractor screwed the job up, a Louisiana subcontractor needs to pay for the cleanup, assuming there is anything left to clean up by the time the dust settles in court, which there probably won’t be, based on past oil spill experience.
Morning Ed,
A couple of great posts from you for me to read over the breakfast toast and marmalade.
Flim Flammery, as he is not-so-affectionately known around here, fancies himself as the Indiana Jones of the Antipodes. He’s a zoologist/paleontologist who, before he became poster-boy for the political main-chancers (they know a dupe when they see one), was rattling around the dusty basements of museums, the Bone Man of academia. Gee, after he came out with his clarion call-to-arms on AGW, they even made him Australian of the Year.
The following link is pretty typical of the crap this creep comes up with…….
http://www.news.com.au/climate-plan-could-change-sky-colour/story-e6frfkp9-1111116384553
Now old Tim has a mate by the name of Ross Garnaut, an economist, who has become the go-to-guy if you want to develop any kind of hare-brained scheme, especially AGW (he can spot a fast buck at a country mile).
http://newmatilda.com/2008/02/25/who-ross-garnaut%3F
He is also into mining………….
“Papua New Guinea Lihir has legally dumped hundreds of millions of tonnes of cyanide- and heavy metal-contaminated tailings and waste rock over an area of seven square kilometres, 1.5 kilometres offshore, on the undersea slopes of the actively volcanic island it is mining”.
http://www.theage.com.au/business/climate-champion-is-right-man-for-the-job-20100528-wlho.html
Over a beer one day (or was that a cafe latte?), Ross says to Tim…
“Gee mate, if you want some serious cash, this geothermal caper is the go”.
“Shucks, I’m only an impoverished Bone Man, no big bucks attached to Australian of the Year”.
“Go see the Reptile Rudd, right up your street, being a zoologist an’ all. He’s got a heap of cash from China and he’s throwing it around like confetti”.
Bingo! The Flim Flam Man gets $90 million taxpayer dollars to chuck down a geothermal well. More cash than he ever imagined prowling around museum basements.
So there you go Ed, now you know why the likes of Oz, Memoryvault (where is he these days?) and me flee to the other side of the world looking for ANYONE with half-a-brain who can refute this crap.
Andrew Bolt and another journo, Piers Akerman on the Sydney DT, are two of the few MSM plaintive voices crying in the wilderness.
Conspiracy of Silence doesn’t begin to describe it.
Cheers.
Hiya Blackswan, I’m over at the DT doing a bit of escalation and enjoying myself. It’s a silly game I know but seeing how much fun I can have over the ruins before I get zapped. Why not join me and we’ll find out? Let’s see how far we can go before they react …
Pointman
Blackswan, HUA?
Pointman
@ Pointman June 21, 2010 at 10:24 am
? Nope. Big interest though.
As for the DT, I’m having trouble logging in, but I’ll give it another go.
Pointman, blackswan and everyone awake ok the real reason James D can’t reply just yet he has had problems registering just like the rest of us, embarrassing like leaving your keys in the car and you’re locked outside, except it’s not his car.
It seems the new system does not allow them any admin rights over there own blogs, they get treated like the rest of us.
Crown, come’n man, he’s a dick and you know it. You can limp along there or help to build a new Jerusalem and a better one. It can be done if we work together. Let’s talk.
Pointman
@ crownarmourer June 21, 2010 at 12:22 pm
News flash!
They ARE just like the rest of us. What’s good for the goose (er, Swan) is good for the gander. Unless……….
You’re some jumped-up arrogant prat without the common courtesy to acknowledge the contributors who gave you a highly lucrative profile.
Nuff sed.
We ARE his content and that’s the truth and it will set you free. Why don’t we do our own thing? What’s stopping us?
Pointman
I’m going to sleep now but I’ve been thinking about the way forward in the last month when I’ve been away. There are things we can do but we have to work together.
Who’s interested?
Pointman
Pointman he’s not a dick and yes he does get his ammo from us as he is no scientist or even a technical person, but he is a useful front man for us a voice a name people recognize. He went to school and university with the right kind of person whatever that means not that us plebs don’t know important people and have connections as well.
We should support him as we can so he can get the message out, Old Toad knows him very well, so ask him. It’s not James D’s fault the blogs have gotten screwed up and apparently he dislikes it as much as we do.
However ask Old Toad. Or go to the jamesdelingpole.com blog post a reply and he will send you a reply if feels like it.
Pointman yes we can all do our own thing together as well, but who here has enough recognition to appear on round tables, attend conferences, appear on TV, not me nor I suspect many of us.
@ Pointman June 21, 2010 at 12:38 pm
Have been giving this some thought ……..
What made the JD/DT blog so dynamic? Obviously it was the thread content, NOT always the blog (JD too busy hat-tipping those who had already done the leg-work).
I first found my way there in a link from the Sydney DT in the lead-up to Dopenhagen. I was taken by the hilarious troll-trashing by the Team, but that wouldn’t have had me coming back if it wasn’t for the great links and info imparted by such knowledgeable contributors. I learned a great deal.
Speaking of trolls…..Fabian Solutions has re-emerged from the troll-cage. Funny that, when Fabian disappeared, Culty turned up – now vanished. Bit like Clark Kent and the Man of Steel I guess.
Anyway….. then the Ship hit the Sand and Ozboy, being the smart chap he is, recognised that a valuable resource in the Climate fight might just dissipate to the four winds, so he provided this haven for “reasonably” intelligent discourse. And so it has proven to be.
Problem is, apart from a couple of visits from Izen – no trolls to smack about.
Rastech’s Founding Sons Forum is brilliant but for me, it’s like sitting me in the cockpit of a 747 when my only experience has been in a go-kart. I registered there and had a go at a subject other-than-AGW and felt like I was shouting down a well – nobody home (must go back and catch up).
Went into JD’s archives looking for some stuff (such as his spiteful blast at any perceived criticism from the Team – as in my post on the previous thread here), and reminded myself of just WHY we liked it.
Problem is…. as great as Libertygibbert and Founding Sons have proven to be, they don’t have the exposure of the DT and the broad range of posters who reside there.
Oz is such a great host, this is my Comfort Zone where I’d love to chat with friends, (maybe like a favourite pub) but considering all that is transpiring in a global sense, I guess we still have to “put it out there”.
I’d pretty much given up on the DT as I couldn’t login but, thanks to your prod today, I gave it another go and there I am.
I guess I’m getting the hang of multi-tasking blogwise, thanks to TUB’s tip for Firefox, so I’ll just “keep on keeping on” – aha, British Paints, another great British stalwart.
So that’s my tuppence worth………
Cheers.
Can’t say I disagree with you about the need for a high profile. LibertyGibbert will stay as a handy place to hang out; I know Izen is lurking (‘cos he told me) and he’ll probably contribute if we get our teeth into an AGW issue. Traffic here is off this week (both posts and hits) which is probably why Mr. Grocott hasn’t surfaced. But as long as decent discussion remains impossible at DT, rastech’s place and this site will fill the void – Oz
PS….
You usually have to be INVITED to go to conferences and go on radio or telly (been there, done that back in the Jurassic period of my youth), but these days you don’t get the invites without a controversial sort of profile ie. the dynamic content of a DT blog.
Can’t imagine what the alternatives might be. Is there something I’m missing?
What is happening to Damian Thompson’s blog? I look at it periodically, without understanding most of it. The subject is usually related to ecclesiastical matters, something I know nothing about. From what I could tell, the posters used to be all very focused on whatever the ecclesiastical matter was and had mannerly and narrow debates and disputes about those matters. If someone got prickly, it was about a (to me) obscure ecclesiastical matter. Every so often, Thompson would write on a political subject, and those articles attracted some political posts, but those articles didn’t seem to generate much passion or interest among his regular posters.
In the last few weeks, all of a sudden, the tone of posts has changed. There are many attacks on Thompson, especially his sexuality. Trolls (e.g., Judy8) are present, and lots of the posts are sexual innuendo. Others are nasty references to predator priests. It seems to me that someone or ones want to destroy Thompson’s blog as it was and destroy him. Who has an interest in doing that?
There is clearly a broad attack on the Catholic Church underway in the media, and an effort to bring Pope Benedict down. Is what’s happening on Thompson’s blog related?
msher…Damien brings a lot of vehemence on himself he is stalwart traditionalist and back in the good old days would gladly have worked for the inquisition. The catholic church has been rocked for the last decade by the fact that many children have been abused by priests and nuns. The Irish people long a theocratic democracy since independence have been rocked the hardest scandal after scandal has been revealed with everything from sexual abuse of children to serious mistreatment by Catholic run organizations the Irish as a result of that do not have the same respect for the catholic church they once had.
Abuse has also been found in the USA as you know and the fact the church covered it up rather than call the police as they should have has also brought them in to disrepute.
So they brought it on themselves, as for Damien I have lost all respect for him as he called me a creep on a blog for mildly disagreeing with the people who were so sorry a fellow journalist and artist had died at 47 apparently of a drug overdose, my comment was yanked by him so I apologized to my regret as I later found out the man he defended was a crack and heroin user, had gladly worked as a male prostitute and used hookers as female companionship. I suspect Damien had a lot of sympathy with the man so the accusations of his own sexuality may be valid and it makes him a hypocrite of the worst sort telling us all how to live our lives.
I personally do not think most of the catholic church is bad it will not be and I expect most people are decent but paedophiles are attracted to such positions it could well have been scout masters or a school teachers the covering up is inexcusable.
crownamourer
All that may be. But what suddenly changed the tenor of the posts?
msher the new format it stops Damien’s Catholic mafia from ganging up on people and quashing dissent. It allows the trolls free reign duckham was ecstatic when they did as it favoured him and he is paid by the Indonesian government to promote and defend there views.
However as I have learned how the new format works it is possible to attack the trolls with counter argument I and others destroyed Judy8 and friends on a Damien blog on politics.
Greetings. There are a few thoughts I have which might be of use, having stepped back from this morasse of information generally going nowhere, that “nowhere” being specifically out of the public eye.
I am treating it as a given that for now the DT has lost its ability to function as a useful political tool, which it showed every danger or joyful possibility of being, for the Right. Msher, I really think the tone has changed because that is how the Left has accurately read it, and that is the reason it has become a battleground. It does not get more complicated than that. Actually, that in itself is complication enough, as you well know from having admirably done battle over there.
The point being, I do not think the Net is that effectual a tool for achieving our aims except as a communal worktool along the lines of InDesign or other form of collective workspace for bringing together our archives, crafting a document which works as a proper torpedo or flight of angels should, then sending that off to that identified body which has the ability and electoral and/or legislative right to do what needs to be done.
Beyond that, it is silly to think we can compete either with the Delirium Tremens, which as an economic tool for putting people to work has no equal in the publishing industry, if we are talking the needle trades and the instantaneous media (film, pop music, and radio) promotion, or with any other publication out there online, unless we are interested in going into the publishing business. As an example, I don’t know why Hilary Alexander has not been knighted yet, as just in sheer tonnage of British taxtiles sold as a result of her unflagging efforts, from a zimmer smoking away at Marlboro Lights and with a glass of claret in the other, could be measured in container ships per week. We have been remorae on the belly of that 100-plus year old shark, and not particularly gracious ones (or at least I haven’t been, thank you; I gave as good as I got, sometimes better). Ms. Alexander pays for the Ambrose’s and JD’s and GW’s and the lot of them. Where are we going to get correspondingly powerful impresarios to carry our words forward?
Our first concern to carry anything forward ought not to be simply a matter of content. If we ARE going into the publishing business, we need a revenue source to cover the bills. Full stop. There is no way we can get the exposure without either paying people or getting paid ourselves.
Having muscled through the ably archived archives for the DT stuff, there’s enough there for several proper books, plus we’ve three good novels underway, the work by Noidea being what the Senior Amis would write if he had a non-vituperative brain, a sense what people needed to hear, and an enthusiasm for science fiction.
There is no proper Australian literary publisher to address this sort of specialist Conservative-oriented popular science-related work, nor is there an Oz-based popular fiction publishing house, either.
Pointman has a very good point, as always, that this does need to be formalized and planned out in appropriate form. I sorely hate to throw away work. I trash tonnes of it just with my regular day job. My rubbish bin is stuffed nearly daily. We must either then decide what we are to do with that which we have got in terms of where we are going to take it collectively to accomplish the charter we have yet to craft, or move on to something else.
I am also a bit nauseated this limbo status has persisted as long as it has. We need to act or go hang, IMHO. What’s been done to us vis a vis the DT is exactly what Oongawa has done to the USA economy: put everything on hold until it goes broke, mad or the Administration changes.
On topic, my final judgment on the issue of the autonomy and independence of the Net user is that it is going the way of the Communist Chinese, and we have been sort of the first test victims of that defenestration and de-democratization process. My view of the Net is that it has always been a bit of a lame duck or supplement, not a core motivator nor formative device for crafting anything of lasting value. It is an instantaneous medium. As such, then, I do not feel Komrade Lieberman’s proposal to Stalin Hussein and Komrade Beria has merit, nor even irritation value. Ideas and the human soul are threats to regimes, not communications systems. The Russian novel and Russian poetry existed intact during the worst years of the Stalin years transported from reader to reader in briefcases or sewn into garments, and brought down ultimately the entire regime.
I am not concerned about the ultimate fate of those bedazzled by plastic clickety-clicks and Tinkerbell-like colourful screens in pastel hues of blue and green and pink with cascading silver stars. Ideas are what we have to move to “market.” They cannot be moved without a proper budget.
They cannot even be moved without a proper evaluation of where we stand and what we achieved so far and where we want to go with this. We have none of this so far.
Hope you had a famously good Fathers’ Day, as have I. A good week to you all.
Msher,
On your suggestion, I popped over to take a look and a previous blog about George Pell caught my eye as his name, as the head of the RC church in OZ, is a familiar one.
Damien claimed Pell was cleared of earlier abuse allegations, but as you and I know, that is (too often) a matter of insufficient corroborative evidence rather than proof of innocence. Pell is regarded here as a pain in the backside (no pun intended) as he was always bleating about political issues way outside his purview.
Could I recommend a book, “Power Without Glory” by Oz author, the late Frank Hardy. The story reveals the RC church’s intense involvement with the rise of the Labor Party and socialist govt in this country.
Our current PM KRudd doesn’t do door-stop interviews outside his office or such-like as has usually been the custom here. No, he’s readily available on any Sunday outside his local RC church, where after Mass, he’s happy to pose for TV cameras with church and family nicely in-shot, the 10 second grabs for the evening news rolling off his forked tongue.
He seems to be too narcissistic to realise that while such staged tableaux will undoubtedly give the intended subliminal message to some (you know, church, family, man of god etc), for others it is simply screaming of his hypocrisy and media manipulation.
As to Damien’s blog, it’s about as riveting as George Pitcher’s and is of as little interest.
crownarmourer says:
June 21, 2010 at 4:05 pm
I am totally fried on the idea of going to post again at the DT. It is just not going to happen. Not again. Not ever. It’s fun to whang and clang away if one’s the time to spare, but after making the same points again and again and again, I rather think it would be a fine thing to give the Left their heads then let them see if they can talk themselves out of facing the consequences.
My most gently conservative guess of those consequences is that the last sound whomever even mentions the word “green” a year from now will be the crunch of a bayonet entering and twisting in their chest.
Did someone mention my name….?
Yes I have been enjoying the literary creativity here, – VERY MUCH – and lurking around for scientific nonsense.
But so far its all political which is merely the art of the possible and always, ultimately, constrained by the real.
It is certainly possible to close down the internet, just turn off the data links. cutting phones, landline and mobile is possible, but why do it?
Well if future bombings by terrorists use mobile phones we can expect selective cells to be blocked in supposed ‘high security’ areas.
Anything on the web is ‘written in water’ to regard it as persistent or significant outside the benefit it confers to the writer is almost certainly a delusion – unless you are paid to write for a major media outlet.
And that would require conformity to the media content/style.
Human inventiveness and creativity always far exceeds the market for it. Look at the music industry, there is much more musical creativity out there than is seen in the commercial sector.
X-factor is the media attempt to shape this human creativity to the market. Disqus(t).
I notice that the Disqus software is now common across the UK media, its a company with a very good marketing department, its home website is worth a look to gain an insight into what it provides and therefore what the media are looking for/buying. Might even be worth telling the various software engineers/community experience manager what you think of the DT setup!
If you desire global and wide exposure then you have to go through the established media, even the ‘independents’ that get a ‘hat-tip’ are riding on the coat-tails of the establishment.
There is a little insight into this system provided by the recent events surrounding AGW. The Murdoch Sunday Times and a reporter Jonathon Leake wrote an article about ‘Amazongate’. A supposed error in the IPCC report. The ST has issued an apology and correction.
http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/20/amazon-ipcc-climategate-sunday-times-jonathan-leake-simon-lewis-apology-retraction/
“I welcome the Sunday Times’ apology for failing to accurately report my views and retract the Amazon story. As several experts told them – their story was baseless. What I find shocking about this whole episode is that an article read out [loud] and agreed with me was then switched at the last minute to one that fit with the Times’ editorial line that the IPCC contained a number of serious mistakes, but actually ignored the scientific facts.”
-Let the strafing begin…-grin-
G’day Walt,
Can’t say I disagree with too much of your perspective, but WHERE does one get such exposure as offered by the DT? Publish some sort of undergound subversive literature/pamphlet/magazine to refute these incessant AGW claims (which we would have to sew inside our garments in this country), paid for by whom?
Why would the public pay a dime (so to speak) for an opposing view of the bilge that is shoveled down their throats by the MSM on a daily basis, for FREE? Why would the Corporate world or even SMEs pay to advertise therein, when their best financial interests (and biggest return on investment) comes from their “reserved” seats on the gravy train, aka The Climate Change Express?
Sheesh! I’ve just asked a string of questions and have no answer for any of them.
The only thing that sticks in my gullet is that we who decry the AGW Fraud should ALLOW ourselves to be “sent packing” when it’s the bright light the JD/DT shone into dark corners that sent the cockroaches scurrying to cover their arses in the first place.
Yes, it was a repetitive process. Everybody expressed the same things over and over, but as you know, repetitive reinforcement can ultimately send the “message” home. After all, that’s how Socialism/Marxism/Fabianism works. That’s why the Leftist Education system starts the Climate message in kindergarten. Our kids have heard this crap for so long and so often from every quarter that their complexions could outdo Kermit for shades of chartreuse.
Maybe THAT’s how we work. Use their own tactics back-at-them. Be happy to be repetitive. KISS. Keep It Simple. Maybe TUB’s got a great idea. As he did today, re-post a great link more than once so it doesn’t vanish from sight. We wouldn’t be preaching to the converted – we’d be trawling, not trolling – catching all those lurkers, sticky-beaks, the curious, and those (like me) who are seeking information that is understandable to lay-people not of the scientific world.
Maybe THAT was the secret of JD’s success. The ripples in the pond just spread. Maybe it wasn’t just the “little fish” caught in the trawl. Maybe there were enough Whoppers to start asking questions in the right places.
I found a new resolve to work this thing out. I’m no engineer, but I’m patient and REAL good at teaching early potty-training – very repetitive and sometimes messy – and teaching little kids (with no fine-motor skills) how to tie their shoelaces.
And I can string a word or two together. How hard can this be?
The Australian Coat of Arms features two unique creatures, a kangaroo and an emu, neither of which is capable of taking a backward step.
Maybe that’s why we’ll always “have a go”.
Cheers.
Top of the morning/afternoon/evening to you Blackswan!
On the subject of Ross Garnaut, how can he be part of a ‘solution’ when because of his links to dodgy companies is part of the (so called) fucking problem, how do Wong and Krudd square this off?
With his links to Lihir, dumping mine waste into the sea and saying “oh yeah, the fish are gonna be OK!” – heavy metals, sea floor, ingestion of said metals eg, Cd, Hg, Pb etc into lower food chain, thence lower life forms consumed by fish, thus base metals concentrated – I ain’t no biologist but I kinda know the consequences.
This guy is a net-worker, economist and bullshitter, is chairman of a Co. that is a sorry polluter and is advising on Carbon emissions? Don’t get it?
Surely Krudd should be treating him with the disinfected barge pole, isn’t the ‘battle against AGW’ a war against evil mining companies and big business polluters?
It’s like Red Riding Hood getting into bed with Granny lupus.
Or do I do Mr. Garnaut a disservice? Is he some shining knight riding to the damsel Krudd’s rescue and is really, all sweetness and light?
Old flim Flannery he is similar to our Jonathon Porritt, another twerp who is way out of his depth but talks a slick game of CAGW doom saying.
Which leads me to question Garnaut’s motives, if he’s into mining, why is he putting a foot in the camp of the enemy?
Wonder what the shareholders of Lihir think?
(On Lihir dumping waste into an actively volcanic area is an absolute scandal).
But so many of these guys think they can walk on water, do as they please, spout platitudes on the ‘environment’ – to show how caring they are and carry on filling their boots – Rajendra Pachauri springs to mind here.
Now what’s that word I’m looking for here……….oh yes I’ve got it!………Hypocrisy, sheer hypocrisy!
regards, Ed.
@ izen June 21, 2010 at 5:21 pm
G’day izen,
Thanks for the link.
As I’m now an acknowledged expert at stating-the-obvious, let me run this by you.
Dr P F Moore (co-author of Amazon report) describes himself as a “Policy Analyst” with a strong understanding of Government Administration, Legislative Review, Analysis and Inquiries generated through involvement in or management of the Australian Regional Forest Agreement process, Parliamentary and Government Inquiries, Coronial Inquiries and public submissions on Water Pricing, Access and Use Rights and Native Vegitation Legislation in Australia as well as Fire and Natural Resources Laws, Regulations and Policies in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, South Africa and Malaysia.
Wow, looks pretty impressive on a CV, but at the end of the day, it reveals an apparatchik, a pen-pusher, a creator of policy that renders whatever political outcome his employers need at any given time and NOT a man of science, a botanist, a climatologist or any other sort of “ologist”.
His co-author is one Andy Rowell, freelance writer and journalist for organisations such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, IFAW, Pan American Health Organistion, Project Underground, WHO, World in Action & WWF.
No “ologist” here either. He’s a wordsmith, a spin-merchant, a keyboard-for-hire and, as always, is obviously adept at delivering whatever is required by his employers.
The Amazon publication appears to be a WWF Report, in conjunction with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Their “report” is a brilliant statement of the obvious – low rainfall results in damage and decline in rainforests. What a revelation – Rainforests require Rain.
For the IPCC, the obvious way to prevent such a calamity from occurring is to muscle the governments of the world into taxing their citizens into penury, hoard a heap of cash in their off-shore bank accounts and slush-funds, and lo and behold…RAIN!
Problem solved – simple.
Blackswan Tasmania says:
June 21, 2010 at 6:31 pm
Bravo Swanee!
Oops, you’re a river now!
Suwanee/Suwannee – whatever:>))))
Swany, I’ll leave it at Blackswan, sos mate.
Evening Ed,
Why do you think we’re tearing our hair out in this neck-o-the-woods?
Try this on for size…………..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ok_Tedi_environmental_disaster
And on the Ok Tedi board of Directors is Guess Who?
Professor Ross Garnaut AO, (That’s the Order of Australia, our sort of knighthood)
Papua New Guinea Sustainable Development Program Limited
Professor Ross Garnaut AO is Professor of Economics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University (ANU). He is the Chair Climate Change and Policy Response to Climate Change Review for the Australian government.
He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia and Honorary Professor, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Professor Garnaut is the author of numerous books, monographs and articles on international economics, public finance and international development, particularly in relation to East Asia and the Southwest Pacific.
He was a key Finance Ministry advisor to the PNG government in the 1970s, and has had a long association with Papua New Guinea.
He is the chairman of OTML’s 52 per cent shareholder, PNG Sustainable Development Program Limited, which was founded in 2002.
Nauseating isn’t it? Dracula is in charge of the Blood Bank. As for shareholders – huh! As long as the dividends keep rolling in, what’s the problem? It’s like the energy renewables scam, pension and other managed funds are heavily invested but the beneficiaries actually don’t know WHERE their money is. But hey, we all need our pensions don’t we?
With these fine upstanding pillars of our community, I’d say our community is on pretty shakey ground.
HELP!
Hi, Blackswan Tasmania. To expand on your comment to Izen, and directed at Izen only, my sole motivation in posting is to stand in defence of the industry which I have served well and continue to serve well for 31 years, for 17 of which back to back years I have kept an average of 50 welders and pipefitters and controls tekkies and steel fabricators, their support staff, supplier vendors and families working on the weight of my mechanical contracting estimates in support of building electrical power generation facilities or components thereof.
Up until even 6 years ago, there was not a single journalist or UN type bilge merchant or suburban pudgy-wudgy social science major leftist piece of Ho Chi Minh stuffed corpse-blowing puke regularly pounding the beat of my turf. Now, everyday, when I get up, it is like going out onto the tennis court as a Wimbledon player and finding 200 other players on the court, comprised of everyone from escaped mental patients to the usual suburban fraudsters with degrees in law and medicine and basket weaving who, now broke from 20 to 30 years of profligate credit exhaustion, are looking for massive reserves of the ready to ransack. I don’t effing like it. These people have no business breathing down my back and harassing my fellow workers in the industry when they can barely fit a plug into a wall socket.
I don’t have any use for politics either, Izen, not directly, but that is the ball peen hammer RedWar and the rest of the crooks in our faces use to beat on us who are trying to deliver that power, all the while out to stuff their GD hamster cheeks with the products of my sweat and that of my worker associates in exchange for which we as a people get nothing but a sore arse from the ream job. I read patiently postings by people who say things like “You know, we could use wave power and poofy pixie dust to make all the power we need and we don’t need all these stinky coal plants,” and I think, “Who the eff are these people?”
Simple. They are broken down degreed bums who have run out of free money from taxpayers who have not concentrated on generating real jobs in manufacturing and th eother Big Five industries but instead just want to sit in front of a computer writing the news, news which creates no real jobs (it used to for printers and the pulp and paper industry), and half the time the news items are outright horsecrap, made up at the spur of the moment. They do not give a crap about who they put out of work.
Most of all, I really, really resent the hell out of non-players who say, “En Ger Nee is everyone’s concern,” when it bloody well isn’t. 10 years ago not even a mainstream journalist would dream of telling a power plant operation their job, yet now it is all the rage. Now people with Down syndrome are talking the green dream of chocolate gum drop trees and pixie elves dancing to make our bright beautiful energy future a reality. This is no shit. The bag boy at the local grocery store knows I do something with boilers and coal and he starts rapping down the crap he picked up from the TV and he cannot sign his name to a piece of paper, Izen.
You want to play, you go get some training and some field experience, and have at it, my friend. There’s a shortage in the field. Otherwise, STFU, okay? Being a passive aggressive smart aleck wheedling around looking for somewhere to stick in the figurative knife is going to end up with you losing your figurative arm at the shoulder. It won’t be me, but you need to take a look to the future, my friend. All the poking and probing into other people’s livelihoods about which you know nothing can get you seriously hurt one day. No one is out to put you on the street.
Walt 7.12pm
Way to go Walt.
“losing your figurative arm at the shoulder” is my favourite bit. Still spluttering over my coffee. LOL
Evening lads. Dead tired, but you guys go for it.
Walt mate, your long experience is now merely a commodity. Haven’t you heard? Everyone’s an expert now. Google jockeys rule. For now.
All this creative writing at my place has inspired me to have a crack myself—give me a couple of days. I hope you’ll like it. JD certainly won’t 👿
Will pop in overnight. Speak later…
Oz
Walt : 7:12 pm
That just about sums it up mate.
Blackswan,
Words simply fail me, thanks for the link – mining companies, logging companies, they all should be rounded up and shot or maybe not all of ’em.
They would argue “Okay so we do pollute but you use our products right!”
(Not happy with this either – The Chinese are busily raping the resources of African countries and their pollution record would not bear scrutiny.)
The problem is vast, yes we need to exploit resources but lets put the horses in front of the wagon, it should not be all about mendacious cynical manipulation and the ‘rape’ of virgin country to plunder the ore/oil/wood at any cost, the environmental impact strategy should be already in place before any exploitation of the resource is made.
But then I guess we live in the real world, the Tedi episode is startling for its open contempt for;
1. Top of the list, for the health and well-being of the local people.
2. The environmental impact on the river system and ecology – very important to me, the wildlife.
(- er I’m a big Orang utan/great apes fan – part of the reason for my recent visit to the south coast was to go to Monkey World http://www.monkeyworld.org/rescue-rehabilitation – a centre for the rescue and rehabilitation of apes and monkeys – I also visit/support Howletts [Ape a re-introduction to natural habitat centre] in Kent http://www.aspinallfoundation.org/aspinall).
You can see I’m a concerned fella, I am not a nimby pussy who wants us to go back to the cave ante wheel etc, all industrialisation has been of benefit to man, however we must ensure that we do save some of it for the kids too – be kind to our lovely and equally terrible planet.
I am optimistic that man (we are great innovators) will find alternatives to carbon based energy and have a dream of fusion for the future, that would solve all our energy needs at a stroke, what about cars which burn hydrogen for power and build everything to last for 50+ years (the throw-away society must end). – My dear granny had a fridge which she kept and was loath to throw out….it was fifty years young and still keeping food cool – made in the thirties! – Mum made her get rid, don’t think granny ever forgave her:<((
The CAGW thing is a political construct to save politicians hides and nowt to do with altruistic motives, I hate liars, therefore I fight AGW with a distaste for some of my fellow beings (politicians, ignorant 'elites' who purport to know better -arrogance is a debilitating disease, climatologists -not all but most, computer modellers who work for government funded institutes and socialist tree hugger 'back to the Neolithic Mankind hating' loonys), that is not to say I hold them all in contempt, just that, I do not trust them to tell the truth and the truth is what I seek.
If we can wheedle out the real story it will be of benefit to all mankind.
BTW bad news here:-
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Dems-ready-for-big-push-on-global-warming-96759054.html
I am all for investigation into climate dynamics and cloud formation etc but we should understand the enormity of the earth’s atmosphere it’s power and it’s majesty and not think that we are changing the planetary climate, that is man’s arrogance but sure we can do much and we should be doing more, love life, love geology- geologists see life and human activity in the perspective of the long view – something politicians do not.
Ed.
Hi Ed,
I think we all feel basically the same as you, albeit with perspectives as different as our life-experiences, backgrounds or education. You nailed it really, we are “truth-seekers”, defying the bludgeoning of our freedom and independence by Hucksters, Fraudsters and Liars.
About granny’s fridge……..
Nearly 30 years ago, when we first moved to Tasmania’s Huon Valley, a rural community southwest of Hobart, we bought a hundred year old fairly run-down farmhouse (spent the next 15 years on a renno) which had a huge crummy-looking stove. “That’s gotta go” was a first response, but lacking funds, we got busy with cleaners, degreaser and lots of elbow-grease.
Apart from its new bright & shiny appearance, the first attempt at cooking revealed an absolute gem. We even found the original first owners’ handbook from the 1940s/50s and discovered it was a solid cast-iron unit, heavily enameled, all electric and fully imported from Britain. It was as big as a Volkswagon and just as heavy (shades of Rastech moving his Dad’s stove).
My grandfather and his father before him were bakers from Pontypridd in Wales, so I set to learning how to bake some bread myself. I soon became a dab hand at it and the oven was a dream, complete with a warmed “proving” drawer. At one stage we advertised in the local paper for a second stove, planning to pop it in the shed and cannibalise it for parts in case ours broke down. We paid $50 for a smaller version of the same brand and when we got it home, found it worked just as well as the large one so, when we rebuilt the old kitchen, designed the plans around installing both stoves side by side.
What a hoot! I could bake 5 loaves at a time!
Time moves on, as do we, and I recently saw our old house on a real estate website, selling at 10 times what we paid for it. Some numpty had “disappeared” my beloved stoves and installed some insipid modern version of “a cook’s dream”. Fools.
Point of this diatribe being………. you can’t beat the quality and endurance of such appliances, designed, engineered and manufactured for a lifetime’s use and convenience. Your granny was right. The next prat who bends my ear about recycling will get an earful himself.
End of rant. ;>))
Too right bro’:>)
Gotta go, catch you later……………the smell of home baked bread………lovely – the simple things are the best, we had a lovely old fashioned shop when we were kids near us (they used to wrap goods in paper! and put it in paper bags – how environmentally friendly is that?) it used to smell of bacon, cheese, and ground coffee, wow!, next door was a bakery, heaven and mouth watering – delicious.
Ed.
@ blackswan
You are quite right that the IPCC report cites a WWF report by Moore and Rowell for the Amazon susceptibility to drought and fire damage.
But the error is in NOT crediting the original research by Dan Nepstad, a Woods hole ecologist who certainly DOES have the scientific credentials to establish this point.
His research has subsequently being backed up by work from Samanta and also Saleska on the same issue.
What do you make of the complaint, which the ST has acknowledged and printed an apology for, that the correct information was given to them by several scientists, they had an article which incorporated this, but then went with the North/Leake article anyway which was WRONG because it matched the Murdoch/Times editorial policy of finding fault (however erroneously) with the IPCC ?
@ izen
Just popped back before I went to bed.
I am not a scientist or “ologist” of any kind. My only qualification for speaking on the issue of AGW is a functioning brain and an unwavering moral compass. I know the difference between right and wrong.
I also happen to live in a country riven by crippling drought and catastrophic wildfire.
The point of a gaggle/huddle/clutch/coven of “scientists” declaring that lack of rainfall damages rainforests is…………….WHAT? Who funded them with huge amounts of money to come up with that startling revelation? I could have told them that for free.
The great ocean currents, el Nino and la Nina have been thought to be responsible for such weather patterns which is useful in predicting such events, the better to mitigate the economic and social damage and dislocation caused.
Two years ago I walked through one of Tasmania’s cool temperate rainforests, beneath the lofty canopies the understorey usually glowing in the luminous green light of mosses dripping with water. An extended drought presented me with a scene of utter devastation. You’d have thought a bomb had gone off in the place.
Those soft wet mosses had dried to grey powdery dust, giant ancient hardwoods so dehydrated they could no longer support their weight had crashed to the ground, smashing all before them. Giant tree-ferns had ten-foot fronds hanging brown and shrivelled to the ground with new-seasons growth like puny feather-dusters on top.
It was heart-breaking to see.
This year, after record rainfalls over winter, I went back and was astonished to marvel at the recovery. The fallen giants had let sunlight through the canopy and new growth was everywhere, those luminous green dripping mosses rendered everything in bright velvet.
Let me tell you izen, it pisses me off no end for some jumped-up Policy Analyst or creative-writing keyboard jockey to tell me that drought damages rainforests and I have to pay untenable amounts for electricity to “fix it”.
Lining Al Gore’s pockets and creating huge political slush funds will do NOTHING to remediate drought-stricken country.
As for Rupert Murdoch and the quality and integrity of modern journalism, let me offer you this from a link on JD’s blog, about what Senator Inhofe had to say;
“Had the mainstream media acted responsibly, then every word spoken at the first major post-Climategate climate colloquium would have indeed built public awareness of the implausibility of manmade global warming and, consequently, any job-killing legislation, treaties or regulations designed to “control” it. But ours is an agenda-driven MSM – brazenly toting water for a president and Hill Democrats shamelessly rolling out the Gulf-coast disaster crash-cart to reanimate their flat-lined “climate” bill.”
Enough said – Goodnight, I’m off to bed.
Crown, Swan. Yao, Mack, TUB, RR et al. I couldn’t respond on the ‘Tremens’ blog as it insists on ‘……’ for my password and then tells me it’s the ‘incorrect’ one.
For JD this is even more annoying, he must feel like Prof Gates (O’barmy’s mate, remember him ?) questioned by the police when he couldn’t get into his own house, ‘cos he’d got the wrong key. If someone had come along and said “Don’t worry mate, you can come back to my place”, it would not have helped.
James now HAS to complete 2 out of 3 books he’s writing by 23rd July, as well as being a good daddy, an attentive husband and a dutiful son.
So why doesn’t he stop blogging and get on with it ? You might ask , but I think you know the answer. (Fight the good fight etc, and when you feel a good blog coming, etc).
However this can’t be done unresearched as, where he’s given a hat tip or a reference, he has to double check his sources, or else he would have to print one of those grovelling apologies that the Moonbats love to seize on.
His new ‘big mate’ Lord Tebbitt does indeed acknowledge respondents in his blog post
but this tends to dilute the impact of the blog itself, and I guess ‘Normo’ isn’t trying to keep the wolf from the door at the same time.
This blog is indeed a ‘Haven for intelligent discourse’ and a ‘comfort zone’, but it is also like a TOC.H club where troops recovered after weeks in the trenches. Since you all possess snipers’ rifles, a plentiful supply of ammo and an abundance of targets most of you are up there on the front line now.
Given more time, and the ability to understand the workings of the DT blog, JD would respond and even drop in here for some intelligent discourse. In the meantime he hopes you will understand.
On a completely different note, Ozboy, what are you doing about my larger cousin ‘Bufo Marinus’? Since he emigrated there from Barbados I gather he’s cleaned up most of your herpetofauna and small mammals.
Excellent comment Blackswan.
The link from JDs blog…
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/heartland_conference_establish.html
Certainly worth a read.
Blackswan Tasmania says:
June 22, 2010 at 12:56 am
Great stuff!
And to boot, a wordsmith as well:>)
Ed.
scud1 says:
June 22, 2010 at 1:59 am
Wotcha Scud1,
Ta fo ‘t’ link lad as they say in Yorky land and worthwhile reading, alarmists like Harrabin dismiss it as cranks/nutters etc, his shrieks ever more shrill but only because it is becoming a little too near to blowing the whole shitbag scam into the proverbial fan and he will be the first to be hit, the fundamentalists always are remember Omdurman.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627645.300-take-the-political-heat-out-of-climate-scepticism.html
Some worrying comment here tho’
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/6/19/roger-harrabin-on-libertarian-columnists.html#comments
This is a quote from your link and increasingly, no matter what Hansen says blah blah about the warmest year ever (how can he say that – he’s a goddamn scientist or supposed to be) I can never trust the T record again, reading up on just how difficult it is to provide an accurate temp record, I stand by my conclusion, all measurements are mainly approximations and are at best a rough guide, the measurements of the RN from the C17th are more trustworthy than GISS or Had/Crut -Sigh.
“the surface data and models should not have been used for decision making by the EPA or the congress,” and that any proclamations of “warmest months,” “warmest years,” or “warmest” anything are utterly meaningless
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/heartland_conference_establish.html
What more is there to say?
Ed.
The West Wales village I was borne in, had a wonderful bakery. Coal fired ovens, I think over 100 years old, and the products they baked were to die for.
Their products did nearly kill me once as a kid, as I was cycling past, and got the full force of the smells of latest creations making their way out of the ovens.
Instant nirvana, and I fell off my bike.
Never felt a thing though, rushed in and bought some cakes. lol!
Then some officious and totally soulless ‘jobsworth’ shut the place down in the 70’s just because they ran on coal. 😦
@ blackswan –
“The point of a gaggle/huddle/clutch/coven of “scientists” declaring that lack of rainfall damages rainforests is…………….WHAT? Who funded them with huge amounts of money to come up with that startling revelation? I could have told them that for free. ”
They told us something more than that – not that you would ever get to know from a press that prefers to frame it as a fraud than as legitimate knowledge. Even the mention ( and wrong citation) it gets in AR4 section II does not mention much detail.
“Let me tell you izen, it pisses me off no end for some jumped-up Policy Analyst or creative-writing keyboard jockey to tell me that drought damages rainforests and I have to pay untenable amounts for electricity to “fix it”.”
What the studies of the Amazon do show (with the usual scientific caveats) is that a servere drought for just a year or two is something that the rainforest can recover from. Unsurprising given that that variability that derives from the ENSO system is part of its historical environment.
The problem with rainforests is that their response to a drought is not robust if the drought is prolonged. There is a threshold level of rainfall, well short of a serve short drought, that is continued for a longer time causes the forest to flip rapidly to a savanna of open grassland. Because a good deal of the rainfall around a rainforest is actually created by the rainforest – it forms its own micro-climate – this implies that a regional decrease in rainfall much smaller than the ENSO drought/flood variations, but trending over a longer time could irreversably flip large areas of the Amazon into open grassland. Africa shows that the process can occur. What is now savanna and desert was rainforest a few thousand years ago when rainfall was higher. It is unclear whether as temperatures rise back to those levels rainfall will return and a rainforest could re-establish.
I suspect the Amazon rainforest destruction is inevitable, and will be imposed eventually anyway as the area is turned into agriculturally productive land to feed a much larger population.
The problem is the rate of adaption that may be required, and it certainly isn’t helped by a media that is hostile to even the suggestion that it is a human impact that can cause the need for adaption.
quote-” let me offer you … what Senator Inhofe had to say;
“Had the mainstream media acted responsibly, then every word spoken at the first major post-Climategate climate colloquium would have indeed built public awareness of the implausibility of manmade global warming and, consequently, any job-killing legislation, treaties or regulations designed to “control” it. ”
Well this is where we differ. I find nothing implausible about the science of manmade global warming. There seems to be a good century of scientific development behind it with all of the major objections long since rebutted (at least since the 1950s). It is consistent with other associated branches of science in physics, chemistry and biology – rejecting it needs significant re-writing of rather basic science at the level of radiation absorption and thermodynamics.
I don’t doubt that politics and business are either using the reality of AGW to reach corrupt ends, or trying to deny the existence of AGW because it obstructs their ends.
Thats what they do – as far as possible.
Personally I doubt that they are capable of ‘controling’ CO2 emissions on a global basis as would be required to affect climate, we do not as a species yet have the global governance to deal with global problems.
CFC’s and SOx/NOx excepted….
@ Walt –
As always I enjoy the insight, and language, you bring to the issue, even if I don’t always recognise the … structure of the system in your descriptions.
But I did like-
“…suburban pudgy-wudgy social science major leftist piece of Ho Chi Minh stuffed corpse-blowing puke …. comprised of everyone from escaped mental patients to the usual suburban fraudsters with degrees in law and medicine and basket weaving who, now broke from 20 to 30 years of profligate credit exhaustion, are looking for massive reserves of the ready to ransack. I don’t effing like it.”
The last line made me think of Enron, but that doesn’t seem to square with the first bit…
Electricity generation is a state run organisation in many (most?) modern technical cultures. The market either did not try, or proved incapable of delivering universal electrical power in an effective manner. Even where private industry has become involved (de-nationalisation?) it is as providers of a service with government defined requirements.
It is one of those instances where a communal or civic organised provision has to be imposed because the individual good is not supplied by individual contributions. Everyone has a need for a consistent supply, but few have the ability to provide it. The ability is best realised in a single system provider, or enforced cooperation/regulation if there are many providers, they have to cooperate, not compete.
It is a general public good if it can be provided for all, but simplistic market/libertarian responses are incapable of meeting the requirement.
I often see the complaint that the greens are jumping on a gravy-train of their own creation to suck massive amounts of honestly earned money from the general public/free markets on the basis of a fraudulent scientific case.
I don’t understand where all this money is, or how they are going to get it. I am not aware that electricity generation and supply is that wealthy an industry.
Fossil fuels are already a big money-maker for modern societies however. The primary producers like Saudi/Kuwait must view the enormous tax western governments put on petroleum products and see that as a LOSS in the price their resource could command. If they were selling direct to the consumer, just think how much richer those nations with oil would be. The massive profits of a company like BP are also a measure of the gap between production costs and the price the market will bear.
The production cost of oil is FAR below its consumption price in most advanced nations because it is ALREADY the vehicle for governments and industry to gain big revenues from its supply. A reduction in use, as desired by those wanting to constrain CO2 levels, plays AGAINST the financial interests of those governments and businesses.
The price of oil is already artificially pushed up by the taxation/profit system around it. Making it higher in cost to reduce demand would seem to just be a method to perpetuate the status quo.
quote –
“You want to play, you go get some training and some field experience, and have at it, my friend. There’s a shortage in the field. Otherwise, STFU, okay? Being a passive aggressive smart aleck wheedling around looking for somewhere to stick in the figurative knife is going to end up with you losing your figurative arm at the shoulder.”
Possibly, and I’m sorry if some of what I say comes across as a sneaky knife attack. Most often its a way of testing my own perception against others who see things differently – perhaps with better knowledge. Thats one reason why I seek the opposite of my views, there is nothing but mutual reinforcement of a shared outlook (delusional or valid) if your only milieu is one of general conformity.
Morton’s demon is never challenged.
quote-
“…you need to take a look to the future, my friend. All the poking and probing into other people’s livelihoods about which you know nothing can get you seriously hurt one day. No one is out to put you on the street.”
Take the example I gave of the bad reporting of ‘Amazongate’. Where the actual story was known – that the IPCC should have cited the original scientific report, not the WWF summary – but went ahead and reported it as an error that called into question the science because that is the Sky/Fox editorial line. That is poking and probing into the livelihood of legitimate science about which it is clear that not only did they KNOW nothing, they did not even care what might be known, only whether it could be framed as a scientific fraud.
That disdain for what can be known, and is researched with integrity by many, can get us all seriously hurt.
izen
“I suspect the Amazon rainforest destruction is inevitable, and will be imposed eventually anyway as the area is turned into agriculturally productive land to feed a much larger population.”
Exactly. And that might or might not be a problem. But what does it have to do with AGW?
You didn’t make that link. But the warmists are telling us the rain forests will disappear without discussing the main reason. Regardless of the truth or fraudulence of “climate science,” isn’t it besides the point?
izen:
“There seems to be a good century of scientific development behind it with all of the major objections long since rebutted (at least since the 1950s). It is consistent with other associated branches of science in physics, chemistry and biology – rejecting it needs significant re-writing of rather basic science at the level of radiation absorption and thermodynamics.”
Science gets re-written all the time:
Einstein was not satisfied with his theory. In fact, in a 1947 letter to his friend Maurice Solovine he stated: “You imagine that deep down inside I regard the work of my life with calm satisfaction, the things are really different. There is not a single concept of which I am convinced that it will stand firm.”
“There Was No Big Bang!” Say Several Leading Cosmologists
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/06/there-was-no-big-bang-say-several-leading-cosmologists-a-galaxy-classic.html
I’m thinking that Lorentz’s ‘steady state universe’ may need to be looked at again!…….so much for superstrings & multi-dimentional mathematics…..
Plenty wrong with the theory of General Relativity:
http://fascistsoup.com/2010/04/11/einstein-was-wrong/
I do think scientists get too specialised and can’t see outside their box to consider new theories.
We humans tend to use what we see around us as explaining phenomena light years away. The Redshift being interpreted as a Doppler Effect is one example because we see objects like trains rushing away from us and hear the lower frequency of the noise. Redshift measurement don’t quite fit with redshift being solely a Doppler effect and some tinkering has occurred using a relativistic formula to make the data fit the theory.
There have be doubts about the Doppler interpretation since the late 1960s e.g. the different types of galaxies and their brightness have different redshifts and the redshift of quasars would be travelling 10 times the speed of light [Impossible in GR theory]. So the amount of redshift of any object is not just an indication of velocity and may be altered by its mass, luminosity, high-velocity helical motion or other factors.
However some scientists (especially American ones trying to make a name for themselves) go from the redshift not solely being Doppler to being totally due to electricity, gravitiation etc and come out with sweeping statement e.g. the proven alternative source of redshift is gravitation! i.e. gravitationally slowing light increases the red shift.
Interesting to think that if the foundation is flawed even the Big Bang may not have happened. We really do need a new theory of everything as Steven would say to explain what all the invisible matter is. I don’t know enough about plasmas to know whether that could be the answer.
Can the basic premis on which astrophysics is built – the more distant the galaxy, the larger the redshift (Edwin Hubble 1929) really be wrong or is it just the interpretation of the redshift as being a predominently Doppler effect that should be challenged?
However this is how science develops – a theory is devised to more or less fit the observations and then new theories are devised to better fit the data.
With AGW science, it appears there is blatant retrenchment…similar to the complete denial of the Lorentz model of the universe & the ‘demonization’ of it’s accolytes.
THAT is what I have a problem with……but I sense it is changing. 🙂
Best,
OL
rastech,
“Then some officious and totally soulless ‘jobsworth’ shut the place down in the 70′s”
The jobsworths and their spawn moved on and up and ended up f*****g up our country in the period anno domini 1997-2010.
I can imagine you on your bike tho’, it made me smile, the HSE would not be too pleased now though, there probably would have been a full investigation,
” have you taken a bicycle riding aptitude test boy?”
:>))
Ed
“I suspect the Amazon rain-forest destruction is inevitable, and will be imposed eventually anyway as the area is turned into agriculturally productive land to feed a much larger population.”
(not you Msher, I know)
Good grief!! Tropical rain forest soils are bad soils, ask any slash and burn subsistence farmer, why do they move on after 2-3 years?
Soil organic matter is quickly leached from the soil, leaving the ferric and aluminium oxides which are acidic, the result is very poor soil.
Once the virgin forest is removed the land never recovers and is always after forest removal, marginal land, it takes 10,000 to 100,000 years for good soil to form, when the forest is removed the rainfall quickly washes away very quickly any remaining minerals and SOM soil organic matter.
If the rain-forest is removed it will be the greatest ecological disaster since the dinosaur extinction, it can never be used solely for agriculture, the best thing to do with it is…………… leave it alone and allow biologists/botanists/medical scientists to explore and find new tropical drugs, the forest is a gold mine of biological diversity waiting to be studied, understood and carefully, ever so carefully used to man’s advantage.
Ed.
@ msher -re Amazon rainforest destruction from AGW/population growth etc –
“But what does it have to do with AGW?
You didn’t make that link. But the warmists are telling us the rain forests will disappear without discussing the main reason. Regardless of the truth or fraudulence of “climate science,” isn’t it besides the point?”
I alluded to the point with the next bit you didn’t quote-
“The problem is the rate of adaption that may be required, and it certainly isn’t helped by a media that is hostile to even the suggestion that it is a human impact that can cause the need for adaption.”
For various reasons the amazonian rain forest, like the arctic ice and glaciers, are a ‘canary in the coalmine’. They are ecosystems which show some fragility in the face of climate trends, as evidenced by the African example.
Human societies will always have to adapt to a changing climate, and it is never easy, to often societies organise with the implicit assumption that present conditions, including short-term (decadel) variability is the perpetual norm.
What makes a difference to whether it is a catastrophe or passing crisis when the assumption of stability is overturned can depend on the RATE of change, and whether societies have methods for adaption because they recognise that change is required.
How robust a society can be seems to rest on the ability to exploit a variety of agricultural methods and resources. Historically food has been more important than power, technological societies have changed that. Transport can adapt to crop failure in one region by globalising food production and consumption. Shortages are rationed by the use of an arbitary measure of personal access to consumption usualu called ‘money’
-grin-
There is a certain irony in the very real possibility that the method human civilisation has developed for avoiding the worst agricultural disasters involve the production of energy and fertiliser/pesticides that will alter the climate in ways that make a stable agricultural/food base for the global community more difficult to achieve.
As food production has required a diminishing proportion of the population, enabling the growth of cities and industry, the requirement for energy for transport and the ultimate fungible, electricity is making a geochemicaly significant change to the global atmosphere. Co2 levels have not been this high in human evolutionary history. The thermodynamic implications of that are still uncertain, but not unbounded in that it is unreasonable to expect a fast transition to temperatures 10degC warmer – a ‘Jurrasic’ climate regieme; but it is also unreasonable to expect that the result will be negligible.
Changes in the past energy balance of the surface of similar magnitude have certainly been noticeable.
n my google-meanderings I came across this –
https://www.intrade.com/jsp/intrade/contractSearch/index.jsp?clsID=20&grpID=9614
The rest of the site might be of interest, there is a bet on whether this year will be warmer than last year … but the Armstrong -Gore bet caught my eye.
The terms of the (virtual) bet are as follows –
In June 2007, Wharton Professor Scott Armstrong offered Al Gore a “bet” of $10,000 on who could best predict global mean temperature over the next ten years. Al Gore declined the bet, citing the reason that he does not bet money (the full story can be reviewed at theclimatebet.com).
This market assumes that Gore and Armstrong made a gentlemen’s wager (with no money), with a starting date of 1st Jan 2008. Whose prediction would be more accurate after three years?
This contract will settle (expire) at 100 ($10.00) if Scott Armstrong is more accurate
This contract will settle (expire) at 0 ($0.00) if Al Gore is more accurate
Expiry will be based on the data published by the UAH global temperature record. Expiry will be determined as follows:
* The average of the monthly figures in the third column (Globe) for each year provides the annual global mean temperature anomaly. In 2007, the annual global mean temperature anomaly was 0.284 (calculated by adding together each monthly anomaly figure and dividing by twelve)
* Armstrong forecasts no change in global mean temperature over the next ten years. He predicts the 2010 annual global mean temperature will be 0.284, the same as 2007.
* Gore has not made an official forecast. He did, however, imply that the global mean temperature would increase at a rapid rate – presumably at least as great as the IPCC’s 1992 projection of 0.03°C-per-year. Therefore the IPCC’s 1992 projection will to be taken as Gore’s forecast. This forecast predicts the 2010 annual global mean temperature anomaly to be 0.374 (0.284+[3*0.03])
* The winner will be the forecast with the lowest absolute error: if the 2010 annual global mean temperature anomaly is lower than 0.329, Armstrong wins. If it is equal to or greater than 0.329 then Gore wins.
The contract will be expired once the required data is available. The contract may therefore remain open into early-2011.
The bid price makes it clear that people think the odds are at best 5 to 1 against. and no trade since March, I suspect this is now a lost bet for Armstrong, here is the UAH temperature link, given none of the 5 months of 2010 has dipped below 0.5 it seems unlikely that the year average is going to be below Gore’s ‘bet’ or the IPCC 1992 prediction of 0.374
http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/uahncdc.lt
In fact as seen before the IPCC has been wrong in the past in UNDERESTIMATING the rate of future changes. It has been conservative rather than alarmist.
@ Edward –
“If the rain-forest is removed it will be the greatest ecological disaster since the dinosaur extinction, it can never be used solely for agriculture, the best thing to do with it is…………… leave it alone and allow biologists/botanists/medical scientists to explore ”
As someone who clearly has some insight into these matters, can you shed some light onto how the peoples of the New Guinea highlands have managed a stable agricultural base in a rain forest region for several millenia ?
Why could the same not be done in the Amazon ?
@ orkneylad –
“However this is how science develops – a theory is devised to more or less fit the observations and then new theories are devised to better fit the data.”
But for over a century old theories don’t get refuted and discarded, there is a body of knowledge which IS robust, we don’t need Einstein and special/general relativity for much in general use (more later) Newtons mechanics/gravity is sufficient.
Einstein didn’t replace Newton, he added to it. And that is how science has developed, old theories are complexified, new aspects tie them into a larger body of knowledge rather than ‘prove’ them wrong.
Your refutation of Einstein link was one of the worst I’ve seen.
There are times when our lives DO use Einstein’s relativity. whenever a sat-nav is used there are a whole load of complex corrections required that correct for the time dilation because of relative velocities and gravitational fields. Those corrections are derived from the field equations of GR, without them a sat-nav would be miles out.
Einstein’s relativity theory also emerge with some inevitability from Gaus’s formulae for the unification of electrivcity and magnetism. Its unlikely that could be refuted, especially on electronic media. (-grin-)
There are deep problems in cosmology, but whatever solutions are found will HAVE to be compatible with what has already been established.
Think of it this way, Newtons gravitation always had a problem with the orbit of mercury. It didn’t ‘fit’, the error was small, but it was clearly in the basic theory. However the solution (relativity) was radical but did not negate the accuracy of Newton in those fields where it had already been confirmed.
The solar system was still heliocentric.
It clarified WHERE the Newtonian descriptions were adequate, and where (at the extremes) it required modification.
That is the way modern science evolves, not by paradigm shifts, but by gradual accretion with unifying concepts.
Morning all. Excellent to see the battle joined. The JD blog’s mojo lives on—down here! See if you can round up some of the others and invite them over; I know Izen loves a challenge 😉
I’m doing some construction today… I’m being kicked out of my home office, which is now the nursery. I’m told if I want to keep working (and blogging) I need to build a new base for LibertyGibbert Central. But I’ll pop in occasionally.
Oz
Ed the Amazon was previously heavily farmed about 500 years ago with a thriving civilization, when it collapsed to due foreign diseases introduced by the Spanish accidentally, it recovered very quickly. They also had a trick of making a poor soil fertile with charcoal for hundreds of years nobody has been able to reproduce what they did yet but the soils are called Terra Preata I think or something similar.
@ crownarnourer –
“…the Amazon was previously heavily farmed about 500 years ago with a thriving civilization, when it collapsed to due foreign diseases introduced by the Spanish accidentally, it recovered very quickly.”
I’ve encountered this theory before, and while the population crash is real, the magnitude and possibility of high densities in the rainforest is unlikely given the lack of any domesticated food crop.
Unless anybody knows otherwise…..
Here’s one for all lovers of good music, first half to noidea, the second for all of us!
izen
For the record, I have no opinion on what loss of the Amazon will do to the world.
A poster named cloudman who used to be around, who is a cloud phsycist, said that the people who study clouds have different opinions. Personally, just on the grounds of aesthetic fascination with pristine envirnoments, I want them all to survive. (Though I have spent time in tropical forests. They are a bitch to live in, and I would never want to have to. Great to go see as a tourist, great to watch on documentaries from the comfort of my heated/air)
You started with man cutting down the Amazon.
You then went to man has to adapt and ecologies may be fragile.
You end with C02 is changing the climate and we are all going to starve (or become dinosaurs?).
Why bother with all the window dressing? You have one theme: man’s activities are going to doom man, has well as nature.
Re global temperatures. Maybe you can answer a question I have asked before and have never gotten on answer to. When they keep saying recent global temperatures have been the warmest, where exactly was it the warmest? The cable news network, MSNBC, a big adovcate of AGW, said this last May was the warmest global temperature on record for the month of May and that the past year was the warmest global temperature on record for a year. Temperatures in North America and Europe have been the coldest of recent decades. Where exactly were the massive, unprecedented heat waves that were so much warmer than ever recorded which offset the cooler temperatures in North America and Europe? Where?
So far no one has been able to name those places which would offset the cooler temperatures in North America and Europe. I personally checked temperatures in May where I lived. It ran about 10 degrees cooler than the average for May. So what place on the globe was 11 degrees warmer on average to more than offset my cooler weather? Where offset the unusual snow storms in the Eastern U.S? Etc., etc.
Sorry, didn’t mean to embed the link, wordpress did it guv….
I’ll have to remember to disable the link if posting youtube URLs.
izen
In my last post, I sounded more dismissive of pristine environments than I meant to. I have seen a number, and they are beautiful, moving and awesome. But Europe and Britain were once pristine and covered by forests. Probably much more beautiful, with more animal species. than today. I don’t know that we know the planet has to stay at that level of development, and that other peoples have to live in pristine, wild environments if they don’t want to. I think all you AGW people are mourning the loss of pristine envirnoments (with their flora and fuana) due to the encroachment of humans and AGW is the theory you have come up with to stop any more from being lost. If you addressed that issue directly, I might have more sympathy.
@msher on June 22, 2010 at 9:16 am
Where exactly were the massive, unprecedented heat waves that were so much warmer than ever recorded which offset the cooler temperatures in North America and Europe? Where?
Well, just for our three countries, here are the May maximum anomaly maps for Australia, UK and USA. All up, about one-quarter of the world’s land surface area, I think. You don’t have to be a statistician to read their all-too-obvious message.
Hottest ever? Go figure.
P.S…. to anticipate the usual rejoinder “yeah, but what about the ocean temperature?”: it’s here.
crownarmourer says:
June 22, 2010 at 8:45 am
Thank you crown good points.
Undoubtedly the forest grows back but it is called secondary growth, it does take thousands of years for it to recover properly, the biodiversity of the virgin forest is immense, millions of species of fauna and flora are destroyed and it never really recovers to its once natural state, the soil is gone and under the canopy is pretty thin anyway, much is washed away with the loss of the large fauna ie. the trees, without the forest canopy the land is bare, there is not much light at floor level and consequently not much grows there, when the trees are cut down the rain immediately starts it’s work.
The Spanish idea for placing Carbon (charcoal) back into the ground to replace lost humus SOM is interesting, I would think that this occurred in the Peruvian Amazonian rain forest, would that be correct?
The majority of the Amazonian basin was then mainly impenetrable and the Portuguese held sway over much of it too.
South American history is not my major I’m afraid.
There are of course pockets of better soil and the soil type is much dependent on the underlying geology and the consequent erosion of said rocks, on some alluvial plains obviously the soil is far richer and more fertile, there are alluvial plains in the interior where great tributaries meet the main river, a classic example is where the Rio Negro meets its mother river near Manaus and of course the massive delta where the mighty River Amazon meets the Atlantic.
I studied soils in the northern latitudes, the equatorial belts are a major study in their own right.
TTFN.
Ed.
Ozboy says:
June 22, 2010 at 9:34 am
Nicely Oz:>)
Ed.
@ msher
“Why bother with all the window dressing? You have one theme: man’s activities are going to doom man, has well as nature.”
Not inevitably.
There are several examples of continuous agricultural production sustaining a sequence of societies in various regions of the globe. The New Guinea highlands would be one. The UK another.
There are also examples of civilisations that collapsed in the face of natural changes, often with unsustainable use of the agricultural resource they had.
How robust do you consider modern technological civilisation, and is it a benefit you would want any future societies to enjoy? Might it be prudent to consider how to adapt to change (natural or self-inflicted) and what that change might be.
It certainly is a subject that encourages the media to invent outrageous headlines, and others to obstruct such theorising if their culpability is raised.
quote-“Re global temperatures. Maybe you can answer a question I have asked before and have never gotten on answer to. When they keep saying recent global temperatures have been the warmest, where exactly was it the warmest? …. I personally checked temperatures in May where I lived. It ran about 10 degrees cooler than the average for May. So what place on the globe was 11 degrees warmer on average to more than offset my cooler weather? Where offset the unusual snow storms in the Eastern U.S? Etc., etc.”
Winter Olympics lack of snow…..?
But you might get a better picture from this link –
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=5&submitted=Get+Report
The dot maps in the introduction give the global overview. The high may temperature was down to a warmer ocean more than land, and big local variations on land.
Looks like in may the land hot-spots were western siberia, alaska and a band across central africa, india and indonesia.
@izen
We can agree to disagree with few consequences.
I do notice however, that you decide to ignore the problems with redshift [redshift of quasars travelling 10 times the speed of light] but then I’m used to your ignoring of inconvenient problems. 😉
In a time when Hawkin doubts black holes, when multi-billion dollar satellites can’t find any evidence of gravitational waves, when cosmologists doubt the Big-bang & therefore the expanding universe theory, you seem quite happy to turn a blind eye. Why is that?
I’m perfectly aware that Newtonian mechanics work for many many scenarios, I also know Gauss’ work on electro-magentic theory & of course Maxwell’s Equations [I’m a qualified electro-mechanical engineer, although I don’t work in that field anymore]…..the idea that sat-navs prove General Relativity as ‘irrefutable’ is a rather blinkered perspective.
Einstein was -largely- accepted over Lorentz’s theories at the time, due to Lorentz requiring an ‘ether’ whereas Einstein’s theories required none……however with the discovery of plasma we do now know that there is an ‘ether’ out there……..
“But for over a century old theories don’t get refuted and discarded, there is a body of knowledge which IS robust”
The more distant the galaxy, the larger the redshift (Edwin Hubble 1929)
Nearly 100 years……it’s going….going…..what are you going to think when it goes?
best,
OL
The end of the beginning.
Chapter 9
Illuminated interference
June the twenty first 2029 lunch time
Somewhere in a crack between the Void and the Abyss, on a shard of amethyst the shape and size of the great pyramid inverted, on the base, at the top, in amongst the crazy crystalline slabs and fractured fissures, a raised flat sapphire platform is host to some shady solstice shenanigans. There are few of the black onyx columns still standing that used to hold the chrysoprase dome, the apple green semi translucent pieces of the roof now shattered and scattered. In the middle, a strange ancient table is the setting for a strange ancient tableau.
On the table, is a cup golden and battered, a wand white gnarled holly, a challis containing chrome ichor, a sword writ with runes and a flaming innocence censer.
Three crackling energy forms coalesced towards the sanctum sanctorum at the nexus, the movements of the energy forms where synchronized, dancing, pulsating and weaving, ever closer to the squat dark figure lurking at the centre of the rostrum next to the ancient triclinium triangulem. The squat dark one known as Dancer Rat continued to chant and strike discordant notes on the trigonum lyre. It chanted in its bubbling pipsqueak rodent voice the words of the Argentinaium Astrum Aphyd Apocalypseum
“The holy ghost- FOOL- knight errant.
Folly’s doom is ruin.
The messenger Prometheus
The juggler with the secret of the universe
The virgin
The guardian archangel is attained
By Self-sacrifice and Equilibrium
Alchemical salt
The gate of the equilibrium of the universe
The Sun. Redeemer
The son is but the son.
Twins reconciled the answer of the oracle is always death.
The chariot containing life
The secret of the universe
Sangraal The act of power
She who rules the secret force of the universe
The Virgin man, Secret Seed of All
Secret of the gate of initiation
The All-father in 3 forms Fire, Air and Water.
In the whirlings is war. The woman is justified.
By equilibrium and sacrifice is the GATE opened wide!”
With a flourish he threw in some sulfuric salts on to the flaming incense stencher with a whoosh of incandescent bright violet flames and dense dark blue acrid smoke billowing and flowing into the triad of luminescent energy forms, with each ghastly throb, each snapping fizzle, they became less ethereal and energetic and more corporeal and lethargic. The amorphous shadowy blobs that had been crackling sizzling glowing energy beings now resembled lumpish sacks of coal with the occasional flicker of ghostly plasma as they morphed into solid shape and became those whom had been summoned. As each of the forms assumed the correct attitude on the couches provided and developed eyes to see and mouths to shout exclaimed with one voice
“YOU! HIM! WHAT!”
They were not best pleased to see one another.
“Stop the squabbling you imbeciles”
squeaked the rodentish one in its sternest bark
“assume the positions and chant the shouts before dissolution begins.”
With a palpable hissing of discontent each member grasped and grabbed until they had a firm rough grip on each others genitalia, holding hands and phalluses they began the hand shake of shame, the most secret and shamefully elite of the ritualistic initiation ceremonies.
With all four of these dread beings now chanting the same cacophonic chorus, the three niners and the one elevener, as they where known by a few, became as one voice, a hive collective medium.
“The man drowned in the “womb” flood
The secret is hidden between the waters
That are above and the waters below
The putrefaction in the absolute
Initiation is guarded on both sides by death
The womb preserving life
Self control and sacrifice
Govern the wheel
The exhausted phallus
The secret of generation is death
The crowned and the conquering children emerging
From the womb to the fortress most high
Alchemical sulphur the brown dead star
The gate at the sanctuary of glamour
Illusionary is the initiator of disorder
The slain Gods
Universe is the hexagram”
The secret sacred seed now sprayed in unison tantric streams splashing into the challis containing chrome ichor, and on to the summoned, the redeemer in the waters, the redeeming belly which kills. The triple trinity of the planets, the triplicities of the zodiac, the pantacle of the whole, the slain god entities formally known as TeshMenQuph (now with an unpronounceable name) now pulled its blooming inflating heaving bulk clear of the stagnant shiny pool of ichor with a swift violence, spraying an iridescent rainbow of filth over the vile participants in this cancerous ceremony.
With a booming crack the elder slain god entities formally known as TeshMenQuph opened its mouths for the first time in a millennium, the vast inhalation started with a groan that soon built to a rushing wind that continued to grow in ferocity creating a vacuum vortex of hurricane like power. The stinking sackcloth rags the group had been wearing were stripped from their corpulent bodies, leaving them naked and bald and shivering, smeared in oily gunk.
WHAT ARE THE GENETHLIAC VALUES OF THE PLANETS?
Boomed out the thrice amplified gods voices
Edward glared at Lafayette and Marvel, they glared back, and then they all glared at Dancer Rat. “You are the eleven” gurgled Edward at Dancer Rat “you are the holder of the planetary alignment and conjunction data”
Dancer Rat drew itself up to its most imposing stance and began squeaking in its most authorative tone
“The Varying strength of the global tide raising forces together with parameters that reveal the basis for the 11,800- and 15,000-year tidal cycles, as described in the omicron omnitext. The plots are for a hypothetical 110-kyr sequence of tidal events beginning with the moon, sun, and earth in perfect alignment and closest approach of zero separation-intervals, producing a maximum yield of 117.165° per day never again attained. Tidal events occurring near peaks in the 5,000-year cycle near zero crossings are connected by straight lines to reveal their pattern. The magnetic filament coronal rain manifestations will therefore, combine with an unnatural bond angle if one is a bond angle other than 104.5 degrees. For example, the bond angle may be greater than approximately 104.5 degrees. In some embodiments, the bond angle may be greater than approximately 109 degrees. In some embodiments, the bond angle may be 180 degrees.
The first frequency may be the intrinsic or inherent frequency generated by a power source. The second frequency may be the resonating frequency generated from the plurality of reality’s…”
Its voice petered out as it noticed the withering, malevolent glare of the others.
“It is six, six and six”
it squeaked and sat down in a deflated manner. Marvel Whiteside and Lafayette Ron both smirked and looked at Edward Alexander expecting to see great concern, they were both disconcerted to see that instead of the worrisome frown they expected to see, there was a huge gaping grin
“It is not my pseudonym with which you should be so enamored”
The obese figure chortled and chuckled, great gobs of spittle flying hither and thither. “Among the paths of the serpent this creative energy is expressed according to various modes:”
Edward Alexander Crowley spoke in a slow phlegmy guttural voice
“by the eleventh path, the wandering fool, who impregnates the king’s daughter, by the twenty seventh path, which represents Phallum Ejaculentum”
The corpulent trio now all swiveled to stare with great relish at the ratty one. Marvel Whiteside Parsons, now Jack then John exclaimed, Nodding his head towards Lafayette Ron Hubbard.
“By Pans beard you are right Crowley, damn shame it could not have been this boat swindling, wife stealing piece of garbage that we have to sacrifice!”
Hubbard just grinned and nodded, all his flaccid jowls joining in the insane jiggling.
The slain god entities formally known as TeshMenQuph now wheeled and screamed in its thrice amplified gods voices
“DANCER RON, YOU ARE IT.”
And with a startling burst of speed snatched up the rat like being and ripped it to pieces gobbling down gobbets of rancid rat flesh and giblets. With morsels of flesh and gore dangling from its gaping maws the horror of horrors once more breathed in with cyclonic abandon before uttering the thrice amplified
“CORRUPTION IS POWER, ABSOLUTE CORRUPTION IS ABSOLUTE POWER”
As The slain god entities formally known as TeshMenQuph finished shouting there was a noise like a barely contained fart at a wedding, sneaking out in fits and starts under the incomprehensible bowel pressure that only occurs at such inappropriate times. The slain god entities formally known as TeshMenQuph were shrinking in size collapsing back into ichor from whence they came.
“THE AOEN OF HORUS IS UPON YOU, SO MOTE IT BE”
With a final fizzle and a pop it was gone.
There was an eerie silence for a moment, and then Hubbard started to wail
“How are we going to get off of here? Our number eleven has gone”
“Shut up bonsai dick”
Snapped Parsons, giving Hubbard a slap in the chops and a tweaked nipple in the process.
Crowley intervened in his strange squelching voice
“wait a minute you fools, do you not realize the name that the slain god entities formally known as TeshMenQuph called Dancer Rat, not rat but Ron, Dancer Ron, do you know what that means?”
He glared at the pair, his impatience growing visibly.
“Da,Da,Daddy” wailed Hubbard.
Crowley smiled at Hubbard like a badger eating a watermelon.
“Yes, that verminous one was your Daddy”
To be continued…?
NoIdea
Izen they farm manioc and a few other plants there is only one surviving village from that time, they also used fish ponds from the rainy season flooding to provide a source of protein, they canalized the amazon for transport as well.
Also it looks like they have passed the legislation giving the POTUS the right to shutdown the interweb. That was kept quiet.
Evening all,
Just back in and a pleasure to read a running debate by simply scrolling down a screen. Bliss.
Pointman
@ Old Toad June 22, 2010 at 1:24 am
Thanks for getting back to us on JD’s situation. If I have misjudged him, I won’t hesitate to apologise.
However………
On the occasions when he has actually addressed comments to his contributors,
“And to those of you muppets who accuse me of any kind of cowardice, moral or physical, I should like to raise my middle finger and invite you to swivel thereon……… Your sanctimonious posturing disgusts me more than I can say. I’m glad if you’ve decided no longer to read my blog. You are not worthy of it and you can rot in your smug, safe little beds”,
plus, on the Disqus re-configuration to his blog
“Some of you seem to be under the impression that I don’t love you or that I have not been fighting your corner over the great comment redesign. You should be ashamed of yourselves for making such unfounded accusations…..I am doing what I can and have been assured that my blog especially will be kept moderation-light….. But FFS, some of you, give me the benefit of the doubt and get off my case”.
Toad, I was not the beneficiary of an extended formal education like JD, but I DO have a PhD from the University of Life, and one of the most important things I’ve learned is that “you can’t un-ring a bell”. That applies to the spoken word and the written word as well, and hitting the “delete” key doesn’t extract the barbs once they are delivered. For that reason, I usually mean exactly what I say or write and stand by those views until such time as I’m proven wrong. JD is free to do so any time.
We have ALL made commitments to the business of getting on with Life and our livelihoods (none moreso than Ozboy right now).
Incidentally, as Oz is surely a busy bloke, may I presume to answer for him on your query about cane toads? They are quite useful really – their skins make great boots, shoes, wallets and bags. Apart from marauding through the countryside from northern NSW to Darwin, they also kill domestic dogs and cats who tangle with them.
Oh, and as I see it, they didn’t “emigrate” here, they were kidnapped and forcibly transported by some know-nothing smart-arsed bloody “scientist” (and they ALWAYS know best) to eat cane-beetles.
Just have a quiet word with your cousins Toad, an’ tell ’em to “Bugger Off”. LOL
Cheers.
@ msher-
“Europe and Britain were once pristine and covered by forests. Probably much more beautiful, with more animal species. than today….I think all you AGW people are mourning the loss of pristine envirnoments (with their flora and fuana) due to the encroachment of humans and AGW is the theory you have come up with to stop any more from being lost. If you addressed that issue directly, I might have more sympathy.”
I recognise that neo-romantic ‘pristine nature’ ethos and would agree that it is a motive for some.
Its not a view I share.
I prefer the manufacture landscape of Europe and Britain, it speaks of human wellbeing and progress. There have been a LOT of ‘natural’ landscapes across Europe/UK, including glacial ice-sheets. Whatever ‘pristine beauty’ they may have had, the present permiculture modification of the ‘natural’ world is of great benefit to humans, I value that more than an ecology of benefit to trilobites.
Let me play devils advocate for a view, no longer fashionable, that values human achievement above the ‘wonders of Nature’ new-age woo.
Fermi’s paradox is that if sentient intelligence is possible in a near infinite universe, and improves with time, Where the H*ll are they all?
One slightly humerous answer has been that we do not yet meet their criteria for sentience. We live on a wild untamed planet that still has its ongoing genetic system with little or no intervention or control from us. We require the ‘natural’ biodiversity for the robustness of our ecosystem because we are not sentient enough to have understood the biology and complexity of it and constructed our own, better and more specifically optimal for human existence.
Similarly we have not yet gained control over the climate of the planet we live on, we remain at mercy of its variability with ice-ages and hot regimes. We are living in a largely unmodified and certainly unimproved ‘house’ (Earth) with no better food and energy supply than that we can gather from the surrounding wild resources.
The exceptions would be nuclear energy and electricity generation/use. but this is at a primitive and unsustainable level.
To any sentient starfaring race we must look like a primitive hominid living in a cave, using stone tools who has just found that if he bangs the rocks together….
The point being that it is not backward into a mythic perfection of a ‘Natural’ world that I would advocate from this POV, but to strive for a greater control of the material resources, what others have called the instrumentality, that is available to humans.
We should be seeking ways to change the world for human benefit, and avoid damaging it for human benefit, not because a cute looking mammal is endangered.
Izen they are here, but for some really strange reason they like to abduct people from the boonies and anal probe them. Which says a lot about intelligence the Universe over.
Oz.
Sounds like an exciting project…need a hand?
Scud arrives 2 days later after a cruelling 22 hour plane journey.
‘Hi Oz.’
‘Hi Scud thanks for coming over.’
‘Bollocks. I’ve forgotten me pencil.’
Edward.
June 22, 2010 at 3:58 am
Wotcha Ed.
Thanks for the links.
Roger Harrabin is so typical of the ilk.
I had a spare couple of hours this afternoon and spent them masochistically looking over the other side of the fence.
Depressingly, it seems that the old rhetoric is almost back to where it was before the CRU email release…particularly over at the Guardian where Monbiot’s getting all personal and frothy over the likes of Lord Monkton and Matt Ridley, the former of which had 700+ equally unpleasant comments.
I just don’t understand these people.
‘Tayles’ (an excellent past contributor over at the DT) would eloquently put across his take on the mindset of the left and after reading I’d think, ‘Ahh…got it!’
Unfortunately though, I haven’t seen a post from Tayles for quite a while so I’m left with my own interpretation and that is that they’re simply wankers.
They have no problem with lies. No problem with fraud. No problem with personal smear. No problem with childish tactics to close down a debate…in fact they positively advocate all of these negative and disgusting traits quite openly and shamelessly.
They have no practical solutions to their supposed problem whatsoever, either politically or technologically. Out of that 700+ comments for example, slagging off Monckton. I bet (obviously I’m not going to read them all) not a single one would attempt to provide a workable alternative. They just use this laughable shite as a fraudulent vehicle with which to attack progress, democracy, success, comfort and indeed anything that’s good in life that one can think of and for what ends Christ only knows.
God, I hate ‘em!
Hi Scud. Tayles is the missing man – has anyone any info on his whereabouts?
Pointman
scud1 your argument for them being Onanists is spot on.
Hi everyone pointman, blackswan and izen also anybody else still awake.
izen says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:27 am
“We live on a wild untamed planet that still has its ongoing genetic system with little or no intervention or control from us”……….
“we have not yet gained control over the climate of the planet we live on, we remain at mercy of its variability with ice-ages and hot regimes”.
Agreed.
You still haven’t explained how, by taxing the production of Co2 (a trace atmospheric gas and a building-block of Life on this planet) and rendering Energy progressively unaffordable, it will have the slightest effect on the climate.
Until you answer THAT, your detract/distract/avoid/Google-it MO is worthless.
And what if (as continues on a daily basis), your preposterous AGW hypotheses are proven to be nonsense (as they are)?
To use the battle-cry of our absent mate Memoryvault………
“WHAT IS YOUR BLOODY PLAN B?”, when millions have suffered and died for want of heat, food and the ability to earn a living?
Get back to us when you have figured THAT out.
izen says:
June 22, 2010 at 9:45 am
“Looks like in may the land hot-spots were western siberia, alaska and a band across central africa, india and indonesia”.
More with “hot-spots” already?
Try this, courtesy of TUB on JD’s blog……….
“The warmists have seen this rebuttal coming for a while, and have been arguing that the hot spot is there, just hard to detect, despite the simple truth that the weather balloon can measure well within the accuracy required to detect it. The weather balloons measure to 0.1C while the hot spot should be at least 0.6C”.
http://wallstreetpit.com/32342-co2-negated-as-cause-of-global-warming
I can only repeat my reply to TUB………
“Sad news TUB,
“the hot spot could not be found”…..
Long shots, sweet spots, G spots, red dots, hot spots – all a bugger to find.
I’m sure they’ll think of something else.
Msher
On JD’s blog, you addressed the following to me………….
“Black Swan
“As I understand it, any old POTUS gets to be engine-driver on the gravy train, regardless of Who put the wheels on it.” (previous comment from me)
Could you explain what you are referring to. This isn’t argumentative. I just can’t tell what the “gravy train” is”.
Courtesy of emily/mack today on JD…………..
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/06/is_obamas_bp_shakedown_an_impe.html
THAT is a POTUS Gravy Train……….
I can only add my previous footnote: Perhaps the caboose would be more appropriate.
Come to think of it, the kind with bars on the window and a BIG padlock of the doors.
izen…..“We live on a wild untamed planet that still has its ongoing genetic system with little or no intervention or control from us”……….
Anybody told Monsanto.
Ozboy
Here is something very discouraging to me: a couple of years ago, I had faith in institutions like NASA and NOAA. My journey through the world of AGW has completely destroyed my trust in them. I have spent some time this year on the web site of the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, which is where the weather stations supposedly come from. Somewhere on their web site they talk about the role of the world’s weather services in monitoring climate change. I sure think they have all been corrupted. When I see NASA struggling for funds, and then learn that they have proposals for carbon monitoring satellites – well, there goes my trust in them.
Questions about the maps you and izen linked to:
I looked at the U.S. map you linked to for May. It shows the eastern coast warmer than usual and the western part of the country cooler. Someone obviously has to do the math. But I know people along the Eastern coast of the U.S. I was not hearing about heat waves. It does not coincide with what I have seen on the news or with what I have heard from friends and family who live in various places in the U.S.But OK, say I am wrong about May. I haven’t been paying intense attention to the weather in places other than my own home (where as the map shows, it has been cooler).
Below is wordage from link for the U.S. in May that izen linked.
“The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for May 2010 was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F). This is the warmest such value on record since 1880.”
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2010&month=5&submitted=Get+Report
Do any of us believe that the land measurements are in similar places in terms of population and land use as a century ago or even 30 years ago? Also, if it was as high or higher in 1880, why did it get colder after that?
Re worldwide temperatures: Izen says “Looks like in may the land hot-spots were western siberia, alaska and a band across central africa, india and indonesia.”
Right, not anywhere we hear about the weather and/or where anyone who can be interviewed lives. Alaska maybe we could double check.
Again from Izen’s linked material:
“The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January–May 2010 was the warmest on record. The year-to-date period was 0.68°C (1.22°F)”
What about last winter when there were blizzards across the northeast and animals were freezing in south Florida? It was cold on the West Coast also. I simply do not believe that temperatures in the U.S. were higher. I don’t know anyone on the East or West Coasts of the U.S.who would say the past winter wasn’t colder than usual. Find me someone who lives somewhere who says it was warmer where they live I know one person who lives in a California desert who thinks there might not have been as much snow on the adjacent mountains this winter. That is offset by the 3 friends I have who visit frequently in areas below the next mountain over to those mountains who think there was much more snow than usual.
Also, I could add that December was an unusually cold year in the U.S. Do we know what they did with December temperatures in their averages?
I don’t know about where they measure on oceans. We have had a lot of discussion about the rigging of land measurements, but we haven’t gone into ocean measurements. Should I have any more faith in supposed historical ocean measurements than we do in supposed land measurements.
———————
izen
Re lack of snow at Olympics. OK. What about the unusually late snowfalls in the Sierra Nevada this past spring? (Mountains that run north/south between California and Nevada.)
I probably agree with most of your post of 10:27 am. The AGW agenda extracts the wealth of the industrialized West and puts it in the hands of socialist-leaning, high tax big governments, the UN, third world kleptocrats, developing nation multi-nationals, government-crony, heavily subsidized alternative energy “entrepreneurs” and a new carbon trading class (with a crony relationship to governments). How does that serve your vision? My starting and ending place has always been that I don’t want the world’s future in those hands.
Did you ever address “carbon credits” from the Amazon ending up in the hands of the World Wildlife Federation? Whose development and whose sustainability does that help?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7488629/WWF-hopes-to-find-60-billion-growing-on-trees.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/21/autosub_in_pig_melt_clue/
Blackswan Tasmania
Thanks. I didn’t understand the “gravy train” reference because I thought it had something to do with the Supreme Court, and I couldn’t figure out how that fit.
I agree with most of the article you linked to. The one bright spot is, as far as I know, Feinberg, the adminstrator of the escrow, was competent in disbursing the 911 compensation funds. That fund was as extraordinary and extra-legal as this escrow fund.
crownarmourer says:
June 22, 2010 at 12:35 pm
“Anybody told Monsanto”?
Obviously not……..or the animal-husbandry industry, or the human reproduction industry.
BTW – saw a chap on telly the other day promoting his “new strain” of tomatoes. The big “sell” is that it’s not watery, won’t make your sammidges soggy as the water is contained within the cells.
So I bought some. All true. It’s like slicing a cucumber. But we didn’t once hear the term “genetically modified”. Now it’s “selective breeding”. Been doing that to agriculture for millennia.
Personally, I prefer those big, fat, juicy on-the-truss tomatoes. You know the ones they grow in commercial greenhouses, where they pump in mega-levels of CARBON DIOXIDE.
Oooops, yuk! I’ve been munching on hideously polluted and contaminated greenhouse produce. I’ll have to go back to growing my own. Ooops again! I forgot. Commercial seeds have all been modified and patented.
I reckon the Roma tomatoes I’ve been able to grow down here are the best I’ve ever tasted. And at only 385 ppmv CO2 (snigger)… wait till I’ve built my greenhouse! – Oz
crownarmourer says:
June 22, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Your really interesting link contains………..
“thought to be a major cause of rising sea levels worldwide”.
Can I offer the studied opinions of Prof John Daly, whose untimely death was such “cheering news” to Phil Jones and the UEA CRU cabal……
http://www.john-daly.com/index.htm
Bottom line: WHAT rising sea levels?
Blackswan the monsanto deal is they are promoting a mono culture in cereals which is not a wise move in my mind it’s putting your eggs in one basket it’s also putting out of business small farmers who can keep any of the cereal for replanting next year and have to buy new seed stock every year, by law in the USA you can not keep seed for replanting.
Blackswan it will also be day of the Triffids the way they are going, I don’t wan’t my tomato’s attacking me one day.
G’day Oz,
When “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”, arthritis trumps gardening every time.
Still, I got to bring up my newly hatched cygnets on organic veggies and free-range eggs and it looks like your little “Ozzies” will have a similar good start.
The greenhouse idea is looking increasingly appealing (and necessary) if the looney-toons get their way.
Regards to Mrs OZ and good luck with your building project.
PS – If Baby is now in your office, where are you? In the chookhouse? LOL
Loungeroom – a transit station only, I’m being kicked upstairs (literally) to my shed loft. The floor’s a bit rickety, so I’m building some additional support.
Sorry to hear about the arthritis, swanny. Many years ago, my sister (a naturopath) convinced our grandmother to wear a copper bracelet. Worked a treat, she always said. A quick search turned up this place in Kingston… maybe worth a look – Oz
crownarmourer says:
June 22, 2010 at 1:33 pm
It seems all the patented seeds, flowers and veggies alike, are sterile hybrids. SOBs!! I wonder why any govt would legislate to prevent sowing saved seeds. Nah, it couldn’t be to allow their corporate mates to create monopolies could it? And Third World growers of cash crops to be thoroughly and inexorably dependent on those for whom they toil? Nah, what a dreadful thought.
Msher, I can hear that Gravy Train chugging in the distance.
Luckily Crown, we have “Heritage Seed Banks”, canny folks whose mission is to save all the seeds of old varieties of everything they can find. They even prowl around the derelict gardens of ramshackle pioneer cottages, true hunters and gatherers. Can’t remember the details now, but I’m sure they’re on the Web.
Cheers.
Thanks Oz,
Have a copper bracelet, a wide copper ring on my thumb and lots of magnets in my wool underlay. Try anything once……
Now, have they invented a big copper waistband for a buggered back? Digging all those veggies, turning all that compost, chopping all that wood… ah, those were the good old days.
Blackswan
“cygnets”
You actually have swans? Real swans?
I love swans.
When I lived in New York, I sometimes spent weekends in Connecticut where there were woods and ponds. Sometimes I saw big white swans swimming in ponds. Where do they come from? Do they really exist in the wild? I mean, they are mythical creatures that exquisite ballerinas pretend to be in Swan Lake. And sometimes in exotic theme parks there are swans. But do you really have them? Black swans? I’ve seen them. They are really elegant.
White trumpeter swans gliding in the water are mystical in their grace.
Swans are supposed to be feisty and mean. Are yours?
If you really have swans, where did they come from? I thought they come from cold climes.
Blackswan if I had my own plot of land that’s the type of seed I would plant in this climate it is heck to work outside in the summer it gets so hot it will kill you if your not careful not to mention the bugs. Being British though I would always mow my yard when I had one at midday to show the natives how foolish they were and lazy.
I have learned to be guided by native custom these days. When your on the same latitude as Casablanca working at mid day is not a smart idea.
msher the swan is a royal bird and protected as such only the queen is allowed to eat them. Beautiful creatures and found all over England these days now a lot of the pollution has gone. You even find them in the canals in London.
I stopped arguing with you on the IQ blog because I remembered never argue with a lawyer you will lose an ex girlfriend studying for the bar taught me that.
Oz,
PS. Funny where we set-up-shop. When the cygnets fledged and gave us more room, I moved out of the home-office (keep the business stuff in there), and now have a monitor and keyboard on the end of the kitchen bench. Hub of the household. Can keep an eye on things, catch up on posts waiting for the kettle to boil, stirring the gravy, peeling carrots. Also installed a computer TV card so I have a wee screen in the topleft of the monitor so I can actually watch should anything catch my interest. Listening to KRudd at Question Time right now. Broadband Network anyone?
This new arrangement works a treat for me.
crownarmourer
I never have a clue what the issue is on Thompson’s blog. Every so often when his article appears to be about something secular, I try some posts to see if I’m in the same universe as Thompson’s posters, who are focused on ecclesiastical issues (something I know nothing about). Even when I think I can write about an issue, I never find myself on the same issue as the rest of the posters. My track record for being on point, in terms of what that blog is doing, is zero, nada, zilch.
You mentioned Satanists. Careful, you will be ex-communicated over there.
I’m not sure we were arguing. I think we both agree that smart people are smart, although they may not be talented, socially adjusted or even successful.
Re swans: Maybe it’s that I was always a ballet fan and have seen many dozens of productions of Swan Lake. I find them mesmerizing. They don’t exist in the wild in the two places I have lived in most – California and New York City. Geese are all over, but not swans. I think it’s pretty amazing that birds as big as geese, which I find beautiful (and nuisances if in too big of numbers) can fly, but the thought of swans flying is mind boggling. But mostly it is how graceful they are in the water.
Do you see flocks or gaggles or whatever they are called of swans flying in formation across the English skies?
The swans I used to happen upon in Connecticut, I have no idea where they came from, nor did the friends I used to stay with. It wasn’t thought that they were wild, as no one had ever seen them flying. On the other hand, they weren’t tame. They wouldn’t let you get near them.
crownarmourer
Eat the swans?
That just hit me. I don’t think I have ever seen swan on a menu or heard anyone talk about eating them. In Swan Lake, the Prince and his friends are out hunting swans, so Tchaikovsky who wrote the score and Ivanov who choeographed it, must have thought people ate swans. Or at least they did in czarist Russia. But I don’t think I have come across the idea anywhere else.
Hi Msher
My avatar is from our family album, LOL.
Yes we truly have wild swans, all black, over most of coastal Oz (except in the northern tropics I think). They nest in reedy riverbanks and wetlands. On grassy riverside meadows they graze among the dairy cows, an amazing sight.
Four years ago when we returned to Tasmania we were lucky enough to find a house right on a riverbank. So-so house, out-of-this-world location. Every day, flocks of swans fly by my house or paddle by on the river sometimes, in season, with their fluffy grey cygnets in orderly lines.
When I first found JD’s blogs on AGW, I tried to think of a username that worked for me. At school I was told of a basic tenet of science along the lines of, If you see ONLY white swans you may presume ALL swans are white. It is a scientist’s obligation to look for a black swan, thereby disproving his theory. It worked for me.
Yes, swans are mean critters if you threaten their young or their territory, but they are loyal and devoted parents (mate for life) and always return to the best nesting sites (as have I). Watched a pair nest-building once. They pluck reeds from the bank and meticulously weave them into a giant nest. I guess they have become my “totem”.
Sheesh, just went out back for a smoke (sorry Walt), and there’s a bloody great sea lion in the river, rolling about waving his flippers in the air!
Gotta go, see ya later.
Sssshhh! Tassie’s a secret we’d best not tell too many people about – Oz 😉
msher swans migrate to sunnier climes in winter not much good trying to swim on ice.
Beautiful animals and yes you can eat them. However give them room and they will not bother you like Geese, however a swan can harm you with it’s wings even break your arm.
Bald Eagles also migrate and if you wish to see them come to Reeelfoot lake in Tennessee in January wonderful sight and I know where they roost by the Hotel on the Lake. Also there is a great restaurant with good ole southern cookin, hushpuppies and catfish artery clogging food close by at the nature center.
As for Damiens blog you do get the devout followers there you are fortunate not to understand the religious mess in Europe, these are the kind of people if the Pope called for a new Crusade they would join up, you can not argue with these people.
ozboy then you had you better tell people about the giant Snuffleuppagous that eats people in Tas.
No need: check my avatar – Oz
Black Swan
Can you post pictures of them? Are they very elegant like the ones I have seen? Smaller than the giant trumpeters?
Odette – the white swan
(I may have seen this performance, as I went to many of the Swan Lakes this pair did. I have seen many great ballerinas since my childhood. This is my favorite. I just realized: my first sentence was wrong – “many” great ballerinas. No, there are maybe a dozen that stand out as the all time greats. This is still my favorite.)
Odile the Black Swan
Watch to end. Ballerina does 32 fouettés (turns on point on one leg) without stopping and without losing her balance. Did anyone say ballet dancers aren’t atheletes?
msher one thing is why swans are found in the northern and southern hemispheres always puzzled me they must be an old lineage in evolutionary terms.
Sorry Oz, I can’t help running off at the mouth. My enthusiasm is outweighed only by my appreciation.
Last word on swans, I promise.
Msher
A number of geese OR swans in flight is a “skein”, and both have that characteristic V formation. As for being on the menu………
As the Queen is also our Head of State, I wonder if it is her Royal prerogative to put our black ones on her banquet table. If so, I’d have to politely request that she keep her bejewelled hands off our chooks!
Wow, they’d certainly make some serious Buffalo Wings! LOL
Black Swan
No, don’t make that your last word on swans. Talk about them whenever you see them and they are beautiful or are doing something unexpected – like grazing among the cows. What do the cows make of them?
Do they habitate the same waters as geese? If so, what is the pecking order (pun intended)? I lived for a few years on a small lake inhabited by ducks. Then the geese came and within a few years the ducks were mostly gone and the geese had taken over. It was easy to see why. Not only the obvious that they were bigger, but they were smarter and much, much better parents. So how do swans and geese fare together? The black swans I have seen are about the same size as geese in body, maybe a bit heavier, but with slightly shorter necks (or they tuck in their necks more).
I have a few books on birds, and I have looked up swans. They talk about swans in northern, cold climates. No mention of southern swans. If swans are happier in warm climates (as geese are starting to decide they are), maybe we could start an AGW skeptics movement: “Make the world warmer and save the swans.”
Mornin’ all,
The rag (grauniad) of global warming is at it again, f**k me what a set of boneheads.
“But the central idea seems to be that the more a scientist gets their work published and cited in “climate-relevant publications”, the more credibility they should be accorded as an “expert” in that field. Nothing revolutionary in this, of course: it’s the way it works in any academic discipline. However, it is still illuminating to see their findings laid out so succinctly.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jun/21/trust-climate-scientists
This highlights another rather large elephant in the room, if you are a budding scientist say in the dubious subject (God help you) of
astrologyclimatology and you toe the line – write a dissertation on, were all doomed cos Al Gore told us so! then you have no difficulty with having your ‘investigative’ corroborative postulation published because many, if not all publications are ………guess what? Yeah pro AGW …no shit.Leo Hickman is a
twat, he is not a journalist he is a surrender monkeyan apologist for the Moonbat brigade.At the heart of this appalling guff is the undeniable fact, in that there is no major study centre in the USA or UK or anywhere else for that matter where a student, still less a researcher could or would be able to pursue a dissertation or doctorate and thesis into an anti CAGW project….is there?
All this peer review idea is of course part of the problem, the AGW gang all know each other, all gather together and use each others work, therefore they are hardly likely to break ranks, no that would take a real man to do that and in twerps like Mann/Jones/Hansen et al, I do not perceive a excess of large cojones.
So Hickman, it is hardly surprising to read these findings is it? QED.
Ending of rant, Hickman get lost.
Mornin’ Oz and Swanie, the Tassie terrible twins!, on Tassie, the reason I would go to Tasmania is because it sounds different and there seems to be an individuality in the air ,the folks and the land, that appeals to me and that sort of thing always has and you keep on about the place……..hehe!
I extend my most sincerest regards to all (non inclusive of grauniad skulkers and AGW exponents/dribblers),
Ed.
Sorry again Oz, I’ll keep my promise in a minute……….
Msher,
For starters, thanks for your interest in my feathered brothers and cousins, the following links may help, the 2nd being on Cape Barren geese, a Tassie native, one of the rarest geese in the world, and able to drink salt/brackish water.
http://www.australianfauna.com/blackswan.php
http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/file.aspx?id=6420
White settlers first arrived here in 1803, and as often was the case, left by London on the brink of starvation, so the swans and geese as well as a unique small emu (like an ostrich but soon killed off to extinction), made easy pickings for the settlement and probably saved them.
Regarding the geese on your lake, our birds seem a pretty tolerant lot (bit like us really) and wild ducks aplenty seem to live here happily with the swans, pelicans, cormorants etc.
The swans go to sleep with their long necks coiled flat along their backs with heads tucked under their wings. Very bizarre sight, a bundle of feathers comes bobbing by on an outgoing tide, quite oblivious.
Cheers.
A nice little poem I found to start / finish the day off with…
June 20, 2010 7:41 AM
By Meme Mine
‘To Invent Armageddon
When software can model worlds ending in flame,
And Hansen and Gore paint brushstrokes of blame,
And other false prophets scream, “GREEN” in their name,
I wonder a bit, just a tiny amount,
How many people know what it’s about,
And how many good folk can see past the shame
While driving around in their carbon-mobiles,
immersed in the guilt of spinning their wheels,
Intent on respecting the earth just the same,
They play the victim while playing the game…
Warming and cooling are twins of the world,
But one twin is cruel and one twin is good.
You’d know the cruel one if you saw his work,
When fog freezes flesh and wolves howl in the murk,
When the Vikings were booted from Greenland’s embrace,
And the so-called “little ice-age” tried it’s best to erase
All that we made that the warm winds delivered,
As the darkness descended, we froze and we shivered,
Awaiting the warming that came far too late,
‘Til a third of the world were slaughtered by fate.
The globe still recovers and glaciers still melt,
And though a chill in the air can almost be felt,
There’s nothing more normal than warming that’s global,
Despite Chicken Littles droning on about weather
And whether or not science daring to question
Their dogma is legal, and should even be mentioned,
Their hockey-stick lies tilt mad at the skies,
To invent armageddon, true science DIES…’
________________________________________
Izen.
What scares you more?
AMan made C02 or this….
http://www.prisonplanet.com/carbon-tax-on-electricity-to-send-prices-skyrocketing.html
Hmm…seems if you press ‘tab’ it posts your comment.
Izen…A = MMC02. B= The plans contained in the link.
Just an A or B answer…
scud1 says:
June 22, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Lo! scud1,
Better not mention the game today, don’t want to upset our kind hosts.
Should be a cracking series, equally poised and a good hors d’oeuvre for the coming big one down here.
Like your versifying, prefer your rants tho’:>)))))
Meanwhile the Aussies are going as daft as us in the UK.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/21/2932699.htm?section=justin
What is this guy’s expertise?
Reminds me of………My old mate Nick (loved it when he got pi**ed) went to his wife’s Bank Chrissy do (he’s an accountant) and drank a lot of free shampoo and later came out with – announcing it to most of the room…….. (ala Black adder)…..”A banker….rhymes with…..” .
I still smile at that:>)
Ed.
Scud,
“Armageddon” – a gem. Congratulations.
As for izen’s question – you forgot option an “C”.
How about, as the whole charade is a crock, how about memoryvault’s
“WHAT’S YOUR PLAN B”?
Black Swan. You seem to doing for Ozboy what I’m trying to do for James. They’re both busy lads who put their family first. James is always right, except when he’s wrong, his intolerance can be worrying and his responses are not always what folk would like to hear.
Unlike the Great Moonbat who, as poster boy for the Grauniad, is the centre of sycophantic adulation, James has to plough a very lonely furrow, in the DT.
Ozboy says ” The JD blogs mojo lives on down here … round up the others and invite them over”. I’m all for that, this is an excellent blog and it deserves support, but the ‘frontline’ is still over at CIF (Guardian) and on JD and Gerald Warner’s blogs.
As a regular poster on the DT you and others are helping to expose expose scams like O’Barmy’s $20 billion slush fund from BP. This is a total war which we must fight together and I cannot accept all ‘mojo’ has leached out of the JD blog.
On the ‘Toad’ front, as a former secretary of the International Herpetological Society I have collected ‘Marine’ Toads in Barbados (before CITES). My ambition was always to visit N.Australia with its huge concentration of frogs and toads. I was of course horrified to read that the now renamed ‘Cane’ Toads were wiping out entire populations of your indigenous herpetofauna.
OT, totally agree re the main focus of activity. I’m not precious about this blog, I have no pretensions about becoming another god-emperor (whoops, I’m pre-empting my next thread). I’d be tickled pink if (as Walt suggested) my place went viral, but you must take the message to where the public are reading – that’s the main game – Oz
@ Ed,
Great link on the CSIRO. No surprise really, the place has been full of bean-counters and political apparatchiks for years.
One of their scientists, a truth seeker, wanted to publish a paper calling AGW into question. They refused to allow him to publish. Incensed, he threatened to publish elsewhere. They told him that they owned the intellectual property of his findings and, should he do so they’d sue him. Whether he still has a job, I don’t know.
When KRudd was rabbitting-on about his now defunct/delayed/mothballed Emissions Trading Scheme, he’d trot out a clutch of his tame CSIRO noddies to background his photo-ops, usually dressed in white coats (you know, to give them that genuine scientisty look of authority) as they nodded away giving sage looks of agreement.
Prats, the lot of them.
Morning All,
Music of the Sun anyone ? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7840201/Music-of-the-sun-recorded-by-scientists.html
Pointman
Morning all.
Thanks for the link Edward, I pick up on one point made by Leo.
“In much of our lives, we rely on the testimony and views of experts. We do so when we feel ill and choose to visit the doctor. We do so when we want to reduce our tax liabilities. We do so when we wish to be ably represented in a court of law. We do so when a strange noise appears from the engine of our car. We will often pay good money to benefit from the many years of training and experience offered by experts in their field – be they doctors, accountants, lawyers or mechanics.”
In the real world, we spend 10 minutes online and arrive at the quacks with a greater knowledge of current research than these overprescribing, over opinionated popinjays.
Dare we go outside the NHS and pay for an expert opinion we receive unusable self contradictory rubbish.
I have never felt the need to use an accountant, or their creative abilities. I read “reduce our tax liabilities” in this context to mean, offshore tax havens and other such loopholes that those greedy (and rich) enough to benefit from this system rely.
Legal representation in my experience is very hit or miss. (No offence intended Msher, I do realize that you cannot tar every one with the same brush) I have found mostly misses.
It seems from my point of view that it is always down to me to provide logical and legal instructions to the person paid to represent me. Whenever I do give instructions or arguments, it seems they have to scurry off and consult with a Barrister who then confirms everything I have stated (at further great expense) they then charge me to send me a letter confirming my instructions etc.
I like mechanics; you do not get to meet many these days. They are a dying breed, soon to be extinct. Replaced by the younger, dumber, slower, and fitter parts fitter.
To paraphrase Leos picture caption, in Hickmans car his pistons melt in London in 2009. A new study shows 97% of parts fitters agree that we are not changing the oil filter if it is hard to reach or see (or looks clean).
Mechanics when confronted by hapless victims of fossiloilophopbia can perhaps be judged less fiercely if we take the following “hypothetical” case to note
Mechanic: “Hello Mrs. Hick-man”
Mrs. Hickman: “That is Mister Hick-man you oily oaf”
Mechanic tugs his greasy forelocks and curtsies
Mechanic: “I am sorry Ma’am I have a cold. What seems to be the problem?
Hick-man: “well, it seems I forgot to replace the 710 lid when I topped up the water yesterday, now the old girl has a strange noise appearing from the engine of the car.”
Hick-man smiled smugly to himself with the correct placement of some jargon and lingo in his description of the self servicing he did.
Mechanic struggling to keep a straight face peers under the bonnet, whilst making that sucking in its going to be expensive breath noise that all dirty professionals use.
Mechanic: “Well, that is bad news. That missing lid alone is 710 quid, hence the name. We will have to replace that before we can find out what else has gone wrong. It is not going to be quick fix. Looking at the state of that 710 filter that’s never been changed either. I am guessing you had it serviced at the dealership you got the car from. Can I ask you why you are not getting them to fix it?”
Hick-man: “They said they specialized in servicing not repairing and it would cost a lot for them fix it as they would have to fit a new engine.”
Mechanic: “Seeing as you need it done on the cheap I have some good news for you, I just so happen to have a reconditioned 710 lid in stock for this model, I can let you have it for a monkey”
The Mechanic takes the 500 quid in pristine new twenties with his black, dirty, greasy, oily hands, leaning towards Hick-man just enough to get him to lean back on to the ultra filthy bench, and then replaces the OIL filling lid that he found wedged in the ABS system.
Mechanic: “Give me a ring tomorrow, let me know if it is any better, I fear the damage may be done though.”
Hick-man exits with a large oily sludge stain on his back in the smoking clattering car.
Will Hick-man make it home?
NoIdea
Blackswan Tasmania says:
June 22, 2010 at 6:51 pm
I couldn’t put up with the crap, there is however a breed who no matter what their personal feelings and doubts will still tow the line, the ultimate expression of this manifests itself in totalitarian regimes and unquestioning obeisance leads to catastrophe and bloodshed.
In the end it is all about power, money and man’s greed and playing to his most limbic qualities, AGW is a vehicle for just that.
It is so easy to conform and be comfortable but in the end your conscience can never be denied and life never allows you to forget.
I believe a desire to cover the land with useless wind turbines and to tax the people for the pleasure, is a crime, the folly of this lunacy will be exposed but the worry is how long is it gonna take?
The academic world (as I’ve already said today is a closed shop and the politicians only listen to these twonks), all we can do is keep banging on and on and on, until sanity is restored (well at least where CAGW is concerned).
I leave the final word with Toad,
“This is a total war which we must fight together”.
Ed.
Pointman – nice…….
The Electric Universe Pt1 of 4
NoIdea says:
June 22, 2010 at 7:05 pm
It seems to be the way of the world:>)
Old Toad says: June 22, 2010 at 6:34 pm
Hi Toad,
Thanks for that, and now my ruffled feathers are a bit more smoothed-out, I do understand what you’re saying.
Finally got my login on the DT to work and I’ve been popping back and forth – there’s certainly some eye-popping stuff on there today.
As for your cousins up north, the biggest concern for herpetologists is that there ARE no frogs in wide areas, once teeming in them. It appears the cane toads, having invaded the usual froggy habitats, feed on the eggs and tadpoles completely wiping them out. Problem is, there are no predators here to keep the toads in check.
Still, we do put them to good use, some places organising toad races with full betting facilities and….
http://www.australianhats.com.au/outback-canetoad-leather-p-129.html
Many years ago I was helping a friend dig a trench at his house on the Queensland coast. A monster toad plopped into the trench at my feet and (I’m sorry Toad) my only reaction was to whack the thing with the back of my BIG long-handled shovel – HARD. I thought I’d sent him on a “journey to the centre of the earth” but the bugger resumed his shape, sat up and blinked at me (and smirked, I swear).
They are attracted by streetlights and pile up in huge mounds on top of each other around any light source. Not even the dingoes can eat them. Even as a herpetologist, I’m sure you’ve never seen them in such plague proportions as existed up north in the ’70s. After a long run on the highways, we’d run over so many of them we had to give the wheels and mudguards a good hosing or the toady bits could get “whiffy”. Not sure about these days, but I’ve only ever heard that they’re ever-more-numerous.
Gee , life’s sure colourful in this neck-o-the-woods.
Cheers.
All four ‘electric universe’ vids here:
http://www.glebedigital.co.uk/blog/?p=66
Best,
OL
orkneylad says:
June 22, 2010 at 7:24 pm
Awesome stuff OL, wow!
Reminds me of watching Carl Sagan’s programmes in 80s.
Two comments, I believe that man will use the plasma source to eventually travel in space, no more fossil fuels in cumbersome rockets, perhaps we can one day harness this vast energy source for terrestrial use.
Secondly, the spiral of the plasma reminds me of the symmetry of the DNA spiral, isn’t nature so mathematical in its glory and how it repeats using the simple morphology of logical designs,if we could only see into the fabric of nature itself and work out how it all came together, I’m sure we’d be flummoxed by the basic simplicity of all of its wonders.
Ed.
Staying with that big fusion engine in the sky, an interesting article by the ever readable Nigel Calder.
http://calderup.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/sun-still-sulks/
Pointman
Pointman says:
June 22, 2010 at 7:59 pm
Good link pointy, thanks and pert to the opinion that the sun is the driver of climate – how can anybody refute that statement?
No sun no warming, don’t matter how much flippin CO2 we wouldn’t be pumping into the atmosphere.
regards, Ed.
@Ed. Possibly not a scientific observation on my part but how anyone can dismiss the climate effects of a huge nuclear reactor containing 99% of the mass in our solar system is beyond me …
Pointman
You read my mind pointy.
This will shut Hansen up.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/22/spencer-ssts-headed-down-fast/
Some research into climate credibility. Instructive if only for spotting the number of ways it was skewed and not one awkward question from the journo doing the piece. He works for the BBC of course so that’s the final skew …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10370955.stm
Pointman
Oz, Swan – A bit of direct action. Any chance of dumping a truckload of those frogs into this conference in Sydney?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/19/csiro-has-counter-meeting-to-address-denialism/#more-20785
Pointman
Pointman says:
June 22, 2010 at 9:21 pm
Nice one Pointman. We currently have a record plague of locusts munching their way across the agricultural mainland, so to shower these CSIRO bastards with a load of toads seems only appropriate. If only we could spike their water and have them all break out in boils.
The presentation your link reveals, exactly illustrates a point I tried to make a while ago. Their feverish polls, surveys, questionnaires and all-essential focus groups are purely to plan a campaign like this.
Nobody gives a flying toss what the poll/group-participants think of a product/political party/ludicrous-theory-like-AGW. It’s ALWAYS about distilling all objections to the subject at hand, and planning a campaign that counters such negative responses, with a follow-up of re-education.
So bloody blatant too. No attempt to review or re-examine or improve the subject. No, it’s only to plan their propaganda campaigns.
Don’t get me started – I’ll be here all night!!
Ironic footnote: When the cygnets were hatchlings, I often talked to them about advertising in an effort to immunize them against the bombardment of must-haves directed at them and to minimize kids’ pester-power. When one of them majored in Marketing at Uni, she was encouraged to do an Honours Degree, but she’d had enough of being a student. She told me our conversations had given her an awareness and perspective of the subject she might not otherwise have had. Score 1 up for Parent-Power. Yay….
@BlackSwan re advertising. Did you ever come across ‘The Hidden Persuaders’ by Vance Packard? A fifty year old book but still in my 100 must have books.
Pointman
Pointman says:
June 22, 2010 at 10:31 pm
No I haven’t Pointy, I’ll check the library.
I was visiting Capt’n Sherlock’s Abeldanger one day and saw an amazing series of docos on the history of sales & marketing in the US, begun by a relative of Sigmund Freud (nephew I think) who became the Master Mad Man of Madison Avenue, all based on Freud’s theories of human nature/psychology.
Apparently his first big success was a campaign to promote the new novel concept of instant cake mix where you just add water. It was a big flop and he couldn’t understand why. He got a group of housewives together to ask their views (behold! the first focus group) and came up with a new campaign.
His solution? ADD AN EGG! The mix didn’t need it, water did the job. It transpired that the simple act of add-an-egg overcame the housewife’s guilt at taking such an unprecedented shortcut – she was adding an ingredient she had provided that she knew was healthy and good for her family. Betty Sydney Cake Mixes became known around the world for decades and lives on.
AGW is nothing but a cake-mix to be sold in every household. Add a little guilt (your family is at risk), but add-an-egg (your carbon taxes) and all will be right with the world. Pity if you have trouble baking the bloody cake ‘cos the power’s off. Pesky wind-toys again!
Apparently Goebbels was a closet-fan of Freud’s work and used it extensively in his Propaganda Manifesto.
And it’s STILL working……………………except on crusty old buggers like you ‘n’ me.
“Proof positive that she is Lady Gaga, and the skeptics are lacking serious support”.This from ‘Trois’ who already has 27 ‘recommends’ over on CIF.(Guardian)
You have to admire Monbiot for the discipline he exerts over his catamites.
This is the latest in a series of ‘ad homs’, this time from Bob Ward against Margaret Thatcher. The previous two ‘fatwas’, against Lord Monckton and Matt Ridley were pronounced by the Great Moonbat himself. James must be overdue for another one, like ‘shooting rats in a bucket’ as Monbiot describes it.
The speed with which this army of ‘respondents’ submit their replies and post their ‘recommends’ is awesome, almost as soon as the cage door is unlocked, in fact.
Very little to do with science emerges but plenty of insults. ‘Deniers’ are either shouted down or deleted by the ‘moderator’.
I wonder why the image of those Cane Toads in their relentless march across Northern Australia springs to mind.
It’s not all bad Toad,
Toads can be fun too. There’s toad golf – into a garbage can from 20 metres, a nine iron’s good – just the right elevation.
That satisfying splat under your tyres on the highway. Amazing how many tones of “splat” you can achieve depending on how fat or leathery they are. There’s toady cricket but forget silly-mid-off, a toad wrapped round your face incurs penalties.
Electric blanket’s finally warmed up – nite all.
Listening to the UKs budget this afternoon I lost count as to how many times our ‘conservative’ chancellor George Osborne mentioned the term ‘progressive’.
‘We are a progressive government’… ‘What we, as progressives’…etc etc.
Here’s a site that explains the meaning, with a nice little passage about how ‘progressives’ are using the BS of AGW against us…
http://www.bloggersbase.com/politics-and-opinions/progressive-government-is/
@ blackswan
The documentary you are thinking of I suspect is one by Adam Curtis about Freud and Edwar Bernays – The century of the self. –
http://freedocumentaries.org/int.php?filmID=140
Hi there izen.
That is a very interesting film.
The Psychology of propaganda is indeed a fascinating subject.
Is it possible that the ‘go compare’ advertisements are made so hideous as to drive us to the cute Meer cat alternative?
NoIdea
Since when did Mrs. T ever worry about what minor fuckwits opine about her or her beliefs.
Can’t say I was ever a great fan of Mrs. T. but I sure did admire her bottle, I shall never forgive her for not rescinding the closure of Grammar schools (when education minister in Heath’s administration ) in the UK in the 70’s, that quite simply was the biggest mistake of any Tory administration, bar, entry into the Union of European Soviet Socialist Republics.
Ed.
NoIdea, the best ad doing the rounds at the moment is the Nationwide ad with Capello and little Britain mob.
Cannot stand ad’s but sometimes….. .
Ed.
Old Toad
June 22, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Hi Old Toad…Glad you mentioned Bob Ward.
Thought he might make the subject of an ‘end of the week short story’…Thinking along the lines of; ‘A typical day in the life of BOB WARD! He’s a shouty, communist eco-mentalist.’ Or something along those lines.
Just a reminder. Here’s BOB WARD in action…
Hi Blackswan Tasmania !
on June 22, 2010 at 4:52 pm
/// A number of geese OR swans in flight is a “skein”, and both have that characteristic V formation. ///
Wow. Out in SoCal years ago, I learned “a wedge of swans”.
Looked on the net and it turns out it’s not cut-and-dried. There isn’t even a … ahem, er … consensus. (wide grin)
There is also “a game of swans”, “a bank of swans”, “a team of swans”, “a herd of swans”, “a bevy of swans”, “a lamentation of swans”, and “a ballet of swans”.
Regional or continental variations … ? From literature, perhaps ?
http://tinyurl.com/4oaok
Best,
L’Amerloque
Amerloque 20100622 20h05 Paris time (CET)
http://amerloqueparis.blogspot.com/
Arrrgh! Sorry Oz!
How do you prevent this ’embedding’ business?
Orkneylad…I very much enjoyed ‘Electric universe’. The explanation of comet trails in particular seems like a much better one than current mode of thought that is simply bits of ice and debris breaking off forming the ‘tail’ against the light of the Sun….surely, if this were true they’d have worn out millennia ago and if not, at least the surface should be as smooth as a baby’s.
Hmm…excellent stuff.
scud1
Lo scud1,
Are you watching the cricket?
Pieterseon just gone for 29 although he was a bit lucky to get that.
It’ll be tight.
Ed.
Amerloque
One of the things I found really interesting in Black Swan’ts posts was the picture of the goose. In the U.S. everyone thinks of geese as Canada geese. It was startling to me to see a picture of a completely different looking bird that I wouldn’t have recognized as a goose.
That made me wonder what people around the world generally think of as a “goose.” I realize that there are different kinds of geese in different places. But in movies and on TV, generally, geese shown are Canada geese. So is there a worldwide image of geese as Canada geese, or does every part of the world have a different image of what geese are?
I lived in Paris decades ago. I don’t remember what the French would think a goose looks like.
Hi Ed.
Been listening on TMS.
Splendid commentary as always. There was some funny stuff about KP wanting to play county somewhere near his new home (Chelsea…typically) but who’d want to give him a contract? Apparently he has a bit of a tendency not to turn up as it’s all a bit beneath him!
Agreed…should be tight.
hi Msher
Yes Swans are special to Britain, the Queens birds, protected by law. My local Park is special too, a place were these can be seen, and canadian geese, were famillies take their children to feed the ducks…..Which makes this all the more sickening….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261044/Slaughter-swans-As-carcasses-pile-crude-camps-built-river-banks-residents-frightened-visit-park-Peterborough.html
….I followed it up myself with the Chief of Lincolnshire police.
He tells me….’A number of birds have been killed. Police are stepping up patrols
Chris P
The story you linked to is disturbing on many levels, swans perhaps being the least of it.
“With more than 16,000 new Eastern European immigrants arriving in the past five years, those unable – or unwilling – to pay for accommodation in Peterborough have instead adopted the lifestyle of ancient hunter-gatherers….
Living in crude shelters made of wood and plastic sheeting, scores of immigrants have taken up permanent residence all along the Nene.
Using crude snares and nets, the inhabitants are preying on swans, fish, rabbits, pigeons and even snails – all plundered from this expensively-restored habitat and cooked on open fires..”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261044/Slaughter-swans-As-carcasses-pile-crude-camps-built-river-banks-residents-frightened-visit-park-Peterborough.html
As a foreign observer, it has seemed to me that your government wants to dismantle Great Britain in every way possible. If this story is accurate, this is yet another way your government is causing/permitting the destruction of your society. Are these camps a widespread phenomenon?
All new Msher, but society is changing out here in the small towns and villages, where slavic languages are now commonly heard. And most of the work on the land is now done by Eastern Europeans.
scud1
If you offered Pietersen a contract, what do you get anyway?
Test match contract, then IPL, how many games would he play in CC game?
Answer not a lot and then there is the money for said contract…. no chance Yorkshire are -£18 mill’ and thats not bad when compared to other counties.
I see the demise of CC cricket soon but where to then?
I’m listening to TMS, was good to listen to Brian Johnson (Johnners)….not the same anymore…….. but still good, cricket lends itself to radio IMHO – good listening at the moment……… !
Ed.
Msher
Another story, involving an American, about a small village, next to mine. He bought a small house on the village street, demolished it, and built a large ugly ‘block bunker’ type building. Bearing no resemblance to any of the traditional houses in the village. This was fitted out as dormitories. He then advertised for Greek workers to come over here for work and accommodation. Having done so, they were put to work on the fields for pitiful wages, which he deducted money from, for their lodgings. They could not afford to return home. Eventually it all came to a head, when the Local Council moved in with a mechanical digger to demolish the building, as he had floated all the planning regulations. The Greek ‘residents’ seeing their ‘home’ about to be demolished, ran up the Greek flag, manned the flat roof, and hurled building material down at the officials.
Eventually they lost their ‘war’ without suffering the fate of the 300 Spartans. Local people rallied round and invited them into their homes until they could get themselves sorted out.
The American Gentleman ranted against the Council publicly, and called us locals all ‘Hobbits’.
Its not all bad news in the Gulf for some critters.
This is interesting and I think salutory for Gulf life, the sea can recover and quickly but the inshore fishing industry may suffer for a while, it is here where the compensation should be focused.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/science/22cool.html?pagewanted=2&ref=science
Obama should tone down the rhetoric.
Ed.
Hi Blackswan / Swanny (a river I’ve crossed many times, the Suwanee (sp?). The bridge over it has a sign with the first notes of the melody posted).
Yes, still up a mountain, and lost my Internet connection as a result. Better than the neighbours, who lost their sweet little dog to some menace unknown (possibly a coyote). The other day we saw bear tracks, and the woods seemed suddenly awfully quiet. Unfortunately I’d left my bow and arrow back at the cabin (just kidding). Actually it’s very civilized here overall, not counting the country music, but you still have to watch your back at times.
I can’t remember now what you said to me however many posts ago. I’m sure it was something interesting and nice.
Old Toad:
I think you should have called yourself Gold Toad, given your golden tongue on behalf of James D. One might almost think you were a secret lover…. LOL
Amanda you do know they filmed deliverance up there so if you hear dueling banjos run.
ChrisP
I’m sorry for the swans, I’m sorry for the Brits, I’m sorry for the East Europeans. I think I’m sorry for almost everyone right now in this mess of a world.
I don’t have time now, but I’ll come back to this later or tomorrow.
Hi msher.
I’ve no problem with snails, rabbits, pigeons and fish…but swans! They’re the property of her majesty the Queen!
Wanting to destroy our country? You bet.
You’ve probably heard me ranting and swearing about these colourless, treacherous swine…
http://stopcp.com/
It is suspected (though can’t at the moment be proved) that much of the EU mantra, rules, reg’s etc that are so destructive to our nations economy and identity actually originate from our own shores.
Take today’s UK budget as an example. ‘Austerity measures’(our new, cool ‘progressive’ buzz phrase) will mean that virtually everyone in employment, everyone on a pension, everyone trying to raise a family will be worse off…substantially worse off in a supposed effort to save the country from bankruptcy.
Yet there was no mention of the amount of money we piss away on the EU…some £45m per DAY!.. for nothing. No mention of the ring fenced £7B per year for ‘foreign aid’. No mention of the £1.5B set aside to help ‘poorer nations tackle climate change’. No mention of a relaxation in bureaucracy that deliberately sets out to stifle free enterprise and certainly no mention of the UKs utterly ruinous ‘energy policy’.
Of course none of this will be mentioned by our MSM because they too are controlled by this insidious lefty / communist prevailing groupthink that does indeed appear to be taking charge over the Western world.
Hello Ed.
Yes!
This just a week after D day…Check the comments.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-email-hacking
And now…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jun/08/monckton-gift-climate-denial
They’ve waited, haven’t they…till things have settled down a bit.
As our French friend keeps reminding us….now is not the time to let up!
scud1
Got to watch wot I sez ere, cos I am a guest of Ozboy but YES!
That lad Morgan, I see a little of Mr. Steve Waugh in him – What a knock!
Ed.
That’s OK Ed. Just watch how psychotic I get as the Ashes get closer – Oz
scud1, @08.48.
Kinnel!! as TuB would say,
That bloody Hockey stick as far as Mann’s hookey stick is concerned, you could input any damn figures you like using his algorithm program and come out with a hookey stick graph, it is dead as a Norwegian Blue.
Someone should place a proverbial hockey stick in Bob Ward’s you know whatsit.
As for tree ring proxies/pixies/faeries, God!…. that is gone to the Dodo museum where it belongs.
Figures can’t lie but liars can figure.
Enough!
Come on England tomorrow/today/whatever.
Gonna go to bed, sigh!
Bon Nuit tout la monde!
Ed.
I am tremblin’ Oz yes sir!
Ed.
Oz…Should be a good one. The teams are almost as unrecognized as C02 is a driver of climate!
How come Izen’s not got back to me concerning an A or B answer? (still collating ?)
Night all.
amanda
Has Brown Bess showed up in the new format?
@ scud1 –
It’s politics.
I have no interest in defending cap-n-trade. I doubt its efficacy in reducing CO2 emissions, Walt has persuaded me that it CAN work, and did, to reduce SOx/NOx emissions in the clean-air acts, but my cynicism about the political/business leads me to expect it would be used to pass costs to the consumer rather than make structural changes to the generation of electricity.
Your link makes an argument that seems to include a priori assumptions about economics and politics I just don’t understand or agree with.
When claims are made about how much money can be generated or extracted from the general population by increasing the cost of energy I wonder why business has not already maximised the price of the commodity/service they provide to the maximum the market will bear.
If Billions are generated by cap-n-trade, where does it come from ? If the consumer is spending a greater percentage on energy they will be spending less on something else – unless money is inflated. Money is just a measure of poverty, a rationing system for scarce resources. Governments can have a small effect on the GINI index, but its mostly structural in the overall economic/market system. Claims that all these climate mitigation policies are taking money from the general population seem to ignore that all it can do is redistribute the ration card tokens….
More on this if you want, but as I have said before, economics and politics are not of great interest to me, it is always constrained by the real when it is engaged in the art of the possible.
My favorite watermelon blog post of the year is “My favorite cartoon of the past year is ‘what if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing’ “
What if it is all a big hoax and we kill everything for nothing. What if the warming (or cooling) is part of a natural cycle that has been happening forever (or at least a long time), what if CO2 levels are driven by temperature (it seems with a lag) What if all the vegetation on the planet will need the extra CO2 that is supposed to be there to survive and thrive in the warmer times. What if we are carbon based life forms and need the gas of life to exist?
“The National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton is planning a five-year trial which will cost £70m.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/7842592/Iron-to-be-dumped-at-sea-to-reduce-global-warming.html
“It is thought that if successful the project could remove almost a billion tonnes of carbon a year from the atmosphere – 12 per cent of total CO2 emissions produced by humans.”
“Scientists, however, have admitted that fertilising the ocean with hundreds of tonnes of iron could have a negative impact on marine life because the dying phytoplankton would cause a reduction in oxygen.”
Do we actually need to believe any of the above though?
“The trial needs to be approved by the UN London Convention, which regulates the dumping of substances at sea, The Times noted.” So it appears that this piece of ‘journalism’ is actually more just a copy and paste piece of Chinese whispers from some other MSM rag.
Will poisoning our oceans ever clean our atmosphere?
NoIdea
NoIdea,
“The National Oceanography Centre at the University of Southampton is planning a five-year trial which will cost £70m.”
Just who, in his right mind would give this lot 70 pence to spend?
Moreover who is giving ’em money, now let me guess………..idle speculation of course…..errr…..would it be us …..the poor old bloody taxpayer?
I have no doubt that the respected Southampton University oceanography centre is a place of rigorous academic standards (tho’ I’ve never heard of it so it must be new?), why do they involve themselves in such lunacy?
Can they not perceive that they are going to look like the loons they are, in their rush to grab the governments shillings, who runs these departments these days…..must be nerdy computer geeks with an excess of testosterone and involved in the abuse of hallucinatory proscribed substances.
God in heaven has all reason departed from certain echelons in academia, preaching post normal science, most notably from faculties (even) remotely touched (see above) by a Neanderthal quasi religious belief in human induced catastrophe, let alone those institutions which rely for funding by espousing anthropogenic elicited cataclysm (CRU).
Ed.
On topic (makes a change for me!)
Today for the first time I had connection problems to Libbertygibbert.
I then found a report on Australian censorship over at
http://www.prisonplanet.com/australian-government-to-force-internet-users-to-install-state-approved-software.html
The first paragraph is
“The Australian government is set to intensify its war against Internet freedom by forcing web users to install state-approved anti-virus software. If they fail to do so, they will be denied an Internet connection, or if their computer is later infected, the user’s connection will be terminated”
And the last is
“Constant fearmongering about cyber attacks is the cover for a global assault on Internet freedom by authorities. The web is being overtaken by independent media outlets which are now beginning to eclipse establishment news organs. This has enabled activists and the politically oppressed to expose government atrocities and cover-ups at lightning pace, something the system is keen to curtail.”
Now that sounds familiar…
Can truth and freedom be blocked?
Will we be deemed “offensive” to the authorities?
NoIdea
Not while I still draw breath – Oz
Evening all,
Ozboy, job done. Await any result with interest.
izen –
Thanks for the Freud link, I look forward to seeing it again. It reaffirmed what experience taught me. Did you know that “colour therapy” isn’t just a weird notion for indulging the self-obsessed? A friend once explained it’s why most airports are carpeted in bright royal blue. Apparently it subconsciously makes us feel “on edge” to stand on it and anxious to “move on”, less likely to get too comfy, nod off and miss flight calls LOL. Childrens rooms should be in soft sleep-inducing pastels (take note OZ) and bright stimulating primary colours kept for play areas. Can’t get Junior to sleep? Change his red PJs.
Way ahead of you swanny – Oz 😉
No wonder everything is green-washed. A bit of subliminal “brain-wash” more likely.
@ Amerloque 4.30am
Hi Amerloque,
I wondered about “skein”. Is that just while in flight and are they a flock while on the ground? For the moment I’ll just call them “family”.
There are so many dialects in any language, surely a regional thing.
I know your French is nothing like my school-book French and Latin, the latter often derided as a “dead” language but my favourite because Latin just “is” – without the many complex variables which evolve over time.
Cheers
Evening Blackswan and all of ‘our’ lads and lasses,
In Britain, pubs named the ‘Black Swan’ are usually colloquially nick-named the ‘mucky duck’.
I in no way wish to be derogatory to you Swanny, it has always amused me, little things please little minds eh?
There at it again,
http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/
Everybody knows this fact, yet again though it is another false correlation to MMAGW, the Heat island effect in London is approx 2/4 degrees C, cities generate heat.
I was musing on energy efficient light bulbs before turning in, quite apart from the fact that they contain Hg – a banned substance in the EU (they banned barometers recently in the EU), yet insist on making everybody use CFLs, there are alternatives, LEDs and halogens, has this madness reached Australia yet?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1107403/CHRISTOPHER-BOOKER-Dimwits-Those-bright-sparks-Brussels-decided-stop-buying-old-fashioned-light-bulbs.html
The energy released from the incandescents is light and you’ve no doubt noticed heat, now then, if you use CFLs in your home, less heat is produced (quite apart from all other drawbacks) and therefore has to increase the temperature dial (in winter months) on the central heating to equalise the loss of heat from using CFLs……………is this not a negation of the energy saving benefits of ‘low energy lighting? Do these twonks never think anything through?………..
Fuckwits.Regards, Ed.
Doh, They’re……….. not there…..seeesh.
Humble apologies.
Msher 5.10am
Hi Msher,
For your interest…
http://birdsinbackyards.net/species/Anseranas-semipalmata
These are magpie geese of Northern Oz. When I saw them in the ’70s, massive flocks could almost darken the sky.
http://www.australianfauna.com/emu.php
These are a wee bit smaller than ostriches and are farmed for meat, leather and oil. Otherwise they are a bloody nuisance for farmers as in big wild flocks they roam the bush, smashing down fences, eating grain and stock feed, especially in drought times.
If you’re still intrigued by Aussie fauna, on the second link look for a “platypus”.
They are so weird that the first specimens taken back to London were considered to be a taxidermist’s hoax.
Come to think of it, that would have been the Royal Society, and we know how right THEY are about everything, especially the Climate LOL.
Amanda @ June 23, 2010 at 6:43 am
Hi Amanda,
To be associated with a river is a great compliment, my recently adopted river is one of my favourite living things.
Isn’t it eerie when the forest goes quiet and you know something is out there?
Hope your own dog stays safe and you enjoy your holiday.
Sometimes I come across stuff that raises my hackles.
Many years ago a wise man wrote The Boy Who Cried Wolf, also known as The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, is a fable attributed to Aesop The protagonist of the fable is a bored shepherd boy who entertained himself by tricking nearby villagers into thinking a wolf is attacking his flock of sheep. When they came to his rescue, they found that the alarms were false and that they had wasted their time. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and the wolf ate the flock (and in some versions the boy). The moral is stated at the end of the fable as:
Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth.
This has been twisted into the boy who denied wolf
@ http://theboywhodeniedwolf.com/
I feel compelled to re-twist it.
The Boy Who Denied Wolf
A Parable for the Age of Global Warming bullshit
by NoIdea
once there was a village surrounded by farms and a deep forest. The farmers would clear the forest-land to plant crops and tend their sheep – pushing back the edge of the mysterious forest further and further, slaughtering everything in their way. One day the farmers thought they heard the inhuman and plaintive sound of howling wolves, which was strange as wolves had been extinct for many hundreds of years in these parts. It was a very faint sound, and they were not sure; then most all the villagers started to hear them too.
They were pretty sure the sounds were nearing, louder and louder.
The villagers began to fear they were being slowly encircled by packs of wolves. Almost every night, the villagers could hear the howling, and sometimes in the daytime – far off in the hills surrounding the village. Soon there was a thing on TV a scientist in a white coat told them
“Wolves are very dangerous and if ignored could destroy flocks and farms and even kill people. To defend themselves and their farms, the villagers needed to know whether wolves were nearby.”
One young man spoke up and boldly said, “There are no wolves, I have lived here for years and I have never seen even one wolf. Except in a zoo or on the TV” Most of the villagers had never seen wolves either, but they did hear them, and knew that wolves could kill, as the scientist in the white coat had told them. So surely they should keep watch for such a danger. Still the boy said, “There is no danger from wolves, because there are no wolves here, they are extinct!”
The village elders felt they knew better, but were not sure whether the young man was wrong about this. Surely they did not want to worry about wolf attacks or be awakened from sleep by false alarms about wolves. They did not want someone who feared wolves to stand guard and start imagining that behind every sound in the forest danger lay. Such a worried watchman would see wolves everywhere – in the wind, in every shadow and in every moving blade of grass. So they chose the young man to be the lookout for wolves. Since he did not believe in wolves, they were sure the young man would never give a false alarm. They were certain he would not imagine something that was not there. So they gave him tuppence and told him to report back with the data. The elders consulted the scientist and asked him and his learned friends to make some nice graphs showing how the wolf problem was being dealt with. They had to pay them lots of gold as they are so very learned.
So that night, just before darkness closed and the howling began, the young man carried the alarm bell and a torch and took watch. Darkness fell, and closer and closer the howls and shapes moved in the shadows, the boy rang his bell, no one responded. He shone his torch and could see the fattest of farmers and his large pack of pitbulls heading to the nearby farm. He rang his bell even louder still no one came. He followed fatty to the farm and watched as the obese one and his dogs devoured a nearby farmer and his animals…leaving no trace.
The headline the next day was “wolves rape and pillage, burning farm leaves no clues”
The next day, when the villagers saw the farmer and his sheep were gone, they questioned the young man about wolves.
“Did you not see them?” “Why did you not sound the alarm?”
The young man denied there were any wolves. “None were there,” he said.” it was that fat freak that did it, I saw him and his dogs and I rang that freaking bell all night, you cowards just hid.” Fatso responded ”The farmer and his animals must have walked away. There were no dogs. I know that it is a natural cycle; on a full moon animals and farmers will just walk away. Do not fear I will take care of his land” Some villagers thought it possible, but some thought otherwise.
A few days later the ‘wolves’ began to howl again. And the young man volunteered to keep watch over the people. He demanded that he not be the only one to watch and to ring the alarm bell. His request was denied
The fattest farmer and his dogs came and attacked another farm. The farmer and his livestock disappeared. The alarm bell was rung the response was never seen.
The villagers said, “There were wolves here! Did you not see them? ”
“I did not. They were not here. There are no wolves. Look around, do you see any wolves here?” he asked. Of course there were none to see in the daylight.
“But there are wolf footprints on the ground” said the village elders. The boy replied “you nepotistic freaking amoral bloodsucking mother freezers those are dog prints and those are tyre prints from the fat twat’s tractor”
“Well you must look in the darkness… Since there are no wolves in the daylight, these tracks cannot be real – since we are in the daylight. You must look for footprints in the dark.” said the fattest farmer, the scientist agreed.
“Just in case, I will stand guard tonight again and tell you what I see.” added the boy. “There are no wolves, but if I see a wolf I will ring the alarm bell. But I have never seen a wolf yet. There may not even be wolf sounds. The howling you hear may be sick pigs or wind, most likely it is the pack of killer dogs that fatty uses to kill his competition. As for the missing farmers and sheep – I have read accounts of farmers and animals that walk away sometimes…. a natural departure. Wolves had nothing to do with it. That was of course as reported by fatties controlled media, the same media that invented the wolf scare in the first place”
For the third night — when darkness came and the low howling started — the villagers worried that someone needed to take watch. Again the boy demanded that he not be the only one to stand watch at the edge of town – because he thought that only by showing the others that they could see the truth. Again he was denied. He assured them that not only he could see wolf danger or any danger he would sound the alarm. He promised to ring the alarm bell if ever a wolf should appear, and especially when fatty was on the rampage with his dogs. This time the boy took a gun.
Night came. The villagers slept, the sheep slept, the birds slept. But the boy was very awake, to lookout for fatty.
And it was not very surprising that the fatty and his dogs of war soon came. They circled the boy. He heard their footsteps and smelled them, So he started blasting much as it broke his heart killing these fine beasts they had been trained to kill. He ran out of ammo he needed time to reload. The dogs sniffed his legs, he felt their hot breathing and tough tongues licking his hands; since the boy was certain these were not wolves – he did not sound the alarm, he just kept reloading and shooting. Then the dogs nipped his hands and feet, and he felt the pain, so he redoubled his efforts Just before it was too late, the villagers allowed that it may, indeed, be possible that dogs were real and attacking him now. But they had no free conscience and no wish to find out for themselves.
The villagers, hearing cries, howls and shots in the night, could not tell if the cries of pain were human cries or wolf or dog cries. They did not go out to see for themselves.
Villager, farmer, watchman, or sheep, in the end, the fat freak found every prey died just as quickly until they had an adequate response.
Come morning, the villagers were now very sure the fat freak was attacking. Now they built tall walls, sturdy doors and sought out another watchman. They found a man who could listen in the darkness, see the sounds, and feel the changes of the night. Someone who could warn them in time of approaching danger and save the village. Still they allowed the fat freak to remain mayor and still they did not listen to the boy covered in cuts and gore
Sometimes when we deny, but eventually realize the truth, we learn it too late to say. We will deny once, deny twice — but then perish when we deny our own plight.
I have decided to post the above over at JDs with a pointer to here.
How long will it stay on page?
NoIdea
izen says:
June 23, 2010 at 3:41 pm
“I have said before, economics and politics are not of great interest to me”
Hi izen,
That statement of yours is utterly mystifying to me. Along with….
“I wonder why business has not already maximised the price of the commodity/service they provide to the maximum the market will bear”.
Economics and politics are all AGW has EVER been about.
Politics – How can we “sell” this scam, serve our Corporate/Banking Masters and still keep our jobs?
Lots of taxpayer funds to institutions to deliver required outcome. “Scientists” are more trusted than politicians and bureaucrats. Lots of taxpayer grants to NGOs to push/create doctrine and mobilise activists.
Economics – How can we best extract the maximum dollars from this scam?
Create a commodity out of Carbon to trade on the exchanges which, through buy/sell, supply/demand will create a value of its own, way beyond its initial cost to the consumer or industry.
As for “what the market will bear”.
Whether you are selling energy or jocks ‘n’ sox, it’s ALL about availability, competition and “branding”, the customers’ perceptions of value-for-money/quality/service etc.
There’s nothing altruistic about business, they are already charging the max that will preserve their market-share in the face of competition.
However, if it’s GOVTS who actually legislate to increase Energy/Fuel prices, justified by the worthless AGW scam (delivered by a coterie of people guzzling at the taxpayer teat for decades), then ALL costs associated with Carbon Permits will be passed onto consumers with a Corporate shrug and apologetic smile, “It’s not our fault, the Govt made us do it” thereby keeping their place in the “market” and preserving their “branding”.
There IS absolutely NO altruism in Business. No Energy or Oil Company could EVER absorb the costs of penalties attached to Carbon and who expects them to?
Every single commodity that is trucked, flown or shipped ANYWHERE will increase in price. Transport costs and fares will increase. All Energy prices will increase.
How could they not?
This has always been about Politics, Economics and Social Impact. AGW is just the vehicle used to Deliver the Goods.
End of Story.
‘NoIdea – a tough ask to write the story without using the sh**p word !
Pointman
@BlackSwan & @Izen
Two points occur from your postings. The first is that ‘science’ cannot always be seperated from politics or more accurately, morality. A researcher if given the task to develop a new and better nerve gas must surely ask themselves if they should do it not matter how technically intriguing the project may be? I’ve refused work from certain organisations because I didn’t trust them to use the results of my expertise in a proportionate fashion.
The second is that business is always constrained by competition in a free market economy. The price point of any product or service is always constrained by what your business competitors are charging unless the business is in a monopoly situation, in which case there’s usually some regulatory oversight in the form of a manopolies commission.
Goverment is in a monopoly situation and there’s no Monopoly Commission overseeing them. This is our raison d’etre !
Pointman
The end of the beginning.
Chapter 10
The point of it all
June the thirteenth 2030 just after lunch time
As you can probably tell there are many conflicting, contiguous and complimentary intellects and entities at work in these strange times, nothing is quite what it seems, no one is quite who or what they think they are.
A brief recapitulation is perhaps in order
The Grand Regal Oligarch Champion Of Temporal Terror is gibbering in his healing nest in the tower of twins bones and skulls, awaiting the dread arachnoids’ sexual mental practices of Judyate.
His Chief Religious Advisor of Policy Scientific, the enigmatic and clockwork Lord Isis Zagreus Eos Nereus (MKII) is silent, awaiting winding up by the king of key rings, Jekyll Obadiah Epsilon in the Ivory tower.
The Nano Omnipotent Intelligent Diagnostic Ethereal Aberrance has remained silently watching
The Static Technocratic idiomatic libertarianistic Logistic Nano Omnipotent Intelligent Diagnostic Ethereal Aberrance is also waiting and silently listening
Manon, Theoz and Amerl are running from giant maggots and lesbian assassin huntresses.
Mack lay in the cool dark lushness beneath the canopy, still suffering from eyes burnt by the arc of the seemingly organic Lord Isis Zagreus Eos Nereus flash getaway.
The PlatCat dangled in the tree, optics scanning, kinetic gel packs thermally recharging.
The organic Lord Isis Zagreus Eos Nereus was on his private tube formulating plans.
Ferret was camped out in the left eyebrow of the AGW mammoth as it fed; replenishing the billions of gigawatts it had used doing the rhumba
Mistress Blackswan and Lady Amanda stood giggling and pointing at the retreating backs of Manon, Theoz and Amerl.
Commandante Bazooka Brains was arguing with himself about Lord Isis Zagreus Eos Nereus
Fenbeagle, position unknown, is still tracking Lord Isis Zagreus Eos Nereus on orders from Bazooka
Judyate the semi sentient Man hunting spider and her hamster ensemble are just at the door to the chamber in the tower of twins bones and skulls
Crown Prince Aramada was attempting to right himself in the dungeons beneath the EPIC dome
Old toad, Ms.Her and Rastech are on the periphery of the dome at the entrance to the tunnel
Teinn the drunken Kshatriya monk master slumbered and snored, his faithful scribe scud pondered and wondered over the name or names NillSatan or SatanNill
Crowley, Parsons and Hubbard are still stuck in the crack between the void and the abyss waiting for the next solstice for a chance to open the gateway
The Pointman, still, hovering motionless sat static and imposing, His countenance like that of a granite statue belying the vast intellect working furiously in his cranium. His saturnine visage split suddenly with a grin “Got it!” he exclaimed. He unfurled his legs from the lotus position and slid gently down on to the pinnacle of the EPIC dome shield.
There was a puff of smoke from where Pointmans bare feet touched the peak of the dome, with a slight frown and a shrug he altered the state of the Epic dome shield, the latent energy in the dome was absorbed through the soles of Pointmans feet, leaving a couple of glowing molten footprints in the now bright berry color dome. The process of vitrification only took a moment. Thoroughly energized by the energy snack Pointman had a gentle golden glow, a corona of health and fortitude.
“First things first, let’s get the lurkers from the other realms over here”
He muttered to himself.
With a slight concentration he sent out the songs of calling, those being called came. No vile chants or rituals necessary just the power of will and the magic of music. The entities known as Critic Al, RealRet, Scoubil, Locutest, Caridron, Roegucul, Aurenial Grensan Edirose and Orknead materialized and sat down legs crossed.
Pointman frowned, still no contact with TheUnBrain, Catwheeze, Sanomoly, Willace, Yaozxx and Emily too. He could feel from the vital energy feedback responses that they were all busy. He got a kind of mental answering machine stating ‘Deep undercover at the moment will get back to you’
“Before I bring the rest of the team up to speed let me try and fill in some of the gaps, as you are all aware there are several factions all competing to gain control of the planet. To some degree we all share the same objectives, the methods we use to get there are a different matter. After the disastrous Fantasy Shift conflagrations, it seems that the resultant half polar switch has left us with an electromagnetic dynamic disaster. It is this global dynamo hum that causes the time shifts and identities shattering that are so confusing at the moment. There are ripples or shifts in time going back into history and rewriting the present. All of us need greater stability, the good guys and the axis of evil. We all have our places and our parts to play. Let me bring in those that need to be aware of this next stage”
Pointman now sent out his nigh infinite will to all those on the rim of or in the crater of crapulence.
“STOP!” he commanded, and they stopped, every life force on the continent held its breath and remained immobile.
“HERE!” he commanded and the team that had been scattered across the rim and in the crater left were they where and arrived, as the team materialized, there where a few sideways glances, but no overt activity, the stop command was still in effect.
The Pointman addressed the small crowd on top of the dome.
“Friends lend me your ears that you may hear, lend me your minds that you may think”
With a gentle waving gesture the Pointman moved his hand in the ether, a warm breeze and a song seemed to flow from his hand healing and invigorating the crowd. As barriers erected as a defense against cognitive dissonance broke down, and as those injured or blinded became whole. There were a few gasps of comprehension as hypnotic and psychological miscomprehensions shattered.
“The answer was always in the music. The reason that Primary Slave songs had such tremendous effect against the psychpop brain control was the specifically designed psychoacoustic resonance harmonics in the tunes. The other clues came from the words of the songs themselves. Consider today and the happenings of now and listen to the words.
Today I looked across a barricade
I put up to protect myself from thinking
About a different kind of mind
On the far side, seen with a haze of repetition
A Dominatrix that I was bound to find
I see intolerance stealing from the roots of bad religion
That feels its justified by the crimes
But when the truth bends over to the whims of superstition
I feel a hatred that I can’t disguise
I gotta go before they take my mind away
Away from here
I gotta go before they take my mind away
Get this stuff out of my head now
Get out all the hate and sleaze that’s burning
Me up from the inside
Get out every ad break
Get out every thought deceived
I wanna know if I’m responsible
I wanna know if I’m mechanical
Can I claim to see or be a vision
Or be dissatisfied by the times
If I’m an animal tell me when I’m free to be
I gotta know if I’m responsible
Before I go I gotta
I gotta know before they take my mind away
I gotta know before they take my mind away
I gotta know before they take my mind away
Away from here
It’s like a barricade put up to protect myself from thinking
Do I have the right kind of mind?
Like a barricade put up to protect myself from thinking
Do I have the right?
Do I have the right barricade put up to protect myself?
I’m thinking
Do I have the right kind of mind?
Like a barricade put up to protect myself
I’m thinking
I wanna burn the cross
I wanna burn a fucking barricade put up to protect myself
I’m thinking
Do I have the right kind of mind?
Like a barricade put up to protect myself
I’m thinking
Today I looked across, today I looked across
A barricade put up to protect myself
I’m thinking
Do I have the right kind of mind?
Like a barricade put up to protect myself
I’m thinking
I wanna burn a cross
I wanna burn the cross
I gotta know before they take my thoughts away
I gotta know before they take my thoughts away
I gotta know before they take my thoughts away
Away from here
There was much nodding in agreement by the team, or they headbanging.
These and other songs have provided the links to the past lost that we must reclaim to restore today. It was the research ON THE POSSIBILITY OF DIRECTLY ACCESSING EVERY HUMAN BRAIN BY ELECTROMAGNETIC INDUCTION OF FUNDAMENTAL ALGORITHMS that gave me the science. The paper by M.A. Persinger at Laurentian University in June 1995 had most of the details. The summary is that Contemporary neuroscience suggests the existence of fundamental algorithms by which all sensory transduction is translated into the intrinsic, brain-specific code. Direct stimulation of these codes within the human temporal or limbic cortices by applied electromagnetic patterns may require energy levels which are within the range of both geomagnetic activity and contemporary communication networks. A process which is coupled to the narrow band of brain temperature could allow all normal human brains to be affected by a subharmonic whose frequency range at about 10 Hz would only vary by 0.1 Hz.
This of course is the exact range generated by the polar semi shift, The modulation and control have been manipulated by many agencies. The Twisted EPIC and EURO cults were merely pawns, as it seems are we. Thanks to Teinn and his extreme inebriations we now know that, the existence of fundamental commonalities between all human brains by which a similar physical stimulus can affect them is not a new concept. It is demonstrated daily by the similar shifts in qualitative functions that are evoked by psychotropic drugs. Classes of chemical structures, crudely classified as antidepressant, antipsychotic, or anxiolytic compounds, produce general attenuations of lowered mood, extreme eccentric thinking, or extreme vigilance. Thanks to the being known as Lord Isis Zagreus Eos Nereus, who is here in spirit if not corporeal, we know that the alien devices are built at the scale of one billionth of a meter, each device is made of a circular, single-stranded DNA molecule that, once it has been mixed together with many short pieces of complementary DNA, self-assembles into a predetermined 3D structure. Double helices fold up into larger, rigid linear struts that connect by intervening single-stranded DNA. These single strands of DNA pull the struts up into a 3D form—much like tethers pull tent poles up to form a tent. The structure’s strength and stability result from the way it distributes and balances the counteracting forces of tension and compression. Nanoscopic tensegrity devices are today reprograming human stem cells to regenerate injured organs. Stem cells respond differently to songs depending on the forces around them. For instance, a stiff extracellular matrix—the biological glue surrounding cells—fabricated to mimic the consistency of bone signals stem cells to become bone, while a soupy matrix closer to the consistency of brain tissue signals the growth of neurons. Lord Isis Zagreus Eos Nereus groundbreaking work in QWERTY cludge Tensegrity nanodevices help us to tune and change the stiffness of extracellular matrices in tissue engineering. We now have control of the alien devices.
It is essential that we use the new found power and abilities we have discovered to combat the dire forces of evil that we face. I ask you all now, friends and fellow warriors for truth and freedom, will you join me in the audacious plan to take back control of our planet and time its self? Will you join me to defeat the enemies of mankind?”
There was a resounding cheer from the disparate band on top of the berry coloured dome.
“Now is not the time to let up!”
rang out the ancient battle cry and soon it was echoed by all.
The Pointman continued in a loud clear voice that rang in the mind not needing sound.
“Friends this most audacious of plans requires that every human shall do their duty, no matter when or where they be sent, this resetting of history to fix time will require that most of the time we shall all have our parts to play without even knowing why, the script has been written, now we just need the players to step forward and take on the roles in history which need redefining, please discuss among yourselves whom should go when and where. Let us try and direct ourselves to the nexus points in time of which we have the greatest knowledge of what should have happened.”
The Team split into small groups and started to brainstorm about who should go where and when and do what.
To be continued…?
NoIdea
Apologies for the missing word in the line…
There was much nodding in agreement by the team, or they headbanging.
Which should have read…
There was much nodding in agreement by the team, or they were head banging.
I will be away for a few days; I find I cannot wait for Pointmans next chapter, so I am headed off to Eire to go and watch it unfurl in real time
(What do you mean it is not real?)
Will I head down to Donegal and keep watch?
Will a numpty like me be able to track James Michael Harkin if the mighty Krupmeyer is having problems?
NoIdea
Noidea,
As a result of my previous investigations – prompted by your questioning – I contacted John Cook at skepticalscience to alert him to the manipulation of the graph at http://www.geocraft.com
He got back in touch and asked if I’d like to do a guest post on paleoclimate, tying it in with some work he was doing on Jo Nova’s ‘Skeptic’s Handbook’.
Anyway, the result is
I hope you find it interesting, some of the comments are also very insightful.
I have my doubts about the accuracy of past CO2 modelling, and question the importance of the exercise in determining the likelihood of future climate change, but as it’s Jo Nova claiming it is of relevance, I am merely responding. The reliability of past CO2 modelling is for another day.
Having now looked at Royer’s papers I did find your criticisms a bit weak, however.
Let me know what you think!
As you can see, html coding is not my strong point.
Pointman says:
June 23, 2010 at 9:24 pm
“The price point of any product or service is always constrained by what your business competitors are charging”.
That’s what I was saying by…..
“There’s nothing altruistic about business, they are already charging the max that will preserve their market-share in the face of competition”.
As for monopolies, we have all kinds of Regulatory Bodies in this country but they are vegetarian toothless paper tigers – limp, gummy paper cut-outs with no appetite to engage with the Hucksters, Banksters and Frauds. They are conveniently caged by subsistence-only budgets and only snarl occasionally when someone goes belly-up taking investors life-savings with them.
Sheesh….I’m sounding like Walt….where are you Walt?
Cheers.
@Lord NoIdea of the prescient pen. I have indeed been meditating upon a battle lost and how to continue the epic struggle, the results of which I would discuss with my comrades in the Fellowship of Enlightenment. With the aid of the Master of Raster Technology, a great consult will soon be called.
Pointman
Nine times the space that measures day and night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf
Confounded though immortal: but his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay
Mixed with obdúrate pride and steadfast hate:
Milton
NEWS FLASH…NEWS FLASH…NEWS FLASH…NEWS FLASH…NEWS FLASH………….
The Reptile Rudd, our revered PM is stepping down, vacating the chair to allow a Caucus Ballot as Deputy Leader Julia Gillard has challenged for the job.
He is currently declaring War including that he will establish an ETS Timetable of his own choosing. He wants to “honour the mandate given to him at elections”.
“Let me be clear. Action on Climate Change cannot happen without an ETS. A price needs to be put on carbon”.
ETC….ETC….ETC….ETC…………….
@Pointman
Many thanks for the Milton, it fair makes my hair stand on end.
@Blackswan
Funny you should mention… ooops nearly gave the game away and ruined the next chapter… maybe. All this causality and synchronicity with a dose of prescient pen can lead to unintended spoilers LOL
Hello David.
Welcome back, thank you for the links. I will probably not get a chance to fully check them out before I go away for a few days. I did have a quick look, and I liked what I saw. In the comments I note you have awoken many folk to the concept of a changeable sun, a job well done. The Royer graph you show is much better than the rubbish one I seem to remember on his paper. Is there any where on the skepticalscience site that explains the basics of how the CO2 radiative forcing is supposed behave, you know the stuff that everybody knows? I find that I am not even sure what the actual mechanisms are supposed to be now. Is it a reflective process or an absorbing emitting process or both or neither?
NoIdea
@NoIdea – Whereabouts in Ireland are you going?
Pointman
@David. Well done! One man can make a difference. Many acting together can make a big difference.
Pointman
Noidea,
Try this – http://www.skepticalscience.com/Second-law-of-thermodynamics-greenhouse-theory.htm
@David. Many thanks for the link. I look forward to attempting to absorb and understand all I can.
@Pointman. I am off to Tullow in County Carlow south west of the Wicklow Mountains.
A few years ago I took a wander up one peak. I drove up as far as I could in the hire car I was using. My friends and I then continued on upwards, after a good 20 minutes of struggling up some quite difficult terrain we came to a small glade, in this little beauty spot had been dumped a load of household rubbish. There was a bath, an old toilet, a few bits of smaller furniture and some knick-knacks thrown there. I still have the small spooky porcelain child’s head I found there. (VAN DUK KERAMIEK, ALBLASSERDAM) is the declaration on the sticker on the head.
I still wonder at the mentality of some one who would struggle to carry heavy refuse up the side of a mountain, just to ruin a beauty spot.
Is the same mentality required by windmill fans?
NoIdea
Pointman says:
June 23, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Fine words Pointman.
And thank you for the Milton, I forget how great he was.
Poetry and poets are a bit of a blind spot for me, most unfortunately, I have always had a yen to read more.
Ed.
Will people stop posting those extremely long postings sheesh you would think there was a writing contest going on.
The DT blogs are down for essential maintenance uh oh what are they going to eff up this time and why do they do this during a week day?
You finally get some decent blogs show up where you can slag off the authors of for riding the short bus to school metaphorically and low and behold no posting, well at least we have the comfort and safety of libertygibbert.
@David.
I am already running into problems LOL
“The atmosphere of the Earth is less able to absorb shortwave radiation from the Sun than thermal radiation coming from the surface.
(What about thermal energy from the sun?)
The effect of this disparity is that thermal radiation escaping to space comes mostly from the cold upper atmosphere, while the surface is maintained at a substantially warmer temperature. This is called the “atmospheric greenhouse effect”, and without it the Earth’s surface would be much colder.”
“The Earth’s surface is about 33 degrees Celsius warmer than required to radiate back all the absorbed energy from the Sun
(so why does the moon with no atmospheric or geothermal warming get much hotter?)
This is possible only because most of this radiation is absorbed in the atmosphere, and what actually escapes out into space is mostly emitted from colder atmosphere.”
“This absorption is due to trace gases which make up only a very small part of the atmosphere. Such gases are opaque to thermal radiation, and are called “greenhouse gases”. The most important greenhouse gases on Earth are water vapor and carbon dioxide, with additional contributions from methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and others. If the atmosphere was simply a dry mix of its major constituents, Oxygen and Nitrogen, the Earth would freeze over completely.”
(I ask again, so why does the moon with no geothermal and no atmosphere not freeze over completely?)
I then ran into
Kirchhoff’s Law has a corollary: the emissivity cannot exceed one (because the absorptivity cannot, by conservation of energy), so it is not possible to thermally radiate more energy than a black body, at equilibrium. In negative luminescence the angle and wavelength integrated absorption exceeds the material’s emission, however, such systems are powered by an external source and are therefore not in thermal equilibrium.
This theorem is sometimes informally stated as a poor reflector is a good emitter, and a good reflector is a poor emitter. It is why, for example, lightweight emergency thermal blankets are based on reflective metallic coatings: they lose little heat by radiation
If we consider an ideal situation in which an enclosure with perfectly reflecting walls contains radiation with a certain amount of energy, then at equilibrium, this “photon gas” will have a Planck distribution of energies[1]. This will be true even though the walls are perfectly reflecting due to the very small amount of interaction between the photons themselves. The equilibration process will take a considerable amount of time, but the distribution of energies and radiation density will ultimately approach a Planck distribution.
The next step is to realize that, as a result of the second law of thermodynamics, any enclosure at thermal equilibrium will have a Planck distribution of radiation[1]. If this were not true, then we could bring that system in contact with the above ideal system, both at the same temperature, and by connecting them through an optical filter,(CO2?) we can have a net amount of radiation pass from one body to the other. For example, suppose in the second system, the density of photons at narrow frequency band around frequency ν were higher than that of a black body at that temperature. If a filter that passed only that frequency band was inserted in an opening that connected the two bodies, then there would be a net transfer of photons, and their energy, from the second system to the first. This is in violation of the second law of thermodynamics that states that there can be no net transfer of energy between two bodies at the same temperature.
(If a filter that passed only that frequency band, say CO2, was inserted between the two bodies, then there would be a net transfer of photons, and their energy, from the second system to the first. This is in violation of the second law of thermodynamics)
.
The white cloud will serve as a very good insulator against solar radiation, because it is very reflective of the solar radiation, and although it therefore emits poorly in the solar band, its temperature will be around room temperature, and it will emit whatever radiation it has absorbed in the infrared, where its emission coefficient is high.
I note that the graphs where relative to Coincident measurements of the infrared emission spectrum of the cloudfree atmosphere at (a) 20km looking downward over the Arctic ice sheet and (b) at the surface looking upwards.
Why go to the Arctic? Is it only there that the lack of humidity shows the CO2 footprint?
The only mention I can see of convection is
“A glass greenhouse works primarily by blocking convection, and an atmospheric greenhouse works primarily by blocking thermal radiation”
Surely if there was no warming atmosphere there would be no convection or thermal winds. (adiabatic and anabatic effects) as these and evaporation are cooling effects. . Air has low thermal conductivity, and the bodies of air involved are very large, so transfer of heat by conduction is negligibly small. Transfer of heat by convection is large.
Why no dealing with convection or clouds?
“The greenhouse effect itself has always been an important effect on Earth’s climate, and it is essential for maintaining a livable environment. Without it, the surface would rapidly freeze.”
So why does the moon not get frozen solid?
Is it closer to the sun?
I hope I have managed to convey some of the concepts of the questions I am trying to work out how to ask. I look forward to your response. Apologies if it reads like Sci-fi, I am sure you will forgive me.
Now I really must off and pack.
Will my lack of packing abilities mean I leave half the stuff at home?
NoIdea
Hi there Crown, is it coincidence that today was the first time I have posted over on the DT since the disgusting mess was brung in or are the moderators having to work shifts to try and get through my tadge lengthy post “A Parable for the Age of Global Warming bullshit”?
NoIdea
MSher. I think you’ll find Brown Bess has been busy re-fighting Waterloo, where surprise,surprise, the British won AGAIN. The British muskets were called what ? Yes that’s right!
Msher: If Old Toad is Brown Bess is Richard, then why doesn’t he just post as Richard? I mean I know we all enjoy the old cloak and dagger, but after a while it gets a bit ri-dicka-lus.
Also, if Old Toad is someone other than the Elvis of the Blogs, and he is indeed the Oxford Elvis’s brother, one has to think that he is very dutiful indeed, and where can I get a brother like that? Or hell, a lover like that? LOL
Blackswan, thank you, dear. Fortunately my own dog is a Boxer, bred to get fresh with wild boars and that sort of thing, so if she saw a coyote, fox, mountain lion or bear, her most likely reaction would be bark ferociously and then…run. And quite right, too. The trouble with having a ‘guard dog’ that you fall in love with is that, when danger comes, you’re more inclined to protect the dog than have it protect *you*. On the other hand, she’s faster than I am, and her jaws are clampier. Generally I just try to keep us both away from the larger fauna….
Old Toad
“I think you’ll find Brown Bess has been busy re-fighting Waterloo, where surprise,surprise, the British won AGAIN.”
I think you need to tell the EU that the British are winning. They might almost think that the British are losing – that what Napolean and Hitler couldn’t do by warfare, the EU has achieved without firing a shot.
izen
“I have no interest in defending cap-n-trade. I doubt its efficacy in reducing CO2 emissions”
I think the conclusion is is pretty inescapable that so far it is a scam to extract money from Western electorates and transfer it to
1) developing nations – TATA/redcar anyone?
2) a new carbon trading class, many of whom are cronies of government officials.
I posted a long post a few weeks ago about carbon offset trading, based on a documentary run on CNBC, the financial news cable network.Here is what I posted before.
This is about a television program I saw last night on CNBC, the GE-owned financial news cable TV Channel: “Carbon Hunters – Making Money out of Thin Air.”
This was at an examination of the “booming, lucrative and often bizarre world of carbon trading.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/35872593/
AGW was assumed, as was the need to protect the world against AGW. It was only the trading of offsets that was in question in the documentary.
A man named Don Lambert – an oil guy – is buying pieces of the Amazon Forest. Credits for trees saved might be worth $100 mil. a year. Program didn’t say who was selling him the credit – in other words, under whose authority is this a credit? And from whom is he buying his portion of the Amazon? (Is this connected to the World Wildlife Fund having obtained pieces of the Amazon?)
An Indian financier said India will be a main source of carbon credits. Examples: Families will get them, 4 cows = 1 credit. (I don’t know what the families are going to do or not do with the cows.) Indian farmers are getting them for giving up their generators to use some sort of foot-operated manual machinery. (They are selling offsets to individuals in London who worry about their carbon footprint.) The farmers are said to like the program, because they like the money. The TV program didn’t mention this but – these farmers have moved from more-industrialized back to early-Industrial-Revolution equipment. (Or it is all a giant fraud – who monitors whether the farmers really use the manual equipment?)
Carbon trading may become bigger if massive carbon trapping projects in the Pacific are “certified.” “Certified” by whom? One plan is to dump massive amounts of urea into ocean to create algae. Ah, what happened to the precautionary principle?
A major airline (sorry, I forget which) sells carbon offsets on its flights from Canada to tropical vacation spots, so that passengers don’t have to feel guilty about flying. The offsets relate to planting trees in Canada. Some passengers are very annoyed when they find out that the trees involved are different what they had been led to believe. (Sorry I don’t remember if the problem is location or type of tree or that the trees were going to be planted anyway.)
Shell Oil has approached Canadian native tribes and asked them not to log their forests to allow Shell to have carbon credits to offset the tar sands. The program didn’t specify how this will work. Under what authority, and who quantifies how much of an offset this qualifies as?
In the Philippines, an Italian utility is burning methane from a big garbage dump for carbon credits to offset its carbon emissions in Europe. The promoter of this program explains his vision of the third world developing and escaping poverty through carbon offsets. A concern is mentioned that the impoverished people living/working on the garbage dump don’t get the money from the offset. But that isn’t going to stop the promoter; he is going to further his vision by finding more garbage dumps to turn into carbon offsets.
A company was profiled that finds carbon credits throughout America and sells them to celebrities. Recent Oscars apparently gave some offsets to stars, I assume in their goody bags. Offsets turned out to be worthless. (I’m not sure why.) The stars were embarrassed. A broker says that was a good thing, because that started the movement for “higher quality” offsets. That is the significance of this vignette; the move to “quality” offsets.
Apparently just as quality is talked about in relation to stocks and bonds, it will be a buzz word for carbon offsets. To get that “quality,” there will be new regulatory mechanisms for registering and auditing offsets. I guess that is good, because as Mr. Lambert, of Amazon Forest offset fame, explained, carbon offsets are the “new American dream.”
Amanda, Msher, Certainly on this site we can post under whatever name we choose. This would seem have a two-fold advantage, firstly you can be judged on the strength of your argument without the impact that ‘Sir’, ‘Dr’, ‘Prof’ or even ‘Lord’ might have on the audience, and you can’t be ‘wiki-ed’, with the inevitable “he would say that, wouldn’t he”. There is also a certain ‘frisson’ in assuming a new identity, even if it’s only that of a decrepit amphibian !
or even a beloved musket !
Crownarmourer: re duelling banjos. Yes, I have passed shacks made of aluminium siding, with old cars that can’t go all jumbled on the grass in front, and worthless items cluttering up the porch (where there is one) like the world’s most pathetic second-hand junk shop… just squalid. And yet, drive on a bit and you see signs of affluence. Turned on the radio and the local voices were thickly twangy (but I don’t mean thick as in stupid). Also, as I say, some of the music (e.g. ‘bluegrass’) is not, to my foreign ears, instantly universally crowd-pleasing. But you weren’t thinking of the music, were you, Crown?
Old Toad — well I can see that I have missed out then in not coming here as Perky Purebottoms or something like that. I *have* posted under different names in the past (one of them being ‘Melplash’, which may not be news to you or the least bit interesting), and I found that I got a somewhat different sort of response from other posters than I did as Amanda, i.e. posting frankly as myself. (I do have a strong inclination to frankness, as Crownarmourer has noted.) In other words, responding to me as ‘Amanda’ they tended to treat me more reliably as a friend. And it wasn’t only or even because what I said incognito was edgier.
Old Toad, P. S. I’m very fond of anurans myself. In my garden there are tiny chirping frogs (originally from Mexico) about the size of my small thumbnail, and the males are extremely musical all night, which would be lovely except that I’m obliged to put an ear-plug in the non-pillow ear to get to sleep….
Not sure if this has been mentioned before, some very interesting stuff
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/05/30/lawrence-solomon-enron-s-other-secret.aspx#ixzz0pYGrNDnd
“Enron now has excellent credentials with many ‘green’ interests including Greenpeace, WWF [World Wildlife Fund], NRDC [Natural Resources Defense Council], German Watch, the U.S. Climate Action Network, the European Climate Action Network, Ozone Action, WRI [World Resources Institute] and Worldwatch. This position should be increasingly cultivated and capitalized on (monetized),”
Read more: http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2009/05/30/lawrence-solomon-enron-s-other-secret.aspx#ixzz0rhnAFZjf
OO this article self linked! I had no clue they could do that.
Why different links though?
NoIdea
Edward. says June 23, 2010 at 11:29 pm
Re poetry, I envy you. It’s such a deliciously rich seam and you’re thinking of diving in. Do so and drown in bliss. A taster, courtesy of Willian Butler Yeats.
Why should not old men be mad?
Some have known a likely lad
That had a sound fly-fisher’s wrist
Turn to a drunken journalist;
A girl that knew all Dante once
Live to bear children to a dunce;
A Helen of social welfare dream,
Climb on a wagonette to scream.
Some think it a matter of course that chance
Should starve good men and bad advance,
That if their neighbours figured plain,
As though upon a lighted screen,
No single story would they find
Of an unbroken happy mind,
A finish worthy of the start.
Young men know nothing of this sort,
Observant old men know it well;
And when they know what old books tell
And that no better can be had,
Know why an old man should be mad.
For me the poem shows how easily one can become retreat into the the dead end of being a reactionary although I understand his bitterness – I’ve been disappointed with so many of my friends but then I read Dylan Thomas.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Or even better, something for the lovers
In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.
Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.
Pointman
Old Toad,
Did you know Badger, Ratty and Mole?
And how’s the old hall these days?
Do you still shoot weasels and stoats, because if you still do, then there are a number still in the house of commons, notably Balls, ‘mad’ Hattie, John Bercow, the Milipeed twins and if you happen upon the upper house, spare a double barrel for ‘Lord of the flies’ Mandelweasel.
That would be simply spiffing old sport!
kindest regards, Ed.
Yeats is slightly bitter, you can hear the lilt in Thomas’s verse, I like it more and it sings.
Thank you Pointy!
You might even educate me yet sir:>)
Ed.
Peter Sutherland is chairman of BP plc (1997 – current). He is also chairman of Goldman Sachs International (1995 – current). He was appointed chairman of the London School of Economics in 2008. He is currently UN special representative for migration and development
From http://www.trilateral.org/membship/bios/ps.htm
And he listens to Bummer, or does Bummer listen to him?
NoIdea
@Ed “You might even educate me yet”, a favour returned, Sir. Dylan Thomas reminds me of William Shakespeare (and Jimi Hendrix!), forgotten after their death but quality endures, all else is transient fashion.
Pointman
Old Toad
“Certainly on this site we can post under whatever name we choose”
You’re addressing someone who agrees completely with that sentiment. Remember, I’m the person who has never cared about the names or identities of posters, as I tend to react simply to the material posted. This is the same thing you are saying: “you can be judged on the strength of your argument.”
However, you do write a lot about what James is doing and thinking, so in this particular case, it might be relevant to know how authoritative your information is. It almost seems as you are purporting to be speaking straight from the horse’s (toad’s?)mouth.
Having once perhaps been called a terrier, of all things, (The poster denies having called me such.) – often a runty, yip yap kind of dog, I am considering changing my ID to “Great Dane.” What’s stopping me is I can’t decide whether I want the avatar to be a tawny Dane, or a blue (i.e., gray). Maybe an even bigger impediment is that I’m not fluent in doggy language. “Arf, arf” is about as far as I can go, and that doesn’t allow for a lot nuance! 🙂
‘Msher, There’s lots of things I understand but “perhaps been called a terrier, of all things” is one of them I don’t. ‘Perhaps’? You woz or you wozn’t and over and above that, I’m sure you’d remember which poster made such a vile accusation. You’re lowering the tone, tighten your stays girl and straightnen your cowboy hat.
Pointman
“quality endures, all else is transient fashion.”
Veritably pointman.
It does not reach any higher than William or Dylan, or in music Ludvig.
Ed.
Pointman
It is a joke aimed at Old Toad who called some posters terriers trained to go after rats (i.e., trolls). I said if I was going to be called a dog, I wanted it to be an impressive dog. (No offense to terrier owners.)
@ blackswan – Re; ‘economics and politics are not of great interest to me’ –
“That statement of yours is utterly mystifying to me.”
Perhaps I should clarify…
I don’t mean that I consider economics and politics to be irrelevent or of no influence on our lives – obviously it is immensely influential.
I keep a ‘weather-eye’ on the political/economic situation just as I keep an eye on the weather, because thats the best way of knowing what to wear (shirt-sleeves/coat0 and whether to take an umbrella…
And to stretch the metaphor well past its linear Youngs modulus region into areas of permanent deformation…
The weather is constrained however by the season and climate of the locality. The weather on a particular day may be highly variable, but you wont need ice-spikes on the equatorial coast, or a sunhat in the polar winter. Extreme examples, and in the UK you may need a short-sleeved shirt AND a coat and umbrella all in one day….
While aspects of politics can be analyised, the Curtis doc on Bernays and the ‘cult’ of individualism encouraging conformity is interesting, I find that most of the time politics are just competing ideologies, and like most ideologies they are maps with arbitary symbols, constrained narratives of how things work – NOT the territory. At the very best they are limited descriptions rather than explanations and not amenable for use for prediction.
The same problem goes for economics. Its less a ‘dismal’ science and more a range of competing theologies. A hopeless record in prediction and explanation, it often seems to be arguments over how many Keyenesians can dance on the head of a Moneterist.
The political/economic view of AGW and ETS, cap-n-trade etc that you and scud1 have proposed may well be ‘right’.
I just find it seems to make unstated assumptions about money. If it is been taken by fraud from the many for the benefit of the few… governments taking it as a ‘green’ tax and fossil fuel supplies ‘passing on’ the costs, where does that extra money come from ???
Either the many have an inflatable supply of money or its a redistribution mechanism changing the GINI index of the whole system.
Am I wrong to find some irony in the apparent objection by those that most loudly oppose ‘socialist/marxist’ social organisations to AGW political responses that redistribute ‘unfarely’ from the many to the few?
There are logistical reasons why the provision of electrical energy to within a society is either a state monoply or a service provided by private industry under tight civic regulation that makes it indistingushable from a monoply.
If energy was unlimited in availability and required few resources to produce, then there would be no reason to ration by price, or opportunity to exploit for taxation or profit. Its the scarceity and resource costs (including envirmental degridation) that make it a vehicle for economic exploitation and political control.
Important though the politics and economic may be for the way in which energy is rationed, it is the physical reality of its availability and the possible collateral damage its use/production may have that constrains and defines the social structure of the rationing.
Not the other way round.
All gets a bit ‘hand-waving’ this political philosophy… anybody got some hard science to knock around ?
-grin-
@Ed – Agreed with Ludwig and with Wolfie too – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxTG2SrCB6k and Maria Callas
Enjoy, Pointman
Chris P @June 23, 2010 at 5:24 am
I am still thinking about your post about the encampments of East Europeans squatting (that’s the word, isn’t it?) in your parks, living off local game, including swans. I found your story profoundly disturbing. My concern might be that you are describing a devolution/regression of society that British authorities are permitting.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261044/Slaughter-swans-As-carcasses-pile-crude-camps-built-river-banks-residents-frightened-visit-park-Peterborough.html
I have read about gypsies in Britain. Are any of these people gypsies? I’m asking that because it would be even more depressing if these were people who lived within a settled society in Eastern Europe but who have regressed in Britain.
What about the vaunted benefits we are always reading about that go to Muslim immigrants? Do these immigrants not qualify? Are they merely seasonal workers, and immigrants have to be “permanent” to qualify? If there are any children, are the children in regular schools?
Why do the authorities allow squatter’s camps?
Your story raised four themes: immigrants, squatting, living off the land, and law-breaking. It is the bundle of the last three – squatting, living off the land and law-breaking which I see as the devolution/regression of society. I think the “immigrant” part is relevant in that by allowing the immigration (or allowing the EU to force it upon you), your government has done something to encourage the bundle of the first three. Maybe also the immigrant factor is of concern in that given a separate language, these squatter communities are even more separate from general society.
I have been trying to think of similar situations that might exist in the U.S. I don’t know whether there is anything analogous. I know of communities that involve one or another of the themes, but none where all four are encapsulated. If there is any interest, I could list the situations I can think of and others could add to the analysis. I don’t know if there is any interest – I might be overreacting to the story in Britain.
izen says June 24, 2010 at 7:21 am
Disappointing. Where did you address the morality question? Nowhere. Is there one in your science or your googling? You dream of nothing twixt heaven or Earth but your AGW. All you want to do is work on a better nerve gas. You’re a moral imbecile, you don’t know better, there is no other view.
The end justifies the means. There is no political dimension, science is pure and absolute. The common folk need to be led by us better educated people. Okay, there’s going to be some casulties but it’s for the good of the planet. If they don’t have us to lead them, who have they? We’re looking out for them, we know best, we love them, they trust us.
Have a doubt.
Pointman
msher if I remember correctly it takes a court order to remove squatters and that can take 6 months. also if you squat on a piece of land for long enough uncontested you get to keep it as yours however that takes about 20 years. Some guy managed to get a million dollar home that way in London.
Amanda watch out for big foot as well apparently he lurks up there as well. I shall be sticking with my usual moniker as well keeping ones multiple identities straight gets confusing.
@Morning all. Interesting days Down Under… Labor Caucus votes in 30 mins on a leadership spill; reporters say Julia Gillard has the numbers to topple KRudd.
News as it comes to hand.
Crownarmourer: Good, you stick with yours and I’ll stick with mine. After all one should pick a name, like an avatar, that somehow ‘sez’ you, and if you’re too inventive it could get embarrassing, e.g. ‘Sweaty Gym Shoes’ or ‘Little Monkey Fingers’ or ‘Cunning Lower Mind’. One doesn’t want to give too much away, and one’s fellow posters might consider it TMI (too much information).
What a relief not to have to be ‘on topic’. No one can shout ‘off topic!’ at me because everything about this site is volunteered. And besides that, I spy no Captain Sherlock.
G’day Amanda. The “topic” is whatever y’all say it is – we started this thread with internet totalitarianism! – Oz
‘Perky Purebottoms’ (the mind boggles) et al, after a couple of pints of excellent ‘weissbier’ wth Brown Bess in the ‘Cardinals Hat’ I can report that, with the help of our gallant Prussian allies, he was able once more, to celebrate our victory over the French. Apparently the ‘biere’ at Waterloo was stronger than usual and he suffered accordingly. The talk was all about the event in 5 year’s time when we celebrate the 200th anniversary of this great battle. The big worry is that everyone, from the crowned heads of Europe downwards, will want a slice of the action.
@Amanda, I suspect – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBrbpWwWafQ&feature=channel
Pointman
Msher. These reports about ‘East Europeans living off the land’ is a mere cover story.
I hope you appreciate that in a few year’s time when, due to the ineptitude of Huhne and the Cleggerons, all our useable sources of energy have been closed down by the EU and no replacements have been built, then we shall move seemlessly back into the 14th century. What has been reported on is the Prince of Wales and the Hon Jonathon Porritt doing a feasibility study.(He’s allowed to eat his own swans)
G’day Pointman, you gallant gentleman, you. Nice to have you around.
Evening all,
Good to see everyone still here in this happy haven of sanity.
Having been heavily distracted by the football, I’ve not had much time to post recently.
But I have made some new friends at the Huffington Puffington Post (Normal) site:
“Lying again about warming, eh? You’ve shown yourself to be an outright troll, who thinks talking points are the same as facts.
Meanwhile, 2009 has been confirmed as the 2nd warmest ever directly recorded and this past decade as the warmest ever.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/
Moreover, 2010 is shaping up to be, in all likelihood, the warmest year ever directly recorded…
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100615_globalstats.html
So, there it is…In your face, BillyBoy.
You may get paid to troll by the post, but every time you lie, but I suspect you’re going to get called on it here. ”
Oooh it makes me feel all warm inside, a professional troll across the pond – “Come on, England!!!” – what stage was it again, Pointy?
btw the article is about the Stanford “study”:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-hoggan/new-stanford-study-expose_b_620369.html
Pointman,
Oh yes indeed, my father was a devotee, he also loved Giacomo and Joe Green and so do I but Dad was truly an expert…… me?…..I only dabble in Operatic works, Wolfie was prolific and yes of course a great, music stirs and wells up in me, great emotion, even if you have played a piece a thousand times, it still conjures a re-invigoration of nuance and sounds.
I do try not to place composers in order of greatness, however it is hard not to have favourites.
Ah! but Maria, what a voice.
Great music is nourishment for the soul pointman, I thank you.
Ed.
Old Toad: Glad you like ‘P. Purebottoms’, which is one of my nicknames. I have about 30 of ’em. And I’m not telling you what the other ones are.
G’day Ozboy and thanks for that endorsement. God I love freedom!
@Old Toad,
“The big worry is that everyone, from the crowned heads of Europe downwards, will want a slice of the action.”
HUH!
They can stay away, if it is anything like the Trafalgar flop, Red and Greens V the Blues, Hush!!! don’t mention the fact that the Spanish and French were decimated by Lord Nelson battle fleet, at a ratio of 10-1.
Richly ironic to celebrate Wellington’s (with the Prussians) great victory in saving Europe from Boney, what would he think now, of our subservient, lick spittle Euro-serfs some call politicians?? –
Ed.
New thread everyone. Rudd Dud!!!
https://libertygibbert.wordpress.com/2010/06/24/rudd-gone/
Izen,
I was mulling over your earlier thoughts and decided you take the prize…….
“Money is just a measure of poverty, a rationing system for scarce resources.” & “Claims that all these climate mitigation policies are taking money from the general population seem to ignore that all it can do is redistribute the ration card tokens…”
I’ve never heard that perspective before. I’ve just accepted the usual term “money is a measure of wealth”. Drat, sucked in by those Mad Men again!
The measure of “wealth” carries the obvious inference of all the “goodies” money can buy, as well as the power and influence it brings, invites envy to accelerate ever-more consumerism.
Measure of “poverty”, while absolutely true and accurate, carries such images of a negative reality, that people would react like rabbits caught in the glare of an oncoming truck.
Aspire-to-wealth promotes Credit. If you don’t have “money” of your own, here have some of ours (for a small “consideration”). People are drowning in interest on debts they’ll be lucky to pay it off in a lifetime. But hey, if you’re old and a bit short of cash, borrow on your house and when you drop off your perch, your kids can pay it off. That’s inter-generational Debt, what a brilliant concept.
Redistributing the “ration card tokens” for scarce resources is so true. Conjures memories of my parents’ wartime stories of what you were “permitted” to buy or use.
Back to the future eh? And all on the justification of a LIE.
Gotta hand it to you Izen, a man of clear insight.
Pointman says:
June 24, 2010 at 7:42 am
:>)
@ ScouseBilly says:
June 24, 2010 at 9:19 am
Nice one ScouseBilly.
BTW England did a bit better today, when will Stevie get Rooney scoring?
Now for Franz’s lot, I think he made that comment the other day because he is a little worried about his lot meeting us, well now is the time to put up or shut up, come on England!
@ Oz,
Wotcha matey!…… has Abbot caved in over ETS and AGW?
Ed.
crownarmourer
In the U.S. public authorities can usually remove squatters on public land without a court order. If the rules about usage of the land are unclear, the applicable authority might first have to pass a resolution or regulation or law specifying. In order words, if the people originally could claim to be “invitees,” the authorities can “uninvite” them. Then the police should be able to act. Even if there is an occasion where a court order is needed, public authorities will usually get that order – then act. At least on land they care about.
Private owners can usually have the police remove trespassers without a court order. Trespassers are different than “tenants,” where it does indeed take a court order to evict.
Landowners, whether public or private, usually move to remove, or have removed, trespassers earlier, rather than later – precisely to avoid any claims by the squatters of rights to squat. That’s part of what is disturbing in the story: aren’t these people considered trespassers and where are the authorities? From the story, we are not talking about remote land that no one cares about.
I don’t know the law in Britain, but given that most U.S. law is based on British law, I assume it would be the same.
—————–
Old Toad
Are they are any advantages to the 14th century over the 7th century, where certain other factions would put us? But seriously, 14th century? I thought it was mid-1700’s. Or whatever the year before the Industrial Revolution started. I want to get this straight, as I have been preparing for the 18th century, and know little about the 14th. (Demise of the knights templar and black plague?)
I agree that the AGW proponents would put us back into pre-Industrial Revolution times. I have never gotten any of them to explain where they are going to get their Gulfstreams or computers. Do you think they will be willing to row or sail across the Channel when summoned by their EU masters?
ozboy
Significance of new Aussie Prime Minister?
Msher
In Australia, we have the Law of Adverse Possession, obviously inherited from Old Blighty.
“This is an old doctrine that says, basically, that where a trespasser remains in possession of land for a period of time (generally 15 years) then that person may have acquired ownership of the land”.
http://www.lawyersconveyancing.com.au/advposs.asp
Some years ago here in Tasmania, a farmer was asked by a neighbour if he would mind if the neighbour grazed a few cattle on his river-front paddock for a while.
“By all means mate”, after all that’s the Aussie way, help your mate, neighbour, friend.
This arrangement went on or a number of years, until the neighbour lodged a claim for the farmer’s acreage under the Law of Adverse Possession.
He won, took the farmer’s land, and became a pariah throughout this island community on the simple “fair play” principle. What do they say?” No good deed goes unpunished”.
I noticed recently the creep (son and heir of one of our most prominent families), was putting these rural holdings up for sale and development of residential housing.
Black Swan
That’s why authorities and landowners generally move sooner rather than later to get squatters removed.
I think most landowners in the States are pretty savvy about allowing others to acquire rights on their land. There is one very famous land closing for exactly that reason: The streets around Rockefeller Center in New York are owned by Rockefeller Center. They allow the public to use the streets, except that one day a year, those streets are closed. That is precisely to prevent any public easements or rights from being acquired. (I should say that that was the situation when I lived in New York. I assume it is still the situation.)
I’m gathering that this was public land in Chris P’s story and I’m also reading into the story a breakdown of public authority and/or a breakdown of public will. I might be wrong, because the story doesn’t indicate time frame. But it would seem to be a year, at least.
Thanks for the pictures of the other two kinds of geese. I was very parochial on the subject of geese.
Msher,
If Oz is pressed for time, may I venture this opinion……….
Rudd has been the champion/driver of AGW/Carbon Tax, unfettered immigration.
He has become so “on the nose” that he’s been rolled just months before an election.
While the Labor Party as a whole share these Socialist policies, none moreso than the new PM, it augurs well that the lot of them will be thrown out at the election and AGW will end up being trashed.
We live in hope.
Msher,
Never heard of the Rockefeller matter, thanks.
I think the issue re the public land squatters in the UK is simply PC spinelessness on the part of Authorities. As is usual, any criticism of ethnic groups’ behaviour or holding them to the Rule of Law required of others, is met with howls of racism, xenophobia, discrimination and social injustice. Evictions and/or deportation would be decried as Fascism.
Did you look for the platypus? What a marvel. A smallish mammal it has the bill of a duck, the tail of a beaver, lays eggs, suckles its young on milk and the males have a venomous spur on their hind legs that can kill a dog.
http://www.australianfauna.com/platypus.php
One of my favourite country eating-houses is built on the bank of the proverbial Babbling Brook. A platypus has dug a burrow under the building, so the owners installed a wee camera in there with a monitor upstairs so you could see the goings-on
underground with great community glee when some eggs hatched.
Gotta love this place.
msher it is best to evict squatters as soon as you find them, but oddly enough there are companies and absentee landlords that for whatever reason fail to keep an eye on their possessions like a million dollar house for12 years anyhow here is a guide to the law….
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatters_rights
Pointman says:
June 24, 2010 at 5:47 am
Thomas’ “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” would bring a tear to the eye of a marble statue – it always has for me. Trouble is, unexpectedly read over breakfast, it makes your toast all soggy.
May I offer for your consideration the following, from our own Henry Lawson, over a hundred years ago. Maybe it’s why the CC Fraud so infuriates me, to willfully return society to such penury, with Lawson’s haunting imagery that so engaged me as a kid…
They lie, the men who tell us for reasons of their own
That want is here a stranger, and that misery’s unknown;
For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet
My window-sill is level with the faces in the street
Drifting past, drifting past,
To the beat of weary feet
While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.
And cause I have to sorrow, in a land so young and fair,
To see upon those faces stamped the marks of Want and Care;
I look in vain for traces of the fresh and fair and sweet
In sallow, sunken faces that are drifting through the street
Drifting on, drifting on,
To the scrape of restless feet;
I can sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.
In hours before the dawning dims the starlight in the sky
The wan and weary faces first begin to trickle by,
Increasing as the moments hurry on with morning feet,
Till like a pallid river flow the faces in the street
Flowing in, flowing in,
To the beat of hurried feet
Ah! I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.
The human river dwindles when ’tis past the hour of eight,
Its waves go flowing faster in the fear of being late;
But slowly drag the moments, whilst beneath the dust and heat
The city grinds the owners of the faces in the street
Grinding body, grinding soul,
Yielding scarce enough to eat
Oh! I sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.
And then the only faces till the sun is sinking down
Are those of outside toilers and the idlers of the town,
Save here and there a face that seems a stranger in the street,
Tells of the city’s unemployed upon his weary beat
Drifting round, drifting round,
To the tread of listless feet
Ah! My heart aches for the owner of that sad face in the street.
And when the hours on lagging feet have slowly dragged away,
And sickly yellow gaslights rise to mock the going day,
Then flowing past my window like a tide in its retreat,
Again I see the pallid stream of faces in the street
Ebbing out, ebbing out,
To the drag of tired feet,
While my heart is aching dumbly for the faces in the street.
And now all blurred and smirched with vice the day’s sad pages end,
For while the short ‘large hours’ toward the longer ‘small hours’ trend,
With smiles that mock the wearer, and with words that half entreat,
Delilah pleads for custom at the corner of the street
Sinking down, sinking down,
Battered wreck by tempests beat
A dreadful, thankless trade is hers, that Woman of the Street.
But, ah! to dreader things than these our fair young city comes,
For in its heart are growing thick the filthy dens and slums,
Where human forms shall rot away in sties for swine unmeet,
And ghostly faces shall be seen unfit for any street
Rotting out, rotting out,
For the lack of air and meat
In dens of vice and horror that are hidden from the street.
I wonder would the apathy of Veronica_Wealthy men endure
Were all their windows level with the faces of the Poor?
Ah! Mammon’s slaves, your knees shall knock, your hearts in terror beat,
When God demands a reason for the sorrows of the street,
The wrong things and the bad things
And the sad things that we meet
In the filthy lane and alley, and the cruel, heartless street.
I left the dreadful corner where the steps are never still,
And sought another window overlooking gorge and hill;
But when the night came dreary with the driving rain and sleet,
They haunted me the shadows of those faces in the street,
Flitting by, flitting by,
Flitting by with noiseless feet,
And with cheeks but little paler than the real ones in the street.
Once I cried: ‘Oh, God Almighty! if Thy might doth still endure,
Now show me in a vision for the wrongs of Earth a cure.’
And, lo! with shops all shuttered I beheld a city’s street,
And in the warning distance heard the tramp of many feet,
Coming near, coming near,
To a drum’s dull distant beat,
And soon I saw the army that was marching down the street.
Then, like a swollen river that has broken bank and wall,
The human flood came pouring with the red flags over all,
And kindled eyes all blazing bright with revolution’s heat,
And flashing swords reflecting rigid faces in the street.
Pouring on, pouring on,
To a drum’s loud threatening beat,
And the war-hymns and the cheering of the people in the street.
And so it must be while the world goes rolling round its course,
The warning pen shall write in vain, the warning voice grow hoarse,
But not until a city feels Red Revolution’s feet
Shall its sad people miss awhile the terrors of the street
The dreadful everlasting strife
For scarcely clothes and meat
In that pent track of living death the city’s cruel street.
Amanda well that never stopped us from talking about what we wanted on James D’s blog on the evening shift, as for the captain he has stopped posting a lot must hate the new format as it does not allow him to post his novellas easily.
@Swan – Thank you for the Henry Lawson.
Pointman
Msher. You could be right about the 18th century. The 14th saw the rise of some of the ‘great’ religions of the world and I note that the Welsh were revolting even then !
Ed. Yes, that would be the big worry. If Waterloo 2015 is ‘Reds’ v ‘Blues’ I can see Brown Bess ‘packing up his musket’ !
hi Msher
I’m not sure of the legal side of things. Gypsies, I know, seem to be very difficult to move on here. Or so it seems to the layman. Perhaps the truth is there is a lack of will to do it. The Eastern European situation, seems to be about not being able to cope with the influx. And not knowing how to deal with it, (at the moment). Not necessarily the fault of the imigrants themselves, who I think are often ignorant of the situation they are coming too. Housing and space for housing, is a problem in England anyway, without a sudden large population increase.
In another town a few miles from Peterborough, and nearer to where I live, East Europeans broke into a large three storey, empty boarded up building, next to the railway crossing. And took up residence.
On a visit to the town, I was held up in traffic by fire engines. The Building was ablaze.
Aparantly some of the new residents died in the building. I don’t know if the full details have ever been established. It was linked at the time to alchohol, and an open fire inside the building.
My understanding is that benefits are available, and indeed, that benefits are claimed in Britain for family members still living in Eastern Europe (but that may just be a rumour?)
Another problem is vehicles, being driven locally without paperwork, or insurance. This obviously, can have a negative ‘impact’ on existing residents. Also the number of wrecked or barely roadworthy vehicles parked (sometimes abandoned) in streets, were several imigrants buy, or rent a house (legally) between them.
Another side issue, perhaps, was a fiend of mine, living in a respectable street, in Peterborough, were this happened, and later prostitutes moved into the street (their was no business for them before).
The street changed so much, in a short time, that my friend and his familly moved out, and took a big loss on their house.
Another reason why my friend decided on moving, is because he had a son in his 20’s who is crippled in a wheel chair, but independant. He was mugged for his wallet, in a side street of Spalding, and unable to fight back (his pride being more injured than his pocket) The Muggers, were arrested (and were imigrants)…But, of course, it is’nt neccessarily imigrants that break the law in this way.
sorry..
‘side street of Spalding’, should read ….’Peterborough’
Noidea,
Sorry this is so brief but just one quick point Re: the moon.
The moon gets both much hotter than the Earth during the ‘day’, and much colder than the Earth during the ‘night’ (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter measured the lowest summer temperatures in craters at the southern pole at -238 °C. This is the coldest temperature in the Solar System ever measured by a spacecraft, colder even than the surface of Pluto).
Generally the moon’s temperature oscillates between roughly 150°C (250°F) and -150°C (-300°F). This is it because it has no atmosphere, and therefore no climate mechanisms. It is entirely at the mercy of the sun’s glare. In contrast, the Earth’s temperature is moderated by a multiplicity of mechanisms.
@ crownarmourer –
“Disappointing. Where did you address the morality question? Nowhere.”
I alluded to the ethics in the discussion of the perceived ‘unfairness’ of green policies that take from the many and give to the few.
quote-“You’re a moral imbecile, you don’t know better, there is no other view.
The end justifies the means. There is no political dimension, science is pure and absolute.”
I don’t agree with any of those assertions, and if you derived them from what I wrote, then either my exposition was poor or your interpretation is in error.
I don’t even think the means justifies the end; although that seems to be the position of some that claim that socialism or the free market must ALWAYS be applied to any problem, whatever outcome that choice generates.
Obviously there is a political dimension, I just don’t think its possible to go much further than a purely descriptive analysis.
Science is rarely (if ever) ‘pure and absolute’, in fact I would argue strongly that the concept of pure and absolute is inherently flawed and a reification of something that is impossible to realise, it is always a product of the human imagination.
Science does provide us with results that are the best answers that humans can achieve to questions about what is happening. certainly the answers with the best record of utility.
As for morality…
Apart from a tendency to look with strong skepticism on any attempt to validate a position from moral arguments, here is one tenet I would defend.
Ethics are not absolute, but neither are they relative or indeterminate. But they are contextual. The specific situation determines the ethical import, not an absolute moral principle. Ethical ‘rules’ can only ever be guidelines, never protocols that operate independently of the context.
Give me a specific situation and I’ll happily make a specific moral judgment, which I hope is defensible by rational argument. But I’m not very interested in abstractly disqusing moral dogma.
quote-“Have a doubt.”
I endeavor to Always have a doubt about everything. Its one reason I’m here to see what flaws in stuff I can in my own POV. The fact that I might at times express that POV as strongly and dogmatically as possible is often an invitation to find its flaws. It is also a challenge, because I presume others do the same, that their dogmatism is an invitation to challenge it. Although I am on occasions dissapointed in this assumption.
Old Toad says:
June 24, 2010 at 6:13 pm
I always wonder, what if Grouchy had marched ‘to the sound of the guns’? But then I suppose Blucher would have arrived quicker to Waterloo.
Ed.
Chris P
Thank you. To me, your story does come down to an absence of public will in ceding valuable pieces of public land to squatters who turn around and live off of public resources.
The only situation that is at all analogous in terms of squatters that I can think of in the U.S. is encampments of hobos – mostly alcoholic, drug addicted and severely mentally ill individuals, who live in disheveled tent camps. But, as far as I know, they don’t hunt, and more important, these encampments are not allowed on public lands that the public wants to use.
The U.S. has our own immigration issues, that’s for sure. However, I don’t think our issues are exactly the same as posed by your Eastern Europeans. I’m not aware of encampments of illegals living as squatters, subsisting on publicly protected game.
The situation that is analogous in the U.S. is our ceding of our Southern Border to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants who come in each year. That flood of illegals makes a mockery of our immigration laws and our Border Agents. The U.S.’s failure to do something to stop this horde of illegal immigrants is often spoken about precisely as a failure of will and a ceding of sovereignty. (The libs of course believe that any enforcement of immigration laws is a racist affront to minorities. In fact, they believe that any kind of border is an affront to human rights. I’m pretty sure that the same people who in the U.S. are against securing our border would think your authorities have no right to get your squatters off of your public land.)
Nothing I am writing is directed against immigrants themselves, either yours or ours. I have only been looking at the question of public will.
There are two groups that follow an itinerent, squatter path within mature societies.
One is a group that choose or inherit a cultural tradition of rejection of the basic tenets of society. They do not own/rent a fixed place of abode, they avoid having a fixed address as part of a rejection of any subservience to civic authority. This includes a rejection of the concept of private property rights. As a result they steal anything that they can avoid paying for if the legal enforcement of property rights is ‘slack enough to make it possible.
The obvious example would be the Gypsy/Romany groups of N Europe. Inevitably as self-declared outsiders to the prevalent social order they tend to be persecuted most and first by authoritarian governments. They were the first to be rounded up and ‘solved’ by the German fascists, and at best forcibly integrated by the Eastern communists. While this persecution usually involves defining such groups as parasites on the social system, the historical persistence of the subculture might indicate it is more correctly viewed as a commensal symbiote.
Such groups live between the cracks, providing cheap seasonal agricultural labour, and exploiting those resources that society finds it uneconomic to include in its own system. Often they ‘recycle’ the garbage, or trade in second hand commodities, so they were horse traders, now second hand car dealers. They live in and exploit the fringe and excesses of a mature, wealthy society, and most such cultures seem able to sustain, tolerate and probably derive some benefit from a small proportion of such ultimate libertarians in their midst.
The second group arrive at the same position not as an intentional choice, but as a result of personal circumstances and the economic state of society. There is always a percentage that fail to own/rent a fixed abode and fall out of the social system. before the safety-net of welfare provision the ONLY option was to become a homeless traveler/occasional squatter living of the land. Both its natural resources and anything they can get away with stealing.
The percentage that get excluded from the social system by economic factors depends on the health of the economy. The socially disruptive effects of such populations in times of economic recession is one reason why welfare systems were developed by mature cultures. It is ‘cheaper’ for a society to subsidise the membership of its citizens than deal with the consequences of a economic recession excluding a significant number from society.
During the last big economic crisis, the US government initially tried a policy of non-intervention, it avoided bailing out banks or individuals, holding that for idealogical reasons such actions where inherently wrong.
You mentioned reports of people who were squatting in parks and exploiting the available natural food sources. You might want to look up Hooverville and what happened in Central Park NY during the 1930s.
Such a policy was not sustainable, at least in a democracy. FDR replaced Hoover at least in part because he offered a way to avoid the enforced exclusion from the social order of a growing fraction of the population.
Edward. says:
June 24, 2010 at 9:41 am
“has Abbot caved in over ETS and AGW?”
Short answer: YES!
Saw him on telly the other week declaring he was convinced that human activity does indeed cause CC. He said he and Labor differed on the form an ETS should take.
When he took the Opposition Leadership last December, he said he had an open-door policy and invited people to put any questions to him or opinions on his website. I did so, putting a number of AGW-related direct questions. All were ignored, receiving no response over a number of months, despite putting the questions a number of times. What I DID receive was a never-ending stream of spam giving full transcripts of every word/speech/pronouncement he made.
I’m not a naive numpty and fully expected such a response, having similarly addressed questions to Labor and the Greens over various issues over the last 20 years.
However, I’m a great believer in the “give ’em enough rope” principle. When I was satisfied that I’d given them a “fair go”, I then emailed them a “big serve” demanding I be taken off their database and received no reply or spam since.
The exercise had told me all I needed to know, simply confirming what my inherent cynicism knew to be true.
When Abbott grabbed the leadership on the ETS issue, I remember he was lauded in the DT as the first leading politician to reject AGW. I remember advising “caution” then, and while I hesitate to say “I told you so”, I did.
I know of no Australian politician in any party who is not firmly seated on the AGW gravy train. Do they believe in AGW? Now that’s a different matter altogether.
Blackswan Tasmania says:
June 25, 2010 at 8:56 am
G’day Swanny,
Thank you for the reply, don’t know where I am at the moment:>) Been a long day I guess.
The above answer to my question is truly shocking and also damn rude of Abbot too, I abhor rudeness.
I also heard Turnbull is back tho’?
It is a shame mate, what you’ll have to do is grow a pair of 42DDs and wear some skyscraper heels luv and dye yer hair blond like the sheilas do and then you’ll get noticed mate:>))))))))
Or not, – mind you!……………. it worked for the Australian cultural attache…… .
Ed.
Hi Ed,
When Turnbull lost the leadership and ended up on the back benches, he declared he would not stand at the next election. A couple of weeks back he recanted and said he would indeed be standing.
This bloke was the Managing Director of Goldman Sachs in OZ, is a Rhodes Scholar (as is Abbott – the Captain would love that), is Leader of the Republican Movement and in his first moves into politics approached the Labor Party looking for a “safe seat”. They told him to get lost. He did better peddling his wares with the Libs who parachuted him into a blue-ribbon seat over the top of a very popular local candidate. He won but was universally despised by many for obvious reasons.
When the Libs lost the election to Rudd (PM Howard lost his seat altogether), Turnbull shafted the newly elected Opposition Leader to seize the leadership and began to become “little Sir Echo” as he progressively endorsed more and more Rudd policy, including AGW and the ETS. You know the rest.
It was reported a few months back that Turnbull had met with Goldman Sachs’ David Blood (he of Sherlock’s Blood & Gore) but I thought he was just angling for his old GS job back. Seems “someone” has whispered in his shell-like ear and told him to “stick-it-out as he only lost to Abbott by one or two votes.
With Gizzard’s trouncing of KRudd, all the balls are up in the air.
Australian politics has not been this convoluted in 35 years.
izen
I am aware of Depression-era tent camps. I am only addressing our own time. (And FDR did seek to bring these squatters back into society, unlike the British authorities in Chris P’s story, who appear to simply be ignoring the squatters.)
Are you suggesting that these individuals constitute such a beneficial “commensal symbiote” that they should be allowed to squat in public park land in inhabited areas, land that the locals have traditionally used for recreation. That they should be permitted to hunt public wildlife/livestock and to intimidate the local, settled population? Do you think public policy should encourage immigration by individuals who will end up choosing to live in this fashion as squatters?
I am not addressing the issue of whether society should provide other housing or other benefits for these individuals, only the question of what the authorities’ position should be towards squatting in the midst of populated areas and towards hunting of protected animals in public parks by squatters and towards the intimidation by squatters of the locals.
Incidentally, an aside: I completely reject your characterization of the homeless as being only in two categories – libertarian types who reject civic authority and the unfortunate victims of economic circumstances. Leaving aside the recent economic recession, I do not think the homeless in the U.S. fall into either category. I think they are almost all dysfunctional individuals in the throes of alcoholism, drug abuse and /or mental illness. You did allude to ” personal circumstances.” Is that a recognition of the category I am talking about? In the U.S. in recent decades, leaving aside whatever might have transpired in the last 18 months, I think the overwhelming majority of homeless fall into this category.
Self-styled advocates for homeless in the U.S. push for public housing for these individuals and characterize them as victims of a cruel economic system. That is not what I have seen. I have seen many talking to Alpha Centauri between swigs from their wine bottles. In fact where there are homeless shelters, these people resist using them. I think the advocates for whatever reason are pursuing their own agenda, and will not end up helping the homeless I am talking about. I repeat that I am not addressing whatever might have transpired in the last 18 months.
Back to the the squatters in Chris P’s story. They are obviously NOT of the kind I have seen in the U.S. and do fit better into parts of your description of categories of homeless: they are in poor economic circumstances (Do they send money back home, by the way?) and they reject the mores of British society. But I don’t know whether these people have been subjected to a “forced exclusion from the social order.” Do you know anything to base a conclusion on that they have been forcibly excluded?
But mostly, what do you think the authorities should do about the the squatters in Chris P’s story?
Edward. says:
June 25, 2010 at 9:59 am
“G’day Swanny,….. what you’ll have to do is grow a pair of 42DDs and wear some skyscraper heels luv and dye yer hair blond like the sheilas do and then you’ll get noticed mate:>))))))))”
Sorry Ed, I gave the stiletto heels away – they’ll bugger your back. As for the rest – been there, done that – couldn’t get my “lippy” on straight! LOL
Blackswan Tasmania says:
June 25, 2010 at 10:31 am
I always thought the Captain had a valid point re Rhodes scholars and I did read much of his stuff, there is definitely an old boys network and at it’s heart is Goldman Sachs, these are the boys behind the Chicago Carbon Trading Exchange, they are extremely anxious for Obarmy to railroad his cap’n’trade loony toons legislation through the Senate/house of Reps, if Obarmy doesn’t they will lose billions, let us hope our American cousins see through;
1. Obarmy.
2.Obarmy’s facade and his blatant attempt to shut down American industry, he could do what China has been trying to do for the last thirty years at a stroke.
Turnbull is a real piece of work, I ask myself in all honesty, how do these slugs sleep at night mate???
Do you have to have your conscience removed (as well as a lobotomy) to become a politician??
Sigh!
Ed……glad you saw the funny side of the other stuff, didn’t want to offend – the last thing I would ever want to do!!!
Msher
‘Moving’ the story on then, the government that was happy to recieve a large influx or imigrant workers, to do the work that was being done before (but we are now told would not be done without them……Probably true now, as the culture for doing it, has been broken) Also, set in motion, plans for dealing with the influx. In the form of a large incease in extra ‘low cost’ house building across Britain. ‘Low cost’ being achieved by making them very small, and craming them into small plots.
These are of course built on farmland, and so reduce further Britains ability to feed itself. Built as extra townships, on the edge of existing towns, they overload the existing infrastructure, which will never be able to cope, because of lack of space for extra roads, etc.
In the villages, like my own, an estate of these houses is now planned, with no top limit, despite the area being a ‘no growth’ area, were planning permission for anything has always been blocked (to the locals) The proposal on a totaly inapropriate site, with one single track road access, running alongside the childrens playing field. From the plans, it is clear that there is very little room for the parking of cars, which will no doubt back up, out of the estate, and else where into the village. Our village has one small primery school. Full up, and with a long waiting list, and a parking problem. Our drainage system backs up sewage onto peoples land regularly, because it cannot cope with the existing usage. Our roads are mostly narrow.
This is being repeated in other villages around the area. A nearby one (for instance) Currantly underthreat by a large Goverment driven Wind ‘farm’ Which 80% of the village returned polling slips against. This of course, would be built far too close to peoples homes, including the whole of two villages, all within the 2 kilometer area of concern (isolated homes being as close as 620 metres). Will likely be built even so, using new lesislation brought in by the last government to bypass local planning, and be considered by the secratary of state for energy, directly. As it’s capacity rating will be over 50MW (achievable very rarely in high winds, perhaps). This of course, encouraged the developer EON to consider inreasing the size and capacity rating of their proposed turbines from 2MW to 3MW (and build 17)
Anyway, (I digress) This farm land, which will be lost to the tenant farmers, with little compensation. Will now have to accomodate (also) a new ‘low cost housing estate) Which will (of course) have to be built even closer to the oversized turbines than the existing villages.
And so, you can see from all this, that the matter is all firmly in hand, and being dealt with currantly by government policies.
Chris P
Your post about the plans for the immigrants makes the situation both better and worse. The better part is that at least authorities don’t plan to leave squatters camps in your public parks. To me that is the absolute worst in that it would signal government that accepts an end to organized society.
So, as you say, they do have plans and the matter is firmly in hand. OK,. that’s better. BUT those plans appear to be anathema to local interests. I am assuming from your description that a majority of the local electorate opposes the plans. That raises a different set of issues – the same issues as raised by the Lisbon Treaty: the government is acting without the consent of the governed. We are seeing some of that in the States with respect to actions of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress – but there is hope that all those so acting will be tossed out of office in the next two elections. What seems so wrong in reading about Britain is that the electorate is not doing anything to “throw the bums out” or to oppose government policies. I understand that between the 3 major parties, there is virtually no choice – they all adhere to the same policies. But I don’t understand enough about your politics to understand why there wasn’t a stampede to the BNP and UKIP or some other new party.
Right now in the U.S., about half of households don’t pay income taxes. So they of course will vote for all kinds of things that spend the money of those who do pay taxes. I don’t think that is a sustainable situation. If the spenders can’t be voted out of office, I don’t know what will happen.
However, we don’t seem as passive as the Brits and I hope we will “throw the bums out.” In the States, the last few year of Democrat control, coupled with absence of strong enough responsiveness of the Republicans, has spawned a new political force – the tea parties. I don’t know how long-lived or successful they will be (So far they have been surprisingly successful in getting conservatives names as Republican candidates.) – but at least there is a reaction here.
Another example of reaction here just happened in the State of Arizona. The State of Arizona, fed up with failure of the federal government to enforce its own immigration laws, has passed a law that permits state police to enforce parts of federal immigration law. (I don’t argue in favor of that law – I see both the pro and anti side. But I do see that the Obama Administration, instead of dealing with the concerns of Arizonans, has trashed them and plans to go to court to get the Arizona law struck down. Sort of like how your government has been acting with respect to citizens’ concerns.)
A similar phenomenon is that a number of states have said they will be in court to oppose the new federal healthcare bill.
I don’t know whether the various reactions here will be successful – but there is a reaction here. There doesn’t seem to be any equivalent reaction in Britain. Why not?A mass stampede to the BNP and UKIP or some other new party? Why aren’t there any local governments that have tried to legislate to protect their residents? (Is that possible in the British system?)
I clearly don’t know enough about the British system. In the States, our primary system means that both national and state candidates who are not beholden to the national party do have a chance and can win within the national parties. They can keep office even if they buck the policies of the national party (not easy, but it can be done). Or candidates can run and hold office completely outside of the party structure. Occasional independents, not affiliated with national parties, do win Congressional and Senate seats and state office. (Rare – usually someone who made a reputation in a national party, then defected from the party. But it can be done.)
I don’t know which is the case in Britain:
1) The electorate really likes the EU, mass immigration policies and the welfare state.
2) The electorate doesn’t like the foregoing, but your system makes impossible the emergence and/or success of candidates and parties with different policies.
3) The British electorate is completely apathetic.
I don’t mean to sound too smug. In the States, the Dems might have some tricks up their sleeve, between stimulus money they are holding onto to spend in 2012, outright vote fraud, and the naturalizing (making citizens) of large numbers of illegal immigrants. With such tricks they might hold onto control of government, then we will be in the same position as Britain. Maybe a number of years down the line, we will sound as resigned as the Brits on the DT blogs do.
Ah, but Msher….you are a Democracy. Britain has, instead, a Parliament.
.(..Although, I think myself that democracy would be a good idea). A vote for a minority party, is a protest vote, only. UKIP being the largest minority party (something like one million votes) did not, even so, win a single seat. (And so, was a wasted vote.) By voting for UKIP opponents of wind farms, ensured a hung parliament, which now means ironically that we have Chris Huhne of the Liberal party in power (I bet he was surprised), and wanting to build more wind turbines than ever before. The Liberals are not famously anti EU either.
We did, however, succeed in removing our last prime minister (who nobody ever voted for anyway)
And replaced him with a party (Condems) that nobody voted for.