tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-144572321271522382024-02-21T04:38:32.046+11:00BunyipitudeBunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.comBlogger968125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-77312889094556582512013-10-28T08:58:00.001+11:002013-10-28T09:03:33.818+11:00The Bird has flownThe Bunyipmobile has not been in the garage for 10 days or so, and it has been a lonely road paved with quite some regret. Some time ago, as visitors may recall, there came a parting of the ways with the Rufous Bird, who had been a fixture at the Billabong and was rather keen to see those extended visits become permanent. Being a fool, the Professor demurred, one thing led to another, and while there were odd dinners in the name of old times' sake and irregular drinks (for who needs a reason to get out the corkscrew?), the old passion was kept very much in back pocket and handbag. But it was there all the same, stymied by a very stupid Bunyip's wariness of launching into another live-in relationship that might -- but probably wouldn't have, in retrospect -- ended in the acrimony that saw the former Mrs Bunyip depart to her friendly family law practioner.<br />
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They say those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it, and that is certainly true. But what they should also say is that not all histories are templates and that drawing iron-bound lessons from one unpleasant experience can be as fraught with folly as not drawing any lessons at all.<br />
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The other day an SMS arrived to announce that the Bird's new companion will be lugging her suitcase on an extended holiday, just the pair of them. The likelihood is that this jaunt will be a prelude to joint residency, so all half-formed plans to resurrect the union are now moot. Probably forever.<br />
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One of the things about blogging is the opportunity it presents to cast stones at others' idiocy. Were the topic love, this Bunyip's projectiles would not land beyond the front fence.<br />
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<b>NOTE:</b> The above is this blog's 1000th post. Would that it have been a happier topic.<br />
<br />Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-26902173277522171782013-10-15T11:40:00.000+11:002013-10-15T11:40:31.936+11:00Age readers riotYou won't read about this in the Age, allowing that you actually read the Age, rather than look to it as the distilled essence of feral opinion and the latest trends in groupthink, but the East-West Tunnel isn't anywhere near so unpopular as the newspaper's writers insist. While the paper has been filled with screeds underscored by the foundation belief that public transport is morally uplifting and should therefore be obligatory, genuine public meetings with real residents and bona fide officials have been taking place throughout Fitzroy, Collingwood and Kensington. For some reason the Age chooses not to report these gatherings, prefering as it does today, to focus on the ferals for whom the tunnel project must serve as a catalyst for mayhem until the next G20 confab or Right to Life rally. It might cost Age editors dinner party invitations were they to mention that those public meetings have generally accepted the view that property values and quality of life will each be improved if vehicular traffic moves beneath the inner city rather than through it.<br />
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Just up on the Age website <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/eastwest-link-protesters-blockade-john-holland-office-in-collingwood-20131015-2vjeq.html">is this report</a> and picture, one of several from today's protest. Unmentioned is that the the "injured" woman, <a href="http://www.socialistpartyaustralia.org/archives/3625">Kat Gallea,is a professional ratbag</a> and <span id="goog_667948777"></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/">mainstay of the Socialist Party<span id="goog_667948778"></span></a>, specialising in movie reviews and <a href="http://www.socialistpartyaustralia.org/?s=kat+galea">Marxist critiques of Fifty Shades of Grey</a>.<br />
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No mention of the protesters' associations and sympathies figures in the Age report, which is hardly a surprise. After all, why would the paper wish to insult the soap-free demographic, the last market segment in which it exerts any influence whatsoever.<br />
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Several weeks Fairfax closed its slick consumer monthlies, Sydney and Melbourne magazines, which formerly paid the rent by carrying ads for flash watches, four-figure handbags and ridiculously expensive ladies shoes. Is it it any wonder those mags folded? Would anyone but an Age executive want anything to do with <a href="http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dingleberry">these dingleberries</a>? If they entered your shop the first call would be to turn out the store detectives.<br />
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<b>UPDATE:</b> How ridiculous is the Age these days? <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/fears-of-eastwest-link-impact-on-zoo-animals-20131003-2uxg6.html">This ridiculous</a>.<br />
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Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-34356300907609803942013-10-15T10:34:00.001+11:002013-10-15T10:35:10.143+11:00"Doctor" DementoHow easy is it to get a PhD from James Cook University these days?<br />
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<a href="http://eprints.jcu.edu.au/20193/1/20193_Smallwood_2011_thesis.pdf">Read this CV-builder, otherwise known as a dissertation. from Grace Smallwood, blacktivist and raving nut job.</a> <br />
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Has James Cook introduced new sub-categories -- Doctor of Rants, for instance -- or is it simply that a black woman with a big mouth and a larger chip on her shoulder is as immune to critique as she is distant from logic and originality?<br />
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No doubt serious minds are to be found on the James Cook campus, even allowing for a heavy infestation of climate "scientists" and enviro grant gobblers. If the academic clean skins don't wish their own reputations besmirched by association with Smallwood's spillage of deranged piffle, then this is the moment to raise a stink.<br />
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A good good place to start <a href="http://www.turnitin.com/">might be here</a> or <a href="http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/assessinglearning/03/plagsoftsumm1.html">here</a>. <br />
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<br />Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-69987603281246287742013-10-12T17:01:00.001+11:002013-10-12T17:03:30.258+11:00Too poor to be entirely originalA former Silly journalist, who asked not to be quoted directly, writes that Julia Baird should re-consider <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/comment/rich-people-couldnt-care-less-20131011-2vdb4.html">her disdain for the rich</a>, as <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-wealth-reduces-compassion&page=2">they don't have to borrow</a> quite as much as she.<br />
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Not that the Silly would deem today's column plagiarism, mind you. The bar was set pretty high when <a href="http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/thief-with-friends-in-high-places.html">Ross Gittins was cleared</a> after <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-wealth-reduces-compassion&page=2">penning a column that boasted 90 per cent of other people's unattributed words</a>, and Ms Baird has actually invested the effort to re-write and paraphrase.<br />
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<br />Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-31943918665204384502013-10-10T13:13:00.000+11:002013-10-10T13:35:07.438+11:00First they came for the bikies....<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Sometimes, when the social urge takes charge, the Professor
sallies forth to break bread with like-minded types. Such dinner gatherings often
represent a critical mass of antisocial attitudes, as judged by contemporary
Victorian standards, there being much levity at the expense of hooked-up,
nicely remunerated members of the Mordy-Litijus tribe, social workers, the
notion that underpaid teachers spend their four months’ of holiday time preparing
lesson plans and, inevitably, the sort of women who represent <a href="http://annesummers.com.au/asr/conversations/">compelling arguments for
male sodomy</a>. Given what happened in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Andrew
Bolt v Self-Identifiers </i>and the fact that cigarette butts are sometimes carelessly
discarded beneath an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">al fresco</i> table,
a case could perhaps be made that a peaceful Bunyip and companions are
law-breakers and undesirable elements liable to prosecution under a variety of
new measures being introduced in the Garden State and other jurisdictions. In
Victoria, the latest novelty is a ban on what are being described as domestic “fortifications”,
which police have been given an authority to tear down. They are <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-10/melbourne-police-raid-motorcycle-gang-clubhouses/5013092">embracing that option with relish</a>.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The new law is aimed specifically at bikies, as is Victoria
Police’s stated intention to give anyone riding in club colours a hard time, even
if they are within the speed limit and perhaps on the way to refurbish grandma’s
spouting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other states similar
measures have been introduced, the common thread being that Australia’s
various police forces need something more muscular than <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>existing laws to make outlaw motorcyclists
behave themselves. This seems a peculiar view, as dealing drugs, manufacturing
them, stockpiling arsenals and shooting fellow citizens are already against the law
and have been for some time.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Now it is true that bikies elicit little sympathy and deserve less.
Certainly, no decent parent would be pleased to find a child had decorated himself
with a “1%” tattoo. Plus, given the way that Harleys handle, there would be
reason to doubt the young one’s sanity, as agile Italian and Japanese crotch rockets
are cheaper, faster and a lot more fun. But being stupid and illuminating your
bicep with a tatt are not illegal activities – not yet, anyway. What should
worry the rule of law’s supporters is just where this business of nominating
particular groups for selectively harsh treatment might end.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The Billabong just happens to be surrounded by a rather high
and private fence, which by the new legislation’s loose definition might
be construed as one of those "fortifications". <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>The
possibility that police might come knocking is, while unlikely in the near term,
a possibility down the road, for if there is a tendency amongst those who
pass and enforce laws it is the lure of “mission
creep”.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"Step away from the Anne Summers jokes, put down the list of Arts Victoria grants recipients and throw yourself face-down in the dirt....." Fanciful, yes, but not unthinkable -- not in a land where <a href="http://www.watoday.com.au/comment/wests-newspapers-take-quick-route-to-regulation-20131008-2v64x.html">a former ABC media critic is consumed with regret</a> that the Finko and Ricketty review was unable to impose the threat of jail time on troublesome newspaper editors.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Today it is bikies on the short end of the battering ram.
Tomorrow, who knows which sub-demographic of undesirables might be in for a bit
of official attention? </span></div>
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Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-88450490244105271802013-10-10T09:22:00.000+11:002013-10-10T09:31:50.714+11:00Why Jacky can't readHow <a href="http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/about/programs/aboriginal/aboriginalactplan.pdf">Victoria's Education Department encourages Aboriginal students</a> to master language, mathematics, chemistry and all the other subjects that save teachers from the ignominy of careers as social workers:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGpcw3esPIYkRed4Apq7qqD9gWukHPy-e-N-zV4YQ6Psoz3eQ4MQ5rgHX1SHdsZp53gbsMexwuatC-kD8fuaoewxFSlz8H46M1ku0mIX5cl6wIcgQ_4JauAHGcJ3Xv_A1GEG8lcF7B0lw/s1600/indigenes.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGpcw3esPIYkRed4Apq7qqD9gWukHPy-e-N-zV4YQ6Psoz3eQ4MQ5rgHX1SHdsZp53gbsMexwuatC-kD8fuaoewxFSlz8H46M1ku0mIX5cl6wIcgQ_4JauAHGcJ3Xv_A1GEG8lcF7B0lw/s320/indigenes.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Click and the image will get bigger, as the Indigenous actress said to the Rainbow Serpent bishop.<br />
<br />
And don't forget, no physics lesson is complete without a Welcome to Country ceremony, about which <a href="http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/school/teachers/teachingresources/diversity/welcomecountry.pdf">Education Victoria has formulated some helpful guidelines</a>. Notice that the department's normal abhorrence of sexism and gender stereotyping has been suspended...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8NVIlwDUMzjbLLAdje8ta40ZBClfpuMclc-syX_iapF3spcrVaolKEkssdsz8wisue2gnqRiMNM1TQSfNqqsY-D5eEwq58Ubqi5ogrPoZQCFY4Fe6JeRODKBOO4ejU8zWYfopXnzZXpo/s1600/indigene2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8NVIlwDUMzjbLLAdje8ta40ZBClfpuMclc-syX_iapF3spcrVaolKEkssdsz8wisue2gnqRiMNM1TQSfNqqsY-D5eEwq58Ubqi5ogrPoZQCFY4Fe6JeRODKBOO4ejU8zWYfopXnzZXpo/s400/indigene2.JPG" width="118" /></a></div>
<br />
... but cash payments haven't been:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJstCYdOsymqwKvTy-NTnNEfQwXfAuGFC34F6zyT8ORw1POIyHwLjD6N70vCCkJeOZXzrBmpnwfFAEsfSen8cuOtQFU8emaM__2EQexHhv8JCeQJbn4M366TxSTfhtGrVbQ-bqka-nTHs/s1600/indigene3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJstCYdOsymqwKvTy-NTnNEfQwXfAuGFC34F6zyT8ORw1POIyHwLjD6N70vCCkJeOZXzrBmpnwfFAEsfSen8cuOtQFU8emaM__2EQexHhv8JCeQJbn4M366TxSTfhtGrVbQ-bqka-nTHs/s1600/indigene3.JPG" /></a></div>
<br />
Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-55654904386307532672013-10-10T08:27:00.000+11:002013-10-10T08:27:19.743+11:00Correction: MWF put its Johnson on displaySeveral commenters on <a href="http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/next-rabbits-will-be-funding-myxo.html">the post dealing with the Melbourne Writers' Festival and the $250,000+ it receives</a> from the Victorian government have accused the Professor of bias in failing to mention that not every guest at this year's conclave was a grant-fed luvvie leftoid. "You are a lying @#$%," noted one aggrieved visitor, whose salty language precluded his thoughts being posted on what is a civilised blog. "Why don't you mention that Tory @#$% Boris Johnson or does he spoil your bull^&*( thesis?"<br />
<br />
Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea culpa.<br />
<br />
Boris was indeed on hand, and as he represents the sum total of the organisers' efforts to present someone other than owners of biodegradable bicycles and sustainable Lit Board grants, he most certainly should have been given a guernsey.<br />
<br />
The full guest list can be found here, <a href="http://www.mwf.com.au/2013/?name=Writers-at-MWF">each participant's CV available via a handy link</a>. As an exercise, see if you can find a conservative. <br />
<br />
<br />Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-70489861160088621852013-10-09T16:34:00.000+11:002013-10-09T18:18:37.543+11:00Robert Doyle's collapsing kingdom<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
While poking about in the shed last month in hope of finding
the perfect nut, bolt and spring washer to repair a broken scissors, a receipt
from 1978 came to light amidst the cobwebs. It was for a Victa motor mower, the
sum a quite staggering <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>$379, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>purchased by the machine’s original owner from
McEwan’s in Bourke Street, the hardware emporium that was a Melbourne
institution until it went out of business in 1993, when the chain and its
flagship were purchased by Bunnings. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Passed
to the Professor via a Springvale garage sale for a much more reasonable $30 in
2006, the mower came with the original receipt, which the elderly former owner
had taped to the handle. Thirty five years after being unpacked, the lusty
four-stroke still does a fine job of cutting the grass.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What brings this to mind is <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/business/property/times-up-for-a-confounding-site-20131008-2v6aj.html#ixzz2hBYAp6Bd">a
story in today’s Age</a> recounting the travails of the developers who
purchased the McEwan’s building, just up the Bourke street hill from the Mall
outside Myer. Their tenants went broke for want of passing traffic and the
former emporium, which was supposed to become a chic, three-storey bazaar, is
empty and covered with graffiti. Reporter Chris Vedelago also quotes a 2010
judgment in a case brought against the then-landlord by a disenchanted tenant: “‘There was virtually no pedestrian activity, either by reason of customers
coming to deal with businesses in the Foundry,’ as it was re-named, ‘or by
reason of the so-called 'ant trail' [a new retail thoroughfare created between
Bourke and Little Collins streets],' the judge found.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While the Age report goes on to note that the site’s future
is in doubt, the opportunity to suggest a fresh use was missed, despite an
obvious and compelling alternative.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why not re-christen it <b>The Lord Mayor Robert Doyle Institute
For Really Stuffing The CBD</b>?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For those not blessed to live in Victoria, know that Doyle
was the former leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party while Labor premiers
Bracks and Brumby were feather-bedding union mates in projects that ranged from
the still-unused $12 billion desalination plant to the re-development of the MCG. A preposterous
figure, he would rise in the Legislative Assembly to make a point, be dismissed
as a pompous featherhead by the governments of the day and melt meekly back
into his seat, a gelatinous pool of spineless irrelevance topped by an empty skull and an inflated sense of self-worth.
If he showed any life at all it was when there was a bit of a sort in the public gallery and he craned his neck to take in the spectacle. Doyle was such a lousy leader of the Opposition that his replacement,
the hapless and hopeless Ted Baillieu, constituted an actual improvement.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After failing in Spring Street he found his niche at the
Town Hall, much as the more problematic lumps sometimes lodge in the S-bend, where his only worthwhile achievement has been to turn loose police on the Occupists in the City Square, and even that took him four weeks to authorise. Other than that, he has been a very good
Labor/Greens mayor, which is certainly not what voters had a right to expect when they voted for a Liberal.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
LaTrobe Street has been converted under his leadership from
a broad and free-flowing thoroughfare to a single lane of cars. The rest has
been given to bicycles, as you would expect to happen with a CINO (conservative
in name only) mayor at the city’s helm. Worse than that, parking fees have been
hiked, hiked again and then hiked some more. Once upon a time, all of Melbourne
looked to the CBD for its first-order shopping needs. Now only an idiot
ventures into the CBD if there is alternative source of the desired good or
service – the former McEwan’s building being the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>proof of that. For decades the store thrived.
Now it is empty and ugly, with no hope of ever again hearing the tinkle of
money in a merchant’s till.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It should take a lot to ruin a city, but Doyle demonstrates -- and the CBD's plethora of empty shops prove it -- that even a man of the most meagre talents can achieve that end. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
</span></div>
Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-15102452787964162362013-10-08T10:21:00.000+11:002013-10-08T10:34:44.352+11:00The carbon-cuttingroom floorAmongst Young Master Bunyip's many talents, the capacity to read cyberglyphics is one of the more surprising and unsettling, as it suggests a relatively recent insertion of back-door genes in the Bunyip line's DNA. There was, however, scarce time to wonder how the former Mrs Bunyip might have amused herself while the Professor was down at the mooring because the young fellow's discovery in what he calls "the sauce code" for Tim Flannery's new Climate Council website is very amusing. Here is part of the code, which goes on for pages.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLv1rQpQJGnxB64k8_bNXH4TTTHgJqMsGtFqBDKrS7aaWipze2u3ykpsweyM8FOyiw3zZmHNIgJZ2yKiDIQuUHBMpgVFRfNpDuR6xyUy3RnKShj2CwwlXsNcsGYJ6D3i52AxPfUkgxJmA/s1600/climate+code.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="26" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLv1rQpQJGnxB64k8_bNXH4TTTHgJqMsGtFqBDKrS7aaWipze2u3ykpsweyM8FOyiw3zZmHNIgJZ2yKiDIQuUHBMpgVFRfNpDuR6xyUy3RnKShj2CwwlXsNcsGYJ6D3i52AxPfUkgxJmA/s320/climate+code.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
YMB explains that the various bits of cuneiform mystery and their associated exclamation marks mean that sections are "comment out" -- erased from public view, in other words -- presumably when someone at the Climate Council realised that the original video link would not do much to advance the cause of separating the gullible and indignantly self-righteous from their cash. Indeed, it would have been a powerful disincentive to heep hands well out of pockets<br />
<br />
Here is the video, according to YMB, which the Climate Commission originally intended to present.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/VsOUyjgv2iA?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<br />
As can be seen, there were some very rash predictions tumbling from Flannery's lips in 2010, none of which has come true or is likely to. (No need to endure the full clip;the funny bits about polar bears, massive rises in sea levels and the certainties of experts are near the start). Much safer, on the whole, to have Flannery talking about "the science" and his cause's need for cash, as he does in the substitute video.<br />
<br />
Sadly, Flannery does not address the climatic imperatives that persuaded him to leave Mrs Flannery to fill the sandbags at the waterfront home he formerly shared with her and <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/celebrity/lowe-voice-rises-20121201-2anl6.html">seek higher ground</a> with a <a href="http://www.kate-holden.com/">prostitute-turned-author</a>. Donations to the Climate Council should be placed beneath the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/one-womans-sexual-adventures-abroad-20100924-15q7j.html">big pink dildo</a> on the night table (the black one is reserved for solstice celebrations).<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE:</b> YMB wishes to make it clear that he did not discover the hidden code. Rather, he was alerted to it via an email now doing the rounds. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-91682447794968021432013-10-08T09:02:00.000+11:002013-10-08T09:06:21.218+11:00"Be consumed" (and washed down with a nice red?)With Tim Blair still chucking down <i>vin rouge ordinaires</i> and pitching his beret at a jaunty angle someone has to keep an eye on South Australia. Fortunately the state's tourism authority has put together a strange little ad which makes that rather easy, as it is replete with reminders of the locals' peculiar little ways. Blogger won't allow the video to be embedded, <a href="http://beconsumed.southaustralia.com/">but you can go here and marvel</a> at the things South Australians value and which they hope will persuade potential visitors to share thei odd delights.<br />
<br />
There are bugs, lots of them, dead rabbits and a man with a gun in <i>Wolf Creek</i> mode. A chicken is sensously plucked. There are cuts of mystery meat hanging on hooks, which must have been easier to photograph than barrelled bodies in an abandoned bank.<br />
<br />
The highlight comes at about the 1.18 mark in the clip, where a young woman in a white dress and holed stockings writhes for not apparent reason in the dirt.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV2ttIp0CmBBafAd-hursDB6gi6JIXiMBzbazaRJJr48hHqASgXjZak4KJPmFf1sMZvtaIHb11Ib4FP05vsutE9TDSsermLvaYj0kAEZBzq6GQJUkv0IYQfFnI_KjRxuJkywNmOLkhkng/s1600/barossa.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV2ttIp0CmBBafAd-hursDB6gi6JIXiMBzbazaRJJr48hHqASgXjZak4KJPmFf1sMZvtaIHb11Ib4FP05vsutE9TDSsermLvaYj0kAEZBzq6GQJUkv0IYQfFnI_KjRxuJkywNmOLkhkng/s1600/barossa.JPG" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Is she dying? Has she been ravaged? Is she feeling about for Sarah Hanson-Young's brain? <br />
<br />
<br />
Nobody but the director can answer those questions. But with an election coming up, those South Australian voters capable of living elsewhere, given sufficient rehab and the attentions of caring medical practitioners, should bear this promotional effort in mind when they cast their votes. If they are not hung on a meat hook first, that is.<br />
<br />Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-66040276883421328492013-10-08T07:55:00.002+11:002013-10-08T08:23:05.729+11:00Quolls, BewareThe Bunyipmobile ate up Victoria over the past few days, pausing for a spell in the Grampians, where a Bunyip's efforts to save the newly rediscovered tiger quoll came to nought. The appealing little creatures <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-07/tests-confirm-sighting-of-endangered-tiger-quoll/3994814">had been believed extinct in the region for well over a century</a>, until one was recorded padding past a hidden video camera some weeks ago. They are in big trouble now. If foxes and ferals were not enough to worry about, the quolls will now have environmental bureaucrats crawling over their turf, setting live-catch traps, installing radio transmitters and all the other things grant-fed academic greenies like to play with when not scaring Age reporters with tall tales of global watming.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOb4zHyPNEbaOJ8FGBnRxnZtH5-alIf1S7Mi8rVXmqtGWbdZA87MKO4g9lq60stvfktrZSdtop0LkjQhDvbx7ae2fBZYODn2Am70o52jA1CaHM_j0nR_1ZOC6Xrw4m7spPWsDMB0-SA1k/s1600/quoll.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOb4zHyPNEbaOJ8FGBnRxnZtH5-alIf1S7Mi8rVXmqtGWbdZA87MKO4g9lq60stvfktrZSdtop0LkjQhDvbx7ae2fBZYODn2Am70o52jA1CaHM_j0nR_1ZOC6Xrw4m7spPWsDMB0-SA1k/s320/quoll.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
One hundred and forty years those quolls have survived since the last sighting. If they heed the Professor's advice, written on carrots and personalised notepaper and stuffed into hollows and fallen logs, they will survive another 140 years.<br />
<br />
What they must do is avoid the experts who will shortly descend in droves -- once the grants are approved, that is.Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-71768770632572030622013-10-03T01:04:00.001+10:002013-10-03T01:22:12.624+10:00Arts Minister Heidi Victoria wants to hear from youLet us just imagine for a moment that there are more pressing matters than a pleasant nine holes, a little fishing and an idle hour or two enjoying what for the moment remains the inchoate bafflement that has held many Labor and Greens supporters in its thrall since that glorious Saturday a few weeks back. Allowing for the existence of a spare moment, we might -- <i>should</i>, actually, being responsible adults -- unleash a little anger that the closest thing we have in Victoria to a conservative force is the government of Premier Napthine, one of whose ministers has spent the past week announcing grants to an arts community that will always take the money and, just as predictably, do whatever it can to assist its patron's ouster. To Overland, $50,000 worth of Guy Rundle-and-worse. To the <a href="http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/next-rabbits-will-be-funding-myxo.html">Melbourne Writers' Festival, a quarter of a million</a>. And to the chap who <a href="http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/blowing-smoke-up-their-arts.html">slithers about in a box of smoke</a>, a very welcome $15,000. Apolitical he might seem, but which way do you reckon the human filter tip's audience will lean come the casting of the ballots in November 2014?<br />
<br />
One could try calling the office of the Arts Minister Heidi Victoria and register a protest, but she holds her seat of Bayswater <a href="https://www.vec.vic.gov.au/Results/state2010resultBayswaterDistrict.html">by a very comfortable 21 per cent</a>, so the odd whiner is unlikely to be blessed with more than the cooing voice of sympathetic electoral officer and the sound of telephone going dead.<br />
<br />
But just imagine that Ms Victoria received a message from her office -- the news that callers had been promising to contact schools, clubs, civic organisations and alert them to the fact that their MLA had just given <a href="http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/boy-crazy-at-arts-victoria.html">$50,000 to a St Kilda gallery that was closed by the police</a> after an exhibiting artist was charged with producing child pornography. Unlikely to go down well, you would think.<br />
<br />
Or what about getting even more serious, starting from the position that a conservative government which isn't conservative doesn't deserve to be a government either. So just suppose Napthine was given to understand that candidates in just one or two of his most marginal seats were to be portrayed as supporting the public funding of really nasty stuff. It wouldn't be entirely fair, true. But then neither is the $250,000 lavished on the MWF celebration of lefties talking about how smart they are and everyone else isn't. If the minister is too busy or too lazy to call the organisers aside and request a little balance, then she might as well send her dog to administer the portfolio.<br />
<br />
Here is the minister doing what politicians do and ingratiating herself with those on whom her future depends, in this members of the Pirate-Australian community from the local cricket club.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH1KnKkPJIQgRH_cQMJ4bLaXcby9Dej8YJ_Ypqg7j8jLaZD_VFN4pebS4dMIHQVrNuoSG3Vrvu4pQIYjiEvdu1KjgiP2laG_ice_5LxenmuWpdVXcT5uTjgHhHEn8tmY9xJNTZNsKvVzc/s1600/heidi.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH1KnKkPJIQgRH_cQMJ4bLaXcby9Dej8YJ_Ypqg7j8jLaZD_VFN4pebS4dMIHQVrNuoSG3Vrvu4pQIYjiEvdu1KjgiP2laG_ice_5LxenmuWpdVXcT5uTjgHhHEn8tmY9xJNTZNsKvVzc/s320/heidi.JPG" width="221" /></a></div>
<b>And here is where <a href="http://www.heidivictoria.com.au/index.php/contact-heidi">you can send an email to Ms Victoria</a>. Readers should feel free to copy and paste their remarks into the comments thread. One message will be ignored, but a bunch of them might actually prompt a reaction.</b><br />
<br />
<br />Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-85716540104263860272013-10-02T18:36:00.000+10:002013-10-03T01:37:11.139+10:00Next, rabbits will be funding myxoReaders will perhaps forgive the Professor for going on at the length of quite a few recent posts about Arts Victoria and the money it is lavishing on people and institutions a reasonable soul might regard as antithetical to the priorities and philosophy of a conservative state government.<br />
<br />
Well here is just one more entry in the list of aid and comforts bestowed upon the enemy:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<h4>
Melbourne Writers Festival, MELBOURNE <u>$259,000</u><br />Melbourne Writers Festival is Melbourne's annual two-week event for
writers, readers and thinkers. The Festival engages over 350
international, national and local writers at over 300 events each year.</h4>
</blockquote>
And <a href="http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/a-literary-whale-amongst-schooling-fish.html">here is the MWF's 2013 guest list</a>:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b><span style="line-height: 115%;">Gay
Alcorn, Cathy Alexander, Dennis Altman, Wendy Bacon, The Bedroom Philosopher,
Eric Beecher, Larissa Behrendt, Sophie Black, Julian Burnside, Jennifer Byrne,
Fiona Capp, Jane Caro, Michael Cathcart, Alison Croggon, Mary Crooks, Sushi
Das, Catherine Deveny, Anne Deveson, Charles Firth, Morag Fraser, Anna
Goldsworthy, Jonathan Green, Libbi Gorr, Wendy Harmer, Joan Kirner, Ramona
Koval, Mark Latham, Benjamin Law, Antony Loewenstein, Amanda Lohrey, Miriam
Lyons, Father Bob Maguire, Anne Manne, David McKnight, Peter McPhee, George Megalogenis,
Tony Moore, Terry Moran, Denis Muller, Ben Pobje, Henry Reynolds, Peter Rose,
Julianne Schultz, Margaret Simons, Peter Singer, Tim Soutphommasane, Jeff
Sparrow, Fiona Stanley, Anne Summers, Magda Szubanski, Arnold Zable.</span></b></span></span> <br />
<br />
Go through the list. Every single one of those names is a lefty, most moving from one publicly funded trough to the next and calling that a career.<br />
<br />
Who is handing this money out? How much is going to mates? What steps has Premier Napthine taken to reform arts funding in the Garden State?<br />
<br />
If Napthine won't act, why should he expect decent people to vote for him in 2014?<br />
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<br />Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-10240315048545324372013-10-02T18:17:00.000+10:002013-10-03T01:15:19.157+10:00Boy crazy at Arts VictoriaThe things those artists get up to! Remember Paul Yore, the artist whose works saw the Linden Centre shut down for a number of days following a police raid back in June? Yore is edgy and hip, as they say, as is the Linden for showcasing his work, like the two examples (below) <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/11/st-kilda-arts-censorship-police">removed by those philistine wallopers</a>.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaDexsPPSQujhZEBPr8kQri6w3TU-VK0bfVJRmkb-YlVILQQuF6wmQxAsGyyt2KDhPenDkkFSA4eVpr5305EmN8jWq43m02-NEF750mSXhtzGnsa8uUPdyeKRQn5tUjCXlOf-S-lT0-Ro/s1600/yore1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaDexsPPSQujhZEBPr8kQri6w3TU-VK0bfVJRmkb-YlVILQQuF6wmQxAsGyyt2KDhPenDkkFSA4eVpr5305EmN8jWq43m02-NEF750mSXhtzGnsa8uUPdyeKRQn5tUjCXlOf-S-lT0-Ro/s320/yore1.JPG" width="262" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnU3AlQFSZkXIE85hDCVJvT-arNqHcDeNcvdJ776J-JyB7Dtv5rDBVbzZgmMQIFwscT6hUp4DsIxdZU4Ub1qwcnNFhSevevDd-bDTAClXPaCkHmgv0QRw6GoklFvntkWm7nU5MhsNZP_Q/s1600/yore2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnU3AlQFSZkXIE85hDCVJvT-arNqHcDeNcvdJ776J-JyB7Dtv5rDBVbzZgmMQIFwscT6hUp4DsIxdZU4Ub1qwcnNFhSevevDd-bDTAClXPaCkHmgv0QRw6GoklFvntkWm7nU5MhsNZP_Q/s320/yore2.JPG" width="262" /></a></div>
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The Linden has <a href="http://www.arts.vic.gov.au/About_Us/News/2013/Investing_in_Victoria%E2%80%99s_dynamic_arts_organisations">just been gifted with $50,000 to keep pushing the boundaries of art </a>(and Squaresville's sensitivities)<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<h4>
Linden Board of Management Inc, ST KILDA $50,000<br />Linden Centre for Contemporary Arts is a contemporary art gallery
dedicated to exhibiting new work by contemporary artists and supporting
artistic development.</h4>
</blockquote>
There has been a lot of chatter lately about a re-ignited "culture war", but that is just silly talk.<br />
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How can you have a culture war when one side's elected champions refuse to take the field? Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-92172734981433184672013-10-01T20:19:00.001+10:002013-10-03T01:26:16.585+10:00The art of football's new rulesAnd one last example of what Victorians <a href="http://www.arts.vic.gov.au/Funding_Programs/Funding_Recipients/2012-2013/Arts_Development/Project_Grants">are getting for their artsy dollar</a>: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>Gabreille de Vietri:<i> </i>Development and presentation of "Three teams", a performance
installation, interactive sculpture and documentary video involving
three Horsham Australian Rules football teams. </b></blockquote>
Translated, that means Gabrielle is going to put 54 opposing footballers on the field at the same time and film them running around according to the artist's instruction.<br />
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Tom Wills invented a whole sport for the cost of a few beers, a pencil and a seat in a pub near where the MCG now stands. Now, a lot more than that gets you an interactive sculpture and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/06/07/3777006.htm">an approving interview on the ABC</a>.<br />
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One thing that is not readily apparent at Arts Victoria's website: the names of those on the selection panels who are rolling out suck* largesse. It would be very interesting to trace their relationships with recipients.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">*</span> <i>originally a typo, but so unintentionally appropriate it must remain </i>Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-66292803627732014222013-10-01T19:55:00.001+10:002013-10-01T19:57:02.946+10:00Blowing smoke up their artsThis list of Arts Victoria's latest happy recipients really does make fascinating reading.<br />
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On page one, just dipping and browsing, we come across Ashley Dyer, who scores for this project:<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Ashley Dyer:<i>Received <b>$15,000</b> for: </i>the development of "Life Support", a cross-disciplinary work that uses
smoke to create images, vignettes, kinetic sculptures and immersive
spaces.</blockquote>
What all that means is filling a box with smoke <a href="http://vimeo.com/35189050">and crawling around in it</a> (below), or sitting in a chair while <a href="http://vimeo.com/35303211">a machine blows smoke rings past your ear</a>. (Apologies. No idea how to embed Vimeo clips)<br />
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<a href="http://www.arts.vic.gov.au/Funding_Programs/Funding_Recipients/2012-2013/Arts_Development/Project_Grants">On page 2</a>, and still just picking random entries, we find Bonny Cassidy, who gets $8000 for <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
the development of Final theory, the final draft of a narrative poem that explores the theme of climate change.
</blockquote>
And by page 3,there is Declan Greene, who trousered<i> <b>$20,000</b> for </i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Presentation of "The Sovereign Wife", a new theatrical investigation into cinematic narrative and cultural identity.</blockquote>
If you missed <i>The Sovereign Wife</i>, know that opinions of its merits varied. <a href="http://www.mtc.com.au/plays-and-tickets/neon/the-sovereign-wife/">The Melbourne Theatre Company was pretty keen</a> because, well, why wouldn't they be? After all, the taxpayer was footing the bill for what <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/queer-comics-take-a-dig-at-colonial-tales-20130708-2pm6b.html#ixzz2gSd3Hxs3">one of its own theatrical types rated</a> not very good: <i>"One MTC staff member whose time with the company was finishing up
contacted the Sisters' producer to tell them what they'd just
witnessed was the most juvenile thing they'd ever seen, and that they
were thankful they wouldn't be there to see it staged."</i> Nevertheless, the Fairfax reviewer was in awe, as you might expect of a production <i>"so queer and far from the mainstream [it] would surely seem like kryptonite to MTC subscribers."</i><br />
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Those bourgeois lowbrows! Serves them right if they bought tickets with their own money and didn't like what arts bureaucrats choose to give them. Just who do paying patrons think they are anyway!<br />
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If you missed the show, a little taste of the genius behind it:<br />
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<br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/xd6uRmRKjrI?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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<br />Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-20842451942780867732013-10-01T19:01:00.001+10:002013-10-01T19:01:44.839+10:00Crumbs for Sparrow<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mccubbin-frederick-fred-7328">Frederick McCubbin</a> is best known for his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pioneer</i> triptych, which wouldn’t be acceptable
today, not at all. There are no slaughtered Aborigines strewn about the canvas’
periphery and it is quite clear by the third panel that trees have been
murdered in the name of mankind’s hegemonic oppression of all things natural
and ferny. If Fred were to try and bag a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>grant for such an obscene work these days he
would pretty soon get a very solid education in what the taxpayers’
representatives demand for someone else’s dollar, and it sure ain’t his sort of
stuff – not even in Victoria, where an allegedly conservative government sometimes
makes squeaky noises about fiscal rectitude.</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Oj3ikf5Lp2pzqiGsFVAsffzc8pWApLaKH-iWnrS7hwdmMk3SqMpdDX58_3ceSoSKDsLObyuB18yTqX8YaQhym86AvVHAEqncNxtgIxB3kFjbWt0OX73pJm41VMQRGkmUEO_7TsSMhYs/s1600/mccubbin.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Oj3ikf5Lp2pzqiGsFVAsffzc8pWApLaKH-iWnrS7hwdmMk3SqMpdDX58_3ceSoSKDsLObyuB18yTqX8YaQhym86AvVHAEqncNxtgIxB3kFjbWt0OX73pJm41VMQRGkmUEO_7TsSMhYs/s320/mccubbin.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Instead, from Arts Victoria, we get a long list of things a Liberal
government is happy to support, one recipient leaping from the ledger being noted
communist Jeff Sparrow, whose little-read but much-funded Overland quarterly has
just picked up another $50,000, presumably for its courage in publishing insights like Rowan
Cahill’s rumination on the militarism <a href="http://overland.org.au/2013/10/a-khaki-future/">at the heart of the
Australian soul</a>. Yes, militarism, as in jackboots and overseas jaunts to
slaughter Japanese, Germans, North Koreans and many other varieties of the despised
Other. Sometimes <a href="http://overland.org.au/2013/09/in-adelaide-for-business/">Guy Rundle also
pens a little thought</a> for Overland, so at least it can be said of Cahill that
he is coherent, relatively speaking, and not at all out of step with Sparrow,
who has been clambering about on the barricades since Labor’s defeat, breast
bared and <a href="http://overland.org.au/2013/09/how-to-lose-a-culture-war-a-response-to-ben-eltham/">the flag of revolution in his worker’s hand</a>. </span></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Culture wars work the
same fashion, except the gun the Left possesses is the possibility for mass
action. We can save the climate only if we turn the environment into an issue
in which everyday Australian feel they have a stake. That’s the escalation we need
– and if we can manage it, the culture war rhetoric will become risible </i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Fellow Victorians, isn’t it re-assuring to have a
Coalition government that knows what it stands for? In this case raising
$50,000 in speed-camera fines and giving the lot to Sparrow of the Proletariat.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Footnote:</b> Sparrow’s
contributions to the sum of human knowledge also <a href="https://online.australiacouncil.gov.au/GrantsList/f?p=113:1:2976365028989981::NO:RP::">command
respect at the federal level</a>, as does his magazine, <a href="https://online.australiacouncil.gov.au/GrantsList/f?p=113:1:2976365028989981::NO:RP::">most
recently to the tune of $183,000</a> (plus another <a href="http://overland.org.au/2013/09/in-adelaide-for-business/">$15,000 for a
state of the art website</a>). </span></div>
Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-119596839215363432013-09-26T10:06:00.002+10:002013-09-26T10:24:51.746+10:00"Crazed Weapons Bearers"There is almost a need to begin this post with an apology, or at the very least an explanation, because once again the topic is Daily Life, where lunacy's lily lacks not for the gilding of further comment. That Fairfax engaged the service of <a href="http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-so-completely-true-fairfax-dirt-on.html">an editrix who is either deeply cynical or certifiably insane</a> has been evident since she was charged with planting the company's flag in the hip new world of digital publishing. That she then engaged the services of writers with more loose screws than Bunnings tends to suggest the latter diagnosis, for if she was aiming to recruit gibbering frothers to attract an audience of gibbering frothers then a little voice must surely have whispered that she would be able to push that agenda so far and no further. With <a href="http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/miss-world-competition-sucessfully-driven-out-of-jakarta-20130908-2tdw8.html">Clem Bastow making common cause with the Salafist weird beards</a> who have visited grief upon the Miss World pageant, it is once again clear that no nuttery is beyond Daily Life's pale. And if there is slightest doubt remaining, <a href="http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/how-not-to-respond-to-a-humanitarian-disaster-20130924-2ucbt.html">Peter Giugni's thoughts on the Kenya massacre will dispel them</a>.<br />
<br />
Let us start with the headline, which should have been rendered thus:<br />
<br />
<b>How not to respond to <strike>a humanitarian crisis</strike> another Muslim massacre</b><br />
<br />
Then it gets worse. Here is the first pragraph:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>It is an unfortunate truth that tragedy abounds these days. Sometimes in
the form of unavoidable natural disasters. Or the most abhorrent man
made events, such as the one we have just witnessed in Nairobi over the
weekend, where crazed weapons bearers chose to assault innocent
civilians.</b></blockquote>
<br />
"Crazed weapons bearers" indeed! Couldn't Giugni have been a bit more accurate. You know, "mad Muslim butchers"? Perhaps he was worried that mentioning the Religion of Peace by name might see Bastow's front-invitation to the next burqa fashion show invalided.<br />
<br />
It gets better, though. With all those infidels bodies clogging Nairobi's morgue, Giugni seizes upon a tweet, one of several billion sent every day, as his launching pad for some thoughts on the rug-kissers whose creed inspires them to execute anyone who cannot name Old Mo's mum.That he manages to do this without once using the word "muslim" is quite the achievement.<br />
<br />
"I doubt they’ll have a great deal of time for your anxieties," he tells the tweeter, "over
visiting a coffee plantation cum family heirloom cum relic of
international imperialism that arguably accounts for some of the
tensions in Somalia today which led to the creation of Al Shabaab as a
militant insurgency in the first place."<br />
<br />
Clear on that? Scores have been murdered in cold blood because <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2380599/RICHARD-KAY-Happy-Valley-saga-draws-ghoulish-end.html">Pommy planters with a taste for gin, polo and other planters' wives</a> planted coffee seedlings in a country with but the slightest connection to Somalia, whence the latest batch of bearded animals emerged.<br />
<br />
Giugni piles more fashionable obscenities and circumlocutions each atop the next, pausing only to upbraid his tweeter for not being a master of thumb-typing and spelling. This from a man whose first paragraph is an end-to-end fender-bender of verb-less "sentences" and who has not grasped that compound adjectives need hyphens. Neither has Daily Life's editrix, apparently.<br />
<br />
So Daily Life, edited by a nong, also publishes nongs. What's the surprise there?<br />
<br />
Just this. When not writing for Daily Life, Giugli is a lawyer <a href="http://myopenday.com.au/careers/humanitarian-worker/">and globe-trotting field operative for the Red Cross</a>, with <a href="http://www.redcross.org.au/red-cross-aid-workers-in-the-field-for-christmas.aspx">a special and recent interest in Afghanistan</a>. Can't you just imagine the conversations with "clients"?<br />
<br />
"So, Mohammad, you blew up an Australian troop carrier."<br />
<br />
"By the beard of the Prophet, indeed I did!"<br />
<br />
"Well that's not nice, but it is understandable in light of what happened to poor Truganini."<br />
<br />
Dribs and drabs of charity flow to worthy causes from the Billabong, and quite a few of those over the years have gone to the Red Cross. There will be no more donations to that particular charity from this point on.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE:</b> When not making excuses for murderes, Giugli is a pretty cool guy -- so cool there is even <a href="https://soundcloud.com/jiqb/p-giugni">a little song about what a cool guy he is</a>.<br />
<br />
<div class="listenDetails__description">
<div>
<i>Peter Giugni is a pretty cool guy<br />He wrote to his girlfriend over three hundred times<br />A letter for every day he's away<br />Saving lives and slaving away<br />Some might call him Korny<br />But I think he's pretty fly</i><br />
<i>Peter Giugni: The king of Generation Y<br />Peter Giugni: He'll troll you till the day you die<br />Peter Giugni: He doesn't even have to try<br />Peter Giugni: He's a pretty fuckin' awesome guy</i><br />
<i>ؤ نهٔ ؤ يو سړی ؤ چې فلټر نومېدهٔ<br />خوست پهٔ ښار كې يې كار كاوهٔ<br />ډېر ښهٔ سړی ؤ<br />د كنجوسۍ ډېر سخت خلاف ؤ<br />ډېر خلكو سره يې مرسته كوله<br />او همېشه عجيب و غريب تحفې انډيوالانو ته يې وركولې</i><br />
<i>(Once upon a time there was a man called Peter<br />He used to work in Khost City<br />He was a very good man<br />He was strongly against tight-assery<br />He really helped the people there<br />And he was always giving his friends all sorts of wondrous presents)</i><br />
<i>Peter Giugni<br />Talkin' 'bout Peter Giugni</i></div>
</div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-35622084699782083212013-09-25T15:47:00.003+10:002013-09-25T17:10:28.568+10:00Drug dealing and honest work -- same thing, reallyWe all know that things are tough at Fairfax these days, but just how tough only became apparent with this morning's perusal of the insights available at Daily Life, where moonlighting Radio National web editor Daniel Stacey explains why the TV series <i>Breaking Bad</i> is so much more than a show about a man whose moral flaws become fissures. <a href="http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/the-greatness-of-breaking-bad-explained-20130922-2u7t6.html">Stacey is one deep thinker, that's for sure</a>.<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b>"The show resonates because Walter White’s journey towards moral
annihilation describes, albeit in hyperbolic form, the experience
awaiting anyone joining the modern workplace."</b></span></blockquote>
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Breaking Bad</i> illustrates the devil's bargain all young people
face, entering a jobs market where most of the outcomes their work will
create–pollution, inequality, misinformation, division–are at odds with
their personal morality.</span>"</b></blockquote>
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"<span style="font-size: large;">The gangster metaphor plays to Gandhi’s observation that a society
should be judged by how it treats its weakest members. Society allows
that many of the poor are forced to sell addictive, harmful products to
make a living, and compete for clients in never ending bloody turf wars.
Is it any surprise then that at the big end of town the same thing
happens with oil – where the addiction is structured into the economy,
the harm global, and the turf wars, well… wars?</span>"</b></blockquote>
<b><br /></b>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"<span style="font-size: large;">...the way to get wealth and power isn't to carry out humble teaching or
police work, it's to find employment in jobs that serve profit and
ignore consequence. For White that job is cooking meth, for the rest of
us it means working for companies that pollute the environment, feed
people products that kill them, and shear off mountain tops to generate
power for air-conditioning units in the suburban homes in which we raise
our children.</span>"</b></blockquote>
<br />
And finally, this gem:<b> </b><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b>"<span style="font-size: large;">There is a shade of Walter White in all of us when we try and hide,
excuse and eventually give up justifying the negative work we do. When
we work for and consume the products of companies that contribute to
anthropogenic climate change, sweatshops, obesity, diabetes, species
extinction, conflict and hate, and pretend that these outcomes will
never come back to harm our families or haunt us in the suburban
Arcadias we're so obsessed with building (and fleeing to).</span>"</b></blockquote>
<br />
As noted, things must really be bad at Fairfax, where the stock of resident idiots has now fallen so low they have had to borrow one from the ABC. Because Stacey does not have one of those squalid, profit-oriented jobs -- the ABC is good like that -- he can opine on the moral fitness of others with absolute confidence. Then he can post another Phillip Adams audio, loiter at the bicycle rack or write his next contribution for Daily Life. <br />
<br />
As for the rest of us, out there working for the man, why, we're no better than ice dealers!<br />
<br />
<b>A FURTHER THOUGHT:</b> When we get the long overdue inquiry into the ABC -- a Royal Commission, preferably -- one term of reference needs to be the way in which the ABC goes about filling vacancies. The paper trail that led to Stacey's current position might provide some fascinating insights.Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-57354352385144188332013-09-25T14:49:00.002+10:002013-09-25T17:10:05.859+10:00Age readers converge on Swan Island<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>UPDATE:</b> Have a look at the photo below, which captures the scene at Swan Island this morning. Notice the sign in the background? Get the message about Australian blood being spilled in someone else's wars (no need to guess which Great Satan the protesters have in mind).</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPL3uz3aLPhBT8vF7YfcrTHnjGAJw_gdu4WORxA9Fso9cOlUdCU1Mw0jEQIgAFhATuJ3nOkrbfVerFdyfwREUczO7mfJqQCmguoAAbyNm_bIKZpc1DXodaBzlTZoxYWdSn3Z7GIpoKtJc/s1600/swan.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPL3uz3aLPhBT8vF7YfcrTHnjGAJw_gdu4WORxA9Fso9cOlUdCU1Mw0jEQIgAFhATuJ3nOkrbfVerFdyfwREUczO7mfJqQCmguoAAbyNm_bIKZpc1DXodaBzlTZoxYWdSn3Z7GIpoKtJc/s400/swan.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Now look at the photo credit. In case your eyes are to old too make out the fine print, here is what it is says:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"<b>Supplied: Swan island peace</b>".</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">If only the ABC had struck a similar arrangement with </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">al-Shabaab it could have obtained some absolutely wonderful pictures of that protest in Nairobi's Westgate Mall. al-Shabaab, by the way, is said to be one of the targets the decent people on Swan Island, not the scum at the front gate, put a lot of thought and effort into monitoring. </span> </span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
______________________</div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">A GROUP of <a href="http://swanislandpeace.org/convergence-2013/swan-island-military-base/">the usual ferals descended on Swan Island this morning</a>, protesting the presence and activities of the Australian intelligence members and SAS troops who train and plan there. It was a variation on the usual urban affair, the Occupy crowd this time enjoying a country excursion, and the protest resulted in a number of arrests and much free publicity for their cause on the ABC. Sadly, the arrests were made by members of Victoria Police, who are a pretty mild lot these days, so there was no bruising scenes nor blur of crashing truncheons. Isn't it a tragedy that the wallopers weren't all overcome by the sudden urge to go and buy pies and lemonade at that particular moment, leaving the defence of the base to the resident commandoes, who must get thoroughly sick of restricting their bayonet training to dummies of the straw-filled variety.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">What sort of evil the hippies imagine is hatched on the other side of the security fence, not one of their member has so far specified. But then they probably didn't feel the need to list their suspicions, as The Age and ABC <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/swan-island-top-secret-training-area-for-agents/2007/04/09/1175971018207.html">have mounted</a> such a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/the-secret-soldiers-20120312-1uwk0.html">long and comprehensive</a> <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/sas-is-involved-in--foreign-intelligence-work-smith-20120313-1uxds.html">campaign of innuendo</a> against <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/sas-trio-had-been-drinking-and-driving-too-fast-20090216-899n.html">the facility</a> that its nefarious purposes are taken by some as needing no elucidation. Rafael Epstein, one of those connected souls who jump from Fairfax to the ABC according to which mate happens to be hiring at the time, can certainly take some credit for <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-25/protesters-arrested-for-breaching-gate-at-swan-island-military-/4979558?section=vic">today's (disappointingly bloodless) confrontation</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/KzNcH-KuJMw?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Epstein is now back at the ABC and gabbling away late on weekday afternoons, no doubt pleased as punch that he secured a new job before Fairfax went down for the count. Good work if you can get it, and even better when old ABC cobbers overlook <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/national/abc-reporter-arrested-over-kinglake-filming-20090225-8hy5.html">that little bit of trouble the last time you worked there</a>. As he controls the microphone and his producer vets callers, there is no hope of him being asked to explain if the name <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-24/tasmanian-community-remembers-young-architect-killed-in-nairobi/4976864">Ross Langdon</a> incites a little guilt. In case you haven't been following the news, Langdon is the Tasmania architect murdered with his pregnant Dutch wife by Muslims in a Nairobi shopping centre.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">According to Epstein and his former Fairfax colleague, Dylan Welch, one of the great causes for concern about Swan Island is that rough men sally forth to places like Kenya, where they gather intelligence on terrorists and their schemes. Why, several of the stories even mention that a particular interest of those working out of Swan Island is al-Shabaab. </span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Australia's security service, ASIO, is increasingly concerned by the
domestic threat posed by the Somali Islamist terrorist group al-Shabaab.
ASIO has concerns a group within Australia's growing Somali community
is sending money to al-Shabaab.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">All very wrong and worrying to any Age writer and his Occupist readership.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Ross Langdon, however, might have disagreed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>UPDATE:</b> <a href="http://ausmilitary.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=10490&start=10">Diggers sound off on journalism Age-style</a></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> </span>Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-23580626493771916952013-09-25T09:57:00.001+10:002013-09-25T09:57:47.402+10:00The newly reformed Ross Gittins<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">See, optimism about the human condition is justified after all. A little encouragement really can prompt even the lowest wretches to lift their game, as Ross Gittins, patron saint of the shallow and formerly a prime advocate of using others' words without attribution, has done in today's Silly. <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/coalition-heading-backwards-with-first-steps-20130924-2uc1u.html#ixzz2fr8BgYga">It is the usual Gittins drek</a> and he gets any pretense at originality out of the way in the first few paragraphs -- original if you haven't tuned in to the ABC since the recent election.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">What a [Coalition] to-do list: sack econocrats guilty of having worked with the
enemy, pass an edict against climate change and discourage all
discussion of it, stop publicising boat arrivals, build more motorways,
move to a cut-price national broadband network and take science for
granted.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">After that, the column is largely composed of cut-and-paste quotes from <a href="http://cpd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Pushing-Our-Luck-Special-Pre-Election-Preview.pdf">chapter seven of this document</a>, whose author Doctor Sticky Fingers rightly acknowledges.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And that is why we should all take heart. Even though Gittins <a href="http://catallaxyfiles.com/2012/03/21/bunyip-pings-gittins/">borrowed almost an entire earlier column from an OECD report</a>, and despite the fact that <a href="http://bunyipitude.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/thief-with-friends-in-high-places.html">his Silly editors ruled that he had done no wrong</a>, he has now taken it upon himself to change his ways and give credit where all but senior Fairfax executives would think it due.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">See, even the worst of us aren't entirely beyond a small measure of redemption. </span></div>
Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-14501153078560727052013-09-25T01:24:00.000+10:002013-09-25T01:24:20.754+10:00Oh, such a perfect day<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The billy needed boiling early this afternoon and what had been planned as a simple overnight trip to scope out stretches of the Howqua, Jamieson and Goulburn very nearly became a weeklong escape from the Big Smoke. If the camp mattress had been stowed and the only tent did not have a hole, well it would have been easy to linger and celebrate this year's trout season, which began on September 6. The batteries in the radio were flat, too, which was another incentive to remain. No chance of catching any more post-election spite and bile from the ABC's apostles of the left. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAn2OulQdW8GlQBmm47mCTwaAWZ-62YwEVZQOIe9vWtgDuFchm-_BBKHcMhMvIiqOw1spwJ-PWcn1Wy4h5BoZmpr8YoM00YlUZAOQjksRxTbz1VtqCcGXr1ZXonjoxNLOcHAFT_uYQC1s/s1600/handsome+trout.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAn2OulQdW8GlQBmm47mCTwaAWZ-62YwEVZQOIe9vWtgDuFchm-_BBKHcMhMvIiqOw1spwJ-PWcn1Wy4h5BoZmpr8YoM00YlUZAOQjksRxTbz1VtqCcGXr1ZXonjoxNLOcHAFT_uYQC1s/s320/handsome+trout.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The sun had that wonderful spring muscle to it, bright for a cloudless hour or two in a sky the colour of kittens' eyes. At the other end of the log that was a Bunyip's sylvan throne a blue-tongue came out to charge its batteries, the leading advocate in our little clearing of sustainable solar power. The bush, which never really goes to sleep, is shaking off the southern winter's lethargy. Further to the east about now, in the hills around the Snowy, Gippsland water dragons will be waking to pursue their brief couplings with an enthusiasm that shames Craig Thomson. Then again, water dragons are far more appealing species than corruptocrats. By October the dragon ladies will have dug their nests and be laying eggs, and come December, the kookas, snakes and other lizards will have gobbled most of their children. Even the trout will get their share of wiggly morsels.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw9V-bvg3rxX6tkxtzEFu83RyQW-POgvgEIopZR72NVt4WDx5_t3sTK7Z7F5Ch-d9uuzyb3dgQkZa1WvC5THKtPKnBRImvoKDxzWhsysz3Lx4J9hgovN5HdTXiNOSXZiVYjsSMof-xCBk/s1600/dragon.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw9V-bvg3rxX6tkxtzEFu83RyQW-POgvgEIopZR72NVt4WDx5_t3sTK7Z7F5Ch-d9uuzyb3dgQkZa1WvC5THKtPKnBRImvoKDxzWhsysz3Lx4J9hgovN5HdTXiNOSXZiVYjsSMof-xCBk/s320/dragon.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And then along will come a Bunyip with rod and woolly bear, haul them to the bank and eat them all. But today, it was just a cup of tea, a dekko and a mental note that a big brown bugger has made his home in the slower water beside and below the rocks that squeeze the stream into a tumbling, tiny cataract. With a little luck the foxes will have overlooked the water rat family which were in residence last year. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">There is a lot wrong with the bush -- invasive species are now occupiers, not intruders -- and with conservation policies orchestrated by Fitzroy greens and administered by Spring Street bureaucrats things will only get worse. But just for a bit today, in the sun and beneath trickle of wood smoke, you would not have considered being been anywhere else, not for all the tea in China. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-77009559197737023012013-09-22T10:32:00.002+10:002013-09-22T10:32:53.579+10:00The pain of youth<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Some people like to be tied up and lashed or have their private parts nailed to the table, neither a hobby that has ever inspired much enthusiasm at the Billabong, where the masochistic urge manifests itself in a perversion even further beyond rationality's pale. In these precincts the twisted delight is visiting the Fairfax websites, where two sharp lessons are administered with very nearly every flick of the mouse. The first is that youth carries more weight than wisdom, a sad realisation for anyone on the wrong side of a middle-aged belly and reinforced by all those mugshots of the newspaper's star writers. Look at Ben Cubby's innocent and ever-trusting face, for instance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBRaLUM1EQHXUSjcbYWjNiaWLXDoc2OGBzsa3q8F1mPUXzGuMX_iP3HaE2EPA00YJWQTpYcSscpdytDf8BT0L8l8KXE7hjQP3yPPYSciiMGNgVpenx_gmsjbXcIUi44CFKCMs_EHAX42A/s1600/cubby.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBRaLUM1EQHXUSjcbYWjNiaWLXDoc2OGBzsa3q8F1mPUXzGuMX_iP3HaE2EPA00YJWQTpYcSscpdytDf8BT0L8l8KXE7hjQP3yPPYSciiMGNgVpenx_gmsjbXcIUi44CFKCMs_EHAX42A/s1600/cubby.JPG" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Have you seen such a look of absolute belief since those long ago Christmas Eves, when your little ones' faces were aglow with the faith and conviction that Santa and his presents were on their way. Ben still waits eagerly for the next arrival from the North Pole, his delight at further confirmation that it is melting no less intense than the joy of trying on a New Power Ranger outfit and performing globe-saving feats of imagination </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">before the festive tree</span> for Mum and Dad. These days, going by the selective eye with which he sifts the latest climate news, little Ben capers and poses for the approbation of David Karoly and Tim Flannery, whose kisses and hugs and gratitude for never being seriously quizzed he must find even more congenial than those of doting aunties.l</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Baby Ben has plenty of company in the Fairfax romper room, including playmate Bianca Hall, who is the Sunday Age and Sun-Herald political correspondent and <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/same-old-argument-from-same-old-men-of-merit-to-keep-status-quo-20130921-2u6qn.html">today addresses the misogynist impulse that shaped Tony Abbott's all-but-gal-free cabinet</a>. The suspicion that she has moved straight from rattling the plastic pots in Barbie's Kitchen to reheating the accepted wisdom was bolstered by her quoting of retiring Senator Sue Troeth, who she introduces only as a Liberal. If Hall was just a little older, had a few more years of observation behind her, she might have mentioned that Troeth is the sort of Liberal who would say that. Her older readers will have immediately recalled that Troeth crossed the floor to support the Carbon Tax and that she is, as people of Hall's generation like to say, "down with" re-editing the dictionary to make the word marriage applicable to same sex couples. Well it worked for "misogyny".</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9YpxMYhBLykiye2CKp9gEPxte6oehhl0RpihvkVoKFb1f7VflkzEBMMzDwa0HM60GzBXAZFBZ1kLWgK61OtyZsPNl-EUGCqBc_8eWf6VakTvi-Ysr1WiT4lo60Z5fxmffGuUUTUEDquk/s1600/fairfax+reporters.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9YpxMYhBLykiye2CKp9gEPxte6oehhl0RpihvkVoKFb1f7VflkzEBMMzDwa0HM60GzBXAZFBZ1kLWgK61OtyZsPNl-EUGCqBc_8eWf6VakTvi-Ysr1WiT4lo60Z5fxmffGuUUTUEDquk/s320/fairfax+reporters.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>Bianca and fellow Fairfax reporters chase a story</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Curiosity inspired a quick google and, yes, it's true -- Hall <a href="http://au.linkedin.com/pub/bianca-hall/18/503/382">is only two years removed</a> from reporting building applications and parking restrictions for the Emerald Hill local rag.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And therein the second lesson, albeit a more subtle one: When a Fairfax woman laments the lack of inexperienced women elevated to high office, what she is really saying is that Abbott should run the country much as Fairfax executives run their company.</span>Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-4047280802924931492013-09-21T12:24:00.001+10:002013-09-21T12:37:04.241+10:00The Age knows Melbourne from A to B<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Fairfax investors should make a point to read alleged humourist <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/some-carry-on-about-carryon-luggage-we-just-get-on-with-it-20130920-2u5ex.html#ixzz2fUG6c8iA">Danny Katz's latest attempt to be funny in this morning's Age</a>. It will explain an awful lot about where their money has gone and why.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Katz tells us that he was off to Hobart with the little woman for a dose of culture at MONA, an acronym from which he attempts to squeeze a gag as might a victim of terminal constipation strain to extrude a poo. Well that's just Katz being Katz, but his further observations on (a) Age readers and (b) his fellow aeroplane passengers do tell us rather a lot.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"What's wrong with you <i>Age</i> readers?" he asks of those he imagines to be tittering at his bid to make 'MONA' the punchline of a joke about a romantic weekend. "You're supposed to be a
mature higher-managerial AB demographic but you're behaving like
low-brow junior-clerical BCs! Come on!)"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Age readers are "high-managerial AB demographic"? Who knew -- certainly not the high-end merchants who no longer advertise in The Age, no doubt because the papers' remaining readers, having taken its advice to eschew consumerism and re-cycle, now do their shopping at Vinnie's and the Salvo shops. Once upon a time well-heeled people <i>did</i> read the Age, but that was before the celebrated Fairfax charter of independence was amended to include the provision that they be reviled for (mostly) not voting Greens.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Having courted a section of the population that no longer reads his tosh, Katz next makes sure to alienate potential Age buyers. Just imagine yourself to be one of those "junior clerical" types and wonder how you might feel to find yourself described as "low brow", purely by definition of your occupation. Insulting your audience works for Don Rickles, but not so well for a paper that has deluded itself into believing it speaks for the real Melbourne (which extends only from St. Kilda to Northcote to Yarraville -- the famous Fairfax Triangle, where profits and reputation vanish without trace).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It could be that Katz is sleeping with the Saturday edition's editor, which might explain why his columns continue to appear. But a more likely explanation is that both are suckers for any orgy of elitist disdain, and today's column delivers that toxin in spades. People who wear tracky dax -- at this very moment their number includes a certain Bunyip -- are to be objects of derision. So, too, families with unfashionable luggage, those who might take an interest in sport, and young women with big bags and unruly hair.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">So, students of the stock ticker, look no further for an explanation of your Fairfax-induced poverty. With Danny Katz on the job your portfolio, like the Age itself, is going to shrink even further.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Katz finishes his column thus: </span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"I don't know who you readers are any more, I really don't."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">He said it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>UPDATE:</b> Hear Katz promo his latest book -- you'll have to wait for the audio to begin -- amid panting and a background soundtrack of things being rattled and shaken. It will take little imagination to assume, and assume correctly, what Katz was playing with at the time. </span><br />
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Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14457232127152238.post-50669943452236295632013-09-21T11:18:00.001+10:002013-09-21T12:33:22.150+10:00Of crested pigeons and first impressions<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">On Tuesday afternoon, just before the skies opened and a pleasant round had to be put on hold, a young fellow with a fine set of dreadlocks caught up with the Professor's party of three. The best policy would have been to let him play through, as one of life's near-irrefutable rules is that the brain shrinks in inverse proportion to the length of the dreads sprouting atop it. But Doctor Yowie is a soft touch for lost souls and The Herbalist even worse, so before the one flint-hearted member of the group could send the Richmond Rastafarian on his solitary way down the fairway, an invitation had been issued and everyone was shaking hands. To his credit, the new addition removed his glove before doing so, which spoke of good manners and respectable parents.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Well it turns out that, while jumping to conclusions about apparent hippies is generally a sound policy, there are indeed times when first impressions can be deceptive. As the rain came down and the now-party of four sheltered beneath an ancient cypress pine -- one of the few green fanatics have not had removed in the name of promoting "native" tress, which often aren't native to the parts of the country where they are being planted in their invasive legions -- the subject turned to birds and the expanding number of crested pigeons one sees these days. Assuming that Mr Dreadlocks would subscribe to the Greens view of things and in the interests of ruining the newcomer's round, the Professor quipped that Christine Milne's sprout-sucking admirers would attribute the species' increasing incidence to climate change.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"Aren't they just the biggest arseholes," said Dreadlocks. He then observed that, when he wants advice on nature and its ways, he puts no faith in those who think of Fitzroy's Edinburgh Gardens a wilderness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFlissRxmOV5fUwqft2uXGk1j4wsyY5hu7GeWXPWaT2zBRqJZXpHDxGwwf40Oe4NsAUJoBZCOOPt1Yxzb7RmImw-VQadzHDS5IF-sL8831MEW9g1UabHwljbwIeu_NFwQ0RG-DFfxNfcY/s1600/pigeon.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFlissRxmOV5fUwqft2uXGk1j4wsyY5hu7GeWXPWaT2zBRqJZXpHDxGwwf40Oe4NsAUJoBZCOOPt1Yxzb7RmImw-VQadzHDS5IF-sL8831MEW9g1UabHwljbwIeu_NFwQ0RG-DFfxNfcY/s320/pigeon.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We're seeing more of the quite delightful crested pigeons because they like open grasslands -- golf courses, in other words. Rasta turned out to be a thoroughly decent bloke, also agreeing that the ecological havoc pseudo-conservationists are promoting at Yarra Bend Golf Course, where they have transplanted a colony of shrieking, crapping fruit bats to the verge of the third hole, should make them liable to criminal prosecution. Like crested pigeons, the bats are extending their range because suburban gardens' plentiful food supplies make it worthwhile putting up with the sort of Melbourne weather they once spurned. Thanks to those filthy bats, the bellbirds and their calls, which used to be amongst the Bend's charms, are no more, a 200-metre stretch of Yarra riverbank is a wasteland of dead and dying trees, and there are taxpayer-funded signs all over the place warning golfers not to lift hand or club against the wretched creatures. What one doesn't need when relaxing on the fairway is a further hectoring by know-nothing bureaucrats and ecological vandals toting clipboards, dubious degrees in environmental science and the power to impose steep fines. Along with their droppings, the plague of stickybeaking green urgers is one more way in which bats are inflicting their gross damage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">By the time the rain stopped and the round resumed, Mr Rasta had also announced that he voted for Abbott and detested Christine Milne, whom he memorably described.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">"How could anyone vote for a fanatic with a face like two cats leaving the room side-by-side?" he wondered</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">And do you know what? He was right!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Mr Rasta will be welcome to make it a foursome any time he feels like it from now on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><b>A footnote:</b> Unlike any other pigeon, the crested variety whistles -- although not in the conventional manner. When alarmed and taking flight, air passing over their wings produces a high-pitched warning to their mates. An entire flock taking off is quite the thing to hear.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Update: As reader Kae notes in comments, it's actually more of a squeak than a whistle </span>Bunyiphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14668398379654771814noreply@blogger.com17