Author: bobmcgee

John Frum …

On the 21st of December at 10.12pm Australian eastern daylight time the Mayan Calendar came to its conclusion and the world ended.

Well, it didn’t actually, I exagerated. A lot of people thought it would, though, but so far all predictions of the last of days have proven false. So don’t drink the Koolaid.

Not all vacuous predictions are so pessimistic. For all the glass half empty folk there’s got to be the odd glass half full person. In the opposite corner we have the cargo cults. Things have gone bad, they ain’t what they used to be, young people these days … but if we renounce the new evils John Frum will come in a very large aeroplane and deliver all manner of material wealth and we will all be rich, like we had our very own carbon tax or mining tax.

In 1941, followers of John Frum rid themselves of their money in a frenzy of spending, left the missionary churches, schools, villages and plantations, and moved further inland to participate in traditional feasts, dances and rituals. Wikipedia.

That was in the New Hebrides, now Vanuatu. It worked, of course …

… some 300,000 American troops were stationed in the New Hebrides during the Second World War, bringing with them large amounts of supplies, or “cargo”.

And I am sure it will work again, Wayne Swan’s new John Frum is a mining magnate, Wayne’s done the “frenzy of spending” bit, but I’m pretty sure that none of the missionary schools were given new school halls, the churches are under investigation, villages and plantations even factories have been abandoned, we have been urged to move back from the coast. The labor party have indulged in no end of “traditional feasts, dances and rituals” especially, but not exclusively in NSW …

After the war, and the departure of the Americans, followers of John Frum built symbolic landing strips to encourage American aeroplanes to once again land and bring them “cargo”.

We must do likewise to bring back the mining boom, share out the wealth, cast out the snakes and carbon pollution …

Pink batts, I am sure, would make excellent symbolic landing strips …

Budget speech …

I am pleased to be able to bring you Wayne Swan’s budget speech …

Madam Deputy Speaker, I move that the Bill now be read a second time.

The four years of surpluses I announce tonight are a powerful endorsement of the strength of our economy, resilience of our people, and success of our policies.

In an uncertain and fast changing world, we walk tall — as a nation confidently living within its means.

This Budget delivers a surplus this coming year, on time, as promised, and surpluses each year after that, strengthening over time.

It funds new cost of living relief for Australian families.

It helps businesses invest, compete and adapt to an economy in transition.

And it finances bold new policies to help Australians with a disability, the aged, and those who can’t afford dental care.

It does these things for a core Labor purpose:

To share the tremendous benefits of the mining boom with more Australians.

To create more wealth, prosperity, and jobs; spread more opportunity; and advance the living standards of millions of families and pensioners on modest incomes.

Tonight we make a forceful statement that ours is one of the world’s strongest economies and fairest communities.

Not even a sovereign debt crisis in Europe or unprecedented natural disasters here at home could deny Australia this substantial achievement.

The deficit years of the global recession are behind us. The surplus years are here.

Surpluses built on some difficult savings, which avoid vulnerable Australians and frontline services, and don’t compromise our investments in productivity.

Surpluses that provide a buffer against global uncertainty, and continue to give the Reserve Bank room to cut interest rates for families like it did just last week.

This Budget is about discipline and restraint but also about priorities; ensuring precious funds are redirected to the purposes and people that need them most.

Across the budget, by saving and redirecting $33.6 billion, we’re balancing the books.

Making room for $5 billion in new payments to households.

Finding an extra $714 million to help companies compete, on top of the $3.7 billion in small business tax breaks.

Funding the historic first stage of a National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Investing in dental services for those who can least afford them.

Strengthening the aged care system.

Investing in productivity and competitiveness by building on key improvements in health, education, infrastructure and clean energy.

Staying true to our Labor ideals and to the promise of a fair go, converting economic success into real benefits for the majority of Australians.

The deficit years of the global recession are behind us. The surplus years are here. Oh, whoops that was last year’s …

Jug ears …

Prince Charles recently criticised ‘corporate lobbyists’ and climate change skeptics for turning Earth into a ‘dying patient’. His pronouncements can be turned into legible English by the aid of a few insertions …

“If you think about the impact of climate change, [it should be how] a doctor would deal with the problem,” he told an audience of government ministers, from the UK and abroad, as well as business people and scientists. “A scientific hypothesis is tested to absolute destruction, but medicine can’t wait. If a doctor sees a child with a fever, he can’t wait for [endless] tests. He has to act on what is there …”

“The risk of delay is so enormous that we can’t wait until we are absolutely sure the patient is dying.”

The Prince is a well known advocate for homeopathy and an opponent of genetically modified crops. He is not famous for his intellect, grasp of science or medicine …

The Daily Mash sums it all up very nicely <HERE>. And they also have a very interesting range of T-Shirts.

Atmospheric …

Important announcement … 99.96% of the atmosphere is not CO2.

It wasn’t always so. The phanerozoic is the eon of abundant life on earth, that’s about 570 million years. All current life is descended from ancestors that existed throughout that entire span of time. For the first 150 million years or so our ancestors survived in an atmosphere that contained about 4000 parts per million of CO2, imagine that … only 99.6% of their atmosphere wasn’t CO2!

The graph is from Wikipedia, the present day is on the left, which may not be the best way to show it.

Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide

Carbon dioxide is essential to plants, the process of photosynthesis requires CO2 and releases oxygen. All the free oxygen in the atmosphere, essential for us to survive, is the result of photosynthesis. Oxygen is too reactive a substance to persist long in a free state. If photosynthesis stopped the atmosphere would soon be depleted of oxygen and animal life would cease.

Lovely day …

Melbourne is enjoying an Indian Summer, or at least a few days of one. I’ve just walked the dog along the beach, clear sky, no wind, calm sea and a top of about 25 degrees. Beautiful.

Or very alarming depending on your point of view, although it’s often said that if you don’t like Melbourne’s weather just hang around for a while.

Whilst not exclusively the province of old women, the weather does seem to hold a special interest for them, you often hear them discussing it. That is very interesting because old women are often witches. The Malleus Maleficarum(Latin for “Hammer of the Witches“) is a treatise on the prosecution of witches, written in 1486 and published the following year. It admits that men can also be witches but malificarum is the feminine form of the noun.

Outside certain backward parts of the world, witches are rarely prosecuted these days but it was big business in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The trials spread throughout Europe and Scandinavia and were conducted by Catholics and Protestants, in both ecclesiastical and secular courts. The victims were disproportionately women, especially the poor and the widowed.

That period coincides with the Little Ice Age. Clearly no coincidence because as the Malleus tells us in a chapter titled “How they Raise and Stir up Hailstorms and Tempests, and Cause Lightning to Blast both Men and Beasts” witches can control the weather. The chapter concludes with “Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that, just as easily as they raise hailstorms, so can they cause lightning and storms at sea; and so no doubt at all remains on these points.” Even then, the science was settled.

The end of the Little Ice Age can best be explained by a modern theory. The burning of all those witches released a great deal of carbon dioxide.

 

Sandwiches …

Miss Gillard had to duck a verbal sandwich from PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

He was fairly blunt in telling the prime minister of the donor country that props up the PNG government with aid money (this year about 8.5 per cent of the PNG budget) that many of his fellow compatriots are offended by Australia’s visa requirements.

Miss Gillard has announced that the visa process will be streamlined. I guess a woman has to be careful in Papua New Guinea …

In early February, a 20-year-old mother of one, Kepari Leniata, was stripped and burned alive in front of a crowd at a market on the outskirts of Mt Hagen.

She had been accused of witchcraft by her killers.

In Southern Bougainville last week, one woman was beheaded and another grievously injured when a mob accused the pair of practising sorcery.

and

A US academic says she was gang-raped by an armed mob in Papua New Guinea and wants to publicise her ordeal to raise awareness about rampant violence against women in the desperately poor Pacific country.

As Jean G Zorn puts it …

Rape is endemic in Papua New Guinea, and the courts in Papua New Guinea have not been effective at decreasing its incidence.