The New Normal

The death toll from the fires continues to grow. The final figure will likely be over 300.

We've not seen a peacetime tragedy on this scale in the history of our nation.

As we sift through the ashes of this disaster and comfort the wounded and rebuild our communities, our thoughts must turn to where we go from here.

This is our climate now.

We can no longer talk about the ongoing drought with the vague notion that at some point it will end. We can no longer hold any hope of getting "back to normal".

We may see wet periods in our dusty future but it will soon be clear that these are the rare exception, not the rule.

Hot and dry is the new normal.

We will see more heatwaves like the one last week. We will see more years with record low rainfall.

And we will see more fires.

This is the human impact of climate change.

Not in any particular event, because no single event is attributable.

But rather in the frequency of events, and the severity of events, we will see the impact as we adjust to a new way of life.

Fires

Over the weekend my home state of Victoria experienced the worst bushfires ever recorded in Australia.

The count is 131 dead. The figure is being updated hourly.

Entire communities have been lost. Countless acres of land have been razed. As more and more tragedy is uncovered, the scale of the disaster grows.

This is one of the moments that will still be spoken of for decades to come. Stories both horrendous and heroic pile upon each other and will become, in time, the legends of an event rarely seen but long remembered.

At times like this we understand what it means to consider humanity a united family.

The fires have taken no heed of race or religion. Nature doesn’t care about our petty beliefs or concocted tribal distinctions.

We are no more important to this planet than the bugs and worms crawling in the scorched and blackened earth.

All we have is each other. We have our common humanity.

And we have our deep shared empathy for those who have lost so much.

Only 91?

That’s Milligan, obviously. I’m surprised it’s so low.

For Jackson it’s 83% which sounds about right.

In Defence of Phelps

Your honours.

I’d like to draw your attention to the recent accusations and penalties meted out to one Mr. Michael Phelps, elite swimmer.

To wit: the recently-circulated picture apparently showing Mr. Phelps, if you’ll pardon the expression m’luds, sucking down a bong.

Item 1: A three-month ban from competitive swimming.

This will be nothing but counter-productive.

What Mr. Phelps needs is a greater training regimen. More hours in the pool. Less free time in which to toke on the chronic green.

Item 2: Cancellation of Mr. Phelps’ Kellogg sponsorship.

This is a foolish action on behalf of Kellogg.

The company is at risk of alienating an important part of its core market, namely: people with killer munchies and so wasted they’re unable to do anything more than pour milk into a bowl of cereal.

Estimates place this demographic at up to 16% of Kellogg’s fixed customer base.

We propose this alternative marketing strategy:

Item 3: The public reaction.

Now m’luds no-one is suggesting marijuana is a performance-enhancing drug.

In fact, despite its undeniable medicinal and anaesthetic properties weed has a certain reputation for being performance-reducing.

Being a cone monkey makes one shiftless and boring, prone to disjointed rambling and watching old episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation because they offer wondrous existential insight.

Yet Mr. Phelps’ clear natural ability has allowed him to overcome his devotion to Mary Jane to win 14 Olympic gold medals and to hold no less than 32 world records.

Surely these achievements in the face of a proclivity for busting down some blunt is worthy of nothing but our utmost respect.

Your honours, I rest my case.

A Change on Climate?

Andrew Bolt has decided who’s to blame for those ridiculously high temperatures we experienced last week, and it’s . . .

. . . those evil Lefty Greenies!

That’s right. All those people banging on about stopping climate change instead of trying to protect people from the rising temperatures are the ones to blame.

For some reason this makes perfect sense in his twisted little mind.

Because what we need is more electricity use, not less! If we want to cool the Earth then let’s crank up those air conditioners!

We seem to be at an interesting point in history here.

We’ve just had a glimpse of what Mr Bolt’s focus will be once the fact of climate change is no longer deniable.

He’ll simply shift from ranting about it not really happening, to ranting about not enough being done.

His latest rant beautifully straddles these two lines of thinking, indicating that we might be somewhere near the tipping point.

It goes something like this:

“If the Earth is warming which it isn’t then it’s utterly ridiculous to tell people not to use their air conditioners because that would cool the Earth dummy and anyway it’s cold that kills people not warmth so global warming would be great even though it’s not really happening.”

He even added a caveat to his usual cherry-picked statistic that the Earth hasn’t warmed since 2002, saying “it may soon warm again”.

Andrew Bolt: neo-Greenie?

Dead Pool 2009 – January Update

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Celebrity Dead Pool now has its own blog!
Find it at Celebrity Dead Pool 
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We’re just one month into the new year and while we’re yet to see any score in the pool, we’ve already seen some serious mortality.

The year started on a tragic note, with the announcement on the 2nd that Jett Travolta, the son of sometime actor and noted Scientologist John, had died at the tender age of 16.

On the 6th John Scott Martin, the world’s longest-serving Dalek operator (rolling around in one of those things from 1965 to 1988) passed away at the age of 83.

Also on the 6th, Apple boss Steve Jobs declined to deliver the Macworld keynote address, throwing the rumour mill into overdrive and prompting this very tasteless (albeit very funny) cartoon on xkcd.

(And that mill continues to turn, with the announcement on the 15th that Mr. Jobs will be taking extended sick leave until June. Hmmm.)

The 13th and 14th saw an unfortunate classic actor double-bill, with the respective deaths of The Prisoner Patrick McGoohan at age 80, and Fantasy Island (and occasional Star Trek) star Ricardo Montalbán at age 88.

On the 16th we farewelled Sir John Mortimer, creator of the modern legal drama with his classic grumpy barrister Rumpole of the Bailey.

On the 25th Kim Manners, director of many, many episodes of modern classic The X-Files and modern classic wannabe Supernatural, passed away at 58.

Finally, on the 27th we farewelled American author John Updike, a man who tragically lived to see his classic novel The Witches of Eastwick go from a great book to a passable film to a dodgy stage musical.

And that wraps it up for January. Stay tuned for further updates.

Heatwave II: The Reckoning

One might be forgiven for thinking that our state government is an incompetent pack of whinging little girls.

Apparently three days in a row of temperatures over 43° constitutes a “natural disaster”.

Sorry Mr. Batchelor, but no. It doesn’t.

This kind of thing should be expected and our infrastructure should be able to cope with it.

If a few hot days is all it takes to completely trash our public transport and power delivery systems, then that’s a serious indictment of our government’s dire track record in public maintenance.

News flash for those “in charge”:

This is not the first time this has happened. And it won’t be the last.

In fact, where the hell do you people get off being surprised by this?

The climate is changing. You might have read about it. It’s been in a couple of papers.

All utilities planning should be allowing for this sort of thing to happen every two or three years. Because a decade or two down the track, it will be.

We’re well past the time we can sit on our hands and start thinking it’s all going to get back to normal soon.

So Mr. Batchelor, Ms. Kosky and Mr. Brumby: get it the hell together.

Heatwave

It’s too darn hot.

And I make no apology for saying that.

Three days in a row of 40+ degree temperatures are enough to make anyone use words like “darn”. (That’s 104+ for our Imperial American friends).

It might not sound like much if you’re from Arizona, but we’re just not set up for this sort of crap.

The city is drooping.

We’ve got rolling blackouts across the state.

The train system is at a standstill.

And there’s no end in sight. The forecast says it’s not going to drop below 30 for another week.

What to do on a day like today?

Well, this afternoon I’ll be spending three hours sitting in a TV studio watching my sister compete in a game show.

I hope she does well.

And I really hope they have air conditioning.

Bart the Scientologist

I wonder what Matt Groening thinks about this.

The original version of this clip, which featured images of Bart, was pulled from YouTube for being a copyright violation.

But apparently it’s perfectly okay for one of their biggest characters to be used to spruik for an evil cult.

Atheism and Me – Part 3

I am an atheist, but as strange as this may be to believe, that doesn’t mean I absolutely unquestioningly unshakeably believe that there is no God.

After all, that would put me on a par with the religious believer who has the unquestioning unshakeable belief that there is a God.

Unlike such a believer, I am willing to be persuaded of the truth of the opposite argument.

Given that I am yet to be persuaded, and God knows he’s had the time to do it, I just think it's very very very very unlikely that there is a God.

How unlikely?

Less likely than a meteorite landing on my car.

Less likely than getting hit by a bus full of performing circus bears on my way to work.

Less likely than finding out that I’m really an undercover secret agent who’s had his memory wiped and is unwittingly carrying out a mission to infiltrate Australian financial services and bring it down from the inside with shoddy spreadsheets.

Now any and all of these things are possible, including the idea that there’s a God, but they’re all so unlikely that it's not worth spending any time at all worrying about them.

Grace

Grace is the latest production from the Melbourne Theatre Company, telling the story of Grace Freeman, an atheist scientist whose son announces that he wishes to become an Anglican priest.

On the surface this seems a pat set-up for the usual Dawkinsian science vs. religion arguments. And while they do get an airing, the play is about much more than that.

There’s nothing new in any of the arguments portrayed: they’re the usual suspects regularly trotted out on the interwebs, in print and from the pulpit (religion is irrational / atheism is narrow-minded / religion brings death and destruction / science can say nothing about the divine).

But quite deliberately, the writers of Grace have only lightly touched upon the debate, and allowed themselves space to make a much deeper point: that when it comes to our human relationships, the way we interact and the way we communicate, these things eventually stop being important.

At some point, being right doesn’t matter so much as being compassionate.

And getting so tied up in the debate that you miss that point can lead to real tragedy.

While the script seems clunky in parts (although that may have been the actors struggling with some of the technical and very fast dialogue), Noni Hazlehurst steals the show as fiery fem-Dawkins Grace and is well-supported by the small cast, particularly Leah Vandenberg as her pious son’s girlfriend.

Grace is essential viewing for anyone interested in the continuing debate on the influence of religion in our lives, and also highly recommended for anyone who thinks we’re all taking it a bit too seriously.

4 out of 5

Osstrayenopen

Ah, the Australian Open.

A time when people of all cultures gather in one place to be burnt by the sun and entertained by the rhythmic alternate striking of a small rubber ball by two incredibly well-paid young people who, in turn, are surrounded by a grim-faced coterie staring at lines painted on the ground, concerned to the point of obsession about which side of the line the rubber ball may fall.

For some reason understood by none except the eldritch brotherhood of “promoters” and “officials”, these ingredients alchemically combine into one hella Fun Day Out.

 

 

A Zen-like state of serenity descends upon the crowd, brought upon them by the rhythms of the game.

The attention of all is focused on the smallest of details . . . the direction of the serve, the curve of the ball, and the light glinting off the sweaty buttocks of the streaker.

For this moment in time the thousands are joined as one. And thus peace is achieved.

The Theory of Gravity

The theory of Evolution, just like the theory of Gravity, is as accepted in the scientific community as any other scientific theory you care to name.

Both are based on years of careful research, observation and experiment.

Every new discovery in every related field serves only to further confirm and reinforce them.

There is no question that we have evolved into the creatures we are today, just as there is no possibility that gravity will spontaneously fail and send us all floating off into space.

But to some, the theory of Evolution is special.

To some the theory of Evolution stands alone, because unlike the theory of Gravity it stands in opposition to their chosen religious belief.

These same people will happily use a cell phone, eat refrigerated food and blog about their hatred of Evolution on the internet, and all the while fail to appreciate that each of these things is the end result of a scientific theory just as strong as the theory they reject as nonsense.

I was moved to make this point recently over at the blog Atheism Analyzed, where there was a silly article saying that because two scientific papers didn’t explicitly mention evolution, it’s obviously not all that important.

Thus was my response:

Hi Stan. Great point.

It's exactly like that ridiculous theory of gravity.

That's revered by scientists as well, with very little in the way of theoretical evidence to support it.

Take an example: there's a new building going up near where I work. I saw the plans, and gravity wasn't mentioned once. Not once!

And yet this building is apparently going to sit on the ground!

Surely such a thing is absolutely dependent on this 'theory of gravity', but it wasn't even mentioned!

There was no mention of gravitational forces, no mention of the inverse square law, and not a single reference to the quantum effects of gravity waves.

This clearly shows that the whole 'theory of gravity' is nonsense.

I'm so glad you've made this important point, Stan. The sooner we stop revering this silly 'theory of gravity' the better off we'll all be.

Inauguration

Dubya is already a fading memory, although the fallout from his disastrous reign will hang over the world like a toxic cloud for years to come.

In just over four hours Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th President of the USA.

The moment has been anticipated for so long (remember the bumper stickers?), it’s hard to believe it’s almost here.

Everyone’s talking about the crowds (record-breaking), the speech (historic) and Michelle Obama’s wardrobe.

But beyond the streamers and frocks and statistics, over and above the simple change of government, this event represents a genuine change of mood.

The sense of optimism may turn out to be brief, but right now it’s no less real for that.

The task of rebuilding America’s reputation, which has been almost destroyed over the last eight years, is a huge one.

We genuinely hope he’s up to it.