The Brain
The plasticity of the human brain. An answer to my eternal question “why do we dream?” and a lot more. nearly 40 minutes but set the time aside – it’s worth it.
Category: General Musings
The truth about Afghan Women
We did the wrong thing, perhaps for the right reason. We wanted to develop that country and rescue Afghan women. Their lives were hellish, girls banned from school, women forbidden to leave their homes except in the company of a male guardian, vigilantes beating them with sticks if their burqa was too short. We wanted them to enjoy the pleasures of modernity and live full, happy lives.
Along with the rest of that failed nation-building venture, we got this part wrong too. And now, instead of recalibrating, we are full speed ahead compounding the harm.
US College Football
From the land of the long white teeth cloud
New Zealand’s Trade Minister has called on Australia to show respect and a “little more” diplomacy towards China, in an extraordinary intervention in the year-long Beijing-Canberra dispute from a fellow Five Eyes security and intelligence partner.
Keep it up NZ and it’ll be Four Eyes. You really shouldn’t take the communists side against your long time family.
Young and free
The PM changes one word in our National anthem to appease someone or other.
SBS reports the changes recognize the oldest living culture on earth. Have the people who write the news even been to school?
Australia has existed since 1788 and only became a legal entity in 1901, which, in the scheme of things, makes us young. I’ll stick to Young and Free and leave One and Free to those who see virtue in virtue signaling.
In the meantime, someone needs to do something to help our indigenous brothers. They are in serious trouble in some places and changing one word in a song they most probably don’t even know is not the answer.
All that’s left now is to wait for the flood of suggested changes from all parties – they’ve loosened the barriers so it’s now open slather.
Media bias
A new MRC analysis of all evening news coverage of President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden in June and July found these networks chose to aim most of their attention and nearly all of their negative coverage on Trump, so Biden escaped any scrutiny of his left-wing policy positions, past job performance or character.
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From June 1 through July 31, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts focused 512 minutes of airtime on the President, or nine times more than the 58 minutes allotted to Biden. (This excludes coverage of the Trump administration in general when not associated with the President himself.) This is an even wider gap than the spring, when Trump received seven times more coverage than Biden (523 minutes vs. 75 minutes).
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The extra airtime devoted to Trump consisted almost entirely of anchors and reporters criticizing the President. During these two months, our analysts documented 668 evaluative statements about the President, 95 percent of which (634) were negative, vs. a mere five percent (34) that were positive. Using the same methodology (fully described at the end of this article), we found very few evaluative statements about Joe Biden — just a dozen, two-thirds of which (67%) were positive.
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Do the math, and viewers heard 150 TIMES more negative comments about Trump than Biden. That’s not news reporting — that’s a negative advertising campaign in action.
Scorpions
Reading Tim Blair’s post on scorpions reminded me of this little devil from my youth.
We were at a fire support base and it had been raining all night. My pit was full of water so when morning stand-to came I was up to my groin in water, standing with rifle in hand and extra mags and hand grenades near by, in case Charlie dropped in. Army SOPs mostly don’t consider weather so stand to is in your pit; doesn’t matter how uncomfortable it is, it is always better than being above ground should the bad guys attack.
Any way, as the sun came up I noticed I wasn’t alone in the pit – a scorpion was in with me swimming around trying to get out. One of his possible exits was to climb the big object in the water with him and that would’ve entailed him gaining access to my body via my groin area. I leapt out of the pit like a young colt because a young colt I was in those days and really, really wanted to maintain the “Colt” status. I quickly planned his demise on the basis that at time of my life, not even humans could threaten my life, let alone a scorpion, without paying the supreme price. He was bottled and given a big drink of methylated spirits that the Int Section used to clean map plastic (talc) covers.
The Adjutant, Andy Mattay (God Bless and Rest in Peace Andy) thought it was hilarious and took a photo for posterity
I would point out that I’m a big man and have what are arguable the biggest hands in the country, so he’s no little scorpion like Tim Blair’s. You could use this one as a cattle dog it was so big.
Just another day in my not-so-boring life.
The best a man used to get
Virtue signalling at its best. Gillette, the best a man can get add attacks it’s customer base. I note in the add that only some of us are OK – the rest are misogynists, bullies or sexist predators – straight from a #MeToo script. Good move guys – gives me a reason to change to Schick. I trust the feminist movement buy heaps of your products because you will lose sales from your customer base. King C.Gillette, who started the company in 1901 will be turning in his grave right about now.
https://youtu.be/koPmuEyP3a0
There’s plenty of Roos, Lee. Plenty!
Kangaroo: A Love-Hate Story is a documentary made by Kate McIntyre Clere and Michael McIntyre and suggests we hate the roos and they are at risk of becoming an endangered species.
The Australian has an article here and here we see Greenie and communist Lee Rhiannon getting involved as she recognises the chance to put Australia down.
In The Australian, Phillipa Hawker, reviewing the doco, suggests;
A new documentary finds Australians bitterly divided over a national symbol.
Maybe there’s bitter division in Phillipa’s favourite coffee shop in the CBD but I think 98% of Aussies recognise the Roo as a great animal but that it does damage agriculture and they need to be culled. From the time we were colonised, farmers and town planners have been building tens of thousands of dams thus providing an opportunity for the Roo population to expand exponentially.
The last time I crossed the Nullabor I was driving though mobs as big as depicted in the video below and stuck on low speeds for ten or 20 kilometres at a time.
They aren’t endangered and it’s unlikely they ever will be.
I can understand the Doco makers trying to make a quid based on “look at the poor joey” but Rhiannon? She just wants to stuff up the country and deny any income from agriculture.
The Communist bitch should be shot. Now there’s a thought – cull the communists. Now that would be great for the country
I wonder if any of the above have seen this clip?
In June 2017 we had the opportunity to plant 240 hectares of chickpeas, by the end of July half of these had been eaten by the roos and the other half will probably be eaten in the next month. It makes me wonder what proportion of the Greens income is also donated to keeping these native animals alive.
Posted by Michael Hetherington on Friday, 28 July 2017
Story Telling – Runaway
Some light amusement for you from the website australianstorytelling .org.au
Trainee pilot, Tony Tearaway, was feeling proud of himself. This morning he’d been flying solo; circuits and bumps at Bankstown Aerodrome, in Sydney’s South-west. Sure he’d stalled his little blue British-built Auster aircraft on touchdown. But no worries. This had happened before. Tony would simply get out and swing the prop and the aero-engine would burst into life again. He seen it done many times before.
So Tony Tearaway swung the wooden prop and the engine roared to life. Unfortunately, Tony had forgotten to apply the hand-brake and chock the wheels, so the little high-winged monoplane started to move.
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