Great questions of our time

Is global ‘peak oil’, like, for real?

47. K’un — Oppression  (Exhaustion)

 
The Judgement

Oppression. Success. Perseverance.
The great man brings about good fortune.
No blame.
When one has something to say,
It is not believed.

 
The Image

There is no water in the lake:
The image of Exhaustion.
Thus the superior man stakes his life
On following his will.

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Goat Friday

click to enlarge  —  image source commons.wikimedia.org

Irish Goat

*bleat* X 2

... to be sure, to be sure ...

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other times in NYC

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sometime in NYC

Gangs of New York (2002)

Leonardo Di Caprio and Cameron Diaz limp off-scene in 1864 NYC, against a backdrop looking across the East River to the aftermath of the Draft Riots.

Munich (2005)

Eric Bana walks off-scene in mid-1970s NYC, looking across the East River to the recently completed Twin Towers.

AI: Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Jude Law and Haley Joel Osment fly-in to a submerged late-21st Century NYC, with the century-old Twin Towers looming large.

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simply perfection

watch at YouTube

Norah Jones — Don’t Know Why

Simply one of the best recordings made in at least the last ten years!

This video clip embellishes the recording from Norah’s Come Away With Me album with a very tight, albeit completely unnecessary, vocal chorus.

But all the elements of perfection remain — the vocal part .. piano part .. guitar .. bass .. drums/percussion ...

Let Norah send you...

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Burrinjuck Capers..II

The latest thing in hats for the Spring Carnival: King Parrots.

It can be a marvellous place when it has water. At 39% and little or no rain in sight that won't be for much longer. As can readily be seen, the lake is well stocked with redfin and Murray Cod. Josh's fish was some sixty cm and he wasn't too impressed with dad's "hold it orizontal...hand under the guts so as not to tear its gill latches...that's it..."

Oh for the days of 2-4kg rainbow trout that used to monster lures....

Couple of cases of black, several bottles of red, fish, mum, the kids and the birds...what more could one want?

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Lago di Garda

click to enlarge  —  image source dit.unitn.it

Lago di Garda, Northern Italy

The scene above (more or less) is depicted in a large mural on the rear wall of the fine establishment we dined at tonight. The restaurant has figured on this blog before.

I’d resolved to give it a try, but unfortunately the roast baby goat was off the menu... veal parmagiana again.

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Burrinjuck Capers...1

A bloke and his family departs to Burrinjuck for a week’s seclusion and those who lead or who wish to lead our nation throw what is left of the plot out of the window.

Essentially incommunicado except for the odd paper and run to Yass on Thursday, it would seem that – according to Peter Costello – the federal ALP now “supports al-Qaeda” and that it is – according to the PM - “soft on terrorists”. Furiously tuning into marginal Canberra FM stations on the boat revealed this to be a reaction to Robert McLelland’s speech (on Tuesday?) where he declared the ALP’s opposition to the death penalty – both here and in other nation states. It seems that because the anniversary of the Bali bombing was approaching this all meant that the ALP’s policy would see the death penalty stayed from these murderers – were it, of course, to apply. This, by reduction, means support of al-Qaeda to our treasurer. It means that the ALP is soft on terrorists to the PM.

What complete and utter hyperbole. The desperation for a knife haunts this government.

Mandy Devine opines that while “it is logical and correct to push for clemency for Australian citizens who are on death row in countries such as Indonesia, as is the case for the convicted heroin smugglers, the Bali nine", it is a reckless squandering of what “political capital” Australia has to be “meddling in the internal legal affairs of other democratic states”. Yes, fine to bump off the yellow folk and the brown ones – just not ours.

Her view that Rudd’s repudiation of his shadow minister says much about him is correct though. Rudd should simply have stated that this was, in fact, ALP policy. It is not case specific – as the government is painting it to be. Instead, displaying all the guts of a coward given a free exit, he caves to the pressure of “insensitivity” and the like. He needs to find a spine: he has compromised himself on this and he has belittled himself. For what? To win an election.

And make no bones that is exactly the rationale behind Costello’s ridiculous line and the PM’s glib and weary “soft” bullshit. To argue that opposing the death penalty – even if it meant the Bali bombers weren’t executed – was supporting a terrorist organisation is stupid. To say that means one who opposes the death penalty is “soft on terrorists” is even more stupid. Does opposing the death penalty in Texas make one a paid up supporter of mass murderers, child murderers and the other such awaiting their turn? Of course it doesn’t.

It all goes to show only what a man will compromise to win an election and what two already well compromised men will stoop to so as to prevent him.

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Don’t say I didn’t tell you so

By Piers Bolt

Applied Hermeneutics’ token right-wing commentator, Piers Bolt, is alarmed. Here, he fires another salvo in the population policy front of the culture wars.

I’ve said it before, haven’t I? — a leftie society is a girlie society!

Indeed, I wrote a while ago about the important and alarming research findings that establish as a scientific axiom the disturbing fact that estrogen is a grave danger to the political health and vigour of Western societies.

Basically, too many girls born into a population results in a leftward tilt in voting patterns. As I prophesied last year:

What all this means for the governance of western societies is that a social fabric awash with estrogen inevitably gives rise to an ascendancy of income-redistributing rentseekers who, despite themselves, cannot see the error of their ways.

Further, the potential crisis highlighted by this study points to the extreme urgency of formulating population policy aimed at achieving an appropriate mix of the sexes in order to ensure an optimal political orientation in the broad population.

The Free West needs an appropriate mix of male and female — Yin and Yang — in order to finely balance the Active and Passive Principles at work in our civilisation. Crucially this will ensure the electoral success of sensible people, such as George W. Bush and our own John Howard, who alone seem able to implement sensible policies.

As Caz points out over at Avatar Briefs, soy food products are the latest addition to the list of dangers to the virility of our civilisation.

We can add this depressing news to the deeply alarming findings announced last month:

Twice as many girls as boys are being born in some Arctic villages because of high levels of man-made chemicals in the blood of pregnant women, according to scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program.

The scientists, who say the findings could explain the recent excess of girl babies across much of the northern hemisphere, are widening their investigation across the most acutely affected communities in Russia, Greenland and Canada to try to discover the size of the imbalance in Inuit communities of the far north. ...

The sex balance of the human race — historically a slight excess of boys over girls — has recently begun to change. A paper published in the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences journal earlier this year said that in Japan and the US there were 250,000 boys fewer than would have been expected had the sex ratio existing in 1970 remained unchanged. ...

With revelations like this, I’ve lately begun to see the kernel of wisdom in the otherwise soft-headed platform of fringe environmentalist and ‘green’ groups. Consequently I’ve surprised many with my sudden advocacy of stringent environmental measures — while, of course, stressing that these be implemented in keeping with the imperative of economic growth.

I’ve been excoriated as a ‘eugenicist’ for my advocacy of radical measures to promote an appropriate population gender balance. Well, so be it, now they can add ‘mad greenie’ to the list, if that’s what it takes to arrest the infusion of excessive levels of estrogen into our precious body politic.

Until next time, stay brave and true.

 
Previously from Piers Bolt
Dangerous idea considered
Lancet-friendly media critiqued
A leftie society is a girlie society
Nigel Kennedy’s existential crisis over Iraq
Lefties of the world go f**k yourselves

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