The Feast of All Fools Friday

Fiona Uncategorized

Metro

Of course, the Brits claim to be the ones who made it an annual celebration:

English pranksters started playing practical jokes on one another on April 1st from at least 1700.

Anyone who is successfully fooled before midday is known as a ‘noodle’, ‘gob’, ‘gobby’ or ‘noddy’ while anyone doing the fooling after midday is considered a fool themselves.

and over the years there have been some extremely clever April Fools’ Day pranks – the spaghetti tree being a prime example:

Then there was the Republic of San Serriffe

Chiefa Coins

not to mention Australia’s own Great Sydney Iceberg:

Ninemsn

From across the ditch (and specially for Kaffeeklatscher) comes this interesting scientific study:

The Sheep Albedo Hypothesis

RealClimate.org detailed the work of Dr. Ewe Noh-Watt of the New Zealand Institute of Veterinary Climatology, who had discovered that global warming was caused not by a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but rather by the decline of New Zealand’s sheep population. The reasoning was that sheep are white, and therefore large numbers of sheep increased the planet’s albedo (the amount of sunlight reflected back into space). As the sheep population declined, the ground absorbed more solar radiation, thus warming the planet: “It can be seen that the recent warming can be explained entirely by the decline in the New Zealand sheep population, without any need to bring in any mysterious so-called ‘radiative forcing’ from carbon dioxide, which doesn’t affect the sunlight (hardly) anyway — unlike Sheep Albedo.”

Noh-Watt also warmed of a potentially destabilizing feedback mechanism: “As climate gets warmer, there is less demand for wool sweaters and wooly underwear. Hence the sheep population tends to drop, leading to even more warming. In an extreme form, this can lead to a ‘runaway sheep-albedo feedback,’ which is believed to have led to the present torrid climate of Venus.”

However, skeptics disputed the Sheep Albedo Hypothesis. Steve Ramsturf, spokesman for the New Zealand Sheep Farmers Guild, was quoted as saying, “Baaah, Humbug. No matter what goes wrong with the world, they’re always trying to blame the poor New Zealand Sheep Farmer.”

Brilliant Buckets

As it is now past midday all around Australia, no Pubster runs the risk of being a noodle, gob, gobby or noddy, nor would any of us be so foolish as to try a prank.

Our Dear Leader may be in a different category.

Therefore, at RNM 1953’s excellent suggestion, let’s have a go this evening at suggesting the most ridiculous policies brainfarts waffles may emit over the next 13 weeks.

Have fun!

Specially for Gigilene . . .

Sky Dancing

428 thoughts on “The Feast of All Fools Friday”

  2. There goes Plan D …

    Malcolm Turnbull has said the government will only consider amendments to the building and construction industry watchdog legislation – the potential trigger for a double-dissolution election – if it already had the necessary support from at least six of the Senate crossbench.

    He’s adopting the hi-res strategy. I wonder where I’ve seen that before …

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/03/malcolm-turnbull-avoiding-double-dissolution-over-abcc-bill-up-to-crossbenchers?CMP=share_btn_tw

  3. Former Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating has a delicious way with words. At a recent fundraiser in the Blue Mountains for Susan Templeman, the Labor candidate for Macquarie, the wordsmith spoke to the gathering and showed that he was in good form.

    “Malcolm Turnbull… fundamentally he is a cherry on top of a compost heap,” he said.

    While in the mood, he had a precise comment to offer the present government too. “This is a very, very ordinary government, with people falling out of it, ministers being lost, resigning, having to leave.”

    Then he returned to Turnbull, “The great risk for Malcolm is that he doesn’t remain a cherry but turns into a sultana.”

    http://theaimn.com/cherry-top-compost-heap/

  4. He belongs in a mental asylum; he really does

    Turnbull confirmed the lower house would not sit for the entire time from its recall on April 18 until the May 3 budget.

    “The lower house will sit for at least the first part of the week beginning Monday April 18 but we don’t anticipate it will sit for the full three weeks,” he said.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/03/malcolm-turnbull-avoiding-double-dissolution-over-abcc-bill-up-to-crossbenchers?CMP=share_btn_tw#comments

  5. Have been picking through Guiseppi di Lampedusa…’The Leopard”..there are some very succinct observations on social mores and class structures there..particularly on the abhorrence of the rising middle class by the Aristocracy…quite similar to the now horror of the rising of the “aspiring” blue-collar class by the oligarch / elite middle classes.

    ” The novel is the story of Don Fabrizio Corbera, Prince of Salina,[2] a 19th-century Sicilian nobleman caught in the midst of civil war and revolution. As a result of political upheaval, the prince’s position in the island’s class system is eroded by newly moneyed peasants and “shabby minor gentry.” As the novel progresses, the Prince is forced to choose between upholding the continuity of upper class values, and breaking tradition to secure continuity of his (nephew’s) family’s influence (“everything needs to change, so everything can stay the same”). A central theme of the story is the struggle between mortality and decay (death, fading of beauty, fading of memories, change of political system, false relics etc.), and abstraction and eternity (the prince’s love for the stars and calculations, continuity and resilience to change of the Sicilian people). In a letter to a friend, the author notes: “Be careful: the dog Bendicò, is a very important character and is almost the key to the novel”. This heraldic emblem is the key to destruction, in the sense that ruin comes even to the dog.”

    Perhaps, like the eventual success of the middle class against the aristocrats, we will see in another generation, less lawyers and academics in parliament than plumbers, and check-out chicks!

  6. jaycee423

    The crushing of the middle class has been the main aim of the ‘aristocracy’ in the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ world for several decades now.

    • I think they have lost that battle, Kaff’…just as I think the next class conflict will be lost by the middle class..the numbers of bogan battlers are legion…and the first stormtroopers have taken the battlements and the system is being “learned” and copied by those aspirants, just as the first merchant class people copied and emulated the aristocracy…much to the amusement of the lords and ladys…but they learned…and they took over the halls of power..

  7. Well well well. Qld Labor agrees that coal is good for Humanity.

    #BREAKING: The Qld Govt has approved #Adani’s $21 billion Carmichael coal #mine.

    Will I hold my breath waiting for Bill Shorten to condemn this announcement? Seeing that a drover’s dog flea would be able to lead Labor to victory in the next election, Shorten will stay stumm on this. Besides, he is a member of The Bill & Tony Mutual Admiration Society. He has a lot in common with Tony than just the colour of their ties!

  8. I have no idea why the Aldani coal mine has got approval, because there is never going to be any coal mined there. The project, from my limited reading, is a dead duck goose. The prices are too low, demand is falling, finance is too hard to get and coal is passed its use-by date as an energy source.Plus the gov’t subsidies apparently have been pulled out. So wtf is going on? Is someone just stirring up the Greens and the environmental movement over a false-flag while something really nasty is being cooked up somewhere else.

    Yeah, Shorten should steer well clear of this one. Let the Feds and the State ALP gov’t gather the opprobrium or kudos, wherever the chips fall. He cannot change a decision and he is well inside his brief to say he cannot make a judgement until he has all the facts available to the fed gov’t. Shorten should pick his battles, if he wants to win this war.

  9. I think it will take more than a drover’s dog for the ALP to win this election. There is a long way to go and one false step by Shorten will cruel the ALP’s chances. The only reason the ALP has a chance now is because Shorten let Abbott king-hit himself, and as luck would have it, laying tripwires for Turnbull’s ego to fall over later on. (as in cayman islands). Who knew Turnbull was so bloody useless? Well, I suppose Keating did, and we here had an inkling, and if Keating did then I conclude the ALP leadership team did.

    But maybe not as useless as malcayman has turned out!

    • I believe many of us knew that Turnbull was “bloody useless”. No surprises there. We knew he would “present” better than Abbott but that’s all.

  10. “Increase economic growth”?

    With this lot, I don’t think so!

    His tactic was couched in the language of “ending the blame game” but was actually calculated to give him a means of shifting, or at least sharing, the blame.

    Which means, of course, it provides no answer at all to the question of where Australia finds the necessary money to pay for schools and hospitals. Even if the shortfall isn’t $80bn, it is significant, in the opinion of all the premiers, and well beyond what might be found through “efficiencies” and “stretching dollars further”.

    The Coalition’s answer is that they are hoping to increase economic growth. If they get more tax revenue from changes to the tax concessions for superannuation and the like, then they’ll return it in gradual cuts to company tax because, theoretically, that will boost growth. The services we get will be whatever we can pay for by spending wisely.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/03/malcolm-turnbulls-tax-tactics-an-attempt-to-shift-not-end-the-blame-game

  11. if i appear to be contradicting myself in above posts, it is because I am free-typing straight from my head to screen to post without editting at all.

  14. Just a question – if Julia Gillard’s funding for education and health was all ‘fantasy’ and never there at all, how can this government to have ‘saved’ $80 billion by cutting that allegedly non-existent funding?

    http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2016/04/03/gillards-funding-promise-was-fantasy-pm

    The money was costed and funded in the 2013 budget, and included in the 2013 PEFO.

    Would some brave journalist please do a bit of research and just for once, call out Turnbull’s lies.

  15. vote1julia

    I think they have said “Yes” in the knowledge it is a “dead parrot” project. Not a good look but it avoids the inevitable anti Labor crapola about being anti “development” etc.

    • I think that’s it. The Queensland government approves the leases and avoids all the accusations of not caring about ‘jobs’. I presume the Queensland government now rakes in quite a bit of lease money as well.

      No-one – except Costello – wants to fund this lunacy. The Queensland government is not going to allow any dredging at Abbot Point until Adani proves it has the money to go ahead. And that’s the impossible hurdle. They won’t find funding for a project that is just going to throw money down the pits they want to dig.

      Supporters can rave on all they want about the world needing high-quality thermal coal, but the world is rapidly moving away from coal. There’s no market for the stuff now, and India, supposedly the big buyer, is going solar.

      Then there are the legal challenges. There are two judicial reviews under way right now. Nothing can be finalised until they are concluded. There will most likely be more legal challenges after today’s decision. They could go on for a long time, and meanwhile the selling price of coal will keep dropping, so will the viability of the whole project. There will also be a lot of organised protests. Adani representatives have said protests have held up development for more than eighteen months and we know that over that time coal mining has gone into a slump. Mines elsewhere in Australia are being closed. Construction won’t start until early next year, it will be delayed even further by more protests and legal challenges, making even more worthless.

      It’s a dead duck.

      http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/03/green-indigenous-furious-queenslands-carmichael-coalmine-lease-approval

      Meanwhile, all of NSW – the whole blooming lot – is now open for shale oil exploration. A nifty way for Mike Baird to raise a few million from selling exploration leases to anyone who wants them. And the MSM don’t seem to have noticed at all.

    • Does Adani have to pay rent on their mining tenements, then when they produce coal their pay royalties in addition

  19. You bet it was, and a distraction from the woes of Sinodinos, and a distraction from the antics of Tony Abbott, and a distraction from his total lack of policies ……

  22. BK

    May I draw your attention to this little gem posted by JC.
    ——-

    jaycee423
    April 3, 2016 at 8:25 AM
    Gone to Streaky bay, eh?…I believe that’s one of the places in SA. you go to “get your kit off” and go for a run…sending back a couple of polaroids, BK ?
    ———-

  26. Vale Bob Ellis

    https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/bob-ellis-dies,8841

    A star has fallen from the sky: Bob Ellis has died
    David Donovan 3 April 2016, 7:30pm

    Legendary Australian writer, journalist, playwright and auteur Bob Ellis died today, 3 April 2016.

    Bob had been battling liver cancer for the last year and finally succumbed today at his home at Palm Beach, in Sydney’s north, at 4.15pm.

    At the end, Bob was surrounded by his loving family, wife Anne Brooksbank, sons Jack and Tom, and daughter Jenny.

    Bob Ellis was a true genius and an Australian icon, with a once in a generation facility for language. Often controversial, frequently confronting and always brilliant, Bob was simply unable to turn a dull phrase. He wrote movies and plays and books and articles and appeared on stage and gave speeches and was, in short, a brilliant, bubbling spring of creativity.

    A long time IA contributor and a good friend, Bob became involved in IA after I opened his website Table Talk, one night in 2012, and read article after article — until I realised they were all written that same day. He was astonishingly prolific. I was astounded he was not being published by the mainstream media. I found out later he had been released by Fairfax in 2011 over some controversy or another. Outspoken and never shy about speaking his mind, Bob was never far from one of those. I emailed him and we reached terms almost immediately. He had a reputation for being difficult, and a curmudgeon, but to me he was always kind and warm.

    I gave Bob no guidance about what to write and often disagreed with his opinions, but I always loved the way he expressed them.

    Other obituaries will be written about Bob’s immense contribution to Australia popular culture. His award winning movies Newsfront and My First Wife, and plays, such as the Legend of King O’Malley. But here at IA we weep for the loss of one of Australia’s most piercing journalistic talents, which began in the 1970s with the Nation Review, a contrarian, progressive political publication not dissimilar to IA.

    A star has fallen from the sky.

    And so it goes.

  27. http://www.afr.com/lifestyle/arts-and-entertainment/books/writer-bob-ellis-on-being-there-i-not-only-caused-the-howard-era-i-caused-abbott-20150908-gjhqic

    Sep 12 2015 at 12:15 AM Updated Sep 12 2015 at 12:15 AM
    Writer Bob Ellis on being there: “I not only caused the Howard era, I caused Abbott.”

    Bob Ellis has always polarised people and confounded them too, writes Andrew Clark. Now, severely ill, he reflects on his life and work – and flirts with trouble all over again.

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/mumble-liberals-always-knew-bronwyn-bishop-was-a-lightweight/news-story/9ef8d2bf53862cd98551956b74c04add

    Mumble: Liberals always knew Bronwyn Bishop was a lightweight
    The Australian July 21, 2015 9:43AM
    Peter Brent

    Bronwyn Bishop, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, has been in the news lately.

    And on the weekend Bob Ellis, writer, filmmaker and long-time Labor speechwriter, delivered sad news on his blog, that he “may have months to live but it is more like weeks.”

    The diagnosis is, apparently, liver cancer.

    It’s 21 years since the two crossed paths in the Mackellar by-election, and it is not a stretch to suggest that if not for Ellis, Bishop might have become prime minister.

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-12-13/36780

    An eerie quality very like charisma
    Opinion
    By Bob Ellis
    Updated 29 Sep 2010, 12:16pm

    (actually first published 13 Dec 2007 on the end of the Howard era)

  34. Fuck, and today my doc says my liver function is out of whack. lose weight and see the specialist. Damn it Bob Ellis, we are losing all our good uns. fuck it.

    • Best wishes, Puffy.

      Interesting those two postings of cuddling koalas, notably the difference in colours. In Portland, where they are at large to the extent of occasionally strolling through the downtown streets, they are nearly all (to the best of my knowledge) the silvery-grey colour, as per Fiona’s pic.

      I’ve seen the brownish ones (per Ducky’s pic) but can’t remember where. I’m speculating that there might be a regional factor in the marginally different colours.

  36. RIP Bob Ellis.

    Erratic, foolish, maddish and yet on occasions he could write like an angel, and he never ceased to show his passion. A great and committed servant in the cause of a better, fairer world.

  38. puffyTMD,

    I think the qld gov’t should have stopped the coalmine dead in its tracks but for some reason is letting this farce continue.

    As someone who has a very good handle on this issue, I am also wondering about that. My presumption is that Qld Labor is trying to ensure it doesn’t stick its neck out too far and alienate too many voters that it needs to continue in government (cue- mining unions etc) but without being seen as too negative about the project.

    Subsequently it is trying to engender then idea that it is not against the idea of a major job producing project which would be beneficial to the national & State economies but with the proviso that the Company should be able to finance it without substantial government & other financial assistance to make it viable.

    On its own, this project would not be viable in a million years for the following reasons that the msm seem to never bother to mention.

    1. the coal, unlike the more easterly Bowen Basin coal, is of poor quality and found at much greater depths than the more easily extracted Bowen Basin coal, some of which is of extremely high quality & still in demand for steel making. ie coking coal & low sulfur content coal. (more costly to dig up)

    2. As the Carmichael deposit coal quality is little different to that of the now seemingly abandoned projects of Palmer & Gina Reinhardt, the next problem rises up.

    3. Poor quality coal (up to 50% dirt) requires a lot of water to wash it enough to be usable in boilers. Unless the controllers of say, the Burdekin Dam agreed to supply water to this mine over hundreds of kilometers of expensive pipeline (Aldani expect taxpayers to pick up the tab for this) or the second option of massive extraction of underground water that graziers depend upon to water their stock & some pasture improvement which, when you are talking about Sydney Harbour amounts of underground water, then the whole idea of this project starts to appear as though no company could have the resources to finance its development without a great deal of outside assistance. (read, Aust Govt)

    4. Then there is the 500klm+ railway line from the mine to the Abbott Point coal loading facility & Port that this Aldani mob expect to be built by the taxpayer.

    5. On top of this, Aldani expects that the taxpayer will cough up to dredge the port (damaging the Great Barrier Reef in the process) and upgrade the port facilities to cater for the export of their coal.

    No wonder that no respected financial institutions are prepared to finance this. Except for Costello who seems to be turning out to be a bigger dill than I thought he was.

    • Well, Aldani can shove that where it don’t fit, too. BTW which fool gave the hammock dweller costello that cushy job with the Australia Fund?

  39. Scorps,

    Why do think sweetie peetie pie hasn’t been able to get a real job since leaving politics? His position as chairthing of the Future Fund doesn’t count – it was abbott’s gift.

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