Wednesday 27th of November 2024
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on the value of hairy chests .....

on the value of hairy chests .....

As Doctor Nelson, the former leader of the Australian Liberal Party, graces the doldrums of the parliamentary hills with his affable nature, his heroic grandstanding on global warming is only belittled by his own insistence to give a tax rebate of 5 cents a litre on petrol back to the punter, so they can add more CO2 into the atmosphere...  

He says "it's a good political move..." I'm coughing with the fumes of political wisdom, already.  

Sure, I'm not against a cheaper price of petrol (or gasoline — as it's called in the land of the Wild West) but instead of making the government short of a buck, the multinational petroleum companies should cough up the cheaper price by loosing a chunk of their giganormous profits. And so they should — even should the car companies in the US bite the dust (which they won't), thus reducing the number of cars on the road by attrition: more unemployed, less cars, less fuel burned and the enviro is saved...  

Instead, like the bloated bleeding banks... the carbon transport builders will be given a "stringent" cheap loan, a pat on the back and a licence to make "more efficient" bigger cars in the US in Europe and in Australia as part of a binge, for us to drive merrily as usual through the clogged up arterial system... 

Yes we all know the system is crook. Say, sick as a dog that has stopped chasing its own tail as it guessed its own death... Like a drunker sailor who's been told: "stop drinking or die forthwith", the capitalist system has been warned off, to stop being greedy or soon die — with a knife in the back, from its own hands... Yes, capitalism has become a weird contortionist and a sicko at the same time.  

Yet how many drunken sea dogs have you seen going to temperance meetings of their own will? None, I hear you say?  

Not only that, the financial rescue packages worldwide are like liberally giving more booze to the alcoholic...  

The system is suffering from too much credit gone sour due to greed in the top echelons, so our unwise leaders give the top wasters more money and more credit in a silly move to waste plenty more — So...  See, even the new zillions from our governments' pockets seem to have evaporated from the streets into the bank vaults as the banks scrooge — to protect their shareholders and bunkered CEOs — won't lend real money. 

Mind you, many rich people I know have witnessed their "fortunes" halved in the last few months. Boom. Some rumors are flying that some of the richest amongst them — gazillionaires who a year ago owned big bucks in equity that afforded them some "reasonable" borrowings should they wish to indulge in buying a new casino or an expensive shirt, are now close to closing shop.  

See, these extra borrowings are becoming less and less serviceable as the value of collateral assets diminished, as well as the unfortunate diminishing pool of consumers out-there. Thus some have had to shed ballast — one-off discreet fire sales to keep the hungry wolves (the real interest rates) at bay, but the process also puts them at risk of diminishing further their survival income stream... And borrowing more dough has been made impossible since as mentioned banks won't lend real money — not even to themselves. 

Sure, the rich are good at what they do: balancing the debts, the earning, the competitive wars and the pleasures from their minimalist palaces. Thus there might be a bit less champagne in the fountains but it might be a healthier tummy in the long run.

Not like during the 1980s, when the banks kept lending the losers more money while the loser's own shareholders were impressed by the thickness of the shag-pile carpets of the over-grandiose head-office to eventually loose all their money. 

Presently, all the smarter gazillionaire has to do is stay above water while not sneezing during the hardest of times, reinvigorate the consumer markets with more efficient spin, a bit less discount disguised as a bottom bargain and reduce enough of the employed fat without losing the cushy passion of the entire workforce.  

They also have to defend their patch by arguing a limit on the amount of booze worldwide-governments are about to pour out to save the silly hedgers — the culprits who have burned banknotes for foot-loose pleasure while in their wisdom, the discreet gazillionaire only bought and smoked Cuban cigars to make signals.  

The name of the game from now on is not so much quantity but quality... 

But the acid media is unforgivingly loopy, especially the financial press in which some beetles think they know all about business but are unable to make a buck themselves — like me.  

And while some other beetles will protect their gazillionaire owners, they will tuck like hyenas into the opposition or anything that moves — unless they want to ingratiate themselves by collecting targeted tit-bits and crumbs thrown at them decidedly by the gazillionaires, to manipulate the market...  

Meanwhile...

Meanwhile, the Aussie opposition, let by Malcolm the oratorial wind-vainglorious, is lambasting our Kev for talking of rough times ahead... instead of whistling like him, care-freely "let the good times roll, relatively".

Obviously, Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop are living on another planet, where drunken captains of financial industry are entitled to drink most of the jeroboams of rescue booze — like silly careless people lost in the snow of the Swiss Alps being rescued by dogs with barrels of hard liquor attached to their collars — after having drunk the cupboard bare and after having run the ship aground, blaming the crew feeding the boilers. The Exxon Valdez has been renamed the "Mediterranean"...  

Not only that, Turnbull and Bishop are still poopoo-ing our Kev for a supposed indiscretion about El Cheezo, the lame duck of the free world who had a quack-lack of knowledge in the secret number of the 20 larger countries he had destroyed the economies thereof, in his belief of "free trade" at all cost — laced with secret lavish subsidies pooping in the other 19's nests.  

And barking Joe added weight to the parallel planet by complaining more about Rudd for not achieving immediately something concrete at the G20 meeting. Of course we've already forgotten that it was his mob, under the leadership of John Howard, Blair and Bush that we got into this unholy mess. 

So last night (17/11/08) on the ABC public channel, the hot air inflated your TV screen like never before. In "The Howard Years"... Thank Vishnu! they're over!... Should we have watched? Are we masochists? Do we regret anything, especially the invigorating floggings? ... Are we ready to vote the mongrels back in again for more torture?... Why is the loopy media presently scrutinizing the possibility? Especially when the USA is awakening to a better democracy.  

Was there anything true in these Gustaphianic cartoons? Remember them, where pyramids appeared to the glory of the system, while the workers free at first became enslaved in the pits of credit — too much credit, while the Howard government, like a pharaoh building a pyramid scheme, decided to flog them harder and harder for every services they used... Some of us think that Howard did that kindly, to make the poor-user pay and the rich save, like a parent "who loves well, punishes well"... I tend to differ here and the user of course paid far too much for anything the government flogged, including the shares in their own Telstra. Buying something twice?  

Howard, like a good socialist, also decided to protect his own kind (the privileged shopkeepers) from supermarket competition where lower prices could have made a dint in the upper privileged shopkeeper class' right to charge more, while the lower class of street vendors — especially those pumping the good oil into cars and those milking the cows — were placed in the full raging front, of the discounting wars from supermarkets... At that level I've heard plenty of stories, exalting the cheating in the competitive classes of suppliers in order to gain shelve space at these grand altar of consumerism, where "cheaper stuff" equates running the good loyal local producer out of business, in favour of the imported dumped subsidized kind — and possibly of lower quality, like the Taiwanese nuts and bolts of the 1970s. Thus the bacon, the fruit juices and the berries were more and more foreign — while the financial wizkids pushed the US dollar below the waterline... We were proud, our dollar was "strong". 

But we all suffered. Meanwhile we were connected to a jar of morphine: while we feared terrorism (and still do), relaxed and comfortable, we did not notice our system was in double melt. As I have told people many times before, the Aussie battler should hover around 64 cents in the US dollar and the world is our oyster, even if we've got to pay more while bumming through overseas backpacking hotels. 

So how do we save a system that has been "so good" to us, capitalists, but a system that we have abused beyond repair? 

We need regulations, transparency and the elimination of derivatives that have been carelessly used like casino royal, betting with our future, for starters. We need to help the poor regain some dignity in the crushing subprime debacle by rewriting honest mortgages, in which the profiteer middlemen are trimmed off. That has been our problem, in order to reduce unemployment in evolved economies, we've outsourced most manufacturing overseas, the average workforce has been refocused into the quaternary financial sector, thus overblown this sector has grown beyond its usefulness. Too many intermediate useless steps, too much on-selling of real estate that has led to becoming unreal in value. In short too many middle-persons in transactions, all taking their cuts. leaving only the bone for the price of filet steak. You know what I mean. 

We need to reduce the ugly differential between high execs and the workforce. We need to redistribute some of the wealth by making health and education basically free for all. We need to protect the planet in the process. We need to reinvent manufacturing on a micro scale. Small might be beautiful, even in energy supplies... Possible? Mission imp....? 

Sounds like a mission for Linsay Tanner... I feel, he could be the only one with the pulse on most of the lot at the moment. He could stuff it up too, but not as much as Howard ever did.  

My two bob's worth. No gross evolution. No GM evolution. Smart evolution.

from the barking mad fan club .....

Yes Gus ....

And this from the barking mad fan club.

from Crikey ….. 

Janette Howard: the interview the ABC rejected 

This is an edited extract of Janette Howard’s interview with the ABC for The Howard Years. The program’s producers were unable to include any of this material: 

The biggest problem with our Government was the amazing numbers of ****wits, dipsticks and ****tards in it. I said to John even before we were elected, I said to him "John," I said, "there’s not a single ****ing brain cell between the ****ing lot of them, I’ve never seen such a pack of ***eclowns." And he agreed.  

At the first Cabinet meeting -- I had to run most of them in the first few years because bloody John didn’t have a ****ing clue, he said "well Malcolm used to do it this way" and I said "I don’t give a **** how Fraser did it, what the **** did he know?" -- I looked at the whole ****ing lot of them and I said "what a ****ing crew. To think you *****s are running the ****ing country. We’re going to have to do all ****ing work our ****ing selves." 

Anyway we got rid of a few of them in the first years with all those ****ing travel rorts and eventually I called a halt and said "John," I said, "if we keep this up there’ll be no ****ing bastard left. You’ll have to promote Petro ****ing Georgiou and Wilson ****ey and I’m not having that." 

There was one person I couldn’t abide. Not Costello. I mean we hated him, smirking little ****, but I tell you the one person I could never stomach was that bloody John Fahey. I told him time after time not to ****ing smoke in Kirribilli but I’d come home and there he’d be, his feet up on the pouffe like Lord Muck watching the football, smoking like a chimney. 'The puffer on the pouffe' I called him. And he’d cough something terrible. Like a ****ing steam train going up a ****ing mountain. I always said one day he’d cough up a ****ing lung and eventually that’s what he did. I called him "One Lung John" after that. Silly ****wit. 

By about 2001 John had started to get the hang of chairing Cabinet. The poor little dear can be a bit slow on the uptake. Sometimes he just let Tim Fischer start rambling on about some ****ing walk he’d taken somewhere in the mountains and I’d have to say "Tim, love, no one gives a flying **** about your hike or your trains or what the **** ever so just sit there quietly will you dear?" I always had to sit on the same side as Richard Alston because I couldn’t handle that man’s eyes. God. He’s like some ****ing psycho staring at you. He unnerved me, he really did, when he left Cabinet I told John that he had to be sent out of the country, I didn’t want to run the ****ing risk of ever running into him. Ugh. Creepy. 

I tell you who I didn’t mind was that Kim Beazley. Kim knew his place, which was on the other side of the chamber. I said to Kim once at some do, "Kim, you’re a lovely man and I hope you lead the Labor Party forever." He started on some ****ing anecdote about Chester A. Arthur or Ulysses S. Grant or Ward Pally Austin or some ***** and I said "enough GBH of the eardrums, Kim, it’s bad enough having to listen to that little toady Downer all day."  

Downer was forever getting in the way trying to be ob-****ing-sequious to John, I don’t know how a man that tall could get underfoot so much I really don’t. But they put in that Simon Crean and then that Mark Latham character. Don’t get me started on that ****ing Latham ****. That ****ing **** ****ing **** a ****ing ****wit **** in the *****ing ****, and I ****ing said to John ****ing ****ball ****tard should ****ing **** **** ****ward **** for the rest of the ****ing decade.” I didn’t like him. 

Now I know you want to ask me about this so I’ll ****ing get right to the point. John had this absolute ****ing BRAIN SNAP in 2007 and decided he was going to quit. I’d been busting a ****ing gut on APEC all year. I was the ****ing one who did all the ****ing work for that ****ing thing, planning the ****ing security, the ****menus, the ****ing clothes, the ****ing meetings. I got no help from anyone except that nice Mr Watkins from NSW who was a pleasure to work with and handsome in a proper sort of way, I quite liked him. 

Anyway, I’d worked my ****ing arse off all year and John starts whingeing "I think I should quit, they don’t want me to stay, they think they’ll lose with me." And I hit the ****ing roof and told him he either stayed in the job or he could start looking for a couch to sleep on. And he says in this pathetic little voice "but Janette, what about the party?" And I said to him "John Winston Howard the only party you need to worry about is the one where I ****ing caught you looking at that ****ing Condoleezza Rice woman." And he gives me these big cow eyes god bless him. Back in 1967 about he made this so-called "joke" about how “once you’ve had black you never go back.” I never forgot that. And I caught him looking at that Rice woman when we went to America one time and he was in the doghouse for a few months. 

So we went to the ****ing reception and there was no more talk of resignations. And that ****ing Rice woman stayed right away from my husband. Sow. 

The thing I remember most about the Howard years is work. Hard ****ing work. I couldn’t rely on the Cabinet, and most of the time I couldn’t even rely on John. I just had to bloody do it myself. In the end it was almost a relief that we lost, I was getting bone tired day after day doing it all. Politics is a really tough job. 

The Howard Years (sans Janette) screens tonight on ABC1

And, unfortunately... but fortunately

Little shops full of horrors but supermarkets buck trend

Jacob Saulwick and Anne Davies
November 18, 2008

RETAILERS in NSW face the most difficult trading conditions in decades. Butchers, cafes and sporting goods dealers are selling a lot less, but supermarkets are selling a lot more as consumers seek bargains.

The latest snapshot of the retail sector, which makes up about a fifth of the national economy, came as the sharemarket resumed its fall yesterday, driven lower by banking stocks.

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Thus the trend goes in the wrong El Cheapo direction...  Quantity prevails too much over quality... We're adding too much water in our porridge. but then fortunately:

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The left writes Liberals' history

Gerard Henderson
November 18, 2008

...

When prime minister, Howard consistently criticised the ABC for its lack of pluralism and for failing to employ any conservatives as presenters or producers of its major current affairs programs. But he appointed Donald McDonald as ABC chairman and then re-appointed him. McDonald did not share Howard's view of the ABC. With a couple of exceptions, including the ABC1 Insiders program, the public broadcaster was no more diverse when Howard was defeated last year than when he became prime minister in 1996.

Just a year out of office, Howard has put his trust in the ABC to present an objective assessment of his administration. Moreover, he agreed, knowing that Fran Kelly was to be the principal interviewer and narrator. This despite Kelly, as presenter of the Radio National program Breakfast since 2005, being unable to disguise her opposition to the Howard government on a series of issues - most notably foreign policy, national security and aspects of social policy.

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Yes, a slightly angry bitterness oozes from Gerard's column. But he should not be. Why would anyone watch? We've been there... why remind ourselves of the pain, despite being told everything was honky dory? May be he's trying to rally the Liberal troops, make them angry for letting themselves be seen on dancing at midday...

Gerard starts the column with:

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In the dark years of the Conservative Party in Britain, before the advent of Margaret Thatcher, the Tories were commonly referred to as the stupid party - by opponents and frustrated supporters alike. I was reminded of this last week when I saw Julie Bishop, the Opposition's deputy leader and shadow treasurer, on Paul McDermott's Channel Ten comedy gig Good News Week.

Bishop put on a fine performance in one sense. She presents well, is intelligent, quick and witty, can dance and so on. Yet this is not the role required when the criticism of the Liberal Party's deputy leader is that she is not on top of her economic brief and has no deep understanding of the Liberal Party.

Even the location exhibited a lack of political judgment. Before last year's election McDermott mocked John Howard relentlessly in his ABC TV comedy program The Sideshow. Bishop was a cabinet member in the Howard Government. She seems to have adopted the Liberal Party's self-doubting beatitude, which requires that Liberals return favours to those who persecute them.

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And Gerard gets stuck into the leftist producers at the ABC for glorifying Chiffley et al... And complains that in the Howard Years, the fact the Aussie army wanted to be part of the action in Iraq, as if it was necessary, is not explored and glorified. Well, Gerard, I CAN PROVE THAT JOHN HOWARD, like Blair and Bush, LIED ABOUT THE WMDs TO GO TO WAR. But I won't go here... I've already done it many times on this site. And Greenspan and Nelson spilled the official beans later on: IT WAS ABOUT OIL... So Howard, deserve to be fully lambasted on this one. Bush should have been impeached. Blair decided to become a good Catholic boy with absolution for three Hail Marys.

And please realise that possibly 60 per cent of the liberals (small l) hated Johnnee's shopkeeper's short sighted visions. Even his former boss Malcolm Frazer was fuming... But I digress...

How do we fix what Bush and his mates have broken? The economies, the ongoing wars with no tunnel in sight to have a light at the end thereof..., the moral bankruptcy, the corrupted "free market" forces, etc...

Is this why the American public voted Obama for the US presidency? An Obama who was dubiously put together with Al Qaeda terrorism by the Howard mob.

And by the way I believe Fran Kelly knows when she's being sold a pup... You know what I mean. Had the "Howard Years" been produced by rightwingers, we would still be laughing our head off at the comical porkies... Ahahahahahah... Unless we'd destroyed our TV set in anger...

sorry...

I've been advised remonstratively that some people "don't get" the cartoon at the top of this line of comments...

Sorry. It's not meant to be that funny but whimsical... Its about evolution of an extinct species representing our own, living in the bliss of crapping themselves out in a fast changing environment while thinking of various stylistic subjects: art (philosophy), understanding (proper sciences) and beliefs...

The nasty beast of course is the one with beliefs: represented by the gun but incorporating the money and religion as well. All beliefs designed to conquer and rule rather than explain anything... May be I did not make the eye nasty enough...

May be I'm too harsh on the Homo mammothii... but I don't think so. There is more to cartoon that a drawing...

of extinctions and revivals

And just when I was mentioning the mammoth....

Reviving this species is a mammoth task

Deborah Smith Science Editor
November 20, 2008 - 10:03AM

THOUSANDS of years after it died out, the woolly mammoth has become the first extinct animal to have its genetic code sequenced.

Scientists extracted DNA from the hair of two carcasses frozen in the permafrost, raising the possibility of bringing the ancient species back to life.

The mammoths sampled had been dead for about 20,000 years and at least 60,000 years.

"This is the first time that we have been able to study an extinct animal in the same detail as the ones living in our own time," said Stephan Schuster of Penn State University in the US, who co-led the international mammoth genome project.

Meanwhile, that other animal is getting sicker...

Wall Street plunged more than 5% on Wednesday to its lowest level in over five years on rising economic worries.

October consumer prices fell 1% on the month before - the biggest such fall in 61 years, which has reinforced fears of rapid slowdown.

Adding to the gloom, the US Federal Reserve slashed its economic growth forecasts for 2009.

The Fed is expected to cut its key interest rate to 0.5% in December - it cut rates twice in October to 1%.

Economists say that this rapid fall in consumer prices has given the US central bank the room it needs to cut interest rates to battle the economic slump.

"It's certainly the Fed confirming what the market has realised - that the recession is here," said Bruce Zaro, of Delta Global Advisors in Boston.

Cough cough... see toon at top...

making them die earlier by zoo-ing them

A new study comparing wild, captive and working elephants has found that living in zoos can significantly shorten the animals' lives.

Writing in the journal Science, researchers say obesity is a major cause of death in adult zoo elephants.

They also cite stress as the key factor in the death of young captive animals when they are moved from zoo to zoo.

They say ideally zoos should not take on new elephants if they cannot provide suitable environments.

solastalgia...

Is There an Ecological Unconscious?

By DANIEL B. SMITH

About eight years ago, Glenn Albrecht began receiving frantic calls from residents of the Upper Hunter Valley, a 6,000-square-mile region in southeastern Australia. For generations the Upper Hunter was known as the “Tuscany of the South” — an oasis of alfalfa fields, dairy farms and lush English-style shires on a notoriously hot, parched continent. “The calls were like desperate pleas,” Albrecht, a philosopher and professor of sustainability at Murdoch University in Perth, recalled in June. “They said: ‘Can you help us? We’ve tried everyone else. Is there anything you can do about this?’ ”

Residents were distraught over the spread of coal mining in the Upper Hunter. Coal was discovered in eastern Australia more than 200 years ago, but only in the last two decades did the industry begin its exponential rise. Today, more than 100 million tons of black coal are extracted from the valley each year, primarily by open-pit mining, which uses chemical explosives to blast away soil, sediment and rock. The blasts occur several times a day, sending plumes of gray dust over ridges to settle thickly onto roofs, crops and the hides of livestock. Klieg lights provide a constant illumination. Trucks, draglines and idling coal trains emit a constant low-frequency rumble. Rivers and streams have been polluted.

Albrecht, a dark, ebullient man with a crooked aquiline nose, was known locally for his activism. He participated in blockades of ships entering Newcastle (near the Upper Hunter), the largest coal-exporting port in the world, and published opinion articles excoriating the Australian fossil-fuel industries. But Albrecht didn’t see what he could offer besides a sympathetic ear and some tactical advice. Then, in late 2002, he decided to see the transformation of the Upper Hunter firsthand.

“There’s a scholar who talks about ‘heart’s ease,’ ” Albrecht told me as we sat in his car on a cliff above the Newcastle shore, overlooking the Pacific. In the distance, just before the earth curved out of sight, 40 coal tankers were lined up single file. “People have heart’s ease when they’re on their own country. If you force them off that country, if you take them away from their land, they feel the loss of heart’s ease as a kind of vertigo, a disintegration of their whole life.” Australian aborigines, Navajos and any number of indigenous peoples have reported this sense of mournful disorientation after being displaced from their land. What Albrecht realized during his trip to the Upper Valley was that this “place pathology,” as one philosopher has called it, wasn’t limited to natives. Albrecht’s petitioners were anxious, unsettled, despairing, depressed — just as if they had been forcibly removed from the valley. Only they hadn’t; the valley changed around them.

In Albrecht’s view, the residents of the Upper Hunter were suffering not just from the strain of living in difficult conditions but also from something more fundamental: a hitherto unrecognized psychological condition. In a 2004 essay, he coined a term to describe it: “solastalgia,” a combination of the Latin word solacium (comfort) and the Greek root –algia (pain), which he defined as “the pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault . . . a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at ‘home.’ ” A neologism wasn’t destined to stop the mines; they continued to spread. But so did Albrecht’s idea. In the past five years, the word “solastalgia” has appeared in media outlets as disparate as Wired, The Daily News in Sri Lanka and Andrew Sullivan’s popular political blog, The Daily Dish. In September, the British trip-hop duo Zero 7 released an instrumental track titled “Solastalgia,” and in 2008 Jukeen, a Slovenian recording artist, used the word as an album title. “Solastalgia” has been used to describe the experiences of Canadian Inuit communities coping with the effects of rising temperatures; Ghanaian subsistence farmers faced with changes in rainfall patterns; and refugees returning to New Orleans after Katrina.

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read more at the NYT and see important toon at top...

subsidies and samba...

The Brazilian government has announced trade sanctions against a variety of American goods in retaliation for illegal US subsidies to cotton farmers.


The World Trade Organization (WTO) approved the sanctions in a rare move.

Brazil published a list of 100 US goods that would be subject to import tariffs in 30 days, unless the two governments reached a last-minute accord.

It said it regretted the sanctions, but that eight years of litigation had failed to produce a result.

It said it would raise tariffs on $591m (£393m) worth of US products - from cars, where the tariff will increase from 35% to 50%, to milk powder, which would see a 20% increase in the levy.

Cotton and cotton products would be charged 100% import tariff, the highest on the list.

The Office of the US Trade Representative said it was "disappointed" by Brazil's decision and called for a negotiated settlement.

--------------------------------

"The Office of the US Trade Representative said it was "disappointed" by Brazil's decision and called for a negotiated settlement." after 8 years????? Good on Brazil and the WTO!!!

of boats and medusa...

Tasmanian scientists have discovered a new species of jellyfish in Hobart's River Derwent and given it a sexy name.

The species is only a few millimetres wide and looks like a flying saucer with a cluster of gonads, or sex organs, on top.

Scientists discovered the jellyfish while surveying the waters outside the CSIRO in Hobart.

The new species has been named Csiro medusa medeopolis, meaning "jellyfish from CSIRO" and "city of gonads".

Launceston jellyfish expert Lisa-Ann Gershwin says it is an astounding discovery.

"It's absolutely different from every other jellyfish that's ever been known," Dr Gershwin said.

"So we not only put it into its own new species and its own new genus, but it's actually a brand new family."

Dr Gershwin says the find is also tremendously exciting.

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Gus: quite weird that this has not been "found" before... One of Gus theories on this is that these weirdos could have come from a foreign ship's ballast water... Would not be the first animal or aquatic plant species to travel this way across the globe... But no, the scientists are adamant it's a newly discovered "local" species...

 

the value of money and produce...

Analysts say the Australian dollar is the world's most overvalued currency.

The dollar has climbed from about 81 US cents in June to close to 95 US cents this month, and Bloomberg says it is now overvalued by 27 per cent.

That means it is worth more when converted to other currencies and spent overseas than kept in Australian dollars and spent in Australia.

Westpac's global head of currency strategy, Robert Rennie, says investors are buying the Australian dollar because local interest rates are high compared to the rest of the world.

"The Australian dollar is very significant because it offers yields, high yields," he said.

"The RBA has been raising rates in a global world where central banks have been cutting rates and moving to quantitative easing."

Mr Rennie explains the concept called "purchasing power parity" is being used to show the Australian dollar is overvalued.

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Gus: at the top of this line of comments I have mentioned ages ago that the Aussie dollar should be valued at 64 US cents...

"...But we all suffered. Meanwhile we were connected to a jar of morphine: while we feared terrorism (and still do), relaxed and comfortable, we did not notice our system was in double melt. As I have told people many times before, the Aussie battler should hover around 64 cents in the US dollar and the world is our oyster, even if we've got to pay more while bumming through overseas backpacking hotels"

But the currency traders from all over the world want to:

a) make money by investing in the highest interest rates available...

b) make sure Australia isn't getting better by being too efficient, despite being efficient.

c) exports from Australia become too expensive on some items such as farm produce.

d) imports into Australia — especially food to challenge at best and kill off some crops viability, helping countries like Brazil and Denmark to dump some of their produces...

f) make money by short-investing money in countries that dump produce — such as Denmark (pork, jams) and Brazil (orange extract).

...

if one work the figures out 27 per cent of 94 US cents is = 94 - (94 x 27 : 100 ) = 68 cents...

In earlier times this would call for immediate trade barriers, but these days of WTO "trade level playing field" , proper domestic equity is impossible to manage (Bob Katter's "beef"). We're at the merci of money-men who get away with murder by telling us our imports are "cheaper". For example petrol is cheaper but how much is it worth if our excellent food bowl is killed-off by "dumped imports"? Or imports produced in countries that do not have the same level of care for workers or overproduce with SUBSIDIES (operating really as trade barriers)...

See toon at top.

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the rats in humanity...

Land mammals went from small "vermin" to giant beasts in just 25 million years, according to a new study.

Writing in the journal Science, researchers say mammals rapidly filled the "large animal" void left by the dinosaurs' demise 65 million years ago.

They then went from creatures weighing between 3g and 15kg to a hugely diverse group including 17-tonne beasts.

Further growth was capped by temperature and land availability, the scientists believe.

Felisa Smith of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, US, and colleagues looked at the fossil record of mammals to plot their course through the ages.

We had a giant Earth with nothing big on it anymore; and so I think that allowed mammals to just go nuts”

Professor Felisa Smith University of New Mexico

They concluded that the rise of the mammals was by no means inevitable, and owes most to the chance obliteration of the dinosaurs, be it by comet, asteroid or another event.

"Mammals actually evolved almost around the same time as dinosaurs, about 210 million years ago," she told BBC News.

"And for the first 140 million years, we were basically vermin scurrying around the feet of the dinosaurs and not really doing much of anything.

"A comet came and hit the Earth and killed off all dinosaurs... and mammals as a class probably had characteristics that helped them survive that impact."

She believes most were burrowers that lived through the ensuing environmental mayhem largely underground, feeding on whatever food they could find, be it plant or meat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11820961

Gus: it's easy to see why... It only took a few generations to increase the average human height and girth —  by eating more stuff... There is more tall people amongst the developed nations than ever before... 25 million years is enough time to alter species beyond recognition. Humans being one of them, altered in less than three million, from a tree-dwelling ape... itself descendant from little rat-like creatures...

see toon at top...

buying a house near a roman sewer has its price...

Australia’s former ambassador to the Holy See has defended the millions of taxpayer dollars spent on luxury housing for the ambassador to Italy.

Renovations to the official Rome residence and 32 months’ worth of temporary accommodation have cost taxpayers around $2.7 million, News Corp reports.

The cost, described as “shocking” by South Australian senator Nick Xenophon, reportedly included more than $1 million in rent for a luxury four-bedroom apartment a short walk from the Colosseum.

Former ambassador to the Holy See, Tim Fischer, says the renovations were necessary because the mansion was sliding down a hill towards an ancient sewer.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/jun/06/when-in-rome-tim-fischer-defends-millions-spent-on-ambassadors-house

 

Now tell us, Timmy, is this ancient sewer from Roman times, the Renaissance (of sewers) or is it just an old sewer from the 1940s fascist revival of Rome?

move the date...

Australia Day should be on the last Friday in January to boost productivity and address the “Invasion Day” debate, the former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer says.

Fischer proposes a floating Australia Day instead of the fixed January 26 date, which marks the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788.

“It is tied to the date of the arrival way back then. It’s time we had a look at it,” Fischer told AAP on Saturday.

He said changing the date would help address the concerns of people he said were fixated on “Invasion Day” – which many mark as the date English oppression of Aboriginal Australians began.

He also said moving the date would help businesses, which could then plan on a long weekend every January.

“This would boost productivity by reducing the number of sickies which inevitably occur when Australia Day is on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday,”  Fischer said.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/mar/20/move-date-of-australia-day-urges-former-deputy-prime-minister-tim-fischer