Monday, February 01, 2016

This year over summer, he put science in its place, and laughed and danced and laughed with glee ...


It's a new month, a new era, a new world ... 

Which is why the pond clings so devotedly to the dinosaurs, those brave souls determined to provide continuity and ongoing awareness of conspiracies afoot, and ever willing to laugh at the fools for thinking they might get away with it, when a sharp-footed, top notch, world class climate scientist is hot on their tails ...

Yes, thanks be unto the reptiles, because once more this day we are blessed by a visitation from Maurice ...

However, you cut it ... reptile splash ...


Or google splash ...


... this top notch climate, world class climate scientist - some say he's numero uno now that screaming Lord Monckton has faded away into the folds of barking mad Christian fundamentalists - can sniff a conspiracy at a dozen paces ...

Please allow the pond to sniff with him ...


Indeed, indeed. Needless to say, the pond is reduced to a humble awe and a revered silence by the stringency and deadly accuracy of Maurice's observations.

It goes without saying that as scientists without peer or parallel, Quentin Letts and Maurice Newman are a perfect fit, and it is to the utter shame of the BBC's trustees that they should have replaced the show online with a pdf here, claiming that the program was a serious breach of the editorial guidelines for accuracy and impartiality.

This is shocking stuff. As Letts himself admits, he's a perfect model of accurate impartiality:

Sometimes you got the impression its forecasts were being written by the same hand that authored the Book of Genesis and its chapters about Noah’s flood. Gosh, they did love to whip up a storm about a few isobars. 
The same hyperbolic desire for attention saw the Met Office meekly agreeing to dumb down its presentation techniques and allow broadcasting editors and producers to turn the Met’s once dry forecasts into melodramatic, matey interludes fronted by autocuties. 
The men and women telling us the weather long ago stopped being dispassionate boffins. Instead they grinned, cooed, empathised, screwing up their eyelashes when they told us it was going to rain and advising us to wear sun cream during heat waves. 
Do I think here of the likes of the infuriatingly simpery Helen Willetts, twisting her face in agony when she warned us of showers? Do I think of Tomasz Schafernaker, a tweeting turnip of a Met Office/BBC weather presenter who posed on the front of a magazine as a sex symbol wearing only his shorts? You bet I do. 
Sheer meteorology of the forecasts was crushed by modish silliness, in an ill-guided quest for egalitarianism, a stupid horror of sober scientific delivery. It damaged both our society and the good reputation of the Met Office. (and more, perhaps too much more, here at the restless daily wail)

Indeed, indeed. This is tremendously scientific stuff, and it reminded the pond that it too has a passing skill at scientific endeavour.

That's why it can call Quentin Letts a remarkably funny looking man - he possibly even wears his trousers rolled in the English way - especially when he's inclined to wear a hankie to keep his beetroot brain under control ...


Oh dear, the pond has been quite distracted from the more important science of the master Maurice.

And here we have to turn a little Freudian.

What drives Maurice on? What motivates this master scientist to each week bring forth new revelations, and astonishing new insights?

Could it be that he is still in grieving, still mourning the loss of his hero, even though it is now many months on, and it's a new month in a new year?

So it seems, because he still yearns for the days of Tony, while deploring that wretched walri lover, a bungling incompetent incapable of recognising a conspiracy, except when brought to heel by his now departed, much lamented master ...

Yes, the walri man is in the thick of the conspiracy concealment, a friend in high places facilitating the conspirators ...


Now there are a few that would suggest Lamar Smith is about as good a scientist as Maurice, and a barking mad McCarthyist delusional luddite to boot - Update: Rep. Lamar Smith Ramps Up His Climate Conspiracy, but the pond was outraged to learn that this expert had been subjected to mockery and ridicule, as can be read in Lamar Smith's Climate Views Win Flat Earth Award.

Why that would be as cruel as awarding Maurice a tin foil award:


In response to his Flat Earth award Monday, Smith indicated he would continue his efforts to subpoena the NOAA scientists. 
“I will continue asking tough questions of this administration because the American people deserve to know the truth about its extreme environmental agenda,” he said. 
At Monday’s demonstration, Jere Locke, program director for the Texas Drought Project, said he felt Smith’s concerns were baseless. 
“Lamar Smith isn’t peer-reviewed,” Locke said. “The scientists are.”

Outrageous. Maurice is of course peer reviewed by the many scientific experts employed at News Corp.


Memo to The Australian's editor: There is an urgent job to be done, and Maurice is just the man to do it. The pond notes with admiration the way the comments section below Maurice's readership suggests that your rag is now only read by barking mad right wing loons of the demented, delusional kind.

The pond relies on this continuing. Keep up the good work. Have you thought of publishing Maurice twice a day, or in lieu, making him the editor of the paper?

Just thinking on feet, in an agile way.

And so to a little ditty the pond always remembers when Maurice is on the prowl ...




8 comments:

  1. He truly is the most adorable MacGuffin is Moorice.

    Let us know if you do work out what drives him eventually. In the meantime, his columns can stand as a bulwark against useful, inspiring and/or challenging journalism.

    I think this puff-piece on Moorice is a tantalising entree to the Pond's take on Vanstone's evisceration of the wall puncher today. You think 2016 can't be better than 2015? Oh heavens, it already is!

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  2. ...and while checking spelling, I did happen across a delicious definition for MacGuffin:

    'McGuffin (aka: MacGuffin or maguffin) is a term for a PlotEnablingDevice, i.e., a device or plot element in a movie that is deliberately placed to catch the viewer's attention and/or drive the logic of the plot, but which actually serves no further purpose - it won't pop up again later, it won't explain the ending, it won't actually do anything except possibly distract you while you try to figure out its significance. More specifically, it is usually a mysterious package or superweapon or something that everyone in the story is chasing."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Full credit, VC, to one of the pond's favourite directors, old Alf himself, for popularising the term ...

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin#Alfred_Hitchcock

      Delete
    2. Indeed, a glaring omission from the anonymous on-line reference.

      First they came for our director credits, then they came for our credible journalists...

      Delete
    3. Well that Hitchcock reference well and truly finagled me, DP.

      Just as I was reading "... "it's an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands." and I was expecting the illuminating reply: "Yes, it's 100% effective" (and there are no werewolves in my back yard either !) but what I got was "Well, that's no true Scotsman !"

      Oops, sorry, I meant " "But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands," and the other one answers, "Well then, that's no MacGuffin!"

      Now all I want to know is why Hitchcock put so many winged McGuffins in that movie to keep Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedren company. Weren't they sexy enough on their own ?

      Delete
  3. Hi Dorothy,

    As a respected Climate Scientist, Maurice knows that it is of paramount importance to cite his sources. Unfortunately The Australian has failed to publish the citations so lets see if we can help.

    “What’s the Point of the Met Office” program host Quentin Letts is a Theatre Critic with a MA degree in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. He lists his hobbies as “gossip” and “Character defenestration”.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quentin_Letts

    Chairman of the US house science committee, Lamar Seeligson Smith is a Republican Congressman with a BA in American Studies and is a Christian Scientist (see SCIENCE). As of 2015 he has received more than $600,000 from the fossil fuel industry during his congressional career.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamar_S._Smith

    Joanne Nova has a BSc in Molecular Biology and her sixteen page illustrated text “The Skeptics Handbook” is widely distributed in the USA by the Heartland Institute.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanne_Nova

    Jennifer Marohasy has a PhD in Biology and is head of the Environment Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Marohasy

    Ken Stewart is a retired school principal who is taking “A Reality Check on Global Warming”

    https://kenskingdom.wordpress.com/about/

    John S Theon retired from his position as a Program Administrator at NASA in 1994. He is listed as as an expert by the Heartland Institute.

    http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/John_Theon

    As Maurice points out with BOM, it is vital that proper academic rigour is followed and everyone should have full access to their sources.

    DiddyWrote

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    Replies
    1. Thanks DW, the pond is overwhelmed by the authoritative authorities you have uncovered. No wonder the pond considers Maurice the world's greatest climate scientist ...

      Delete
  4. Quentin Letts is one of the Gumbys!!!!!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATmWeEvW-Ec

    ReplyDelete

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