Saturday 20th of April 2024
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cycling through the detrituses...

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Today, lazy as ever, Gus steals someone else editorial from a few years ago to remind readers why Ms Devine is an idiot. The cartoon at top is from the Melbourne Punch, published in 1896, when Aussie cyclists were doing so well in bicycle races, overseas. This was the new Australian Coat of Arms.

 

Here goes Loon Pond:

 

Miranda Devine, lycra-clad louts redux, and an epic bicycle journey through the dangerous streets of Sydney ...


Inspired by a few readers, true gentlemen all, I was thinking what a fine role model Vivien Leigh made in Gone with the Wind.


Petulant, sulky, irascible, a tease and a flirt, yet feisty and willing and ready to stand up to anyone with a saucy defiant air. 
True, Vivien Leigh herself in the real world was on occasion as mad as a march hare, and gave poor Larry an extremely hard time, but what's wrong with a little manic depression.
Truth to tell, I was also inspired a little by Elizabeth Gumport's Laughing a Lot, and Often Over Nothing Much, my current bathroom reading (oh we never say toilet here at the pond, no never, as a concession to our much loved American cousins), which celebrates novelist Elaine Dundy and her love of screwball comedies, but which sad to say is behind The Believer paywall and so you will have to fork over your hard earned readies if you want a full read.
I feel I can filch a couple of Gumport's observations - I happen to love American screwball comedies of the 1940s, any that feature Katharine Hepburn more so - without harming her intellectual property rights, and in particular her recall of Dundy's marriage to theatre critic Kenneth Tynan and his response to Dundy's first book The Dud Avocado and its best seller status:
After a night out with with his friends, he returned home to find Dundy reading a copy of her manuscript; in a fury, he flung it out the window. "The awful truth was not so much that his tormentors had pressed upon him the idea that his wife had 'competed with him and 'won', Dundy wrote, 'but that he was buying into it. Except for the screwball comedies, where women were allowed some equality in regard to jobs, professions and careers, we females were taught by endless example never to seem to have even the appearance of competing in any way with our husbands." Tynan told Dundy he would divorce her if she ever wrote another book. The next morning she began work on what would become her second novel.
So it goes, and what does this have to do with anything, apart from the incessant desire to actually avoid dealing with the scribbling of the commentariat commentators? 
Nothing much, but we must now move on from the wonderful world of people who create things from nothing - artists, doers, movers and shakers who create the culture within which we can live and breathe and reference and so understand each other - and move on to the doomsayers, the negatives, the omegas to the alphas ...
And who better to represent that world than Miranda the Devine? 
Sometimes I wonder, does she think of herself as a kind of modern day southern belle, Scarlett O'Hara style, fighting the forces of evil and oppression? Or is she just as mad as a march hare?
Well if you read Fraught obstacle course on Moore's 200km vision of city bike paths, you'll learn only one thing: Miranda the Devine needs bicycles and bicycle paths like a fish needs mercury poisoning, and so it seems does Sydney.
Of course the Devine has form in this area: who can forget her epic tirade against Tony Abbott in Roads are for cars, not Lycra louts? Well it was actually against cyclists, who were crazed, and rampant, and attacked bush drivers, and were classically angry, and believed in forcible education and fear like jackbooted Soviets, unlike happy, tranquil eastern and northern suburbs drivers of Toorak tractors (though perhaps they should be called Paddington or Woollahra tractors here). By the time she'd finished that rant, there was a war between drivers and cyclists, and almost five hundred comments.
Yes, the shit stirrer had done her job, and stirred the poo, and presumably all were happy, except those who actually had read the rant.
This latest offering is rich in Freudian insights and epic detailing, perhaps best left to the Devine connoisseur to discover. But we particularly like the opener, as she rants about how much she hates the idea of cycleways:

The lord mayor, Clover Moore's, much ballyhooed $70million pretend cycleway network under construction in the city is such a dog even the cyclists don't like it. With enormous gaps, dangerous obstacles, odd diversions, sharp turns, blind corners and expensive over-engineering it has annoyed motorists, shop owners and residents alike.


Even the cyclists don't like it? Hmm, has she trotted off to Sydney Cyclist, and got the buzz, got the vibe from the brave band of bicyclists who actually venture on to Sydney roads, and face crazed challenges from rampant ideologues like the Devine in charge of tonnes of vehikkul? Has she got on board with the Western Sydney Cycling Network? Does she indulge in outings with the Sydney Cycling Club to get her informed opinion of what cyclists, those lycra clad louts, think?
Read more:http://loonpond.blogspot.com/2010/07/miranda-devine-lycra-clad-louts-redux.html#.XMdx_a2B3Pw

 

 

on your bike, miranda...

 

The "safety bicycle" was easier to ride than the penny-farthing... 

bike

 

 

Meanwhile Miranda talked crap...

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/30909

 

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/29117

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/30830

 

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/30972

 

and plenty more...

 


joining the cycling club in my head...

Are two photon the same? This is the big philosophical/quantum question. Do photons travel in pairs like having a twin brother called wave, taking turns at illuminating the world?



I remember hating philosophy courses at school. For me, Einstein had defined the universe and there was no need to fiddle. But I later on realised that the adult world was not that simple.There were doubters, Thomases and crucifixioners — people who still believe that the earth is flat or that the Holocaust did not happen. Adults are a painful lot — especially those with big fat wallet or those opinionators with noodle-brains who spit words into golden microphones. 

Thus, growing up, I had prepared some sand bags against the tide of ignorance. 

Mind due, I had to do cartwheels to remember anything… My own memory was like a sieve during the night and rarely remembered the previous day's learning effort. I hoped that someone would quickly invent something to remember stuff with, as the mnemothingy did not work for me. A robot with my face on it would have done besser to save the day on der Tag der Rezitation. I thus used a slide rule and micrometers to measure the unsmiling faces of tutors. One of my most famous utterances was to comment that my mum must have baked a cake, after seing the huge city gas reservoir at near empty level… I got four hours of detention for making the class laugh. It was worth it. 

Then came the age of computer, the internet and artificial memory. I was saved!  Soon they would invent the brain inplant — my desperatly needed memory chip! Imagine how you could turn dementia patients into little Einstein! They would not take shit from their "carers" anymore...

Now, in my old learned days I am a bit more direct and go on the attack thus calling people like Miranda Devine “idiots” — as I can access a zillion etheral bit-storages full of noughts&ones — proofs for this kind of statements.

But despite my memory being totally lacking, I had been “blessed” (fuck, this feels a bit christian… so let’s say "naturally equipped” — i.e. taught by my parents to observe...) with a strong analytical and applied synthesis mind, topped with an unbeatable common sense that still annoys a lot of people. I annoy myself often as well. I say things that would take 2 (two) lifetimes to explain that I understand in a femtosecond. And then I loose the plot to memory loss. It’s not old age related yet, because as far as I can remember, I remember that I could not remember anything. 

Of course my spray has no effect on the cultivated lunacy of other people, except make me feel good that I did my duty against the ignoramuses. But is it enough? Am I shaking the targets off their wet mud pedestals? Should I cycle faster?

I have been a nasty satirist, bordering on utter sarcasm, all my life. But it’s not that simple. I’ve lost the plot a few times.

I get totally irate to see idiots — imbeciles, fools, asses, halfwits, nincompoops, dunces, dolts, ignoramuses, cretins, dullards, morons, simpletons, clods — being given the privilege of spruiking their idiotic — imbecilic, foolish, assdomery, halfwittery, nincompoopery, dunce-isticm, doltish, ignoramusery, cretininistic, dullardrolery, moronical, simpletonian, cloddy shoddy — views on national media, as if these ideas came straight from the sacred poops of the gods (we know who you are Uncle Rupe)...

Often, around the dinner table with distinguished guests, I am told not to be “sopushy" (so pushy) and let other people speak… Why? Is the truth so annoying? Am I a know all? No!... But as mentioned earlier, my strong analytical and applied synthesis, topped with an unbeatable common sense annoy a lot of people. I get annoyed at tricks or compromises. Oh, I make mistakes as well... but most people can’t deny I have done a lot of clever things, much better things than a seal clapping its hands to get a dead fish. I am far less mercenary. To some extend I could be a masochist and enjoy being cut off. So I shout louder! It makes me feel that my argument is correct. This is why they want me to shut up. 

This YD site has been a lifesaver. No need to bullshit. Just gently stream the arguments... I’m sure I would have found other avenues for expression, like becoming an important painter on the gallery circuit, drinking champagned strawberries and talking about the metaphysical/hermeticallistic/symetrical pseudo-twin/meanings of my latest blank canvases exhibition, but I would not even remember what It was all about. There again I am not patient enough to go through these tricky motions. I hate repeat. As I’m saying, I hate repeat. 

So the adult world is full of fibs — and full of things created with the intent that they don’t work too well — thus leaving room for improvement. Diplomatic compromise is in this league of average creation that makes everyone unhappy — and busy, trying to steal as much of the carpet as possible till next time of compromising diplomatically. 

Here comes Donald Trump. Like me, he is pushy, bombastic and annoying. But he is off the planet with what he sells. I sell creations. He sells poop, not even wrapped up in pink bows. But this is his art of the deal is to make "the king with no clothes walk around town” thinking his willy is protected… This is clever. I could not do that. And this is the reason I’m cash-poor. I cannot trick people into believing in falshoods. I draw the line at taking people for mugs. I need firm foundations (mostly scientific) for my annoying utterances.

Long live annoyance...



Gus Leonisky

Your local factor...

Read from top.

And don't forget as you freeze your tits/nuts off on "election day" in May, Antarctica would have lost another million cubic kilometres of ice since the day before...


Read also:miranda pisses over the ledge...

 

 

GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC...

 

miranda snarks at US narks in new york...

Miranda Devine has been writing for the New York Post for less than two months but she has already been called out by the US media for praising Donald Trump’s use of an “ethnic slur”.

The Daily Telegraph columnist, who’s on secondment for 18 months to Rupert Murdoch’s US tabloid, said on Fox News that Trump was “brilliant” at assigning “catchphrases”, like calling the Democrat Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas”.

But Media Matters for America didn’t think “Pocahontas” was evidence of Trump’s brilliance, preferring to call it an “ethnic slur”.

Devine also said Trump was “very good at getting the crowd going” and he could pick “a guy out the back who’s a little bit fat [and] he’ll point him out. That’s all part of the razzle dazzle of wrestling.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/aug/30/miranda-devine-snarks-at-u...

 

Read from top.

covid: less car accidents, more deaths by bicycle...


Coronavirus drives down German traffic deaths, bicycle deaths up


With more people working from home and shops and restaurants closed, traffic fatalities plummeted in 2020. Still, lack of adequate bicycle infrastructure led to an increase in cyclist injuries and fatalities.

Germany's Federal Statistical Office announced on Friday that traffic fatalities in the country in 2020 were considerably lower than the year prior due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on traveling. Police recorded a total of 2.1 million traffic accidents in the period between January and November 2020, down 15.5% from the previous year. 

The Statistical Office says the decrease can be traced directly to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on daily life. With more people working from home, as well as the closing of shops and restaurants, far fewer people were on the roads. 

A total of 2,523 traffic deaths were registered during the period, down 10.4% from 2019, which tallied 3,046. Some 305,900 traffic injuries were also recorded during that same time, down 14% from 2019. Numbers from November showed a 5% drop in fatalities (190) over 2019, injuries fell by 22% (23,900). 


Cyclists less fortunate

One group, however, saw a dramatic spike in traffic accidents, namely cyclists. Though statistics only covered the period from January to October, insurance investigators say the number of accidents (11,228) was significantly higher than during that same period in the year prior (9,102).

Analysts say the trend can be traced to more people, especially those who would normally use public transportation, traveling by bicycle. Increased bicycle traffic also exacerbated a systemic traffic problem — a lack of adequate infrastructure, such as bike lanes and extra traffic lights for cyclists. 

Accident researcher Siegfried Brockman told the German news agency DPA, "Local governments have begun to signal their willingness to address the problem but have been slow to implement improvements." Brockman says that as the pandemic drags on, overall traffic fatalities may remain low again in 2021, but he warns "the opposite could happen as soon as people regain their freedom of movement and start heading out in greater numbers."


Coronavirus hampering counterfeiters, too

In a separate announcement related to the coronavirus' effect on German society, the Bundesbank, Germany's central bank, announced that although more counterfeit euro banknotes were in circulation in 2020 than in 2019, the economic damage was far less. 

 

 

Read more: 

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-drives-down-german-traffic-deaths-bicycle-deaths-up/a-56317798

 

 

Read from top.