Bits and Pieces.

Image Credits: your intrepid reporter.

Bits and Pieces.

I think we can give up hope this third consecutive La Niña will be any better than her two previous sisters.

On Thursday 6th Sydney broke the record for the rainiest year since data collection began in 1858: that day rainfall over Observatory Hill meteorological station totalled 2,206.8 mm. The previous record (2,194.0 mm in 1950) had stood for 72 years.

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To give readers – particularly European ones – an idea how much rain that is: in the 278 days of the year from January 1st to October 6th 2,606.8 litres of water fell over every square metre around Observatory Hill (1,000 litres of distilled water weigh 1,000 kg: one tonne).

From October 6th to the end of the year there are 87 days.

Bits and Pieces: The Missing Average and Suppressed Memories.

As I struggle with some newly discovered health problems, my attention tends to drift to different things. These are two.

The Missing Average and the two Australias.

This is a recent temperature anomaly map produced by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, reproduced today by the ABC, with Kate Doyle’s customarily excellent comments:

One part of Australia (the largest one) exceeds it, the other falls short of it, but pretty much nowhere average temperatures for this time of the year are found. The thick black line shows the border between the two (the exception is the corridor along both sides of the borderline).

Bits and Pieces.

One of the key predictions of climate science is that as the atmosphere warms up, the likelihood of extreme weather events increases.

But, how would you tell when one weather event is extreme?

You can tell when something like this happens:

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They are good graphical representations, but to interpret them may be a bit tricky for those unaccustomed. The good folks of The Guardian (Oz) seem to believe otherwise. I’m not so sure. So, if it doesn’t speak to you, let me know and I’ll do my best to explain it. I’ll just advance here that the idea is not unlike a box (aka box-and-whisker) plot I explained here.

Dramatic, isn’t it? Well, now look at this:

Bits and Pieces: The Joke’s on Us All.

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I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that with repetition, even the best joke loses its ability to make us laugh. It becomes unfunny.

Or maybe it’s just me. I’m growing older and grumpier.

Either way, for me, jokes like that, clever as they might be, no longer make me smile, let alone laugh.

The unchanging truth such jokes reflect has gone well past the point of being funny.

Bits and Pieces: Images. (Updated)

Lately, the media has shown images of many people posing as workers.

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Anyone, however, can wear a hi-viz vest and a hard hat for a photo opportunity. That doesn’t make of them a worker, much less a working class hero.

Bits and Pieces: The Big Apple.

It’s often said that “if you can make it there, you’re gonna make it anywhere” and Scotty from Marketing is virtually there, baby, New York City. And he is trying to make it there, but equivocating here.

Often forgotten, however, is that old advice – “fake it, till you make it”. That seems to have worked a treat for Scotty when dealing with Nancy Pelosi, the US House Speaker. The 81-yo Pelosi, impressed by his “meeting and beating” climate targets bullshit, said that Australia is “leading the way” on climate change action.

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That’s how Australia will save the world, Nancy: leading from the rear.

Bits and Pieces (xi)

Joe Biden just couldn’t wait. Barely 37 days after his inauguration, he’s already got brown, foreign blood in his Democratic hands.

His very woke supporters – rainbow flags and all – are duly impressed. In particular, they loved the professionalism with which his Defence Secretary, Steve Austin, announced the deed:

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A glorious victory in the fight for racial equality.

Bits and Pieces: is the Government the Problem or the Solution?

I’m sure readers have heard libertarians and free-marketeers roaring or wailing -- fire in their hearts or tears in their eyes -- that the Government is not the solution, but the problem. Lefties (Anarchists and similar excepted), on the other hand, sing hymns to the virtues of Government intervention.

Who is right (lower case)? The Right or the Left?

Sorry, fellow Lefties. At least in Australia, Righties have good reason to believe the Government is crap. Believe it or not.

Bits and Pieces: “I Was, I Am, I Shall Be!”

Commune, a new American socialist magazine, sees the light of the day (h/t Ross Wolfe, from The Charnel House). Welcome, mates (I don’t like the term “comrades” much; I’m Aussie, what can I do?).

Its first issue includes “Three Months Inside Alt-Right New York”, by Jay Firestone. A must-read.

Bits and Pieces: Let's Read.

The discussion around The Donald seems to have changed, Corey Robin thinks. This is probably a good thing. You don't see so much feverish speculation on the fascism of the freak show characters inhabiting the White House: with any luck, their fifteen minutes may be all but over.

Bits and Pieces: Great Southern Land.

General Motors Holden announced recently that the last Holden Commodore will roll out of its Elizabeth assembly line (South Australia) on Friday, Oct. 20, after 69 years. One thousand factory workers will lose their jobs.

Last year Ford closed its Broadmeadows assembly plant. Toyota will shut down its own line around the same time, spelling the end of car manufacturing in Australia.

Bits and Pieces: Vampiric Dystopia Edition.

"Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks." (Das Kapital, vol 1)

Marx sometimes described capitalists as "vampires".

More literate readers won't need this clarification, but I'll place it here anyway as a courtesy to upper-middle class, philosophically-minded bloggers, econo-poseurs, and bloviating professors of economics from Berkeley: he used that term metaphorically, only.

Well, it turns out that Marx may have been wrong on this.

Bits and Pieces (x)

So, what's with the emerging Right?

A self-flattering explanation popular among the sanctimonious and disingenuous liberals, like Paul Krugman, is:

"I don't think any kind of economic analysis can explain this. It has to be about culture and, as always, race."

How can one argue with such politically correct brilliance? It's all Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel's fault.

Bits and Pieces: Aliens Edition.

Capitalism is a mess.

After a year's worth of news involving 7-Eleven Australia franchisees scamming their staff (Google News informs us: "About 562,000 results"), another new week brings us … another new 7-Eleven pay scandal! Surprise!

Bits and Pieces: Up Yours Edition.

The latest in Australian work relations?

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Bits and Pieces (ix)

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Julia Baird (above) writes that educated, qualified and experienced professional women lacking self-confidence should follow the example of much more confident, but less educated, less qualified and less experienced white male colleagues:

Bits and Pieces: Touching Wood.

Dedicated to tovarisch Bradislav Josipovich Delongiev, Head Political Commissar NKVD/Amerika

Maria Farrell (Irish writer and consultant on Internet policy) took off her British Army helmet and wrote "Post-Democracy" (May 20) for Crooked Timber.

Farrell has been re-reading "Colin Crouch's Post-Democracy on and off for about eighteen months" and agrees with his analysis: liberal democracy has managed to keep the trappings of democracy (elections, "free" press, "free" speech), while abandoning the substance of it.

Bits and Pieces: The Meaning of "Dickensian".

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Christmas was approaching and Tim Worstall angrily demanded people to try and look up the meaning of "Dickensian".

Your wish is my command, govnah!

Bits and Pieces: Changing Labour Markets Edition.

A few years ago, a visitor to any large, self-respecting law firm in Sydney would have found that most humble and welcome worker: the tea lady (see here).

Law firms are well-known for encouraging their staff to work long hours. That's where tea ladies came in handy: by providing hot drinks and sugar heights tea ladies helped made that possible. The occasional break, with a brief chat, would help relieve pressure and stress (or so it was expected).

Well, to the best of my knowledge, long hours (not to mention work pressure) are still common in large, self-respecting law firms in Sydney. Tea ladies, however, seem to be all but gone:

"Across many industries, many people have lost jobs because of the digital revolution and automation.
"But one Sydney law firm has defiantly managed to hang on to its tea lady -- until now.
"Today is Robyn Tuckwell's first day of retirement and her colleagues believe she is the last of her kind." (here)

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"All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations." (here) 

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It's not just tea ladies facing extinction:

"Sixty per cent of Australian students are training for jobs that will not exist in the future or will be transformed by automation, according to a new report by the Foundation for Young Australians [here or here]." (here)

The thing is, nobody knows exactly how the labour market will change. The Foundation for Young Australians' estimate, however, seems to roughly follow other people's estimates:

"Up to 70 per cent of Australian jobs could be at threat as a new wave of automation sweeps the world's workplaces over the next few decades, CSIRO [here or here] researchers have warned". (here)

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And that's not all.

While politicians at both sides of Parliament have been busy taking the best possible advantage of parliamentary allowances (here and here), the Abbott government has moved to reduce -- aiming in time to their total elimination -- penalty rates for some of the lowest paid occupations in the land: