Dear Santa, thank you for the dolls and pencils and the fish. It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you but... honest, it is an emergency. There's a crack in my wall. Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack, but I know its not cause at night there's voices so... please please can you send someone to fix it? Or a policeman, or...
Back in a moment.
Thank you Santa.

The Unbearable Idiocy Of New Scientist

Yes folks, it's Friday again, and the so-called editors at New Scientist are up to their old tricks.

The editorial this week runs under the headline Feeding Africa with a subhead of If a green revolution won't work, how can the continent solve its food crisis?

Harrowing images of starving children have become synonymous with Africa. And in the coming days, expect more of the same as the refugee crisis continues to unfold in the Darfur region of westurn Sudan.

The Darfur region, eh? Haven't we heard about that area in the news recently?

This time, civil war rather than crop failure is to blame

What do you mean, this time? What about all the other times when civil war was to blame? And all the times when it was just plain old war? Funny how your food supplies dwindle when all your farmers are dead or run away.

but instability is not going to go away in a continent where 200 million people - almost 1 in 4 Africans - are undernourished.

No.

No.

Look, you ignorant cretins, cause and effect flows in a specific direction. Lack of food causes starvation. And instability - or to put it more accurately, interminable senseless violence - causes dwindling crop yields. Because, as I said, dead farmers don't do you much good.

Finding a solution will not be easy. For decades, governments and companies from the developed world, along with international institutions, have thrown aid, money, products and platitudes at the problem - especially platitudes. Their attitudes have tended to be prescriptive, urging political reform within African states

Because, y'know, there's no reason to call for political reform in a continent where corruption is pandemic.

and the widespread adoption of practices such as growing cash crops, and technologies such as genetic modification.

While this advice is not universally applicable, the move from subsistence agriculture to locally optimal cash crops and trade has worked wonders for, well, pretty much everywhere except Africa.

But Africa is not Europe, Asia, or South America, where a green revolution featuring high-yield rice and wheat varieties has boosted the food supply.

Well, no, it's not. That's the whole point.

Now, rice, wheat and maize, which are marvelously productive crops everywhere else in the world, account for just 20% of food production in Africa (says New Scientist). Perhaps there's some correlation between growing less productive crops and, well, producing less? If someone can point me to information about why so little of African agriculture is devoted to these crops, I'd be interested, because New Scientist doesn't even touch on the matter. They're too busy with their platitudes.

Okay, leaving that editorial lying twitching in the dirt, we can move on to pages 8 and 9, where the good folk at NS present their own unique perspective on Iraq, including items like this:

27

Major archaeological sites looted across Iraq - the heart of ancient Mesopotamia. They include parts of famous sites such as Babylon and Nineveh, but details are sketchy. At the National Museum in Baghdad

Yes, you know where this is heading:

where looting was widely reported in the days after the US invaded the city, 250 of the 600 artefacts on display are thought to be damaged and 100 missing.

Thought to be? It takes more than a year to count 600 artefacts? Or 500, as the case may be.

Of the 491,418 artefacts kept in the museums storerooms, around 15,000 are missing and 25,000 damaged.¹¹

Hang on, what's with this ¹¹ business? Well, in a little box down at the bottom right corner of page 9, there's a legend, and ¹¹ turns out to be:

According to a tally kept by Francis DeBlauwe of the University of Missouri, Kansas City

Right. And your reason for presenting this particular tally as established fact is... What, exactly?

Not to mention the nice little evasion of looting was widely reported after US troops invaded the city. Never mind the fact that looting is known to have been taking place under Saddam Hussein, or that looting of archaeological sites has been a regional pastime in the Middle East for at least the past 4000 years. Or that many of those wide reports were of exactly the same person taking off with exactly the same urn. Oh, and

1

Number of chemical armaments found by US troops since invading Iraq.

Might want to update that, guys. No, wait, those were Polish troops, so the figure stands.

Update: It would seem that early reports on the shells found by the Polish troops were wrong, and they were not in fact chemical weapons. So I'll grant the New Scientist that point.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:27 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Australian Weather Forecasts

The start of a new month brings us clear blue skies with a top temperature of 21 degrees* and unfortunately no sign of rain.

There was a bit of rain here a few weeks ago, but basically nada, zip, zero, zilch. Which is great if you want to enjoy the sunshine but lousy if you want a lawn that is any colour other than brown or yellow.

* Degrees centigrade, and it's the middle of winter here in Sydney.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:54 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man

Ranks number 22 20 16 8 5 4 at Amazon.

Still waiting on my copy of Noam Chomsky Sleeps Furiously...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:16 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Upcoming Events

As I mentioned before, there will be a rally held in Sydney tomorrow (June 30) to demand that Australia's troops be withdrawn from Iraq. Of course, as of yesterday our troops are there at the express request of the Iraqi government, so this demand is unlikely to gain much traction.

Thursday July 1 marks the first birthday of the Mu.Nu Forums, and your lovely hostess Renata is holding a party! All welcome as long as you behave... Unless your name begins in S, or you live in Texas or Michigan. (Registration necessary, otherwise you can't see the good bits.)

Sunday July 4 is Australia's Reserve Forces Day, with a parade through Sydney's streets featuring 90 horsies and a column of armoured vehicles! How cool is that? Also, our American friends will be celebrating their Nation Barbecue and Fireworks day.

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Truth Is More Ironic Than Satire

There's a reason that this blog is called Ambient Irony. Take a look at this*

Reporters at three news organizations are resisting subpoenas issued in the trial of a lawyer charged with conspiring to support terrorists.

Prosecutors issued subpoenas to four reporters at Reuters, The New York Times and Newsday, saying they want the reporters to testify that lawyer Lynne Stewart said what they quoted her as saying in their articles.

So the question is, are the quotes accurate, or did the reporters edit them to suit?

Lawyers for the reporters have argued that making the reporters testify would compromise their neutrality by forcing them to side with prosecutors.

So, that means you made the quotes up? Or is it just that being legally required to tell the truth compromises your principles?

In a motion filed Monday, a lawyer for Newsday argued that its subpoenaed reporter, Patricia Hurtado, might have to stop covering the trial if she is required to testify.

Well, yes, I think that would follow.

My suggestion: Look for the little ... markers. They're a dead giveaway.**

* Of course, since it's linked from Instapundit, you probably already have.
** I wouldn't be at all surprised if the quotes were edited. A while back my brother was interviewed by The Australian (Australia's Least Worst Newspaper&trade for an article on PocketPCs. They had him speaking in marketese ("maximise the product synergies" sort of thing), and I asked him if he really said that. He replied "Well... Not exactly." And they didn't even use the ... markers!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:30 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Pixy Misa's Guide To Detecting Journalistic Bias

Step 1. Pick up a newspaper.

Note: This may not work with The Wall Street Journal or similar papers. It's not that they're not biased; it's just that their bias boils down to Money good. More money better. Unless you live in Berkeley, California, you are unlikely to score any points by protesting this.

Step 2. Pick any article from the first four pages.

Anything after page four is what is known in the business as "filler": material that is there just so there aren't embarassing blank areas between the ads.

Also, picking on the OpEd pages is a task reserved for our grade school classes. (Well, and Tim Blair. But that's only because we can't get him to stop.)

Step 3. Pick a paragraph at random.

Check to see if it is an unedited quote with attribution; this sometimes happens. (Look for the little ... markers; these indicate that the quote has been changed so as to reverse its original meaning. Sometimes these markers are left out, this is covered in our Advanced Course.) If so, pick the following paragraph instead.

Under no circumstances follow the story beyond the "jump" - the point where it says, Continued on page Q-37. Paragraphs after the jump are often written by underpaid assistants or "stringers" and rarely exhibit the quality and quantity of bias we are seeking.

Step 4. Publish the paragraph on your blog as an example of the treachery of the MSM (mainstream media).

You may want to disable comments at this point too.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:15 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Ah! My Brain!

[A] movie promo for "The Stepford Wives" ... depicted Condoleezza Rice as a topless hottie and Hillary Clinton as a bosomy housewife holding a baking sheet.

"Henry Kissinger was national security adviser 30 years ago, and if he had been used in this way at the time, I don't think it would have been tolerated."

I don't think it would have been tolerated either.

(Words of wisdom from the Washington Post)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:32 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Methinks They Doth Protest Too Much

Ice cream vendors had hoped to cash in selling cool scoops to hot demonstrators, but estimates are that only 50 of the 5,000 expected protesters materialized.

(FOXNews)

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Strange Days

Merde in France comments on yet another of those vile french editorial cartoons.

The strange thing with this one, though, is that everything in the cartoon except the television set is 1940's period. Why?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:59 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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ANZAC Day

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

This is ANZAC Day.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:02 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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