Meanwhile, Down Under...

This beast, dubbed “SkyWhale”, is about to take flight.  Tim Blair says: “The perfect symbol of our capital city – a bloated, gaseous, multi-breasted monster feeding those who dwell in its poisonous shadow while leeching off the rest of us”.

Study it a bit, and try to imagine what the artist is trying to convey.

I have no idea.  None at all.  But I'm now newly worried about my friends who hail from the land down under...

Great Moments in (Australian) Advertising...

WARNING: swallow your beverage before viewing:

Bugger...

Toyota advertisement from down under...

Fire Tornado...

Via my mom:

How Far Will They Go?

After viewing this video, I can only think of two explanations.  Either:
1) Those treats are really, really good
– or –
2) The fact that Australians spend their lives upside-down really does have significant negative effects on brain function

You decide:

Who Knew?

Kangaroos have evolved a special response to shopping bags:


Yes, I know this can't possibly be for real.  I'll bet they had a lot of fun making this video, while imagining all the Americans who would buy it...

The Loneliest Little Shop in the World...

The Mulka Store in Australia...

Global Warming in Oz...

The Australians are getting increasingly skeptical about global warming for some reason.  It might have something to do with the utterly failed predictions of the warmists.  For example, in 2005 they predicted that the reservoirs supply Sydney's water might be dry within two years.  The actuality?  Sydney's reservoirs are now at record levels, with more than two and a half times the water they had in 2005, and without enough remaining capacity to contain floods like they've experienced over the past three years.

Oops...

Cat's Paw...

Ptilotus spathulatus, aka “cat's paw” or ”pussytails”.  I saw this while in Australia, back in the '70s.  They feel just like they look like they'd feel.  I had no idea what it was, but I sure enjoyed it.  As always, click to enlarge.  Via BPOD...

Hope and Change, Australian Style...

The state of Queensland, Australia is afflicted with a liberal-dominated government comparable to California's, with predictable consequences.  Make that was afflicted – in yesterday's election, the liberal majority was absolutely demolished.  The results were the largest political swing in Australia's history, and it was away from the liberals.

Let us hope that's infectious...

ClimateGate: Looking Closely at the Data...

Willis Eschenbach has been doing exactly that, this time at the Australian temperature data series used in the IPCC report.  Step by step, he picks apart the differences between the raw data and the “fudged” data discussed in the CRU emails.  He finds:

Yikes again, double yikes! What on earth justifies that adjustment? How can they do that? We have five different records covering Darwin from 1941 on. They all agree almost exactly. Why adjust them at all? They’ve just added a huge artificial totally imaginary trend to the last half of the raw data! Now it looks like the IPCC diagram in Figure 1, all right … but a six degree per century trend? And in the shape of a regular stepped pyramid climbing to heaven? What’s up with that?

Those, dear friends, are the clumsy fingerprints of someone messing with the data Egyptian style … they are indisputable evidence that the “homogenized” data has been changed to fit someone’s preconceptions about whether the earth is warming.

One thing is clear from this. People who say that “Climategate was only about scientists behaving badly, but the data is OK” are wrong. At least one part of the data is bad, too. The Smoking Gun for that statement is at Darwin Zero.

Go read the whole thing...