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The beloved and I have just returned from a few enjoyable days in south-east South Australia.
We made Mt Gambier our base and enjoyed tours of the Coonawarra wine district, beach towns, a cruise on the magnificent lower Glenelg River and a tour of the Princess Margaret Rose caves at Nelson.
The town of Penola was particularly appealing with its ancient dwellings, local poetic legends and information centre devoted to Mary MacKillop who is expected to become Australia’s first saint.
Our accommodation was a bed and breakfast self-contained apartment at Triune House in central Mt Gambier and it was superb. The owners have furnished and decorated the place in a comfortable, folksy style and left nothing to chance to ensure we had an enjoyable stay.

Historic cottages in Petticoat Lane, Penola.

Eerie formations in the Princess Margaret Rose caves.

Guess what they call this lake at Mt Gambier

One of many weathered boathouses along the lower Glenelg.

Lots of useful links here to counter global warming alarmists as the Hawaii Reporter’s Michael R. Fox elaborates on 2008 continuing a global cooling trend.
Excerpt:
Booker continues “secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world’s most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that “consensus” which was only a politically engineered artifact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions”.

Silly Moo!

Other brilliant pix of unintended consequences here.

This is from the home of photographed failures.

Grannies often speak wisdom. Mine had a timely quote from a wordsmith for almost all situations. Such as:
Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone,
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own.

Or:
O would some Power, the gift to give us,
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us

Now, the grandmother of Australian drama writing has delivered some powerful advice to her younger peers:

Julia Britton, 94, said surviving as a writer was a hard game.
“I don’t take anything too seriously, and you’ve got to be prepared to take a lot of slaps in the face, and ignore them,” she said from her home in Adelaide.
“You have to get tough - because writers are not normally tough people, and they face a lot of harsh criticism.
“And get some money behind you so you can be independent and not rely on public assistance.”

Cripes, that will go down well with the gumment-should-fund-me arty crowd.

James Hansen, the alarmist who warned an ice age was looming before he discovered manmade global warming, has shown his true colours in a letter to Barack Obama.
Newsbusters has published the letter that reveals Hansen is just another grubby socialist.
Extract:

A carbon tax is honest, clear and effective. It will increase energy prices, but low and middle income people, especially, will find ways to reduce carbon emissions so as to come out ahead.

Would those ‘ways’ include walking instead of driving, going cold in winter, sitting in the dark?
Socialists love to see the lesser classes suffer. They approved greatly of queues around the block in Soviet Russia, believing that citizens forced to share limited rations of food became good communists.

This leader isn’t afraid to take on socialists and their lies:

The European Union’s new figurehead believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state.
The views of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, 67, have left the government of Mirek Topolanek, his bitter opponent, determined to keep him as far away as possible from the EU presidency, which it took over from France yesterday.

Great timing. The singer renown for the sexiest of Christmas songs has bowed out.

Eartha Kitt, died on Christmas Day in New York City, her publicist confirmed to CNN.
Kitt, 81, had been treated for colon cancer. Her daughter Kitt Shapiro was by her side at the time of her death.

Only our ABC could come up with something this preposterous: Christmas dinner leftovers cause global warming.
Jon Dee, the chairman of Do Something, says gases from leftover food rotting in landfill are 20 times more potent than the carbon pollution from car exhausts.
You’d think the chairman of Do Something would know that most councils have committed to do something by generating power for the state grid from methane in their landfills.
But we can’t have rational discussion when there’s an institution beloved by the oiks - Christmas - to bag, can we?

Meanwhile in the northern hemisphere attempts to counter global warming are stymied by global cooling. The New York Times reports that wind turbine blades ice up, biodiesel congeals in tanks and solar panels produce less power because there is not as much sun. And perhaps most irritating to the people who own them, the panels become covered with snow, rendering them useless even in bright winter sunshine.

READ ALL ABOUT IT! While stupid politicians plot useless anti-global warming schemes that will gouge middleclass pockets and wreck industries, the world shivers.
A chilling rundown of pre-Christmas coldness across the planet here.
Passengers on a New Orleans streetcar named desire for some global warming as their biggest Christmas wish.

And a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all who venture to this site.

Bob Singh tells terrible jokes. That’s not a crime, you say. Er, well in loony-left Britain it is.

When a policeman called at Bob Singh’s shop to offer him some advice on his jokes, he thought someone was having a laugh.
But the smile was wiped off his face when the officer told him there had been a complaint about the gags he prints on leaflets advertising his corner shop’s Christmas offers.
Even though the leaflets have amused customers for more than a decade, police said they could offend people and warned the shopkeeper that he could face prosecution for a public order offence.

Samples:
Why is it dangerous to let a bloke’s mind wander?
It’s too little to be out on its own.

How do you measure a blonde’s intelligence?
Put a tyre gauge in her ear.

It’s a good thing Benny Hill’s dead. He’d get life today.

Nicholas D. Kristof in the New York Times reports on something long suspected: Lefties are hypocrites who claim the high moral ground on compassion, but are tightwads when it comes to charity.

. . . when it comes to individual contributions to charitable causes, liberals are cheapskates.
Arthur Brooks, the author of a book on donors to charity, “Who Really Cares,” cites data that households headed by conservatives give 30 percent more to charity than households headed by liberals. A study by Google found an even greater disproportion: average annual contributions reported by conservatives were almost double those of liberals.

I’ve always thought it was the Hokey Pokey. Anyway, it was danced with much enthusiasm by us kids at the local Catholic Church hall back in the 60s. So, this report is mystifying. But then the stupidity of loons who run around looking for hate crimes never fails to surprise.

But according to the Catholic Church and some Scottish politicians, singing the popular tune that begins with the words “You put your right hand in, your right hand out,” may constitute an act of religious hatred.

Gawd, what would they make of chants about Catholic dogs sitting on logs eating maggots out of frogs? Taught to me by my first best mate - the Proddy kid who lived up the road.

Great array of the best pix of 2008 here. They take a while to download but it’s worth the wait.

One of 10 politically incorrect thoughts penned by the incomparable Victor Davis Hanson:

6. Something has happened to the generic American male accent. Maybe it is urbanization; perhaps it is now an affectation to sound precise and caring with a patina of intellectual authority; perhaps it is the fashion culture of the metrosexual; maybe it is the influence of the gay community in arts and popular culture. Maybe the ubiquitous new intonation comes from the scarcity of salty old jobs in construction, farming, or fishing. But increasingly to meet a young American male about 25 is to hear a particular nasal stress, a much higher tone than one heard 40 years ago, and, to be frank, to listen to a precious voice often nearly indistinguishable from the female. How indeed could one make Westerns these days, when there simply is not anyone left who sounds like John Wayne, Richard Boone, Robert Duvall, or Gary Cooper much less a StrutherStrother Martin, Jack Palance, L.Q. Jones, or Ben Johnson? I watched the movie Twelve O’clock High the other day, and Gregory Peck and Dean Jagger sounded liked they were from another planet. I confess over the last year, I have been interviewed a half-dozen times on the phone, and had no idea at first whether a male or female was asking the questions. All this sounds absurd, but I think upon reflection readers my age (55) will attest they have had the same experience. In the old days, I remember only that I first heard a variant of this accent with the old Paul Lynde character actor in one of the Flubber movies; now young men sound closer to his camp than to a Jack Palance or Alan Ladd.

For such a venerable institution the New York Times has made a lot of blunders in recent years.
This sort of thing is not supposed to happen.
NEW YORK (AP) - The New York Times admitted Monday it published a fake letter purportedly from the mayor of Paris criticizing Caroline Kennedy’s Senate bid as “appalling” and “not very democratic.”

Sydney-siders, welcome Dr Melissa to Orstralia. But fellas, if you want to impress, wear the RMs.

It all began with Santa and the elves. You see, Santa used to wear shiny black work boots. Form met function. He paired the ensemble with a snappy red pajamas number and black belt. The rosy cheeks were cherubic and balanced with a frightening amount of facial hair. The elves used to be tough, too. They wore earth tones and manly boots. Sure, they’re diminutive, but they’re hard workers. Burly little union guys, proud of their workshops and their products, they were manly men.
That all changed with pointy-toed shoes. I don’t know if it was Mrs. Claus or maybe technology and bad ideas finally reached the North Pole, but whatever it was, it was not good. Santa and his tiny minions decided to go for elf slippers. Elf slippers were okay in fairy tales and Nordic history, but Santa?

Obama may have been suckered by manmade global warming hysteria, but it seems he doesn’t expect the oceans to rise just yet.
KAILUA, Hawaii (AP) — While on vacation in Hawaii, the Obama family is staying in a $9 million single-story oceanfront home in a pricey but laid-back neighborhood over the mountain from downtown Honolulu where the president-elect grew up.
The five-bedroom wood frame house sits on almost an acre of land fronting Kailua Beach, a favorite spot for windsurfers, kayakers and dogwalkers.

The antitheses of Disneyland has opened for business. To whom should we shout a one-way ticket and the price of admission?

We are then brutally frogmarched into a dark, damp underground bunker, where we are ordered to run around a maze, thoroughly disorientating us, before we are forced to watch propaganda films boasting of Soviet prowess beneath a monstrous white bust of Lenin. Anyone deemed too ‘independent’ is taken into a separate chamber and hit with belts.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all, though, is that I have just paid £25 for this sinister three-hour experience in one of the most unlikely new tourist attractions in Europe.

It’s hard to disagree with Mark Finkelstein of NewsBusters when he describes this topical summary by Mark Steyn as the “column of the year”. Extract:

So many areas of endeavor that once embodied the youth and energy of this great land are now old and sclerotic. I include, naturally, my own industry. I loved the American newsrooms you saw in movies like “The Front Page,” full of hard-boiled, hard-livin’ newspapermen. By the time I got there myself, there were no hard-boiled newspapermen, just bland, anemic newspaperpersons turning out politically correct snooze sheets of torpid portentousness. The owner of The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune recently filed for bankruptcy protection. The New York Times is mortgaging its office to fund debt repayment. The Detroit Free Press is cutting out home delivery except on Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, thereby further depressing sales of delivery trucks in the Motor City.

I recently wrote to Victorian Attorney-General Rob Hulls inquiring why a court he established specifically for hearing Aboriginal cases should not be considered a racist institution. After all, what else could you call a court set up solely to hear matters concerning one racial group?
Hulls replied, saying Koori Courts in Victoria were set up after numerous reports recommended that the legal system be modified to make it less culturally alienating and more tailored to the needs of Koori defendants and their community.
Referring to my query, Hulls said the legislation establishing the courts does not make any special laws for Koori people. “Rather, it delivers a more effective and culturally relevant system of justice for a group that is clearly over-represented in the criminal justice system. Secondly, judicial officers sitting in the Koori Court have the same sentencing dispositions available to them, including imprisonment, as other courts. They must also take into consideration the same factors to decide on an appropriate sentence.”
Hulls goes on to say that defendants appear to be far more confronted by the presence of Aboriginal elders and respected persons who sit in Koori courts, and that the courts have produced a reduction in recidivism.
That’s it.
Hulls has not denied that Koori courts are a racist institution.

Letter of the week at American Thinker:

December 19, 2008
Something else for Al Gore to worry about
I don’t know if anyone else has noticed, but I have detected a new crisis that I have named “the daylight change crisis”. I first noticed it sometime around the end of June this year. I started paying attention and created computer models and sure enough I was right! We are losing daylight at an astonishing rate. Each day we are losing approximately 2 minutes of day light and my computer models predict total darkness by next July.
I have been able to detect this phenomenon around the entire Northern Hemisphere. And here is the scary part: the day light appears to be leaking to the Southern Hemisphere.
I thought I should bring it to the attention of great scientists like Al Gore so he can help solve this new crisis.
Richard Strimple

Rotten, dirty thieves:
A pair of reputed stick-up artists hit as many as 23 Houston businesses, mostly adult book stores, as they made off with customers’ wallets and cell phones, and, police say, didn’t hesitate to grab items off the rack while making their getaways.