Baby magpie

An Australian magpie chick has fallen out of the nest and is sitting in our front yard, jealously guarded by its parents. I went out earlier to see if it was alive, and was cussed out and feinted at. I'm just about to call the experts at Sydney Wildlife (9413 4300) for a bird rescue!

ETA: They've asked me to keep an eye on the chick for now; it may naturally have left the nest rather than toppling out. It's certainly a big, well-developed little dude.

ETA: omg, there's another one, up the other end of the garden! They can't both have fallen out of the tree - it must be the first day of magpie kindy!

Identify this poem

There's a frightening poem, the words of a Roman soldier present at the Crucifixion, for whom it's an ordinary day's work and he says he has nothing personally against Christ. *racks brains* What is it?!

(no subject)

Howard suggests quiz on cricket as part of a test of citizens' knowledge of the Australian way of life. I'll pack my bags, then. Harrangeman takes the piss.

Unitarian Jihad

Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere!

Fantastic find, murasaki_1966 :-)

(no subject)

I have no idea how Frank managed to get into the kitchen cupboard. I'd never have known he was there if Tim hadn't sat in the kitchen, looking intently at the cupboard doors and opera singing, until I twigged what he was singing about.

Unspeak

I'm gripped by Steven Poole's Unspeak, a book about about how soundbite terms ("pro-life", "anti-social behaviour") contain entire arguments. The second chapter explains how fossil fuel interests and collaborating governments shifted the language of debate, so that, for example "global warming" became the less threatening "climate change", as well as how they invented a "controversy" - which leads to this gem:

"Other deniers had a rather shaky grasp of science. The British pundit Peter Hitchens, for example, wrote: 'The greenhouse effect probably doesn't exist. There is as yet no evidence for it.' To this, George Monbiot offered the following unimprovable riposte: 'Perhaps Mr Hitchens would care to explain why our climate differs from that of the moon.'"