Piers Akerman
The sad saga of the baby whale deperately seeking succour in Pittwater has touched millions around the world, as stories of cute animals in distress always do.
Well-meaning people have weighed in with their comments, some thoughtful, many thoughtless, but the situation is really quite depressing.
It is a reality that a number of baby whales die off the NSW coast for a variety of reasons each year - out of sight, out of mind.
It is also a reality that there are very few options to help the starving baby humpback which is currently attracting so much sympathetic attention and that it might be better to euthanase the creature as quickly as possible.
While it is true that a Californian group have successfully managed to save the lives of two Californian grey whales through artificial feeding, the difference between a grey whale and a humpack is enormous and poses extraordinary problems, not the least being the huge disparity in size. If there are sufficient resources to devote to the task, it might be - at best - an interesting experiment but commonsense would suggest that the little humpback is already beyond saving unless it is swiftly adopted by another pod or its mother returns. -It is young, distressed and defenseless. If we hurry, we might be able to get Henson to photograph it. I would like to help it, but I don't know how. I suppose it's mother is dead. It would be terrible to euthanaze it and find out differently. I don't like to watch it suffer, but I think doing nothing is the best alternative. It was the argument put forward by Rudd on the matter of Iraq. - ed.
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No Eden ever
Andrew Bolt
I don’t think the romanticists of inner urban Australia yet understand how utterly depraved and hopeless are some country Aboriginal communities:
A VISITOR to a town camp in the Northern Territory says he had to throw rocks at feral dogs who were feeding on the body of a dead man. It is the second body witnesses say they have found being eaten by dogs in Hidden Valley town camp in the past three weeks…
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The green threat to reason
Andrew Bolt
Ian Plimer, warming sceptic and Emeritus Professor of Earth Sciences at The University of Melbourne, fears for reason:
A new religion has been invented. Environmentalism. The rise of environmentalism parallels in time and place the decline of Christianity and socialism… It is a fundamentalist religion with a fear of nature. It has its own high priests such as Al Gore and a holy writ, such as the IPCC reports…
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Green faith means gassy water
Andrew Bolt
When one green myth smashes into another. The Victorian Government, thinking that dams are a crime against Gaia, decides (belatedly) to build a desalination plant instead. Not only does this produce only half the water for as much as five times the price, but check the emissions:
THE Victorian Government’s controversial desalination plant will emit over 70,000 tonnes of carbon a year which will not be offset, according to an environmental study.
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Scientist grow red blood cells in lab
SCIENTISTS have grown huge quantities of red blood cells for the first time - a breakthrough that could make blood donations a thing of the past.
The researchers harnessed stem cell technology to create cells from blood types A, B and O.
They found the lab-grown cells were as good as natural ones at carrying oxygen - raising the possibility of creating artificial blood for use in transplants.
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Oldest man dies, aged either 138 or 129
AN Indian reported to be the world's oldest man has died in the western city of Jaipur.
Habib Miyan, who died Monday, claimed to be 138 years old and was listed as the country's oldest man in India's Limca Book of Records.
But without a birth certificate giving formal proof of his age, Habib Miyan, who played clarinet in a maharaja's band before retiring 70 years ago, could not prove his longevity.
However, his pension book showed his birth date as May 20, 1879 - which would make him 129.
The oldest living person according to the Guinness World Records is 115-year-old Edna Parker, who lives in an Indiana nursing home. Japanese woman Yone Minagawa died last year at 114.
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Maybe people in Sydney are just crazier
Andrew Bolt
Reporter Andrew Ramadge uses Google’s latest search analysis tool, Insight, to see who is looking up what. This is interesting, and against stereotype:
For example, web searches including the terms “art” and “politics” are popular in the Northern Territory and Tasmania – but only “politics” is of interest in the ACT, where those for “art” trail every other region.
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What ugly, tribal protest?
Andrew Bolt
How hard we try to overlook the dangerous new ethnic tribalism, that pits a “them” against “us”.
Example: An armed robber with a record is shot dead in Sydney while trying to hold up Armaguard van. A shameful way to die, but thing is, the thief, Kaled Deb, is from a Middle Eastern - probably Muslim Lebanese - family. Not only do his relatives consider him ”the best guy in the world”, but as many as 100 friends and relatives swarm to the hospital where his body was dumped by his two fellow thieves. The mob’s mood is so threatening that police, police dogs and a police helicoptor are brought in to keep them from storming in.
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Pay for picking, not for sitting
Andrew Bolt
Warren Mundine is right, of course:
Labor powerbroker and indigenous leader Warren Mundine told The Australian yesterday the Rudd Government should introduce hardline welfare reforms that forced Aborigines to take work all over the country, with consequences for those who refused.
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The rage Greer describes may be her own
Andrew Bolt
Miranda Devine says Germaine Greer probably knows something about rage, after all:
Germaine Greer begins her just-published and much-publicised essay On Rage with an anecdote about a dinner party thrown for her 50th birthday, 19 years ago. One of the guests, a relative of the host, amuses himself with a little light mockery of Greer, to which she responds with “suffocating” rage.
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Save the planet, freeze a pensioner
Andrew Bolt
Many pensioners in the Bulgarian village of Gorno Osenovo, who go to bed with the sunset and wake up at sunrise, have never heard of carbon dioxide. They don’t get electricity either. But a new plan by Brussels to make European Union energy companies pay for the carbon dioxide they emit from 2013 threatens to lift energy costs to the point where building grids to remote places like Gorno Osenovo would be impossible.
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She wouldn’t have cheated on her own
Andrew Bolt
I cannot be sure it’s true, but do know plenty of experts already had suspicions:
An official Chinese document unearthed today provides further evidence in the ongoing scandal that China’s gold winning women’s gymnastic girls are just that—girls.
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Change in climate “devastating”
Andrew Bolt
Yes, there is one kind of climate change that’s far more dangerous than the alternative:
Households worried about the high cost of keeping warm this winter will draw little comfort from the Farmers’ Almanac, which predicts below-average temperatures for most of the U.S… The almanac’s 2009 edition, which goes on sale Tuesday, says at least two-thirds of the country can expect colder than average temperatures…
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Obama lost in Georgia
Andrew Bolt
Obama on the slide?
In a sharp turnaround, Republican John McCain has opened a 5-point lead on Democrat Barack Obama in the U.S. presidential race and is seen as a stronger manager of the economy, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released on Wednesday…
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Dying for some Hamas television
Andrew Bolt
Free speech, yes, but not if that speech threatens us with violence, and raises money for terrorists:
AUTHORITIES are trying to stop an anti-Semitic satellite TV station broadcasting into Australia from Indonesia — which has already rejected US efforts to take the channel off the air.
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It’s just a whale
Andrew Bolt
We slaughter thousands of cattle each day and complain about the cost - of the mince.
We each day kill kangaroos, rats, sheep and stray dogs and cats. In the wild, countless mammals die unnoticed each day from starvation, injury, battle or sickness. But when one whale looks near death, no cost seems too great to save it. Even the armed forces are mobilised to repel this attack on the poster child of the green movement:
AUSTRALIA’S Defence Forces have been called in to help save Colin, Sydney’s stranded baby humpback, after the discovery of equipment which could be used for a rescue. The Daily Telegraph can reveal that Acting NSW Environment Minister Nathan Rees late yesterday contacted Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon asking for his urgent assistance as the clearly distressed calf was again seen nuzzling boats in Pittwater in a futile search for its mother…
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