image: Ali Rahimi, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, Noah Vawter
MIT, 2005

Historians of the future will one day mine deeply buried seams of compacted factoids, blogger blather, twits’ tweets and 24-hour cable news coprolites in search of the date when unsubstantiable idiocy pulled straight out of one’s ass (if not outright fraud and deception) mutated into considered opposition opinion worthy of standing up on the world stage against verifiable fact, in pursuit of the 21st century definition of ‘balance.’

Birfers, moon hoaxers, 9/11 truthers, teabaggers, drug warriors, racists who wouldn’t recognise racism if it jumped up and bit them on the ass who declare others to be racists, holocaust deniers, cryptobigots, climate change skeptics who somehow got elected to public office, HHOax scammers, quitters quitting for the greater good and many more denizens of their own realities all get a bite of your attention span at the moment.

Why?

Not because these nongs know anything, but they’d sure like to let you know that they know something you don’t, whether it’s got a skerrick of factual basis or not- and when they can register a domain name for under ten bucks, you can bet they will.

Here’s the latest conspiracy theory, this one’s all mine AND I’ve got my own website with a blog with which to tell you all about it: Walter Cronkite really didn’t die at age 92 from any so-called ‘cerebral vascular disease’ (as if a moon-hoax-believing, Fux Noise addicted birfer would know what ‘cerebral’ means). Walt actually died of disgust and sheer embarrassment at what passes for news and journalism in 2009.

In 1969, Buzz Aldrin had the right stuff. In 2002, Buzz had the right response to stupid.

-weez

I live in the Blue Mountains, a mere hour’s drive from the centre of the most populous city in Australia. This close proximity to civilisation fools many tourists into thinking it’s not a terribly dangerous nor isolated place. In actual fact, one only has to get a few tens of metres off bushwalking tracks before finding one’s self in a situation where a rescue may require days of searches by the NSW SES and victims possibly requiring winch-out by helicopter.

If you look at a map of the Blue Mountains, you’ll find areas named ‘The Devil’s Wilderness‘ and ‘The Blue Labrynth.’ You might glean from the names of these places that getting lost is rather easy. Several bushwalkers become lost in the Blue Mountains every year. Deaths from hypothermia and exposure, notably in winter, are not uncommon. With winter overnight temperatures hovering around 0-5C (32-41F), an underprepared bushwalker will only last 2-3 days.

British backpacker Jamie Neale appears to have dodged a bullet after spending an astonishing 12 days wandering around Mt Solitary near Katoomba, not far from where young David Iredale’s body was found in December, 2006. Neale claims to have survived by eating leaves and seeds. While I’m very glad Mr Neale was found alive and looking relatively unharmed to boot, he really should have carried an emergency locator beacon.

Blue Mountains bushwalkers can borrow an Emergency Locator Transmitter for free from Katoomba Police and Blackheath NPWS or hire one for a nominal cost for use in many popular bushwalking areas across Australia. It is important that old style analogue 121.5MHz beacons are not used. AMSA ceased monitoring them by satellite on 1 February 2009. 121.5MHz is an aircraft emergency communications frequency and is now only monitored by high-flying passenger airliners, meaning detection may take hours or days and the resolution of location is very poor compared to 406MHz+GPS units, meaning a very large search area for rescuers. The new 406MHz beacons with integrated GPS automatically transmit a distressed person’s location to rescuers with an accuracy of 120 metres and usually within minutes, without the victim having to explain where they are to an emergency services operator as one must do when trying to contact emergency services with a mobile phone, which was a very big problem for poor David Iredale. There are non-GPS 406MHz beacons available, but while less expensive to purchase, these only have a resolution of 5km and may require 2 passes of a satellite over the area to get even that close. You’re easiest to find with a 406MHz+GPS beacon.

You don’t need to get lost to need a beacon, though. The rough terrain of the Blue Mountains means it’s all too easy to slip and fall, even on the marked trails. A simple twisted ankle can render a bushwalker unable to get off the trails before nightfall.

Don’t be stupid. Register your bushwalking plans with NSW Police at Katoomba… and borrow a beacon!

-weez

Don’t miss the Censordyne spoof site.

-weez

Rabid Facebook racist Terrie-Anne Verney thought she could get away with vomiting vile racial vilifications all over the planet.

Wrong.

Verney was employed at a community FM radio station where the continued good character of the licensee is a key condition for licence renewal. The character of the licensee is assessed by ACMA on a number of factors, inclusive of the good character of the staffers.

Suggesting that Indian students should have a gun held to their heads to persuade them to return to India to study along with spewing countless other racial vilifications, as Verney did while she was an administrator of the patently racist ‘Fuck Off We’re Full’ and ‘Australian Protectionist Party’ Faceboook groups, along with her membership in xenophobic Facebook groups such as “Stop the Islamisation of Australia while we still can”, “Australian Conservative United Party”, the “Australian Protectionist Party” and “Australians against Multiculturalism” can in no way be deemed to be indicative of her good character.

Further, most employment agreements contain a caveat enjoining the employee from participation in conduct that may cause the employer to be held in disrepute. There’s little more disreputable than racial vilification, notably with utter falsehoods.

Much to their credit, the Griffith Community FM Radio Association recognised that Verney’s administration of and participation in racist Facebook groups was highly likely to cause 2MIA to be held in disrepute- and sacked her within 24 hours of being notified of her public misconduct.

Verney’s racist mates have naturally run to her defence, but it truly takes an extremist nutbag to see the silver lining in a mushroom cloud. Kid you not, the bigots in FOWF are attempting to claim that Verney’s the persecuted party, that she is a victim of ‘political terrorism’ and are attempting to launder a little money in her direction, as though racism and threats upon ethnic minorities are valid political positions worthy of free speech protection. Hate speech is never free speech. Verney herself attempted to excuse her racism by claiming to be a ‘patriot.’ Racism is not a character of any patriot, anywhere on earth.

Not until the Virgin Terrie makes daily appearances on toast will her misconducts be considered persecutions worthy of canonisation.

-weez