This is the second part of the commentary on Morrison’s Canberra Citizenship ceremony speech and follows the one about his abrogation of responsibility for quarantine and aged care1. As I said in that earlier effort, I attended the ceremony because someone I knew was becoming an Australian citizen. As part of this we had to suffer through a speech by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.
In one part of his speech, he said:
Humans need to keep their core temperature within certain limits. Too high (~40°C) and we die of hyperthermia; too low (~35°C) and we die of hypothermia. That is why when we exercise strenuously, we sweat. The evaporation of that sweat is the body’s way of attempting to cool itself. The effectiveness of that cooling depends how quickly that sweat evaporates. That depends mostly on how humid the air is, i.e. how much water vapour there is in it.
I was going to go through Morrison’s Canberra Citizenship ceremony speech in one essay, but it would have ended up being far too long, so I have cut it into readable (I hope) chunks.
Today (January 4, 2021) on Sky News (where else?) Hillsong’s Alex Hawke denied that far right extremism is on the rise in Australia.
On Twitter, an emergency doctor, Tariq Jenner, tweeted
“Sending solidarity to whoever the doctor is managing this incredibly distressing situation so calmly. This is what disinformation causes. Media personalities peddling this sort of absolute nonsense should be utterly ashamed of themselves.”1
In mid-November 2020, I took a swipe at the idiotic Rowan Dean from among the Sky After Dark nutters, for believing he was capable of understanding epidemiology. Dean was advocating that Australia should follow the ‘Swedish model’ in dealing with Covid-19. This entailed voluntary social distancing, some restrictions on the size of crowds, no lockdown and ‘keeping the economy intact’.
Many years ago, our school class (cannot remember which one) had a student teacher, who introduced to us the concept of ‘Austerica’, an amalgam of the names Australia and America. It is a word coined by the architect Robin Boyd in his book ‘The Australian Ugliness’ from 1960. It referred to the slavish adoption by Australians of American styles in everything from neon-lighting, outlandish fins on cars, to some of the cheapest and silliest mass-produced items.