Saints be praised: there'll be one miracle tomorrow
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday December 18, 2009
The bookies have made themselves scarce in the Mary MacKillop stakes. They must have realised the fix was in last Sunday when Saint Kevin, the lapsed Catholic and aspirational Anglican, dropped in to Mother Mary's namesake chapel in North Sydney.The Prime Minister clearly had good mail. The next day, Vatican sources were leaking like Barnaby Joyce inside the Coalition tent. Gushing.The tip: Mother Mary's second miracle will be confirmed by papal decree, probably tomorrow night, meaning she could soon be declared Australia's first ridgy-didge saint. (Our Kevinly Father, having left the Catholic tent, doesn't qualify.)"You can virtually bet your bottom dollar that he [Pope Benedict] is going to say that's OK," said the Catholic commentator Paul Collins, referring to Mother Mary's miracle, not the PM's defection.We could do with the odd miracle here in Australia. Like, we could take all the sauvignon blanc imported from New Zealand and turn it into enough water to fill Wyangala Dam. Then we could repeat this exercise for Warragamba Dam with our daughters' Fruity Lexia - which, to a discerning palate, tastes remarkably like the Kiwi sav blanc.Just ask Kristina Keneally. Not about the Fruity Lexia - the drought. She was in church about the same time as Kevin Rudd. Our Catholic Premier was out bush, though, inspecting the parched earth and no doubt praying for rain. Will her prayers be answered? The bookies might offer better odds on the reverse Miracle at Cana, as suggested above.FOR YOUR INFORMATIONIt's a miracle our heads don't explode most weeks. The University of San Diego has produced research showing the average brain is blitzed with enough information - from emails, television, newspapers, books and other media - to overload a laptop computer in five days. That's about 34 gigabytes or 100,500 words a day, or 23 words every second. They surveyed Americans, so that doesn't even account for Kevin Rudd on a parliamentary sitting day.All this data, the experts worry, means humans are developing shorter attention ...I believe in miracles/Since you came along/You sexy ...Sorry, where were we? Ah, yes. Rudd's Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has kindly intervened to relieve us of some of the information burden. His compulsory internet filter, announced this week, will prevent us looking up child porn and terrorism websites. Unless, of course, we are pedophiles or terrorists, in which case we'll have cunning and dastardly means of outsmarting the filter. We could send each other emails, for instance, or go peer-to-peer. They're only filtering web pages, after all, so who needs them?There may be some collateral damage in Conroy's chivalrous crusade to protect the public decency. A leaked blacklist suggests a trial filter inadvertently blocked poker sites, YouTube links, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, Christian sites. It caught the business websites of a tour operator, a dentist and a tuckshop consultant. Mmmm? If he could limit the blacklist to dentists ... they're never innocuous. And who's ever heard of a tuckshop consultant? On second thoughts, keep up the good work, Senator Conroy.I believe in miracles/Since you came along/You sexy th-Zap! Did somebody mention sex?REALLY WARMING UPIn consideration of your diminishing attention span, the remainder of this column will be delivered not in gigabytes but sound bites. Strap on your headphones.Richo releases compilation tape as sideshow to the parliamentary inquiry into Michael McGurk affair. You can hear only the gentle rub of vinyl, the suspenseful silence between Graham Richardson's favourite Beatles and Stones tracks. This silence is interrupted briefly by unintelligible mutterings, which may or may not be Thom Yorke of Radiohead. (There is no suggestion that Yorke or any member of Radiohead is linked to McGurk's murder. We apologise that this gratuitous disclaimer has prolonged the sound bite.) McGurk reckoned his own 90-minute tape was riveting, but Richo has heard less than 60 seconds of it - meaningless ambience, like the compilation.Tiger enters therapy for sex addiction. (The Conroy filter, recognising your information fatigue, has blocked this item from your router.)Grubs pay Jaimee Grubbs buckets to dob in Tiger. It's obscene but Conroy's filter fails to catch it.Geoffrey Edelsten, on his maiden flight at the helm of a helicopter, crashes. The chopper is a write-off but the 66-year-old deregistered doctor turned medical entrepreneur walks away, unscathed except for the cruel jokes that start only hours later. "Edelsten can't keep it up." By now, his new bride, 26-year-old Brynne Gordon, is having her hair done at the salon, as one does. Sheer stoicism. Edelsten vows to fly again.Paul Keating, a master of the fruity lexicon, blasts the Rudd Government for abandoning Badgerys Creek as the site for a second airport: "Already, in anticipation of the [white paper] publication, every flyblown developer organisation is on the record as wanting to chop up the site for development and developer profits."Marcus Einfeld, fine evader, perjurer and former judge, passes time in jail tackling the Herald crossword and playing Scrabble with fellow inmate Mark Standen, the former Crime Commission top cop who is still awaiting trial for conspiracy to import drugs, two years after he was charged. While seeking bail, and complaining of his conditions inside, Standen rejects the suggestion he is more interested in working on his case with Einfeld than attending the gym. "If I had a choice between going to the gym or playing crosswords, I [would] prefer the latter." Most of us find the cryptic a real workout.Ian Plimer, climate change sceptic and professor of mining geology, is in a mud wrestle with George Monbiot, Guardian journalist and champion of climate change science, on the ABC's Lateline. "It is the height of bad manners to interrupt," Plimer repeatedly tells Monbiot. "It is the height of bad manners, Professor Plimer, to lie on national television about something you know to be plain wrong," counters Monbiot. "For god's sake, get some manners, young man," says Plimer. Monbiot accuses Plimer of fabricating the science on his claim that Earth was hotter during Roman and medieval warmings than now. As sport, it's entertaining, but a bit like watching Roger Federer slog tennis balls at Tiger Woods while Woods returns fire by driving golf balls at Federer. Monbiot and Plimer are different species playing different codes and speaking different languages. We learn little else than that Plimer refuses to answer questions. It's excruciating. Much like watching Copenhagen, really.Jairam Ramesh, India's Environment Minister, in Copenhagen, calls Australia an "ayatollah" and so takes the fruity lexicon award. Sudan's negotiator, Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, more soberly calls the $US10 billion on the table to help poorer countries an insult. "Ten billion dollars under the current scenarios will not buy the poor of developing countries coffins, let alone address the serious problems that this challenge is causing."We may pray that the world is in safe hands. Bookies might give better odds on the prospect of a third Mary MacKillop miracle being confirmed by tomorrow night.An Irish colleague refuses to get excited. He has emailed a list of all the Irish saints. "Based on this document," he gloats, "it's Ireland 756, Australia 1."We await the arrival of the masses at Wyangala Dam. Then again, you can lead a man to water, but you can't make him drink Kiwi sav blanc.
© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald
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