Harsh language?

Bumper sticker:

"IF IT WASN'T FOR GUNS
You'd be speaking Japanese right now"

I do realise the value of bumper stickers as political statements, but this one seems to transcend politics and challenge the very tennets of logic itself. The primary argument, that we, Australia, were able to defend ourselves from the Japanese during WWII using guns has the usual, run-of-the-mill, redneck fantasy about it and the traditional arguments apply:

• Guns were only used by the military.
• No hand to hand combat was used in the campaign (was it? I dunno).
• The Japanese would have been fucked anyway, trying to conquer a landmass that's mostly desert with bullets.
• Etc.

No, I'm interested in the premise explored in the sticker which posits that guns existing in the first place is a innate positive. Japan had guns, therefore, Australia has guns. However, if no guns exist at all, Australia has no guns with which to defend itself but neither does Japan. The portable projectile delivery system does not exist. This begs the beautifully creative question: if no such invention existed, what does Japan use instead?

Ponderous, man.

The squinty-eyed, jut-jawed handshakes which were gripped across the kitchen table that evening after we at last tumbled upon the Collins Shortened only to discover that the word 'automated' actually fulfilled the seemingly-opposing definitions defended as unassailable gospel by each hubristic generation were as meaningful as oil region peace accords, twice as tense and productive of a ceasefire over matters grammatical, syntactical and punctuational which possessed only a fraction of the tendency to longevity.

He should have gone with the magic beans

I just finished watching Four Corners.
No, this is not going to be a blog about how I'm becoming my parents.
Tonight's story was about Australia's fleet of aging fighter planes. In order to keep the ladies interested, I'll keep the technoporn to an absolute minimum:
The F-111 has been Australia's fighter plane for ages. In an age where you replace your computer more regularly than your car, these things have been flying around blowing up shit since the 60s. So, it's time to replace them with something new. Something exciting. As any fan of technology will tell you, "new" and "exciting" almost always equal "spine-gougingly expensive". There are a few planes around to replace the Kingswood Of The Skies, but Four Corners focused on the one we Australians eventually bought to replace it: the Boeing Super Hornet. It interviewed a bunch of pointy-heads who said that it was a piece of shit, and a couple of jarheads who loved it.
I can't tell.
It flies, it shoots. Done deal.
Four Corners made it seem like a bucket of bolts, and that may be true, but it's not my concern. What piqued my interest was the little tale about how we ended up pressing the "Ship Now" button on the Boeing website in the first place, on a whizzer that apparently the US didn't really want, but bought anyway because it felt bad that no one else in the world wanted it (except for eventually Sheriff South-East Asia). Brendan Nielson apparently watched the Boeing promo video, decided it was tops and told the Australian Government to hand over its credit card. The rest of the show was about how shithouse the Super Hornets are and how we should all just stay with the Kingswoods Of The Skies. The bit that caught my attention most, however was how much a carton of Super Hornets cost:
6.6 BILLION DOLLARS! (place little finger on bottom lip). That is with a 'B' as in 'bullshit', by the way. For 24 planes that are only being used to fill a gap until the next bargain comes along from Lockheed-Martin, which should arrive sometime before we all divide into Eloi and Morlocks.
I was dumbfounded, as I'm sure you are (or better be). I'm not about to debate the cost of effective military hardware and arms races and all that frankly macho bullshit. The point is that it's $6.6 Billion that I seem to remember a certain politician taking away from my colleagues and myself during the horrors of V.S.U. $6.6 Billion that he carefully trimmed away from higher education like so much long-pig so that he could spend it on planes that fly and shoot, but, as demonstrated in a simulation on Four Corners, couldn't actually make it to Indonesia and back without needing paddles, inflatable life-raft and a few infants to toss over the side to ensure national attention around election time.
As someone who is about to start work on the dreaded Research Quality Framework, making humanities and social science academics justify the positive life influence of their research (like trying to extrapolate the cost-benefits of telling children stories at bedtime), I want to just send this video along instead of every report with a note that says "I might be studying poetry in an extinct language, but at least I'm not blowing $6.6 Billion on shit that don't work!"

The only catch is that in this economically conservative environment, the cost of paying for those fighter planes is probably less than the cost now needed to re-invigorate Australia's education system to the point where we can actually think our way out of the need for them.

***

I'd also like to take this opportunity to welcome to the blogoblag, my personal hero: Jimmy Thins. The Jimmy Thins Style is a publication of taste, hilarity, hand-made flash and chocolate chips. I wanted to link one of his videos here, but he is mix mastering them to a new location, bitches. I will host the next one. I urge you to check it check it one two. Now!

***

GTH
Trent rolled out with the dirtiest joke (I won't reprint - check last post's comments!). Sorry O.o. Sam, crapped out. Jono was geographically closest with his guess at the Cologne Cathedral for the picture, sorry Neil, it was the St Peter's Cathedral in Prague.