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“During the ’08 campaign, the same media that reported breathlessly about an old used tanning bed I purchased to get some sun during the dark Alaskan winter, couldn’t be bothered to investigate Barack Obama’s associations, statements or even his voting record as a state senator.” – Sarah Palin. It continues to amaze me how, whatever one thinks of her views, she is portrayed by a large chunk of our MSM as stupid or crazy. Really? March 16th, 2012 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Here is a list of things that you can buy, but which Michael Sandel (who I seem to recall doing a series of lectures for the BBC – yes) thinks it’s morally dubious for you to be able to buy. I haven’t read all of them, but was immediately struck by this one, which strikes me as, on the face of it, a very good idea:
To Michael Sandel, this seems to mean that South Africa is being bad. But to me it sounds like South Africa is serious about preserving its now endangered black rhinos. I have a definite recollection of noted South African libertarian Leon Louw having recommended just such a thing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that he was partly responsible for this arrangement. I myself won’t comment in detail on the rest of Sandel’s piece. It is complicated and I am about to go to bed. Parts of what he says strike me as true, parts not. But me saying only that needn’t stop other commenters going into more detail. March 15th, 2012 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
I dislike windmills because they are inefficient, destabilise the grid and put up my electricity bills. That I think, should be enough to stop building the things. That they kill bats and birds is not something that we should making too much of a fuss about. Buses, aircraft, and just about everything that moves does too. If we ban windmills because of the threat they pose to wildlife then logically there is an equal case to do the same to really important things. Remember, the Green lobby don’t actually love animals, they hate humans and anything they can do to screw up our society they will do. – Bishop Hill commenter “AndyS” March 15th, 2012 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
I get emails occasionally from readers. This one interested me:
Interesting. The email continues:
The correspondent, by the name of A.D, asked me to sign a statement with others opposing this. As a Brit, I am not sure whether any signature of support from me would be valid but I am happy to lend my voice to this issue. As the late FA Hayek famously pointed out, “social justice” is one of those question-begging terms that takes as given such ideas as the presumption in favour of equal distribution of wealth by some sort of “distributor”. It is not a neutral term – ideas of socialism and state ownership are baked into it. And while “justice” is a word that might mean something, “social justice” is very different. I wish this gentleman success. You can visit his website March 14th, 2012 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
Spring is in the air, and there is a spring in the step of the climate skeptic blogs these days, the two big ones on my radar being Bishop Hill and Watts Up With That. Peter Gleick‘s trickery, already written about here by Natalie Solent, combined with the willingness of so many on his team to try to promote him as some kind of hero rather than condemn him as the failed fraudster that he is (see also this posting about Michael Mann), means that although climate skepticism hasn’t won, it continues to win. Slowly but surely, C(atastrophic) A(thropogenic) G(lobal) W(arming) is being reduced from “science” to a racket. Declarations of complete victory are surely premature. Much depends on how you define victory, and who or what you consider to be the enemy. If you care only about scientific truth, but not about the world being littered with damaging and expensive bureaucracies dedicated to perpetuating and enforcing lies, you may well indeed believe this battle to be nearly over. If those bureaucracies (to say nothing of the larger financial and ideological interests they serve) still trouble you, as they do me, you will regard the war as hardly having begun. Some are saying that continuing to argue about the mere science of it all is a distraction from the more serious task of unmasking the motives and machinations of all those personages to whom all this fraudulent science has been so useful. I disagree. I say that showing this “science” to be dishonest leads naturally on to the question of who patronised it and to what end, given that the mere truth of things was emphatically not the only thing that concerns all those concerned. If the science of CAGW was now, still, universally accepted as honest, the underlying intentions of the various factions and characters responsible for foisting it upon the world would not now be attracting nearly so much scrutiny. An immediate next task for the skeptic tendency is to itemise and publicise, in greater detail than hitherto, who is making money out of CAGW, a process that is already well under way. The longer term goal is to unmask the politics of it all. The bigger goal behind this hoax (and many others) was, and remains, to turn the entire world into a corrupt tax-and-spend superstate, run for the pleasure and enrichment of anti-progress, screw-the-poor-in-the-name-of-the-poor, global despots. That many very useful and desperately sincere – very useful because so desperately sincere – idiots are and always have been involved in this project is not in question. These idiots need to be challenged intellectually rather than merely denounced as crooks and tyrants, although showing them that crooks and tyrants is who they are really supplying aid and comfort to may also help to straighten them out. In the post, and I should have read this book months ago: Watermelons. James Delingpole has been a key figure in ensuring that the CAGW ruckus (and the Climategate story in particular) escaped from the ghetto of blogs like the ones I linked to above, into the general arena of political discussion, and even to infect parts of the general public, now so curious to know why their heating bills are going ballistic. The thing about Delingpole is that not only has he done a fine job publicising the various scientific criticisms of the CAGW faith. He also understands what set the whole thing in motion in the first place. He gets the money of it. Above all, he gets the politics of it. When I have read this book, I’ll surely want to say more about it here. March 14th, 2012 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
According to a news brief from a Janes newsletter, the move into the realm of what was once science fiction weaponry continues apace:
The future is here. March 13th, 2012 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
This via a comment by our local neighbourhood ‘ukipwebmaster’. I have though for a while now that this term deserves wider currency and to be used in all seriousness. March 13th, 2012 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
Of course, a number of governments, including the late, unlamented one of Tony Blair, were prepared to hold their noses and do business with the now very dead former dictator of Libya, but this story about an alleged £42 million campaign contribution to Nicolas Sarkzoy in 2007, if true, would surely be the end of the diminutive president of France. Excerpt:
Of course, given the range of poisonous collectivists running for the job of French president, it is very much the case of “none of the above” if I were a citizen of that country and thinking about voting in the upcoming French elections this year. March 13th, 2012 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
(David Cameron is) a communitarian, he is not clever, but he is fashionable. – Delectably named commenter ‘New Boiled Potato Peeler’ March 12th, 2012 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
The founder of the X-Prize (well known around these parts due to events such as the space ventures side of things) now wants to launch a prize for people with good ideas on how to sort out education. (H/T, Instapundit). I can suggest two quick ideas: Give the prize immediately to Professor James Tooley. Or, Give it to me, as I have this brilliant idea – just get the state out of education, full stop. Simple, really. March 12th, 2012 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
You have to hand it to this government in the UK. Having watched at how the US has demonstrated the foolishness of distorting the housing market in sub-prime mortgages, and hence encouraging a huge “moral hazard” problem, the UK is, according to a report, going to back hundreds of thousands of home loans in measures to be announced in the 21 March budget. One grows weary. The shoulders sag. It becomes more difficult to think of a smart-arse piece of satire when confronted with the latest cretinous idea to come out of David Cameron’s limited mind, or from the minds of his colleagues. Over dinner a few weeks ago, Brian Micklethwait and I agreed that Cameron is not, in fact, all that bright, apart, perhaps, from having a sort of superficial, feral cunning. March 12th, 2012 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Seeing as this year marks the bicentenary of the War of 1812 and seeing as I know precious little about it, I thought I’d ask the commentariat the following: 1. Who were the good guys and who were the bad guys? March 11th, 2012 | 50 comments - (Comments are closed)
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