Utopia, you are standing in it!

Winston Churchill has a well-deserved reputation as a bon vivant. From the iconic cigar to the John Bull physique to the legendary consumption of Pol Roger champagne, he was a man who enjoyed life. This is fully documented in the vast biographical literature on Churchill. What is perhaps less well known is that for the majority of his long life his finances were out of control, veering from bursts of fortune to overwhelming debt. In this original study of Churchill and his money David Lough shows us the constant preoccupation the statesman had with personal finance.

Churchill was born into a background of high social status but great financial uncertainty. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill, was a younger son of the Duke of Marlborough, a radical Tory and sometime Chancellor of the Exchequer. Throughout his life he constantly struggled to maintain an income that would meet the enormous expenditure…

People for the Extortion, Torture and Abuse of human beings (PETA) named the Indonesian crested black macaque monkey Naruto as their Person of the Year.

The monkey became famous resulting from a copyright dispute over selfies the animal took in 2011 using equipment set up by British nature photographer David Slater in the jungles of the island of Sulawesi. In an attempt to win court approval recognizing animals as sentient beings, PETA filed a lawsuit in federal court four years after the photos were taken stating that Naruto should be declared the owner of the photographs he took.

Despite the group losing the copyrights lawsuit, PETA was able to cajole the photographer into settling out of court and agreeing to donate 25 percent of the proceeds of royalties of his sales of photos of Naruto to charities geared to protecting macaque monkeys.

The whole purpose of the action by…

The Paris Climate Treaty, the UK Climate Change Act, the US CO2 endangerment finding. These misconceived policies decided on by scientifically ignorant and socially cocooned politicians KILL people. Far more people die of cold and cold related illnesses than suffer from heat-stroke. As the effects of these policies bite harder on personal finances, we need to look after those vulnerable people in our communities who cannot afford to heat their homes, or don’t even have a home to heat.

Sea Legacy, the group behind the now infamous video of the starving polar bear, was not only criticized for not intervening to help the struggling creature. But one of Sea Legacy’s leaders made factually untrue and racist claims about native polar bear hunting, the Canadian Inuit tribe alleges.

In an email sent Tuesday by SeaLegacy co-founder Cristina Mittermeier told the show hosts of the Canadian Broadcasting Company‘s show As It Happens:

Inuit people make a lot of money from polar bear trophy hunting. Of course it is in their best interest to say that polar bears are happy and healthy and that climate change is a joke, because otherwise their quota might be reduced.

While Mittermeier later apologized for her remarks, as it turns out, the emaciated polar bear was filmed near Baffin Island in Nunavut. The bear was pitched as the face of climate change by American and…

I previously praised the position of my alma mater, The University of Chicago, in refusing to limit free speech with the creation of safe spaces and speech codes. Indeed, the courageous position of UChicago stood in sharp contrast to the troubling position of my other alma mater, Northwestern University (which has only grown more hostile to both free speech and academic freedom).   Now, Northwest Vista College president Ric Baser has declared himself squarely on the speech regulation side of academia with a chilling rejection of a broad array of speech as hate speech, including words that “spread” or “provoke” or “create” “animosity and hostility.”  Baser’s San Antonio Express-News op-ed  titled “Hate speech does not equal free speech shows not only a disturbing lack of understanding of constitutionally protected speech but an intolerance for the speech of those with which he disagrees.  Baser’s disturbing comments are part of a letter…