Utopia, you are standing in it!

From the Samizdata blogsite comes this nice set of reflections following the death of the renowned historian Paul Johnson.

Paul Johnson, one of the great figures of post-war British journalism, has died at the grand age of 94. He was the author of about 50 books, and I read several of them in my youth. Of all the books, the one that stands out for me is Modern Times. That was a one-volume study of the 20th century.

Johnson was unafraid to challenge stereotypes. He defended US Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Nixon from the reputational shade cast upon them and was unsparingly hard on the likes of F D Roosevelt and JFK. He slammed the United Nations, lauded the NATO alliance, and pointed out how so many “third world” countries went disastrously wrong in embracing Fabian socialist ideas after the Western empires ended. In that sense, he gave every…

Solar panels were meant to be all sunshine and lollipops, with nothing but tingly virtuous feelings for their subsidised owners. With an effective economic lifespan of little more than a decade – after 12 years in service their output is nothing like their original capacity and at the 15-year mark, it becomes a pointless fraction, especially if they’re not cleaned on a very regular basis. Which is the reason why millions of panels are already being crushed and dumped in landfills, with millions more to follow.

Got a landfill in your neighbourhood? Well it’s probably time to do some homework and what is being dumped there.

Solar panels are a veritable toxic cocktail of gallium arsenide, tellurium, silver, crystalline silicon, lead, cadmium and other heavy metals. Ground up and dumped in their millions into landfills, it’s not difficult to imagine the effect on water supplies, the environment and human health…

The Kingdom of Greece was established in 1832 and was the successor state to the First Hellenic Republic. It was internationally recognised by the Treaty of Constantinople, where Greece also secured its full independence from the Ottoman Empire after nearly four centuries of Ottoman rule.

Background

The Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire, also known as Byzantine Empire, which ruled most of the Eastern Mediterranean region for over 1100 years, had been fatally weakened since the sacking of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders in 1204.

The Ottomans captured Constantinople with ease in 1453 and advanced southwards into the Balkan peninsula capturing Athens in 1458. The Greeks held out in the Peloponnese until 1460, and the Venetians and Genoese clung to some of the islands, but by 1500 most of the plains and islands of Greece were in Ottoman hands. While in contrast, the mountains and highlands of Greece were largely untouched, and…

There’s sometimes a stereotype that in poor countries with low car ownership, alternatives to the car are flourishing. I saw a post on Mastodon making this premise, and pointed out already in comments that this is not really true. This is a more detailed version of what I said in 500 characters. In short, in most of the third world, non-car transportation is bad, and nearly all ridership (on jitneys and buses) is out of poverty, as is most walking. While car ownership is low, the elites who do own cars dominate local affairs, and therefore cities are car-dominated and not at all walkable, even as 90%+ of the population does not own a car.

What’s more, the developing countries that do manage to build good public transportation don’t stay developing for long. The same development model of Japan, the East Asian Tigers, and now China has built both…

Exhibit A is provided by Zachary Faria writing at Washington Examiner Sports media throw a tantrum over hockey player’s pride night slight.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

The most important story in the hockey world, according to sports media, is that one player decided not to wear a gay pride jersey, and they are deeply upset about it.

Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov did not take part in the team’s warm-up for “LGBTQ+ Pride Night,” with the rest of the team wearing pride-themed warm-up jerseys and wrapping rainbow tape around their hockey sticks. Provorov opted not to participate “to stay true to myself and my religion.”

This means he should have been benched, if not outright fired, according to sports media.

One reporter asked coach John Tortorella after the game if he considered benching Provorov for not wearing the jersey. Steph Driver, the NHL editorial manager for…