Utopia, you are standing in it!

I learned about a new Norwegian law from this tweet by Bari Weiss, who links to a report in Out Magazine.

What struck me, as a free-speech absolutist who adheres to our courts’ interpretation of the American First Amendment, was the notion of “hate speech”, which is slippery at best, as well as the part of the Norwegian law that allows imprisonment for comments made in private. I read the out.com article and also one from the charitable Thomson Reuters Foundation (click on screenshot below).

An excerpt from Thomson Reuters:

Norway’s parliament outlawed hate speech against transgender and bisexual people on Tuesday, expanding its penal code which has protected gay and lesbian people since 1981.

People found guilty…

It’s pretty clear by now that there was no widespread vote fraud in the election, as Trump keeps insisting, enabled by Mitch “666” McConnell and the silent Republicans who won’t speak up out of fear of Trump.  The New York Timescalled election officials in all 50 states, asking them about voter fraud. The results won’t be appealing to Republicans:

The New York Times contacted the offices of the top election officials in every state on Monday and Tuesday to ask whether they suspected or had evidence of illegal voting. Officials in 45 states responded directly to The Times. For four of the remaining states, The Times spoke to other statewide officials or found public comments from secretaries of state; none reported any major voting issues.

Statewide officials in Texas did not respond to repeated inquiries. But a spokeswoman for the top elections official in Harris County, the largest…

I’ve maintained that becoming a determinist leads many people to promote criminal-justice and prison reform. This comes from realizing that people have no choice in their actions—including committing crimes—and so criminals should be treated as if they were broken machines to be fixed (if possible) rather than as “people who made the wrong choice.” Readers have responded that promoting prison reform can also come from non-deterministic world views, and that’s true. But I believe that “hard” determinism, not sullied by the semantic taints of compatibilism, leads more automatically and naturally to criminal justice reform.

Well, you might disagree, but that’s not important for today’s post. I think most of us will agree that American prisons are cruel, inhumane, and do a lousy job of rehabilitating prisoners. That’s largely, I suspect,  because American prisons are directed more toward punishment than rehabilitation, and what you learn in prison is how to…

If this wasn’t so unbelievable this would be hilarious. ABC News reports two environmentalist campaigners with the group Protect Country Alliance named Lauren Mellor and Conrad Rory were accused of vandalizing Australia’s Northern Territory Parliament’s lawn during a protest their organization held last year. The hooligans were charged with using a bobcat to drill holes in the parliament’s lawn.

The judge stated that, while he agreed that the two hoodlums were guilty of vandalism, but dismissed the case. The judge decided the prosecution did not establish the NT Parliament owned the property in the first place and that the protest was unlikely to have any impact on the government’s decision.

No proof of the NT Parliament constructing, maintaining, or even having the grounds policed to establish some sort of common law ownership? This is how environmentalist and other Leftist hooligans continue their destructive activities when they’re enabled by legal…

SMR transporter
RR has also linked up with American and Czech nuclear firms with a view to developing the international market. Hard to see how the government can get anywhere near its ‘net zero’ electricity targets without this technology. They keep saying ‘build back better’ so here’s an obvious chance to do that, as existing UK nuclear is being retired.
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A consortium led by the engine maker is hoping to secure a further £217m of funding from the government for the project, says Sky News.

A group led by Rolls-Royce has pledged to create 6,000 regional UK jobs within the next five years under plans to build 16 mini nuclear power stations.

The consortium said the jobs would help support the government’s “levelling up” agenda, with up to 80% of the power station components set to be made in factories across the Midlands and the north…

South Australians cross their fingers & hope for power tomorrow…

In the wacko wonderland of South Australia, a brief burst of sunshine managed to ‘power’ the economic backwater for a staggering 60 minutes. SA is venerated as Australia’s Wind and Solar capital; and the renewables cult is heralding this, apparently, momentous event as their ‘Hour of Power’.

Their childish cheering, ignores the fact that – thanks to an obsession with heavily subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar – South Australians suffer the world’s highest retail power prices, the ignominy of suffering the country’s only statewide blackout and – as a consequence of both – the rapid decline in mineral processing, manufacturing and other energy hungry businesses.

Those trumpeting 60 minutes of solar power as the future, might well consider the other 23 hours of the day and, particularly, that rather expansive period between sundown and sunup, when in South…

Back in 1983 the American Wind Industry Association claimed that solar and wind would be “competitive and self-supporting on a national level by the end of the decade if assisted by tax credits and augmented by federally sponsored R&D”. That was 36 years ago. And there was no lack of assistance in the form of tax credits and federally sponsored R&D, along with a whole bunch of other punitive mandates and targets designed to cripple conventional generators and favour chaotically intermittent wind and solar.

Now, as then, claims from renewable energy rent seekers that wind and solar are truly competitive with nuclear, coal or gas evaporate the instant policymakers start talking about removing subsidies to wind and solar.

With their 40^th birthdays approaching, the wind and solar ‘industries’ are a pair of perpetual infants who – like Peter Pan – are determined to never grow up.

We’ll hand over…

Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; January 27, 1859 – June 4, 1941) was the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from June 15, 1888 to his abdication November 9, 1918. He was the eldest grandchild of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe, most notably King George V of the United Kingdom and Emperor Nicholas II of Russia.

Wilhelm was born at the Crown Prince’s Palace, Berlin, to Prince Friedrich-Wilhelm of Prussia (the future Friedrich III) and his wife, Victoria, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

At the time of his birth, his great-uncle Friedrich-Wilhelm IV was king of Prussia, and his grandfather and namesake Wilhelm was acting as Regent. He was the first grandchild of Queen Victoria and…

When I put up one of my frequent posts about the ideological follies on American campuses—and yes, these often involve the Left—I’m sometimes told that these follies are irrelevant, and I should pay them no attention. It’s only a fringe element, people say, and the students will grow out of their Wokeness when they graduate. (Another criticism, along the lines of “Why don’t you go after Trump instead?”, is not worth answering today.)

My response has been that campus extremism may involve only a minority of students, but it’s a vocal minority, and that minority is the group that will take over—and has taken over—Leftist politics and media, as well as institutions like the schools themselves. (Campus administrators and professors are about as Leftist a group as you’ll find in “regular” jobs.)

Now I count myself among the Left, too; I’m referring here to Woke, identity-politics Left in which the…

There’s been some argument around these parts about whether Wokeism will increase or decrease when Trump is gone. On the “increase”, side, Biden is seen as an enabler of Wokeism, supposedly instantiated in his increasing leaning toward the Left, and in the fact that now the “progressive” left now sees a big opportunity to advance its program. (We’ll ignore the Senate for the time being.)

On the “decrease” side, one could argue that Wokeism was aggravated by Trump’s racism and the ascendancy of Republicans, and will calm down after Trump leaves. Some have conjectured, too, that Wokeism is exacerbated by the pandemic: people with not a lot to do can nurture and express their grievances.

My own view is that Wokeism is not going away any time soon, for the fear of being labeled a bigot—one of the main motivation for the excesses of Leftism and identity politics—is too deeply…

Power lines in Victoria, Australia [credit: Wikipedia]
Come the next potential blackout situation, the battery could give Victorians up to an hour to find a way out of trouble. But making the wind blow harder or the sun shine more won’t be among their options, of course.
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Australia is poised to construct one of the world’s largest batteries, using Tesla’s technology for lithium-ion batteries, reports TechXplore.

The football-field sized battery will provide up to 300 megawatts of power output and 450 megawatts-hours of storage in a country that has been struggling to meet energy demands during skyrocketing power usage triggered by record-breaking temperatures.

Last year, Australia suffered its hottest and driest year ever, with temperatures topping 121 degrees Fahrenheit last December.

The battery, known as the Victorian Big Battery Megapack, will be located in the state of Victoria, Australia’s second most populous region.

The NSW Parliament is currently considering a Private Member’s Bill which would make religious discrimination unlawful. The Anti-Discrimination Amendment (Religious Freedoms and Equality) Bill 2020, introduced by the Hon Mark Latham, is being considered at hearings before a Joint Select Committee. I have previously linked, here, to a submission on the Bill provided by Freedom for Faith. The Bill has been subject to serious criticism in an article on The Conversation and in the Sydney Morning Herald. Here I want to provide some response to those critiques, and to suggest that the Bill, while not perfect, is worth supporting and is a good idea.

Australia now has two local Acts banning so-called “gay conversion therapy”, in Queensland and the ACT. An article on the ABC website on November 8, 2020 reports: “Gay conversion practices to be outlawed by the Victorian Government“. But this latest article demonstrates that some activists calling for these laws want to go well beyond outlawing horrible practices like shock therapy or “aversion” therapy. Those quoted in the article want to ban “conversations with religious leaders” on topics of sexuality. Such a law would be a gross violation of free speech and religious freedom rights, as well as an attack on those experiencing same-sex attraction who may want to be helped to live in accordance with religious teachings on these issues. Laws like this ought not to be passed.