Utopia, you are standing in it!

“Colorblind casting” is defined in this New York Times piece by culture critic Maya Phillips as “performers [inhabiting] characters of racial backgrounds that [differ] from their own.” When applied in such a way to ensure “acting justice” (people of all ethnicities getting an opportunity to play anyone) rather than just letting white people play people of all ethnicities—as was often the case in early movies—it would seem to be fine. But in Phillip’s piece she finds several reasons why such casting is problematic.

In a way, Phillips’s counterintuitive take on colorblind casting reminds me of the piece by the paper’s music critic, Anthony Tommasini, urging orchestras to drop blind auditions as a (misguided) way to increase ethnic diversity. And it shows the ability of the op-ed writers at the New Woke Times to justify any action, however crazy, if they can be made to look antiracist.

I don’t find…

On 6 May 2020, the National Assembly for Wales (hereafter “the Assembly”) will officially be renamed, adopting the new title of Senedd Cymru / Welsh Parliament. The change comes as a result of section 9 of the Wales Act 2017, amending the Government of Wales Act 2006 (hereafter “GOWA”) to include the new section 111A which transfers to the Assembly the power to legislate on matters relating to its electoral and operational arrangements.

The new powers transferred under the 2017 Act were in keeping with recommendations made in Part II of the Silk Commission Report (R.53) and included in the St. David’s Day Agreement, as well as also reflecting some similar provisions implemented in Scotland under the Scotland Act 2016. Under section 111A Government of Wales Act GOWA, the Assembly may now, by way of a two-thirds supermajority, pass legislation on protected subject-matter relating to the…

At least it seems that way judging from an infographic they put up in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, which already had a section devoted to “Whiteness“.

Here’s the infographic.

Incredible is it not? We often see accusations about “Systemic Racism” in the USA, and perhaps you could take this as an example, where the graduates in Critical Race Theory have apparently imbibed the beliefs of White Supremacists so completely that they now regurgitate them without critical thought, even as they acknowledge that such things have been “internalized” by “People of Color”.

Perhaps they should just hire David Duke and be done with it. After all, how different would this infographic be if he’d written it?

Latest from the Beehive

Before Point of Order had wrapped up the previous bulletin, the busy bees in the Beehive were releasing the most comprehensive review of New Zealand’s resource management system since the Resource Management Act (RMA) was enacted in 1991.

At much the same time, the Government was signalling its intention to introduce legislation to allow it to recover some of the costs for managed isolation and quarantine.

This isolation measure is something of a rarity in the run-up to the election – it will result in the Government collecting money rather than borrowing to give it away in billions.

The RMA review is reported in New Directions for Resource Management in New Zealand,  commissioned by Environment Minister David Parker and prepared by an independent review panel led by retired Court of Appeal Judge Tony Randerson QC.

Among its recommendations is the replacement of the existing RMA…

Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility has enjoyed a tremendous resurgence of popularity since George Floyd’s murder. It’s appearing on many college reading lists, and is even a recommended resource of the Society for the Study of Evolution, which has now gone uber woke and has a full page of resources that will teach the guilt-ridden evolutionist “how to be an anti-racist”, including a list of places where you can give money. (Why a society dedicated to promoting the study of evolution needs such a page is beyond me.)

I suppose that, given its popularity, I need to read DiAngelo’s book. Not willing to pay for it, I see that it’s online at my University library, and I suppose I will essay it. But I’m looking forward to it about as much as I looked forward to my hernia operation. That is, I know it’s necessary but also that it will…

New Zealand’s general election will be 19 September (grrr, they are holding it on Rosh HaShanah). Given the generally good record of the government of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in handling COVID-19, at this point the question seems to be, how big will her win be? And how much will her two coalition partners suffer as Ardern’s party gets most of the credit?

Through today, there have been seven recent polls that have put Ardern’s Labour Party over 50% in votes. If this were to happen on election day, it would make for the first time since the mixed-member proportional system was first used (1996) that a single party won a majority of seats or votes.

The last poll showing the main opposition National Party ahead was conducted in February. The party has changed leaders not once, but twice, since then.

Obviously, with a majority, Labour would not…

Assume, for the moment, the wind always blew and the sun always shone, then wind and solar power just might make sense. That’s why those talking about an ‘all wind and sun powered future’ sound like they’re coming from another planet.

Renewables rent seekers keep telling us how cheap wind and solar are, compared to those ‘evil’ fossil fuels, coal and gas.

But ‘price’ and ‘value’ are not the same animals. What we pay for something, and what it’s worth depends entirely upon what we get. And, in relation to the consumption of electricity, whether or not we get it, at all.

Wind power might be ‘free’, but try purchasing it, at any price, when the wind stops blowing. Ditto with solar power, when the sun does what it’s been doing every day since the dawn of time.

Comparing weather dependent wind generation and sunshine dependent solar with sources available…

A month or so ago I went along to hear the Governor of the Reserve Bank speak at the Law and Economics Association in Wellington.   LEANZ is a pretty geeky sort of organisation (or attracts pretty geeky sorts of people) and against the background it was quite surprising how little substance there was to the Governor’s speech, which was billed as “Delivering on Great and Best” at the Reserve Bank.  That is the Governor’s grandiose vision: his predecessor claimed to want the Bank to be the “best small central bank” in the world (although did little or nothing about it, including no relevant benchmarking) but Orr takes that a giant step further and claims to want to be the best central bank in the world.   You might think that harmless –  always good to aim high etc –  but in a small country, not very prosperous, it isn’t clear…

“The point of education is not to make you comfortable; it’s to make you think.”

—Hanna Gray (former President, University of Chicago, speaking in video below)

I greatly fear that one of my roles over the next few years, should this website continue, will be to chronicle the downfall of the University of Chicago as it abandons several of its foundational principles: freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and the refusal of the University to take political or ideological stands. The last foundational principle has two exceptions, the most important being this one (from our “foundational” Kalven Report of 1967):

From time to time instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend…

Australia’s wind industry has been suffering from the Big Calm – with dozens of occasions over the last month or so when the entire wind fleet’s battled to deliver more than a tiny fraction of its combined capacity.

Depicted above – courtesy of Aneroid Energy – is the output delivered by Australian wind power outfits to the Eastern Grid last month.

Spread from Far North Queensland, across the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and across South Australia its entire capacity routinely delivers just a trickle of its combined notional capacity of 7,728MW.

Collapses of over 3,000 MW or more that occur over the space of a couple of hours are routine, as are rapid surges of equal magnitude, which make the grid manager’s life a living hell, and provide the perfect set up for power market price gouging by the owners of conventional generators, who cash in…

A few quick updates, mostly video:

(1) A somewhat UK-centric world update from Dr. John Campbell

(2) The Economist on why the stock market is doing pretty well despite the corona crisis. Jeb Kinnison mentioned the economic law that whenever new money is issued, those sitting closest to the source of new money enjoy an economic advantage as they are able to spend it before everybody becomes aware of its loss of value — needless to say, not mentioned here.

(3) Swedish epidemiology chief Anders Tegnell says, “judge me in a year”.

(4) Jeff Duntemann alerted me to an e-book by Dr. Zev Zelenko and others. A community doctor in the Satmar Chasidic community, he started applying a treatment regime of hydroxychloroquine, zinc supplements, and the antibiotic azithromycin quite early (around the same time as Dr. Didier Raoult, director of the Marseille hospital for infectious diseases, applied…