Utopia, you are standing in it!

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…

Here’s another multi-passport challenge for Foreign Minister Winston Peters. The US is proposing former NZ businessman Chris Liddell as the next director-general of the Paris-based OECD, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The current DG, Angela Guria, has been in the job since 2006. There’s word he wants yet another term. He is a Mexican diplomat and former politician and his term ends this year.

Liddell is head of policy coordination at the White House. He has held high rank in Microsoft and General Motors and joined President Donald Trump at the beginning of his presidency.

What worries Wellington is that he retains joint US and NZ citizenship.

(Lawrence Peter Berra ….”Yogi”)

Growing up in Brooklyn, NY I had had ample opportunity to sit in the bleachers in the old Yankee Stadium or watch the “Bronx Bombers” on WPIX.  If I could not watch the team in person or watch them on television, I could listen to my Sony transistor radio and learn of the exploits of my heroes.   The names of the players are embedded in my memory; Mantle, Ford, Skowron, Richardson, Kubek and of course Berra.  The Yankee catcher, sometimes outfielder was a sight to behold.  His awkward swing that paid no attention to the strike zone or his bowl legged stride did not detract from his baseball grace.  Be it jumping into Don Larsen’s arms following the 1956 World Series perfect game or turning his back on Bill Mazeroski’s game winning homerun to win the 1960 World Series, Berra always stood out as a leader…

(Donald Trump and Fred Trump in December, 1987.)

As a retired educator last Fall, I taught a Psychohistory course for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Granite State College in New Hampshire.  One of my topics was an analysis of Donald Trump exploring personality issues trying to determine what lay behind his decision making and behavior.  After conducting my research what emerged is the picture of a deeply flawed individual and a fifty-slide power point.  As a fellow New Yorker, I have watched Trump for decades and I wondered how my analysis measured up to the views of psychology professionals.  After reading Mary L. Trump’s new book, TOO MUCH AND NEVER ENOUGH: HOW MY FAMILY CREATED THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS MAN I found that my perspective and insights dovetailed nicely  with those of Trump’s niece.

It is clear from Mary Trump’s title that her conclusions reached in analyzing her uncle’s behavior…

Back in 2017, the Center for Freedom and Prosperity released this video, which shows that free markets and small government are the best recipe for poor nations that want to become rich nations.

The CF&P video was motivated in part by a need to debunk international bureaucracies such as the OECD and IMF, which abandoned the “Washington Consensus” for economic liberalization and instead have been making the odd argument that prosperity can be achieved with higher taxes and a bigger burden of government spending.

Needless to say, neither of these international organizations has bothered to explain how such dirigiste policies produce more growth.

But the politicians who fund and control such bureaucracies doubtlessly appreciate the message.

You probably won’t be surprised that the United Nations also is on the wrong side of this issue.

A recent report from the New York City-based group regurgitates the anti-market…