Utopia, you are standing in it!

The Romans’ success in conquering and maintaining their enormous empire lay partly in their military culture, their weapons and their training. Rome’s ability to provision large armies at long distances was, however, equally as, or more important to its success. The military history of Rome is not one of continuous victory: indeed the Romans often won wars because, after losing battles—and sometimes entire armies and fleets—they could keep replacing them until the enemy was defeated. Polybius, a keen observer of the Roman military at its height, remarked that “the advantages of the Romans lay in inexhaustible supplies of provisions and men.”

A sophisticated logistical system allowed the Romans to exploit their military resources effectively. The Romans recognized the importance of supply and used it both as a strategic and a tactical weapon and the necessities of military supply influenced and often determined the decisions of the Roman commanders at war…

The Witch Hunts, which began in the 1500’s, swept across Europe in the 17th Century. Estimates of the deaths vary wildly with the most conservative estimates, of casualties, ranging around 60,000.  Feminist theories of the trials focussed on the sex of the victims. In England a staggering 90% were women. Coincidentally (not) this was inversely proportionate to the sex composition of the saintly class. Theories which contradict the feminist interpretation can’t dismiss the sex of the victims. Some theorists point to the role of the rising printing press in the spread of Witchcraft Trials. This modern re-enactment owes much to Twitter.  Twitter Shaming has replaced the burning.  Just when this will tip over into more serious violence, against a woman, is anyone’s guess.  The violent incidents we have already seen have been denied, dismissed and minimised. This is a dangerous climate we are creating for women.

The focus was on…

There is very little case law about single and separate sex services and gender identity. Only one case has been litigated since the Equality Act 2010 was enacted.

The case is what is known as a “first instance”, which means it wasn’t appealed and did not create a legal precedent (legal precedents mean that court must follow decisions of previous decisions of the same or higher court in cases that are similar in relation to the facts and the legal issues).

No transcript of the judgment by Judge Miller is available. Nevertheless it has been reported as a “landmark case”and has been influential. It is leaned on heavily by those who argue that self-declared “gender identity” gives someone the right…

The more intermittent wind and solar get added to the grid, the greater the risk that their chaotic delivery of power will wreck it. By which we mean the delivery of an entire ‘system black’ – of the kind that Australia’s wind and solar capital, South Australia became world-renowned for.

Depicted above – courtesy of Aneroid Energy – is the output delivered by Australian wind power outfits to the Eastern Grid so far this 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 7,295MW.

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…

(1) The lead story of Chemical and Engineering News, the house organ of the American Chemical Society, is about rethinking the role of ACE inhibitors (angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors, a commonly used family of blood pressure drugs).

https://cendigitalmagazine.acs.org/2020/05/22/rethinking-the-role-of-blood-pressure-drugs-in-covid-19/content.html

“Once thought to boost levels of ACE2 , the novel coronavirus’s doorway into human cells, these widely used medicines are now contenders to treat the respiratory disease”

(2) Meanwhile,  the Daily Telegraph has a popular write-up of an intriguing paper that just appeared in Thorax, a daughter journal of the British Medical Journal. It suggests the asymptomatic infection rate may be much higher than the 35% in the revised CDC figures

http://doi.org/10.1136/thoraxjnl-2020-215091

ABSTRACT: We describe what we believe is the first instance of complete COVID-19 testing of all passengers and crew on an isolated cruise ship during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Of the 217 passengers and crew on board, 128 tested…

Louis XVIII Of France

Since both the republican and imperial models were discredited and unacceptable to the victorious Allies, a royal restoration was inevitable; the victor of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington, warned that there would be no peace in Europe unless the Bourbons mounted the throne again. The Congress of Vienna, held to define European frontiers after two decades of war, reversed Napoleon’s conquests but was otherwise generous to France after Talleyrand inserted himself into the deliberations; in a sign of flexibility among recent adversaries, Britain and Austria allied with France to block a Prussian attempt to absorb Saxony.

However, the new monarch who called himself Louis XVIII in deference to his nephew who had died in prison two decades earlier, made a poor fist of it on his return from exile in Britain in May 1814. The corpulent 59-year-old king surrounded himself with appointees who had been out…

Below an article in the top Aussie newspaper, The Australian, published a few days ago.

In today’s blog Dr Andrew Barclay, senior research fellow in our Commons 1640-1660 project, returns to his exploration of the days leading up to the restoration of Charles II. In this final instalment, we turn to 29 May 1660, as Charles entered London as King for the first time...

Charles II entered London in triumph on 29 May 1660, his 30th birthday. Three weeks earlier Parliament had proclaimed him as King. He had landed at Dover on 25 May and had made stops at Canterbury and Rochester en route to the capital. On 29 May he was greeted at St George’s Fields in Southwark by the lord mayor of London. The huge procession, mostly formed of the army, the London trained bands and the City worthies, crossed London Bridge and then proceeded through London to Whitehall. The parade took seven hours to pass through the City…

14 OCTOBER 1943

“The mission of October 14th had demonstrated that the cost of such deep penetrations by daylight without fighter escort was too high … the Eighth Air Force was in no position to make further penetrations either to Schweinfurt or to any other objectives deep in German territory.” US Official Report on the Schweinfurt Raid.

It is a great tragedy of war that commanders can blindly persist with plans which have been repeatedly proven to be dangerously misguided. After World War I, visionary young officers in a number of countries argued that in the future wars would be won not by armies or navies but by fleets of aircraft bombing enemy cities, in what became known as `strategic’ bombing. World War II saw the creation of such strategic bombing fleets, chiefly by the British and Americans, of which perhaps the strongest and the most famous was `The Mighty…

A damaged B-17 bomber being protected by two P-51 fighters.

In the Second World War the bedrock of US strategic bombing tactics in Europe was formation flying in a self-defending 54-aircraft combat wing, which was both dangerous and physically exhausting. Extreme physical effort was required from the pilot to keep station in the turbulence generated by hundreds of propellers. The pilots flying in wing positions depended on the skill of element leaders right up to combat wing level. Poor flying by the leaders, and the constant seesawing of positions, added to pilot fatigue and ran the risk of collisions or breaking the formation, thus providing Luftwaffe day fighters with “cold meat”—isolated aircraft.

Flying consisted of sliding the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator bombers around to maintain the integrity of the formation. Banking was dangerous because of the close proximity of other aircraft. Frequent throttle changes were required, which could…

Why have epidemiological forecasts been so wrong and what to do about it

If we look at the forecasts, we got from epidemiologists initially in the Covid-19 pandemic it has turned out that they have massively wrong. While tragic the number of people who has died in this pandemic has been much lower than forecasted.

The reason given by epidemiologists then is that that is because of interventions – lockdowns. But then you made the wrong kind of forecast – you forgot to forecast what would happen IF lockdowns were implemented.

Furthermore, how do you explain the numbers in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan? There were no lockdowns (until recently) and we haven’t seen a massive death told, which was forecasted by the kind of epidemiological models used for example by the epidemiologists at the Imperial College in the UK.

Similarly, in Sweden with no lockdown, which as the only…

Heavy losses over Germany became the norm in 1943. The attrition reached a peak on August 17 when the 8th Air Force attacked the fighter assembly plant at Regensburg and the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt. Of the 376 aircraft dispatched on the double raid, 60 were lost and many more written off. A second raid on Schweinfurt in October cost the Americans 77 aircraft lost and another 133 damaged out of 291 dispatched. After the second Schweinfurt raid, bombing operations were temporarily suspended. It was brutally clear that the bombers would have to be escorted to and from targets deep in Germany. However, there were no aircraft capable of fulfilling this role.

The USAAF’s P-38 Lightning and P-47 Thunderbolt fighters lacked the performance to meet enemy fighters on equal terms and the range to escort the bombers over Germany. The Luftwaffe could now choose the time and place to attack…

If you’re looking to wreck a grid and send power prices into orbit, then pin your power hopes to wind and solar power delivered at mother nature’s whims.

South Australia did; it suffers the world’s highest retail power prices and became the butt of international jokes for a series of weather-related mass blackouts.

Looking for an example? Take a scan of what’s depicted above.

That’s the ‘performance’ of Australia’s wind power fleet so far this month – courtesy of Aneroid Energy

Spread from Far North Queensland, across the ranges of NSW, all over Victoria, Northern Tasmania and across South Australia its 7,295 MW of capacity routinely delivers just a trickle of that.

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…