Utopia, you are standing in it!

Reports   have been   circulating in Wellington  of  sampling  by  pollsters    which  show   support  for  Labour climbing   into  the 49-51%   range  and  for  National  slumping to  the  low 30’s.

To those enraptured by the  “kindness”  of the  Prime  Minister    and  impressed  by  the government’s  performance  during  the  Covid-19 pandemic, a  result like that would be  no   surprise.  Many  New Zealanders rejoice in the plaudits which overseas media heap on Jacinda  Ardern  as a  “world leader”   who  is  outperforming  her  peers in other countries.

An influential American magazine, The  Atlantic,  described Ardern as maybe the  most  effective  leader  on  the  planet.

In contrast, there is consistent criticism  of  Opposition   Leader  Simon  Bridges  from some  media   figures.   Left-wing  blogs come alive with speculation  of  a  coup   any   day   within the  National  caucus.

So is the forthcoming  election  one  that  an  Opposition  party   might  want to lose?

For a while now I’ve written the occasional post about claims that there are no evolved and genetically based differences between male and female behaviors, brains, or hormones. This claim is based not on science but on ideology, stemming from the fear that if you show differences between men and women in these respects, you will somehow justify a biologically based sexism: that women are inferior to men in some ways and thus can be treated as subordinates.

This “blank-slateism” has also been applied to differences between ethnic groups and is often used to dismiss the entire field of evolutionary psychology—for the same reasons. The ideological denialism of differences between any groups rests on the premise that difference equals inferiority and justifies unequal treatment and bigotry.

Well, leaving aside the possibility that genetically based trait differences may reveal better rather than worse performance of marginalized groups, the ideological dismissal of…

The Guardian has a review out of Cordelia Fine’s new book, Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society, which continues her critique of innate differences between male and female brains and behaviors. The Amazon summary includes this:

In Testosterone Rex, psychologist Cordelia Fine wittily explains why past and present sex roles are only serving suggestions for the future, revealing a much more dynamic situation through an entertaining and well-documented exploration of the latest research that draws on evolutionary science, psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, and philosophy. She uses stories from daily life, scientific research, and common sense to break through the din of cultural assumptions. Testosterone, for instance, is not the potent hormonal essence of masculinity; the presumed, built-in preferences of each sex, from toys to financial risk taking, are turned on their heads.

Moving beyond the old “nature versus nurture” debates, Testosterone Rex disproves ingrained myths and calls…

Æthelred II (c. 966 – 23 April 1016), was King of the English from 978 to 1013 and again from 1014 until his death.

Æthelred was the son of King Edgar and Queen Ælfthryth. He came to the throne at about the age of 12, following the assassination of his older half-brother, Eadweard the Martyr. His brother’s murder was carried out by supporters of his own claim to the throne, although he was too young to have any personal involvement.

Æthelred II the Unready, King of the English

Name

Æthelred’s first name, composed of the elements æðele, “noble”, and ræd, “counsel, advice”, is typical of the compound names of those who belonged to the royal House of Wessex, and it characteristically alliterates with the names of his ancestors, like Æthelwulf (“noble-wolf”), Ælfred (“elf-counsel”), Eadweard (“rich-protection”), and Eadgar (“rich-spear”).

Æthelred’s notorious nickname, Old English Unræd, is commonly translated into present-day English as “The…

DISASTER divided : Two countries, one island, life-and-death differences

WITHOUT access to fossil fuels, every tree on the planet would have been cut down by now to provide for heating, cooking and industry.

THE greatest threat to the environment is not affluence, it is poverty.

BORDER between Haiti and Dominican Republic, a pristine example…

• ONE country embraces Fossil Fuels 🇩🇴

• THE other, signed up to the UN Paris Accord 🇭🇹

BORDER between Haiti and the Dominican Republic: Guess which country contains eco-criminals that can afford to use fossil fuels, and which country contains nature-lovers who are dependent on natural renewable organic biomass for energy?

*

HAITI is almost 99% deforested, as they rely almost entirely on natural ‘biomass’ (wood) for domestic and industrial fuels and building materials.

ON the other side, the forests of the fossil fuel burning, eco-terrorists – the Dominican Republic – remain lush and…

Gabriele Ciminelli and Sílvia Garcia-Mandicó in this voxeu piece:

There are still many unknowns about COVID-19. We don’t know its true mortality rate, nor the speed through which it spreads across communities. This lack of evidence complicates the design of appropriate response policies. The case of the UK is illustrative. The government first opted for the bare minimum in terms of mitigation. It then drastically reversed course after micro-simulations by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team showed that that strategy could have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths (Ferguson et al. 2020).

In a new paper (Ciminelli and Garcia-Mandicó 2020), we source daily death registry data for a sample of 1,161 Italian municipalities in the seven regions most severely hit by COVID-19 (Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Lombardia, Marche, Piemonte, Toscana, and Veneto) and match them to census data to analyse COVID-19-induced mortality. Overall, the dataset covers a population of almost…

It’s been impossible to ignore the calls for the UK government to announce that it will be seeking an extension to the Brexit transition period, or at least to make clear that it’s still keeping its options open, as a result of the coronavirus crisis. Here I review the arguments on both sides – before coming down in favour of sticking to the current timetable.

The background

The UK has, of course, already left the EU. But it remains a member of the single market and customs union, and is still bound by EU rules, during a ‘transition period’ which is due to end on 31^st December. This period is meant to provide time for the two sides to negotiate a new long-term relationship, covering issues such as trade and security cooperation, and to make the necessary preparations to implement the new arrangements.

The Withdrawal Agreement (WA) allows the…

Angela Saini is a British science writer who belongs to what I call the Cordelia Fine School of Science Journalism (CFSSJ): a school whose members have an explicit ideological bias that colors all of their popular writing. In the case of Fine, her ideology is that there is essentially no evolutionary/genetic difference between the brains and neurology of men and women, and so any behavioral differences we see are of purely social origin. Further, hormones play little or no role in behavioral differences between the sexes. Fine’s motive is good—to reduce sexism and bias—but her modus operandus is not, for it involves misrepresenting science.

To buttress Fine’s ideology, her books aim at debunking every study that contradicts her preconceived thesis, even though there is now convincing indication of not only genetically based behavioral and morphological differences based on hormones, but also of differences in the brain. In contrast…

Planet of the Humans | By Jeff Gibbs, Executive Producer Michael Moore

“The documentary does a good job
at proving that conservatives
were right to say that green energy is a scam“

“This urgent, must-see movie,
a full-frontal assault on our sacred cows,
is guaranteed to generate anger, debate.”

***

A must watch.

IT gets going at around the 13 minute mark, and then, kaboom…

•••

SEE also :

• SCOTLAND’S Net-Zero Forest Management Program | Climatism
• Michael Moore stumbles upon the truth about so-called ‘green’ energy – American Thinker (Climatism post title-tip)

RELATED :

• ‘GREEN’ Energy Future | Climatism
• IF CO2’s Your Poison, Renewable Energy Is No Antidote (Peer-reviewed) | Climatism
• TEAM GRETA Admits Climate Change Has Nothing To Do With The Environment | Climatism
• CADMIUM : The Toxic Problem Of Not-So-Clean Energy | Climatism
• ANGELA MERKEL : The New Climate Change ‘Denier’ | Climatism
• HOW DARE HE!…

When I wrote about the wealth tax early this year, I made three simple points.

• A war on wealth is a war on capital (increased double taxation is needed since rich people have a lot of saving and investment).
• A war on capital is a war on productivity (every economic theory agrees there is no added output without saving and investment).
• A war on productivity is a war on workers (every economic theory agrees that there is a link between wages and how much workers produce).

I obviously have not been very persuasive.

At least in certain quarters.

A story in the Wall Street Journal explores the growing interest on the left in this new form of taxation.

The income tax..system could change fundamentally if Democrats win the White House and Congress. …Democrats want to shift toward taxing their wealth, instead of just their salaries and the income…