Utopia, you are standing in it!

THIS 1491 MAPis the best surviving map of the world as Christopher Columbus knew it as he made his first voyage across the Atlantic. In fact, Columbus likely used a copy of it in planning his journey.

The map, created by the German cartographer Henricus Martellus, was originally covered with dozens of legends and bits of descriptive text, all in Latin. Most of it has faded over the centuries.

But now researchers have used modern technology to uncover much of this previously illegible text. In the process, they’ve discovered new clues about the sources Martellus used to make his map and confirmed the huge influence it had on later…

On the Western Front: a soldier’s trench, too often became his grave.

The efforts by wind power outfits to desecrate the battlefield graves of thousands who died in France are nothing short of outrageous.

Quite rightly, historians and the relatives and descendants of those who died fighting to protect French lives and liberty are furious as a French wind power outfit literally rips up a battlefield and the final resting place for thousands of men who made the supreme sacrifice. This latest outrage follows several other proposals to do precisely the same across the battlefields of northern France.

When the guns fell silent all across the Western Front on 11 November 1918, thoughts naturally turned to the 10 million combatants who had perished in what was meant to be the war to end all wars.

Of those who were killed in action, countless thousands remain buried where they fought and fell…

Henry IV ‘s first major problem as monarch was what to do with the deposed Richard II. After an early assassination plot (the Epiphany Rising) was foiled in January 1400, Richard died in prison, probably of starvation. He was 33 years old. Though Henry is often suspected of having his predecessor murdered, there is no substantial evidence to prove that claim.

As king, Henry IV consulted with Parliament frequently, but was sometimes at odds with the members, especially over ecclesiastical matters. On Arundel’s advice, Henry IV obtained from Parliament the enactment of De heretico comburendo in 1401, which prescribed the burning of heretics, at the stake as an act done mainly to suppress the Lollard movement.

De heretico comburendo was one of the strictest religious censorship statutes ever enacted in England. In March 2, 1401 William Sawtrey became the first Lollard to be burned. This law stayed on the books…

From the Emperor’s Desk. This will be a four part series on the life of King Henry IV of England. Part I will look at his lineage and rise to the throne, Part II will examine his reign and Part III will examine his claim to the throne.

Henry IV (April 15, 1367 – March 20, 1413), also known as Henry Bolingbroke, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1399 to 1413. He reasserted the claim of his grandfather King Edward III, a maternal grandson of Philippe IV of France, to the Kingdom of France.

Henry was the son of John of Gaunt (the fourth son of Edward III) and Blanche of Lancaster. John enjoyed a position of considerable influence during much of the reign of his cousin King Richard II, whom Henry eventually deposed. Henry founded the Lancaster branch of the House of Anjou, also known as…

Chaotic intermittency means wind and solar cannot, and will never, replace coal, gas or nuclear.

The fact that wind and solar output plummets whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in has been treated by RE zealots as (yet another) inconvenient truth, that just won’t go away.

In the first few years of the great wind power fraud in Australia, its promoters kept telling us that all we needed to do was spread these things far and wide and we would have an endless supply of ‘free’ electricity, lovingly caressed from mother nature. Well, that didn’t pan out, as any South Australia will tell you.

So, talk soon turned to mega-batteries, as if the wind and solar industry was like some ditzy shopper who’d forgotten to add milk and bread to their shopping list.

The meme is that the chaos delivered by wind and solar can all be solved…

The hyperbole that greets the announcement of another giant battery is like the toxic plume they give off when they explode in flames. And, as we recently reported, that’s an increasingly likely occurrence: Giant Batteries Bomb: Renewable Energy Storage Systems Literally Setting The World On Fire

At a loss to deal with the hopeless and chaotic intermittency of wind and solar, renewable energy rent seekers and zealots have had to retreat behind the “batteries will fix it” barricades, as a last redoubt.

So, it’s only natural that they’ll overplay their hands every time a piddling 100 MW of lithium-ion storage gets tacked on to the grid.

Paul Homewood sets out to douse their misplaced exuberance with a little mathematics and physics.

Shell’s New Battery Won’t Solve Wind Intermittency Problem
Not a Lot of People Know That
Paul Homewood
22 February 2020

Oil and gas giant Shell has plans for a 100-megawatt…

The Statute of Rhuddlan provided the constitutional basis for the government of the Principality of Wales from 1284 until 1536. The Statute introduced English common law to Wales but also permitted the continuance of Welsh legal practices within the Principality.

The statute, which was enacted on March 3, 1284 after careful consideration by Edward I, takes its name from Rhuddlan Castle in Denbighshire where it was first promulgated on March 19 1284.

The Prince of Gwynedd had been recognised by the English Crown as Prince of Wales in 1267, holding his lands with the king of England as his feudal overlord. It was thus that the English interpreted the title of Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Lord of Aberffraw, which was briefly held after his death by his successor Dafydd ap Gruffudd. This meant that when Llywelyn rebelled, the English interpreted it as an act of treason. Accordingly, his lands escheated to…

On March 19, 1649 the House of Commons abolished the House of Lords. This revolutionary action did not obtain the consent of either Lords or the King and so it was not recognised as a valid law after the restoration of the King.

The first part of the abolishing Act was as follows.

The Commons of England assembled in Parliament, finding by too long experience that the House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the people of England to be continued, have thought fit to ordain and enact, and be it ordained and enacted by this present Parliament, and by the authority of the same, that from henceforth the House of Lords in Parliament shall be and is hereby wholly abolished and taken away; and that the Lords shall not from henceforth meet or sit in the said House called the Lords’ House, or in any other house or…

I’ve posted twice on the story of the publisher Hachette canceling publication of Woody Allen’s memoir, Apropos of Nothing (see here and here). In short, Hachette was committed to publishing the book, but then Hachette author Ronan Farrow protested, on the grounds that he believed Allen had molested his step-sister Dylan Farrow when she was seven. (Two investigations failed to produce any evidence that Allen was guilty.) Farrow broke his relations with Hachette, and then a number of Hachette employees walked out for a day, on the grounds that they believed the accusations against Allen.

The next day, Hachette “caved”, as Bret Stephens puts it in the op-ed below, and canceled publication of the memoirs. So far as I know, nobody has picked up the book, but I may be wrong.  And, according to Stephens, they should, as he’s read the book and liked it. Having read Allen’s essays…

Although I’m not an expert on pandemic analysis, I am naturally following the COVID-19 data as best I can. And because I always understand data better when I make the figures myself, I’ve been making and looking at COVID-19 trend data, and sharing it as I go.

The figures below are the latest I made as of March 18. For the latest versions, and others I come up with, see the Figures folder in this Open Science Framework, here: osf.io/wd2n6/. You can also get the data and code I use there, under CC0 license. The project updates automatically as I go, but these figures won’t (because this is an old fashioned blog).

Home-rule movement

From the Act of Union on January 1, 1801, until December 6, 1922, the island of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. During the Great Famine, from 1845 to 1849, the island’s population of over 8 million fell by 30%. One million Irish died of starvation and/or disease and another 1.5 million emigrated, mostly to the United States.

From 1874, and particularly under Charles Stewart Parnell from 1880, the Irish Parliamentary Party gained prominence. This was firstly through widespread agrarian agitation via the Irish Land League, that won land reforms for tenants in the form of the Irish Land Acts, and secondly through its attempts to achieve Home Rule, via two unsuccessful bills which would have granted Ireland limited national autonomy.

In April 1916, Irish republicans launched the Easter Rising against British rule and proclaimed an Irish Republic. Although it was crushed…

Victorian coal-fired power: what provides Tasmania’s energy safety net.

The renewable energy zealot is all care and no responsibility. Claims that the world can run on sunshine and breezes and become “100% renewable” have been outdone by Tasmania with its claim that it will soon be 200% renewable.

But, dig a little deeper, and the 200% claim is just as hollow as the 100% claim; neither have ever been achieved at grid scale, and neither of them ever will be.

Unless, of course, you turn a blind eye to the fact that behind every wind turbine and solar panel there’s a coal, gas or nuclear plant chugging away in the background to keep the lights on.

Of the so-called “renewables”, stored hydro at least has the ability to deliver power 24 x 7. However, that’s for only as long as there’s sufficient water sitting behind the dam wall. And the…