Utopia, you are standing in it!

UPDATE: Over at Pharnygula, P.Z. has his own take (negative) on Bering’s paper and the lax standards of evolutionary psychology.  P.Z. notes that the “adaptive” results of the handgrip study cited by Bering have not in fact been replicated by other investigators.   That calls the results into question, something that Bering conveniently omits from his piece.

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In the past week I’ve read two “pop” articles on evolutionary psychology.  One, “Social Animal,” in the latest New Yorker, is by New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks.  It’s apparently an extract from an eponymous upcoming book.  The piece is cleverly framed: it’s the account of a first date by two fictional people, “Harold” and “Erica,” in which all of their conversation, their gestures, and their subsequent courtship and marriage are couched in terms of evolutionary psychology, with Brooks describing the research backing up the story.  Here’s…

THE Simpsons and Medieval Tech | Climatism

“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms.
That’s the only reason to build them.
They don’t make sense without the tax credit.
–– Warren Buffett

“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work;
we need a fundamentally different approach.”
–– Top Google engineers

“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels
in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole
is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.
– James Hansen
(The Godfather of AGW alarmism / former NASA climate chief)

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H/t Guy Takamatsu

HAPPY Hump Day!

A little gem to help you through the rest of the working week, courtesy of our favourite politically incorrect family – The Simpsons.

WATCH (2 mins) …

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UNreliables related :

• GREEN JOBS : Helicopter De-Icing For Wind…

Introduction

On 19th January, after discussions within the Royal Family, it was announced that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will step back from royal duties, no longer receive public funds, or ‘formally represent the Queen’. Neither will they use their HRH titles, and more generally they will not be classed as ‘working members of the Royal Family’. Instead, the Sussexes will pursue a new life in Canada, outside the structure of the Royal Family, although they have committed to continue to ‘uphold the values of Her Majesty’.

Not all the details of this arrangement have been finalised ahead of its implementation in the Spring and given that Prince Harry is sixth in the line of succession it may appear that there are few, if any, constitutional implications. However, this blog addresses perhaps the one constitutional issue that the Sussexes decision raises – Prince Harry’s position as a Counsellor…

* 1793 – After being found guilty of treason by the French National Convention, Louis XVI of France is executed by guillotine.

Louis XVI (August 23, 1754 – January 21, 1793), born Louis-Auguste, was the last king of France and Navarre before the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution.

Louis-Auguste de France, who was given the title Duc de Berry at birth, was born in the Palace of Versailles. One of seven children, he was the second surviving son of Louis, the Dauphin of France, and the grandson of Louis XV of France and Navarre and of his consort, Maria Leszczyńska. His mother was Marie-Josèphe of Saxony, the daughter of Prince-Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony, (also King Augustus III of Poland) and Maria Josepha of Austria.

In 1765, at the death of his father, Louis, Dauphin of France son and heir apparent of Louis XV, Louis-Auguste became…

The annual Demographia report on housing affordability across a range of English-speaking advanced countries was released earlier this week.

If you are a New Zealander who cares at all about efficiency, fairness (especially to the rising generation), functioning markets it makes pretty bleak reading.   The focus of the analysis is on the ratio of median house prices to median household income.   Here is ratio for the median urban market in each of the countries they look at

(They also look at the two city states Singapore  (which is in the middle of the pack) and Hong Kong (which is off the charts, see below).

And here is a chart focused just on fairly large cities (>1 million people).  I’ve shown the ten cities with the lowest price to income ratios, the ten with the highest ratios, and a selection (every ten or so rank places) of those in-between.

When PhDs Don’t Understand Westminster Parliamentarism

The debates in Westminster parliamentarism on the role of Crown-in-Parliament vs. the Crown-in-Council mostly result from legitimate differences of interpretation of Crown prerogative, such as between Dawson’s and Forsey’s respective schools of thought. Unfortunately, sometimes the debates result from factually incorrect assertions that even PhDs and tenured professors propagate, perhaps hoping that their credentials and their name will suffice in place of arguments or citations! Christian Nadeau, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montreal, provides one such example.

Nadeau wrote “Constitutional Rule Bending: When Angry Citizens Push Back and Fight for Democracy” in the same issue of Canada Watch to which Peter Russell contributed the article featured in my previous blog entry. Essentially, Nadeau interprets the prorogations of 2008 and 2009 as evidence Harper’s desire to govern without the Crown-in-Parliament, and emblematic of a contempt for parliamentarism. Ironically, Nadeau shows contempt for Westminster…

The Radicalism of the “Stop Harper” Lobby and of the High-Tory Monarchists

Last year, Bridget DePape abused her position as a Senate Page and mounted a silent protest with her “Stop Harper” sign in the Senate chamber while the Governor General read the Speech from the Throne that opened the 1^st Session of the 41^st Parliament. DePape has since inspired a new virulent “Stop Harper” Lobby, which has adopted histrionic extra-Parliamentary tactics and anti-constitutional viewpoints on the role of the Governor General of Canada and Queen of Canada in our system of Responsible Government.

Much to my surprise and chagrin, I have also recently learned of the existence of what I can only describe as a small fringe element of High Tories in Canada, who have expressed objection to this entry on some social media because they maintain that the Sovereign in the United Kingdom and Governors General…

Introduction

The scholarly consensus on cabinet government in Canada argues that from Prime Minister Trudeau’s first government (1968 to 1979, the 20^th Ministry) onward, the powers of the prime minister have become more centralized relative to both those of cabinet and parliament. Fed largely by Donald Savoie’s magnum opus Governing from the Centre: The Concentration of Power in Canadian Politics, the mythology of cabinet government in Canada also asserts that the Pearson government (the 19^th Ministry, 1963 to 1968) was the last to practise the principle of cabinet government that the prime minister acted as primus inter pares (“first among equals”), and that from Prime Ministers Trudeau to Harper, cabinet government has suffered from an inexorable decline into irrelevancy. The scholarly consensus thus sanctifies Pearson as the last non-centralizing prime minister and friend of the classical model of cabinet government, and respectful of…

When I first embarked on this constitutional odyssey in 2011, I encountered scholars who propagated a novel constitutional interpretation with no basis in history, nor in the principles of Responsible Government itself, which I call “Reserve Powers Without Consequence”: the notion that the Governor General can reject a prime minister’s constitutional advice and that this extraordinary and rare vice-regal intervention, in turn, entails no consequences and allows the prime minister to carry on in office as if nothing happened until the House of Commons might say otherwise. This is false. And numerous historical precedents — along with the recent case from British Columbia in 2017 — demonstrate the falsity of this notion. I have written on one such case study in my latest piece in The Dorchester Review.

Solar Thermal: Big, Shiny White Elephant.

US taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of $millions following the spectacular financial collapse of the world’s biggest solar-thermal power plant, Crescent Dunes, situated in the Nevada desert, north-west of Las Vegas.

South Australians (victims of their government’s obsession with chaotically intermittent wind and solar) can count themselves lucky that they didn’t end up with a carbon copy of the Crescent Dunes debacle.

Back in August 2017, STT reported on efforts by the Weatherill Labor government to build a solar-thermal plant at Port Augusta with the ‘help’ of the characters behind Crescent Dunes. It was designed with a trivial 150 MW (notional) capacity, but came with an absolutely staggering $1.2bn pricetag: South Australia: Sublime One Day, Ridiculous the Next – Premier Set to Squander $1.2bn on Solar-Thermal Boondoggle

Fortunately for South Australians that big, shiny white elephant never get off the ground and Jay…

Last weekend marked 29 years since the first Iraqi missile attack on Israel during the Gulf War of 1991. 

A review of available BBC online content relating to those five and a half weeks of attacks shows that anyone searching today for information on those events will find only minimal references to the topic.

The timeline in the BBC’s profile of Israel reads:

“1991 January – Gulf War. Iraq fires 39 Scud missiles at Israel in failed attempt to regionalise conflict. Israel refrains from responding at US request.”

An entry for January 18^th 1991 in the BBC’s ‘On This Day’ archive titled “Iraqi Scud missiles hit Israel” states:

“Iraq has attacked two Israeli cities with Scud missiles, prompting fears that Israel may be drawn into the Gulf War.

Israel’s largest city, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, its main seaport, were hit in the attacks, which began at…

Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) – Positive Phase | BOM

“People have been imagining that the climate is changing,
exaggerating every weather event, getting widespread press coverage,
and blaming it on man – for as long as there have been newspapers.”
–Tony Heller
Climate Change Insanity Never Changes

“It is fortunate for the community’s peace of mind
that the Commonwealth Meteorological Office exists as a
corrective to scare mongering and shameless prophecy.”
– Mr. E. Bromley : Commonwealth Meteorological Office (BoM) 1923

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AUSTRALIA’s highly variable climate is influenced by the broad patterns in the oceans around it and the atmosphere above it. These patterns are considered the “dominant climate and weather drivers“ according to Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology.

ENSO (El Niño–Southern Oscillation) is one of Australia and the planet’s key climate drivers, influencing extremes including devastating bushfires, “droughts and flooding rains“.

ENSO swings…