Utopia, you are standing in it!

From the Vanderbilt Hustler, the student newspaper of that Nashville, Tennessee university, we learn that the demonized people subject to being deplatformed by the Left is—you guessed it—Steve Pinker. Read the article below, which describes a petition the students are putting together demanding that Pinker get booted from an upcoming panel on global issues. The reason is given in the sub-headline: Pinker’s “history of ties to Jeffrey Epstein.”

To be sure, there are only about 120 signatures on the petition, and the chances that it will work seem quite low. What’s important is that Pinker is increasingly regarded by the woke as ideologically polluted, regardless of the value of his books and works, because he had a tangential connection with Epstein—a connection that doesn’t implicate Pinker in any misconduct, sexual or otherwise.

Here’s a small excerpt from the Vanderbilt piece:

Junior Edie Duncan started a petition Nov. 25 to…

I am not opposed to scholars being politically active, nor using their scholarly skills to tackle public issues. Still, I am a proponent of the compartmentalization of scholarship and activism. Values are important, but so is science and that has to be done in a way that does not bias your research or undermine your claims to truth.

When you mix the two – activism and scholarship – you get some real problems. To illustrate, a series of questions:

1. Let’s say you are an activist-scholar and you are on a job search committee. Someone applies, has a strong CV, and says they are an activist-scholar… for the other side. Do you seriously consider them or toss the application?
2. Let’s say that you are on television defending your research and a critical journalist says, “Why should I believe what you say? Don’t ‘activist-scholars’ just dress up their opinions in data? They…

At Human Events, Gregory Wrightstone writes Principled Inaction in the Face of Climate Change Extremism. Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

President Trump’s courageous commitment to America first on the issue of energy emissions.

The 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference, “COP25,” began with a cryptic address by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres: “By the end of the coming decade we will be on one of two paths, one of which is sleepwalking past the point of no return … Do we want to be remembered as the generation that buried its head in the sand and fiddled as the planet burned?”

According to Guterres, “What is still lacking is political will.” And yet, despite all this “lack of political will,” some 70 countries have pledged carbon neutrality by 2050. Conspicuously absent from the proceedings, however, is the Trump Administration. No senior member of President Trump’s administration is in attendance at…

by Judith Curry

The UN Climate Change Conference this week in Madrid provides an important opportunity to reflect on state of the public debate surrounding climate change.

David Graeber’s vitriolic essay “Against Economics” in the New York Review of Books has generated responses from Noah Smith and Scott Sumner among others. I don’t disagree with much that Noah or Scott have to say, but I want to dig a little deeper than they did into some of Graeber’s arguments, because even though I think he is badly misinformed on many if not most of the subjects he writes about, I actually have some sympathy for his dissatisfaction with the current state of economics. Graeber wastes no time on pleasantries.

There is a growing feeling, among those who have the responsibility of managing large economies, that the discipline of economics is no longer fit for purpose. It is beginning to look like a science designed to solve problems that no longer exist.

A serious polemicist should avoid blatant mischaracterizations, exaggerations and cheap shots, and should be well-grounded in…

A further referendum on Brexit is central to many parties’ general election pledges. Today, the Constitution Unit launches a new report examining how such a vote might come about and what form it might take. This updates previous work conducted last year. In this post, adapted from the report’s final chapter, Alan Renwick, Meg Russell, Lisa James and Jess Sargeant sum up the key conclusions. They find that, though it would not be without difficulties, a vote on Johnson’s deal may be the quickest option and the one most likely to command public legitimacy. 

The Constitution Unit’s latest report, The Mechanics of a Further Referendum on Brexit Revisited: Questions for the New Parliament, is published today. It significantly updates our previous analysis of the mechanics of a further Brexit referendum, exploring the circumstances that might lead to a further referendum on Brexit, and the form that such a referendum…

No time can be afforded in 2019 to respect the dead. Not when there’s an election at stake, and the tantalising prospect of scoring cheap political points winks coyly at you from a special advisor’s email. So it is that, within 24 hours after the killings by Usman Khan at London Bridge, politicians have lined up in descending order of deplorability to exploit the tragedy for their own ends. The Prime Minister obviously went first, leaping in front of Sky cameras last night to claim:

” I have long argued that it is a mistake to serious and violent criminals out of prison early and it is very important that we get out of that habit and that we enforce the appropriate sentences for dangerous criminals, especially for terrorists that the public want to see.”

This, one presumes, is a nod to his well-publicised manifesto pledges to “toughen up sentences”…

No matter where the wind industry plies its subsidy-soaked trade, rural folk soon turn hostile. The German wind industry is at a standstill, not only because subsidies have been wound down, but also as a result of furious rural residents – fed up with being driven nuts in their homes, or being driven out of them, altogether by incessant low-frequency noise and infrasound – blocking projects and taking developers to court.

As we’ve reported recently, Hawaiians are on the war path, too.

The protesters number in their hundreds, and their perfectly understandable fury has been met with heavy-handed policing, with over 160 Hawaiians being cuffed and carted away. Here’s a report from NZ’s Maori News on a battle for Hawaii’s heart and soul.

“Bad night” in Hawaii as arrests rise to 161
Te Ao Maori News
Mare Haimona-Riki
16 November 2019

More than 25 people were arrested in…