Utopia, you are standing in it!

The wind may be free and the sun, when it’s shining, doesn’t cost a penny. But wind and solar literally cost the earth. Put aside the wholesale slaughter of birds, bugs and bats; the destruction of idyllic landscapes and once bustling communities, with residents driven out of their homes by incessant turbine generated low-frequency noise and infrasound.

Then, there’s the inevitable surge in power prices that follows any pursuit of chaotically delivered wind and solar. It’s a night-follows-day kind of thing. Just ask a South Australian, Dane or German.

And you might also direct your enquiry to the people of Georgetown, Texas, where power prices jumped by a fifth overnight.

A town in Texas went “100% renewables” and prices jumped 20%
Jo Nova Blog
Jo Nova
6 November 2019

Georgetown Texas did the Fake Renewables Show and Dance — the one where they “buy” 100% renewables but are connected 24/7…

Canada has a long history of financial/banking stability compared to most other nations.

In this recent speech, Carolina Wilkins, DG at Bank of Canada  points how the system will remain stable despite the worst possible adverse shocks:

Canadian banks are part of a global banking system that is more solid than it was a decade ago. Globally active banks are holding over US$2 trillion more capital than they were at the beginning of 2011, when the phase-in of the post-crisis reforms began. This translates to a 7-percentage point increase in their Tier 1 capital ratio.11  The leverage limits and new liquidity regulations also make these banks more resilient.12

Canada has implemented new measures to further strengthen our banking system. For example, Canada’s prudential regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI), increased the required amount of capital that Canada’s big banks have to hold to…

Juan Carlos I (Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias, born January 5, 1938) is a member of the Spanish royal family who reigned as King of Spain from November 1975 until his abdication in June 2014.

Juan Carlos was born to Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, and Princess María de las Mercedes of Bourbon-Two Sicilies in Rome, Italy, where his grandfather King Alfonso XIII of Spain and other members of the Spanish royal family lived in exile following the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931. He was baptized as Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias. He was given the name Juan Carlos after his father and maternal grandfather, Prince Carlos of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.

Generalísimo Francisco Franco, the Spanish head of state who initiated the civil war by means of a coup d’état against the constitutional republic in 1936, took over…

The NCEA level 2 economics exam took place yesterday afternoon.  I’d been helping my son with his revision and preparation, in the course of which he’d shown me various exams papers from recent years, and some guidance they’d been given on how to answer some of those (past) questions: what might get Achieved, what Merit, and what Excellence.

I wasn’t exactly reassured by what I saw.

As one example, consider this question from last year’s paper 91222 “Analyse inflation using economic concepts and models”.

The first questions were introduced with this statement

The Quantity Theory of Money states that the quantity of money circulating in the economy is equal to the monetary value of the goods and services available in the economy.

The quantity theory of money starts from the identity –  for thus it is –  MV=PT, where

M = some measure of the money supply,

P = some…

Whilst this blog takes no position on the legality of Israeli communities across the green line, we do take a strident stand on holding British media outlets accountable to the accuracy clause of the UK Editors’ Code of Practice. So, over the past several days, we’ve pushed back against multiple outlets – including the Guardian, Independent, Economist, Telegraph and Financial Times – that have misrepresented longstanding US policy on settlements in the context of reports on the new US decision that they’re not illegal.

As we noted in a recent post, these outlets have erred in claiming that the new US position breaks with “four decades” of US policy, which, they assert, deemed Jewish communities in the West Bank “illegal”.

This is not true, as between the late 1970s and 2016, there was not one President or Secretary of State who labeled the settlements “illegal”. …

Guest post by Indy Bhullar and Debbie Challis

There is much more research to be made in these areas, particularly the relationship of eugenics to demography and LSE’s role in training for colonial administration. This is just an outline of some of the material in LSE’s Library Collection and Archives. A good starting point to read more is the blog post by Shikha Dilawri.

The Webbs

In 1883 Galton published Inquiries into Human Faculty, a
collection of experiments, correspondence and data on inheritance, human
ability and psychological tests. It was in this book that Galton created the
word ‘eugenics’ to describe the science and idea of breeding human ‘stock’ to
give ‘the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing
speedily over the less suitable’ in a footnote. ‘Eugenics’ came from the Greek
words ‘genus’, translated as race or kin, and ‘eu’, meaning good…

Franz Joseph I (August 18, 1830 – November 21, 1916) was Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, and monarch of many other states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, from December 2, 1848 to his death. From May 1, 1850 to August 24, 1866 he was also President of the German Confederation, the successor state to the Holy Roman Empire. He was the longest-reigning Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary, as well as the third-longest-reigning monarch of any country in European history, after Louis XIV of France and Johann II of Liechtenstein.

Franz Joseph was born in the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna (on the 65th anniversary of the death his great-great grandfather Holy Roman Emperor Franz I of Lorraine) as the eldest son of Archduke Franz Karl (the younger son of Holy Roman Emperor Franz II), and his wife Princess Sophie of Bavaria. Because his uncle, reigning from 1835…

By John Kruzel – 11/21/19 – The Hill

The Supreme Court on Friday will consider whether to take up a prominent climatologist’s defamation suit against a venerated conservative magazine, in a case that pits climate scientists against the free speech rights of global warming skeptics.

The dispute between scientist Michael Mann and the National Review has drawn attention from lawmakers, interest groups, academics and media, as the court weighs adding a potentially blockbuster First Amendment showdown to an already politically charged docket.

Scientists hail Mann’s lawsuit as a necessary defense against efforts to erode public confidence in the scientific consensus that climate change is an urgent threat, while free speech advocates have rallied around the iconic conservative publication.

The case has made for strange bedfellows, with the National Review receiving backing from the Center for Investigative Reporting, which has produced award-winning coverage of climate change; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell