Utopia, you are standing in it!

This blog post uses the timeline of Byzantine emperors from Wikipedia and then adds details and comments from John Julius Norwich’s book Byzantium: The Early Centuries.

Constantine I ‘the Great’ (324-337)

Son of the Augustus Constantius Chlorus and Helena. Proclaimed Augustus of the western empire upon the death of his father on 25 July 306, he became sole ruler of the western empire after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312. In 324, he defeated the eastern Augustus Licinius and re-united the empire under his rule, reigning as sole emperor until his death. Constantine completed the administrative and military reforms begun under Diocletian, who had begun ushering in the Dominate period. Actively interested in Christianity, he played a crucial role in its development and the Christianization of the Roman world, through his convocation of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea. He re-founded the city of Byzantium as ‘New…

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “alas”, derives from this article in Canada’s National Post (click on screenshot):

I’m surprised that they made a joke about global warming rather than religion, though!:

The Government seemed to be in a bind about the cannabis referendum to be held at the general election next year.  The dilemma was about whether the referendum should be binding.

Referencing a leaked cabinet paper, National Party drug reform spokeswoman Paula Bennett threw doubt on how binding the referendum would be. 

National declined to release the paper to protect the source (something of an impediment when it comes to establishing the credibility of claims against political opponents) but said only one of four referendum options due to be discussed by Cabinet yesterday might compel the Government to act on the outcome.

The other three possibilities would not be technically “binding” because the government would not be obliged to act on them.

This tweet from Chris Bishop caught my eye

Jacinda Ardern embarrassing herself in the House by insisting the cannabis referendum is “binding” against the advice of the Justice Ministry, the Office of the Clerk, experts, and common-sense. There is no end to the depth of the incompetence of this useless government.

— Christopher Bishop (@cjsbishop) May 7, 2019

This is the second in a series of posts about this issue and related matters. It would seem that Jacinda Ardern is further compounding the brazen misinformation put about by Andrew Little when he claimed according to a report from Jane Patterson at RNZ

Cabinet ministers have agreed the referendum will be binding, based on agreement by all three governing parties.

“The voters’ choice will be binding because all of the parties that make up the current government have committed to abide by the outcome,” Justice Minister Andrew Little said.

Now this…

This is worth another look and is a humorous way to view the issues covered by Earth Day as well as this website. Comedian George Carlin (1937 – 2008) gives a hilarious look at the environment and environmentalists during a comedy special he did. Carlin told the truth that the Earth has been through a lot worse than man’s influence.

It’s this summer’s hottest pastime for libertarian-leaning academics: finding examples of bad scholarship in Nancy MacLean’s new book Democracy in Chains. For those out of the loop, MacLean, a history professor at Duke University, argues in her book that Nobel-prize winning public choice economist James Buchanan is part of some Koch-funded vast right-libertarian conspiracy to destroy democracy as inspired by southern racist agrarians and confederates like John Calhoun. This glowing review from NPR should give you a taste of her argument, which often has the air of a bizarre conspiracy theory. Unfortunately, to make these arguments she’s had to cut some huge corners in her federally-funded research. Here’s a round-up of her dishonesty:

• David Bernstein points out how MacLean’s own sources contradict her claims that libertarian Frank Chodorov disagreed with the ruling in Brown v. Board.
• Russ Roberts reveals how out-of-context Tyler Cowen was taken by MacLean, misquoting him…