Utopia, you are standing in it!

The significance of the title of Emperor in Western Europe. From the time of Roman Emperor Constantine I (r. 306–337), the Roman Emperors had, with very few exceptions, taken on a role as promoters and defenders of Christianity. The reign of Constantine established a precedent for the position of the Christian Emperor in the Church. Emperors […]

The Title of Tsar. Part II.

I still hope that NZ looks over in horror at Canada and pulls back from making it risky for platforms to link to news.Facebook’s clearly decided that being in news just isn’t worth the aggro. Look at this. Facebook referrals to top global news sites dropped from 120 million per month to about 20 million…

…and make the platforms pay for it

… and the results are statistically disastrous.   Summary of three pieces on Economist Melissa Kearney’s Research Freakonomics Radio: When did marriage become a luxury good? Related: Why Did You Marry That Person? (Replay) Related: Why Does the Richest Country in the World Have So Many Poor Kids? (Update) Related: The Fracking Boom, a Baby Boom, and the Retreat From…

US leads the world in single-parent households…

The title of Tsar (alternatively Czar, Tzar or Csar) was a title used by Slavic monarchs. The term is derived from the Latin word Caesar. Caesar was a Cognomen which was the third name of a citizen of ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. Initially, a Cognomen was a nickname, but lost that purpose when […]

The Title of Tsar. Part I.

A few weeks ago, just before I went away for 10 days holiday, the latest in the saga of the Reserve Bank MPC, and the blackball on external experts when the first MPC appointments were made, appeared in the Herald. You’ll recall that it was widely understood that there had been such a blackball, put […]

MPC appointments, past and future

The People’s Champion vs The People’s Prosecutor: It is the news media’s job to elicit information from politicians – not to prosecute them. Peters’ promise to sort out TVNZ should be believed. If he finds himself in a position to carry out his threat, then it will only be because the angry majority has had […]

CHRIS TROTTER:  The angry majority

I am not bullish about China’s economy. Even 10 or more years ago, when many people thought China was going to be the economic superpower of the 21st century, I poured cold water on those predictions. Simply stated, China suffers from too much bad economic policy. Is it as bad as it was during Mao’s […]

China and Migration

Perhaps the worst war plan in American history. (Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, page 115) ‘It failed utterly.’ (Verdict of Marek Belka, Prime Minister of Poland which contributed troops to the coalition, describing the entire American project to invade and ‘liberate’ Iraq, p.347) Bad assumptions The US Army invaded Iraq on 20 March […]

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq by Thomas E. Ricks (2006)

‘Yee-haw is not a foreign policy.’ (Hand-written sign in the bar of the British compound of the Green Zone, Baghdad) Why America invaded Iraq In March 2003 the US Army, accompanied by forces from the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’, invaded Iraq with the aim of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The architects of the invasion, US […]

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Baghdad’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (2006)

In Monty Python’s film, “The Life of Brian,” the lead character hangs hopelessly on the cross when a small army arrives to rescue him. His relief is short-lived as Otto, the leader, promptly announces that they are the crack suicide squad trained to kill themselves “within 20 seconds.” The scene came to mind yesterday as […]

The House Crack Suicide Squad: The Ouster of McCarthy Captures the Politics of Our Times

Radio NZ reports that Minister for Social Development Carmel Sepuloni was on the campaign trail in Christchurch yesterday defending her government’s performance. She said that: “Her government had seen higher numbers of beneficiaries moving into jobs …” Yet the numbers on a Jobseeker benefit continue to climb. Technically her assertion may be true but it’s…

Checking out Carmel Sepuloni’s campaign claims

I don’t know how Anna Krylov manages to sustain a successful career as an accomplished and honored theoretical and quantum chemist at the University of Southern California—while at the same time turning out long and thoughtful pieces that attack the ruination of science by the Authoritarian Left. She was, for example, the main author of […]

Fighting ideological repression by the Authoritarian Left

If a drug or medical device has already gone through the regulatory gauntlet at the FDA and Australia, or in the UK and Canada, or the EU and Taiwan, or Switzerland and Singapore, does it seem all that likely that Medsafe’s going to find anything that everyone else missed?Sure, Medsafe has ‘expedited’ processes for drugs…

Certified

It is of course precarious to criticize the present-day worship of “indigenous knowledge”, as it’s all too easy to dismiss that criticism as racism or bigotry.  The problem is not that the empirical knowledge of indigenous people is worthless, because it isn’t. Although it’s often derived from trial and error, that is still a way […]

NSF invests millions in indigenous knowledge