Utopia, you are standing in it!

David Ricardo:

Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each. This pursuit of individual advantage is admirably connected with the universal good of the whole… It is this principle which determines that wine shall be made in France and Portugal, that corn shall be grown in America and Poland, and that hardware and other goods shall be manufactured in England…

If Portugal had no commercial connexion with other countries, instead of employing a great part of her capital and industry in the production of wines, with which she purchases for her own use the cloth and hardware of other countries, she would be obliged to devote a part of that capital to the manufacture of those commodities, which she would thus obtain probably inferior in quality as well as quantity.

The quantity of…

Ivan IV Vasilyevich (August 25, 1530 – March 28, 1584), commonly known in English as Ivan the Terrible, “Ivan the Formidable” or “Ivan the Fearsome” was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and the first Moscow ruler to be crownedTsar of all Russia from 1547 to 1584.

Ivan was the first Moscow ruler born after its independence.

Early life

Ivan was the first son of Grand Prince Vasili III of Moscow and his second wife, Elena Glinskaya, Elena was born in 1510 as the daughter of Prince Vasili Lvovich Glinsky (d. 1515), a member of a Lipka Tatar clan claiming descent from the Mongol ruler Mamai, and Serbian Princess Ana Jakšić from the Jakšić noble family.

Elena’s mother was a Serbian princess and her father’s family, the Glinski clan (nobles based in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), claimed descent both from Orthodox Hungarian nobles and the Mongol…

We have reached an interesting point in this series. Although, as we shall see, the House of Stuart will have its difficult times on and off the thrones of England and Scotland, we have reached a period of relative stability as far as legal successions are concerned. There will be a few more crises for the throne but we will not see civil wars and usurpations like we have had in the past. In the next section of this topic we will see the rise of Parliament and the battle with the Crown over the power within the government. I will examine how this conflict actually helped stabilize the Crown and the succession to the throne.

James I-VI, King of England and King of Scots (when still only King of Scots) married Princess Anne of Denmark in 1589, the daughter of King Frederik II of Denmark and Norway and his wife…

Charles I (November 19, 1600 – January 30, 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark and King Frederik II of Denmark and Norway and Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow.

James VI was the first cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, and when she died childless in March of 1603, he became King of England and Ireland as James I. Charles was a weak and sickly infant, and while his parents and older siblings left for England in April and early June that year, due to his fragile health, he remained in Scotland with his father’s friend Lord Fyvie, appointed as his guardian.

By 1604, when Charles was three-and-a-half, he was able to walk the length…

You know what this original trailer reinforces? The iconic characters, the legends playing them, the instantly recognizable music?

It’s the idea that “The Godfather” was a “Star Wars” or “Harry Potter” for grownup film lovers. An alien universe obsessively detailed, life and death stakes, villains, a young hero to be tempted and corrupted, all summoned up by a few perfect notes on a score, a line, a shadow, a gesture.

Film fans have obsessed over this film, this trilogy, for decades. Granted, they and we arent cosplayers. But geeking out over a movie can happen to great films, too.

Most of us associate these movies with the holidays, as the third and I believe the second “Godfather” movies opened on Christmas.

But the original came out on today’s date in March of 1972.

The Supreme Court’s decision, forcing a wind farm operator to shut down all of its turbines at night-time, lifts the lid on a toxic culture, where the wind industry torments and ridicules its victims, as a matter of standard corporate practice.

On 25 March 2022, Justice Melinda Richards of the Victorian Supreme Court slapped an injunction on a wind farm because the noise it generates has been driving neighbours nuts for seven years, and the operator has done absolutely nothing about their suffering.

The victorious plaintiffs, Noel Uren (pictured on the left above) and John Zakula (on the right) have set a legal precedent for the ages; every wind farm neighbour who has suffered at the hands of the wind industry owes them an eternal debt of gratitude.

The full judgment is available here: Uren v Bald Hills WF [2022] VSC 145

And our analysis is available here: Landmark Decision…

Quite a juicy report about the governing party of Alberta today. Premier and United Conservative Party (UCP) leader Jason Kenny has been recorded having told a caucus staff meeting that he does not need the job and could just walk away. However, he says the party is at risk of being taken over by conspiracy mongers and other fanatics, and he is trying to stop them. “I don’t say this stuff publicly, these are just kooky people generally,” he said, and “I will not let this mainstream conservative party become an agent for extreme, hateful, intolerant, bigoted and crazy views … the lunatics are trying to take over the asylum.”

The backstory is that the UCP is itself a merger of the old Progressive Conservative Party and the Wildrose, which is indeed a far-right “populist” and conspiracy-motivated group. This division on the right is what enabled the NDP to win government…

In a world-first, neighbours tormented by wind turbine noise have won a landmark victory, forcing the operator to shut down all of its turbines at night-time.

Yesterday, Justice Melinda Richards of the Victorian Supreme Court slapped an injunction on a wind farm because the noise it generates has been driving neighbours nuts for seven years, and the operator has done absolutely nothing about their suffering.

Her Honour also ordered damages, including aggravated damages for the high-handed way in which the operator has treated its victims. Since March 2015, the community surrounding the Bald Hills wind farm have been tortured by low-frequency noise and infrasound generated by 52, 2 MW Senvion MM92s.

Neighbours started complaining to the operator about noise, straightaway. But, as is their wont, the operator simply rejected the mounting complaints and carried on regardless.

Locals, however, were not perturbed. Instead, they lawyered up. Engaging the tough and tenacious

BMW i3 electric car plus battery pack [image credit: carmagazine.co.uk]
Unlucky. It’s not just lithium either. Nickel prices are going crazy as supply problems loom. The notion of EVs competing on price with fuel burners any time soon is receding fast, if not dead in the water.
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Soaring lithium prices are threatening energy transition efforts as EV battery makers will be forced to hike the prices for their products by as much as 25 percent, Morgan Stanley has warned.

Over the past 12 months, the bank said, as quoted by Bloomberg, the price of lithium carbonate, which is a key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries, has jumped five times.

This may force EV manufacturers to hike prices by up to 15 percent, hurting demand, reports OilPrice.com.

The news comes at a bad time for EVs. Rising retail fuel prices in some parts of the world, such…