Utopia, you are standing in it!

You may not know this, but Palestinians regularly seek and get medical treatment in Israeli hospitals, and are rarely refused entry into Israel for that.  For a Palestinian to avail themselves of the world-class health care available in Israel, they have to meet three conditions:

1. The illness cannot be treated in one of the several Palestinian hospitals. This means that care is sought largely by those with cancer, eye diseases, and heart diseases, as well as organ failure.
2. The patient must get permission from the Palestinian Authority to go to Israel for treatment.
3. Israel must determine that the patient or those accompanying him/her are not a danger to Israel, i.e., they cannot be terrorists or be suspected of meeting with underground terrorists in Israel. This denial happens rarely. In fact, several years ago, Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the terrorist organization Hamas, had his daughter treated for a serious condition…

A recent study on the effect of minimum wages in the city of Seattle has produced some conflicted reactions. As most economists expected, the significant increase in the minimum wage resulted in job losses and bankruptcies. Others, however, doubt the validity of the results given that the sample may be incomplete.

In this post I want to focus just one empirical problem. An incomplete sample in itself may not be a problem. The issue is whether or not the observations missing from the sample are relevant. This problem has been pointed out before as the Russian Roulette Effect, which consists in asking survivors of the increase in minimum wages if the increase in minimum wages have put them out of business. Of course, the answer is no. In regards to Seattle, a concern might be that fast food chains such as McDonald’s are not properly included in the study.

The…

Sure, sunshine may be free, but solar power is the most expensive stuff around. And, of course, when the sky clouds up or the sun sets, solar power simply can’t be bought at any price.

Assume, for the moment, the wind always blew and the sun always shone, then wind and solar power just might make sense. That’s why those talking about an ‘all wind and sun powered future’ sound like they’re coming from another planet.

Renewables rent seekers keep telling us how cheap wind and solar are, compared to those ‘evil’ fossil fuels, coal and gas.

But ‘price’ and ‘value’ are not the same animals. What we pay for something, and what it’s worth depends entirely upon what we get. And, in relation to the consumption of electricity, whether or not we get it, at all.

Wind power might be ‘free’, but try purchasing it, at any price, when…

Heather Roy

19 October 2020

Opinion Piece published in the Sunday Star Times on Sunday 18 October 2020

David Seymour has often lamented he’d like some friends to join him at parliament. It’s a lonely place at the best of times, but no-one knows this better than Seymour who has manned the ACT Parliamentary Party on his own for two parliamentary terms.

Now the electorate at large has given him not just one or two friends but likely nine as last night’s election result revealed.

Forget the two big old parties slogging it out for no change for government; this election has been David Seymour’s and therefore ACT’s.

Their fortunes began rising a little at the start of the year, climbing to a steady 7 – 8 percent throughout the election campaign. This is ACT’s best election ever, with 10 MPs making their way to parliament, trumping the nine strong…

The pandemic has sucked the air out of the climatism scare, so the usual suspects are stirring the pot this Halloween season.  Of course many are joining to make up this witches brew, but take for example this CBS News report today: For many climate change finally hits home.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds.

2020 has been a year of nonstop crises. For a while there, it was almost possible to forget an ongoing crisis that used to have our attention: climate change. But Nature found a way to remind us.

In the Midwest, punishing 100-mile-per-hour winds. In the Southwest, a brutal succession of floods and droughts. On the coasts: a freakish number of devastating hurricanes.

And in our Western states, historic mega-fires that sent a plume of ash and smoke all the way to the East Coast. More than four million acres have burned in California alone…

Most of you have heard of Russell’s Teapot, the hypothetical but undetectable orbiting object that Bertrand Russell used to show why we shouldn’t believe things for which there is no evidence (i.e., “religion”). But perhaps you don’t know where that simile came from.  While futzing around on the Internet, I came across Russell’s essay “Is there a God?“, which is described as “commissioned by, but never published in, Illustrated Magazine, in 1952.” It’s apparently been published in his collected papers, though, and I give that reference at the bottom. And it’s the first mention of the fabled Teapot.

A lot of the stuff in this essay was taken from Russell’s famous and earlier piece, “Why I am Not a Christian“, first published as a pamphlet in 1927.  If you think that the hallmark of New Atheism is its vociferous, in-your-face anti-theism, think again, for people…