Utopia, you are standing in it!

Reader Bryan called my attention to this video from 2016 in which Brady and Keith, who “uncover science treasures”, visit the Council Room of Britain’s Royal Society. Among the treasures they examine are the famous portrait of Darwin that you’ve surely seen, and a nice scale model of H.M.S. Beagle.  As I noted in my Darwin lecture in Antarctica, the Beagle was very small: 27.5 m (90 feet) long and just 7.5 m (24 feet) across. That is tiny!

They then examine what appears to be a first edition of the four-volume account of the Beagle’s voyage (actually the voyages of two ships: the set is called The Narrative of the Voyages of H.M. Ships Adventure and Beagle), which includes the famous volume by Darwin known as The Voyage of the Beagle. This set was given to the Royal Society by Darwin and his captain, Robert FitzRoy.

Pity…

On this date in history: February 10, 1840. Her Majesty Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland married her maternal first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Victoria once complained to her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, that her mother’s close proximity promised “torment for many years”, Melbourne sympathized but said it could be avoided by marriage, which Victoria called a “schocking alternative”. Although a marriage between Victoria and her cousin Prince Albert had been encouraged by the Coburg family, specifically King Leopold I of the Belgians since 1936, Victoria was ambivalent at best toward the arrangement.

The idea of marriage between Albert and his cousin, Victoria, was first documented in an 1821 letter from his paternal grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, (Countess Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorf) who said that he was “the pendant to the pretty cousin”.

Victoria did however, show interest in Albert’s education…

Enormous expense, twenty times more wind turbines, hydrogen production, much less meat eating, carbon capture, hard ‘lifestyle changes’ and so on. Maybe travel to work on a flying pig – and all for what?

It won’t be easy, but clean energy analyst Chris Goodall believes that the UK is entirely capable of becoming carbon neutral, says BBC Science.

Belatedly, the world has realised it has to eliminate greenhouse gases within a few decades.

The UK has promised ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050. Is this is an achievable aim? How much will it cost? In what ways will our lifestyles need to change?

Here’s the latest installment in our ongoing series of posts documenting BDS fails.

Political

Sudan gives Israel initial okay for overflights- official

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan has agreed to allow flights heading to Israel to cross its airspace, a military spokesman said on Wednesday, two days after Sudan’s military head of state held a surprise meeting with Israel’s prime minister.

Israel officially allows Israelis to travel to Saudi Arabia

Jordan gets first natural gas supplies from Israel

Under the agreement, the U.S.-Israeli consortium will supply Jordan gas for 15 years from the field in the Mediterranean.

The deal has faced opposition in Jordan where many view Israel as an erstwhile enemy. Activists and parliamentarians have lobbied the…

I came upon this article when someone sent me the tweet below (I don’t know who Cathy Young is). The caption is pretty snarky, but the article in The Atlantic  by Megan Garber, which you can access by clicking on the link or the bottom part of the tweet, justifies the snark. It’s really a pretty dire article that criticizes due process because in some cases (read: accusations of sexual misconduct), “due process” involves making the witnesses uncomfortable or upset, and causing harm. And it can’t guarantee justice.

The article is about how the defense lawyers for Harvey Weinstein have been going pretty strongly…