Utopia, you are standing in it!

On the last day of 2019, I reported on a new way of hiring faculty at the University of California. It has already started on the Berkeley campus, and is poised to begin at both the Santa Cruz and Davis campuses.

The method, as implemented at Berkeley, is to require candidates for faculty jobs—not all of them yet, just those applying to some selected departments in the life sciences—to submit “diversity statements” with their applications. These statements require three features: they must express your philosophy of diversity, they must recount your past efforts to promote diversity, and they must describe your plans to increase diversity at the UC campus where you’re applying.

The invidious aspect of this process at Berkeley is that the diversity statements were vetted by a committee, not the department itself, and they were scored on a scale that goes from 1 (worst) to 5 (best) in…

A decade from now, New Yorkers will rue the day that Andrew Cuomo determined to run their state on chaotically intermittent wind and solar.

Like everywhere else that’s attempted to run on sunshine and breezes, New York’s power prices are bound to rocket out of control and its enviable grid reliability will soon become a thing of the past.

That wind and solar obsessed South Australia, Denmark and Germany fight for line honours in the world’s highest power prices stakes is no surprise.

But the fact that power prices will inevitably rise to unaffordable levels hasn’t deterred New York’s Governor, who seems hellbent on following those dismal examples.

A gobsmacked Roger Caiazza sets out to tally up the staggering price tag attached to Cuomo’s wind and solar obsession, which may well reach a breathtaking $47,000,000,000.

New York Energy Bill from Cuomo to Consumers Could Top $47 Billion!
Natural Gas Now

The Labour Party is currently engaged in picking a new leader. In recent years greater and greater powers have been given to party members in such elections, at the cost of parliamentarians. Meg Russell argues that these changes have destabilised the dynamics of parliamentary democracy, weakening essential lines of accountability. She suggests that there is a need to properly review these effects. In the meantime she proposes some short-term solutions for Labour.

Labour’s leadership election is underway, with a final decision due after a ballot of party members and affiliated supporters on 4 April. Currently, four candidates are pursuing nominations from constituency parties and affiliated organisations, following an initial round of nominations by Labour MPs (and MEPs). Under Labour’s present system, the party’s MPs have relatively little control over the outcome – serving solely as ‘gatekeepers’ to the ballot. As occurred in 2015, a leader could hence emerge who has…

On this date, February 6, 1952, George VI of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland died and was succeeded by his elder daughter as Queen Elizabeth II. This marks her 68th year on the throne.

The stress of the World War II had taken its toll on the King George VI’s health, made worse by his heavy smoking and subsequent development of lung cancer among other ailments, including arteriosclerosis and Buerger’s disease. A planned tour of Australia and New Zealand was postponed after the King suffered an arterial blockage in his right leg, which threatened the loss of the leg and was treated with a right lumbar sympathectomy in March 1949.

His elder daughter, Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh and the heir presumptive, took on more royal duties as her father’s health deteriorated. The King was well enough to open the Festival of Britain in May 1951, but…