Utopia, you are standing in it!

Image: UK Parliament via Flickr CC

The earliest description of the ceremony in which the Commons are summoned to the Lords by Black Rod comes in a notebook that belonged to Sir Thomas Duppa, who filled the position between 1683 and 1694, and had been deputy to his predecessor, Sir Edward Carteret, from 1675. The description is part of a set of procedural notes dated 14 August 1679, presumably given to Duppa in anticipation of his having to fulfil the role at the opening of the new parliament, only recently elected. The note reads:

When the King is sett [seated], either he or my Lord Great Chamberlain gives you Order to call the House of Commons. Then you go immediately, and when you come there, you knock with the end of your rod four or five times, and when the Doors are open, and [you] come in as high as…

Malcolm Turnbull’s miserable presence endures in the Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro project, a white elephant that’ll cost taxpayers at least $10billion.

Before he was ditched as PM by his Liberal Party over his pitch to expand subsidies to chaotically intermittent wind and solar and to extend those subsidies until the end of time, Malcolm Turnbull and his son, Alex were considered the dynamic duo among renewable energy rent seekers.

Turnbull the Younger managed to throw $millions at a nearly bankrupt wind power outfit (Infigen) just before daddy signed the Paris Climate Agreement, which lifted Infigen’s stocks and made the canny young investor a veritable fortune. Talk about lucky!: Born Lucky: Stars Align Perfectly for PM’s Son with Mammoth Bet on Wind Power Outfit Infigen

There’s plenty to dislike about Malcolm Turnbull, a man who should have headed up the Greens, rather than Australia’s notionally conservative party, the Liberals. He secretly assisted…

In 1944 the RLM issued a requirement for an aircraft with a range of 11000 km (6835 miles) and a bomb load of 4000 kg (8818 lbs). This bomber was to be able to fly from Germany to New York City and back without refueling. Five of Germany’s top aircraft companies had submitted designs, but none of them met the range requirements for this Amerika Bomber. Their proposals were redesigned and resubmitted at the second competition, but nothing had changed. The Hortens were not invited to submit a proposal because it was thought that they were only interested in fighter aircraft.

After the Hortens learned of these design failures, they the went about designing the XVIII A Amerika Bomber. During the Christmas 1944 holidays, Reimar and Walter Horten worked on the design specifications for their all-wing bomber. They drew up a rough draft and worked on weight calculations, allowing for…

Blog Post by Joe Babaian

Today’s blog is inspired by the so-called human-centered waves of the current pandemic. Attribution and design credits to Victor Tseng @VectorSting for the amazing work seen here.

Take a look at Dr. Tseng’s graphic – it’s representative and not keyed to precise times as of today. He created this to be a start to conversation – it’s wonderful for that purpose and more. Or particular concern is the 4th Wave – what comes after. What comes after is going to define and change society in ways we are just beginning to grasp.

• 1st Wave: Immediate mortality and morbidity of COVID-19.
• 1st Wave Tail: Post-ICU and admission recovery for many patients.
• 2nd Wave: Impact of resource restrictions on non-COVID conditions – all the usual urgent things that people need immediate treatment for – acute.
• 3rd Wave: The impact of interrupted care of chronic conditions (people stayed…

A point that interests me greatly is the status of the concept of truth in contemporary intellectual thought. Insofar as postmodern and poststructuralist modes of thought remain hegemonic in intellectual culture, truth has very little currency. Similarly with our pluralistic and multicultural politics, which privilege a very relativistic approach to issues, rather than an insistence on a particular truth. Terry Eagleton writes, “No idea is more unpopular with contemporary cultural theory than that of absolute truth” (After Theory, Verso, 2004, p. 103). Rather than offer a devastating and unanswerable critique of this position in this blog post, I can only begin by noting that this idea has never been acceptable to me. I cannot do without the notion of truth.

The absurdities of a position entirely dispensing with the notion are well illustrated by the famous anecdote about Wittgenstein and the Rhinoceros in the Room. On one…