Why I’ll be buying a brand new petrol car just before the 2030 ban – Matt Ridley
29 Jul 2023 Leave a comment
Why wasn’t there a Scramble for Australia?
28 Jul 2023 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, international economic law, International law, Public Choice Tags: age of empires, Australia, economics of colonialism
Happy Birthday World War 1 I THE GREAT WAR – Week 105
28 Jul 2023 Leave a comment
in defence economics, war and peace Tags: World War I
Chaotic Wind Power Output Leaves Power-Starved Texans Praying To Wind Gods
27 Jul 2023 Leave a comment
Banking on the wind for your daily power needs is prone to disappoint. From the moment human beings harnessed thermal energy the path of industrial and modern civilisation was set. No more begging for beneficial breezes to spin that mill. Power could be had as and when we needed it, not when mother nature felt inclined to provide it.
Then came self-serving, rent-seeking crony capitalists – backed by an ideologically driven cult – who hijacked energy policy, returning us to an age of superstition and wishful thinking.
What stands out in the first piece by Bill Peacock is not the perfectly predictable collapses in wind and solar output, it’s the argument put forward by a Reuter’s columnist that Texas’ troubles will soon be overcome by “greater wind speeds” which, he reckons, will provide a “major boost” to Texan power supplies and avert any further power scares during hot weather.
Now…
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JERRY COYNE: Could Mātauranga Māori advance quantum physics?
27 Jul 2023 Leave a comment
Reproduced with permission
- Jerry Coyne writes –
I suspect the answer to the title question is “No way!”, but the incursion of Mātauranga Māori (“MM”, or Māori “ways of knowing”) into New Zealand’s science is reaching ludicrous depths. Even in the U.S.A. we don’t see headlines like the one below. (Note that “complement” is misspelled as “compliment”.)
Why am I so sure this endeavor won’t work? Simply because there is nothing about quantum physics in MM, and I can’t envision any MM-derived insights into the discipline that could advance it beyond what modern physicists are doing already. Of course Māori physicists, like the one below, could well make contributions to quantum mechanics, but it’s hard to see that those insights would come from MM, a mixture of trial-and-error knowledge gained from living (gathering plants and fish), theology, superstition, tradition, and ethics.
Nevertheless, the termites have dined so well that we…
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