Utopia, you are standing in it!

I was about five minutes into re-watching “The Cincinnati Kid” when it struck me that I needed to read or re-read director Norman Jewison’s autobiography, or hunt down the recent biography of the Canadian director.

He’s not exactly an obscure filmmaker, with seven Oscar nominations and films like “Moonstruck” and “The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming” in his extensive filmography.

But his fifth feature film, his first “serious” movie, has threads that turn up so often in his later work that one wonders, “What made him such a righteous dude?”

The Toronto native who made the groundbreaking “In the Heat of the Night,” “A Soldier’s Story” and the very impressive bio-pic “The Hurricane” was astutely in touch with America’s shifting attitudes on race. And he made sure his films were ahead of the curve in that regard.

Jewison, a child of the Great Depression, took over a 1930s…

This blog has been a bit quiet in recent weeks (if anyone has insights on what sections 15D and 98 of the Government Superannuation Fund Act do and don’t allow I’ll be happy to hear from you) but I hope to make up for it this week.

In the 4+ years the statutory Monetary Policy Committee has been in existence, there has been not a single public speech given by any of the three external members. There have been no serious interviews either, just one petulant and testy set of responses to some emailed questions late last year, responses that I characterised at the time this way:

At times, Harris displays all the grace and constructive open and engagement we might expect in a rebellious 15 year old told they have to make conversation with Grandma at the family Christmas celebrations. If the answers aren’t quite monosyllabic grunts. most of…

After a  succession of ministerial stumbles, some of them fatal for the respective political careers of the stumblers, the  Labour  government is still  buoyed by its own polling.  And even independent  commentators think the parties  of the  left are level-pegging  with  those on the right.

How  could  this  be?  There  is little  argument  NZ has been hit by a  cost-of-living crisis,  families are going hungry, hospital emergency departments are overflowing.  Others cite ministerial fumbling for the failure  to deliver on policy announcements. Economists  point to  the deficits in the public accounts getting worse and net debt  climbing. 

Wherever voters look,  the Labour government has  a  dismal story  to present.

So why aren’t Opposition parties racing ahead?

Intermittent wind and solar deliver guaranteed grid chaos and rocketing power prices. Every single country that’s chased the wind and solar pipe dream has watched their power prices go through the roof, with no exception.

STT has been banging on about this since December 2012. So, don’t say we didn’t warn you. The graphic above from Dr Michael Crawford spells it out: add massively subsidised and chaotically intermittent wind and solar to your power grid and watch power prices spiral out of control.

As STT has pointed out a number of times, power market gaming – of the kind that made Eron infamous – is a natural consequence of a very natural set of phenomena: wind and solar power output collapses that occur whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in:

Wind Power Output Collapses Send Power Prices into Orbit: The World’s Biggest Joke Just Got Serious

and

South Australia’s…

As reported last month, the Oregon activist judge invited the plaintiffs in Juliana vs US to reopen that case even after the Ninth Circuit shot it down.  Now we have a complete and thorough Motion from the defendant (US government) to dismiss this newest amended complaint.  Most interesting is the section under the heading starting on page 30.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Plaintiffs’ Claims Fail on the Merits

Because Plaintiffs’ action fails at the jurisdictional threshold, the Ninth Circuit never reached—and this Court need not reach—the merits of the claims. . . Plaintiffs’ second amended complaint, which supersedes the first amended complaint, asserts the same claims that were brought in the first amended complaint, which this Court addressed in orders that the Ninth Circuit reversed. Defendants thus renew their objection that Plaintiffs’ claims fail on the merits and should be dismissed pursuant to Fed…

Operation PX was the codename for the Japanese plan for a biological terror attack on the U.S. west coast in World War 2. The planned operation was abandoned due to the strong opposition of Chief of General Staff Yoshijirō Umezu, as well as the Japan surrender following the atomic bombings and the Soviet declaration of war.

Operation PX, also known as “Cherry Blossoms at Night” was proposed in December 1944 by the Japanese Naval General Staff, led by Vice-Admiral Jisaburō Ozawa. The name for the operation came from the Japanese use of the code name PX for Pestis bacillus-infected fleas.

In planning the operation, the navy partnered with Lieutenant-General Shirō Ishii of Unit 731, who had extensive experience on weaponizing pathogenic bacteria and human vulnerability to biological and chemical warfare.

UNIT 731-Japanese WWII Experiments

The plan for the attack involved Seiran aircraft launched by submarine aircraft carriers upon the United States…