Utopia, you are standing in it!

When I began examining whether or not King Richard III was a usurper it seemed pretty cut and dried given the fact that Richard’s reputation as a usurper is well known. I’d even go as far to say that Richard III is the best known super in history.

As I’ve researched this topic I’ve realized that it’s isn’t as cut and dried as generally thought. I actually could drag this topic out over many more entries. In this entry I will examine the “pro-Richard III” stance. Then in the following entry next week I will examine the “anti-Richard III” stance. After that I will give you my assessment.

As I said in previous entries the legality of Richard III’s reign, as mentioned in the Titulus Regius document, rests on the core claim that when Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville, he was already promised in marriage to Lady Eleanor Butler. This…

Figure 1. Graph showing the number of volcanoes reported to have been active each year since 1800 CE. Total number of volcanoes with reported eruptions per year (thin upper black line) and 10-year running mean of same data (thick upper red line). Lower lines show only the annual number of volcanoes producing large eruptions (>= 0.1 km3 of tephra or magma) and scale is enlarged on the right axis; thick red lower line again shows 10-year running mean. Global Volcanism Project Discussion

Update April 28, 2023

I am prompted by a discussion at WUWT regarding the role of SO2 in causing climate variabiity.  There are some voices claiming that reduced SO2 from smaller vocanic activity in the Middle Ages caused warming, leading to droughts, crop failures, etc.  And that we could be causing global warming by removing SO2 from the air in modern times.  As the research cited below explains…

Anyone with a basic knowledge of maths understands that people who earn more pay more tax.

To illustrate that, let’s keep it simple and work off a theoretical 10% rate.

Someone who earned $50,000 would pay $5,000; someone who earned $500,000 would pay $5,ooo,000 and someone who earned $5,000,000 would pay $500,000.

Of course the one who earned more would have a lot more left after paying their tax and would be much more likely to have investments that gain in value, at least on paper,  but don’t incur tax.

The government might calls that economic income. Most of that is more commonly known as unrealised capital gains, the taxing of which would be very unfair.

That doesn’t bother the government which set the IRD the task of researching high wealth individuals.

There is no surprise in what the research found:

The Government has wasted $5 million dollars…

Did you know that the Education and Workforce select committee is considering the Education and Training Amendment Act (3)?

And did you know that it includes this requirement for appointments to school boards?

• updating the criteria for co-opting and appointing board members to reflect today’s school communities, by adding the genders, sexualities and sexes of the school’s students and of the school community, and disabled students at the school and the school’s disability community. 

Education Minister Jan Tinetti mentioned this while speaking on the first reading of the Bill:

The bill also expands and modernises the school board member co-option criteria. School boards must have regard for these criteria when deciding to co-opt a board member. The bill updates the criteria to ensure that boards take into account the genders, sexualities, and sexes of students and school community, as well as the disabled students and the school’s disability…

Recent years have been very depressing for supporters of free trade.

Trump pushed protectionist policies.

Now Biden is pushing protectionist policies.

And the European Union is pushing protectionist policies using global warming as an excuse.

More specifically, EU politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels have rammed through a so-called Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which is euro-speak for a new protectionist tax on imports that are not sufficiently green.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial summarizes some of the problems.

The European Parliament this week pulled the trigger on the opening shot in a new climate trade war. …Foreign companies that haven’t paid for carbon emissions at home will have to pay a tariff when exporting goods to Europe. …Climate coercion advocates say a tariff is needed to avoid “carbon leakage,” which is their term for the flight of manufacturing to countries with less onerous emissions restrictions.