Utopia, you are standing in it!

Has the Ardern government just  shot itself in the  foot?

Despite its  poll  ratings slipping in  recent  months, it nourished hopes of  returning to power next year.  But  its  “world-first” policy to  cut greenhouse  gases with farm-level pricing, effectively making 20% of  NZ’s  sheep and beef  farms uneconomic, could result in it  bleeding  votes  in  most  of the  regional electorates  it  won  in 2020.

The unpalatable  truth  is  just  dawning on the  country: cutting  agricultural emissions  means  cutting  food and fibre output.  And  that means slashing the export income on which  NZ  depends.

Clearly  the  Cabinet  ministers  adopting the  policy  announced  yesterday  believed  they  could “sell” it  on  the  basis  that NZ  would be  leading the world, in  cutting agricultural emissions.

In the event, they have been met with shrieks of outrage from farm lobby  groups.

The word baron comes from the Old French baron, from a Late Latin barō “man; servant, soldier, mercenary” (so used in Salic law; Alemannic law has barus in the same sense). The scholar Isidore of Seville in the 7th century thought the word was from Greek βᾰρῠ́ς “heavy” (because of the “heavy work” done by mercenaries), but the word is presumably of Old Frankish origin, cognate with Old English beorn meaning “warrior, nobleman”.

Cornutus in the first century already reports a word barones which he took to be of Gaulish origin. He glosses it as meaning servos militum and explains it as meaning “stupid”, by reference to classical Latin bārō “simpleton, dunce”; because of this early reference, the word has also been suggested to derive from an otherwise unknown Celtic *bar, but the Oxford English Dictionary takes this to be “a figment”.

Britain and Ireland

In the Peerage of England…

Decades ago when I was young Reserve Bank annual reports were – uninteresting accounts aside – mostly a bit of an essay on the economy (I got to write some of 1984’s and if I recall correctly one sentence survived to publication). Since the Bank had no independent authority over anything – power rested with the Minister of Finance – that model of Annual Report made a certain amount of sense. If there was any “accountability” involved, it was mostly about judging the fine line involved in offering some analysis without at the same time unduly upsetting the Minister of Finance. (The Bank was, at least in principle, accountable for analysis and advice offered to the Minister, but nothing much of that ever saw the light of day, the then recent innovation of the OIA notwithstanding).

These days, of course, the Reserve Bank is a power in the land, conducting…

Using logical thinking is an effective way of solving problems and rooting out untruths. Unfortunately, logic can be replaced in many instances with repeated phraseology that has been absorbed and memorised for quick regurgitation without thought, such as arguments using the Bandwagon Fallacy:

1. X is popular.
2. Popular things are always true (unstated).
3. Therefore, X is true.

Bandwagon Fallacy: Why the Majority Isn’t Necessarily Right

Here is the Bandwagon Fallacy argument used to justify the safety of The Shots:

1. 11 million + shots have been given to people in NZ.
2. Popular things are always safe (unstated).
3. Therefore, the shots are safe.

Implied in this fallacy is the idea that if the shots were not safe, then people would be seeing the effects in those around them, that damage would be widespread and noticeable. However, ironically the argument is then used against anyone who says the shots are not safe because they…

Oh but this is going to hurt, and judging by the online Twitter meltdowns from Leftists it’s a burn that’s going to last a long time, certainly past the Mid-Term elections next month.

Just a few years ago Tulsi Gabbard, as a House Rep. from Hawaii, was being talked up as yet another youthful face of a rising Democrat Party poised to do great things in the 21st century. Military veteran, mutli-ethnic, female, etc. She was the Vice-Chair of the Democrat National Committee (DNC). When she ran for the Democrat Presidential nomination in 2019 she did better than many others with higher profiles but faded for the usual reasons such young, first-time candidates do; lack of money and support from inside the upper echelons of the Democrat Party – including the DNC – who eventually plumped for “moderate” and easily controlled Joe Biden over True Believer Socialist Bernie Sanders.

Stardate: 2268 (technically no stardate is given for this episode)
Original Air Date: February 16, 1968
Writer: John Meredyth Lucas
Director: Vincent McEveety

“Even historians fail to learn from history…”

The Enterprise is searching for John Gill (David Brian), a missing Federation historian. Gill is a widely respected intellectual among Starfleet, he once taught Kirk during his Starfleet days, and even Spock praises Gill for his treatment of earth history as a series of “causes and motivations” rather than a mere timeline of events. Gill had been sent by the Federation as a “cultural observer” of the planet Ekos some years prior, but he has since disappeared. What happened? First, a bit of exposition about Ekos. The Ekosians are known to be a primitive warlike people, living in a state of anarchy, whereas its sister planet of Zeon is known to be technologically advanced. As the…