Utopia, you are standing in it!

The communist in this case being the last leader of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, who died a few days ago at the age of 91.

I actually liked the guy for his basic decency and smarts, although that decency did not stop him sending in KGB agents to Eastern block countries to do their usual job of killing “agitators”, until he realised it would also take tanks and troops, as in East Germany in ’53, Hungary in ’56, and Czechoslovakia in ’68, and decided he couldn’t follow in the footsteps of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. So yes, I’ll give him credit for not doing the worst he could have – but that’s pretty weak sauce even if it does testify to some basic human decency.

That decency was also attested to here by John Hinderaker at Powerline, based on dealing with him at a US event in 2000:

I am always intrigued in the history of how things come to be. Like who was the first to discover could be turned into a hot beverage. However, as the title suggest this is not a blog about coffee but about my other guilty pleasure, Chocolate.

The history of chocolate is a bit more mysterious then that of coffee.

From Latin America to the modern day, chocolate has come a long way to get to the shops and eventually to you. From where did chocolate originate to how it became the indulgence we cherish and enjoy today.

The history of chocolate began in Mesoamerica. Fermented beverages made from chocolate date back to 1500 BC. The Mexica believed that cacao seeds were the gift of Quetzalcoatl, the god of wisdom, and the seeds once had so much value that they were used as a form of currency. Originally prepared only as…

With Europe’s renewable energy disaster laid bare for all to see, the focus is now on “real energy” – power that’s available 24 x 7, irrespective of the weather and where the Sun sits in the sky.

For fairly obvious reasons, the Small Modular Reactor has captured the imagination of power-starved Europeans, with two key contenders vying for a slice of what will be a very healthy market.

Britain’s Rolls-Royce is well ahead of the curve, with a 470MW unit almost ready to roll.

In the US, NuScale, based in Oregon, has cleared all of the regulatory hurdles and is ready to deliver 924MW reactors to those with the wit and temerity to acquire them.

The wind and solar cult run the line that SMRs are a pipe dream, cooked up by conservative reactionaries, which menas they’re bound to ignore the 200 small nuclear reactors presently powering 160 ships and…

Mornidine advertisement, 1959.
Canadian Medical Association Journal, Vol. 81, No. 1, p. 59.

Now she can cook breakfast again
… when you prescribe new MORNIDINE (brand of pipamazine)
A new drug with specific effectiveness in nausea and vomiting of pregnancy, Mornidine eliminates the ordeal of morning sickness.
With its selective action on the vomiting center, or the medullary chemoreceptor “trigger zone,” Mornidine possesses the advantages of the phenothiazine drugs without unwanted tranquilizing activity.
Doses of 5 to 10 mg., repeated at intervals of six to eight hours, provide excellent relief all day. In patients who are unable to retain oral medication when first seen, Mornidine may be administered intramuscularly in doses of 5 mg. (1 cc.).
Mornidine is supplied as tablets of 5 mg. and as ampuls of 5 mg. (1 cc.).
G. D. Searle & Co. of Canada Ltd. 247 Queen St., E., Brampton, Ont.

• * *
  Historical footnote:

‘The Lamps Are Going Out All Over Europe’

Germans have never struck me as being stupid people. It may be cliched to picture them as sober, serious, stolid citizens who make machines and systems that work, but that’s because cliches often derive from basic truths.

But there is that whole German Political Party That Must Not Be Named thing, which often seemed to be both led and run by hysterics, so perhaps there’s some flaw in the German national character that just bursts out from time to time.

Begging also does not seem to be them either.

Oh dear:

German Chancellor…

Apparently, Germans are not looking forward to a winter sitting freezing in the dark when the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in. One ‘plan’ is to encourage energy-starved Germans to bunch up in commonly heated exhibition halls to prevent them from freezing to death when temperatures plummet.

The (hopeful) German power consumer is, quite rightly, unamused.

The nonsense of attempting to run on weather-dependent wind and solar has been revealed. As has the insanity of mothballing coal-fired power plants and the idiocy of axing Germany’s enviable fleet of nuclear power plants.

As to the latter, much to the horror of the anti-progress, anti-human Greens, Germans are becoming increasingly vocal in their demands to undo Germany’s suicidal anti-nuclear policies.

Amazing what the reality of not having power, as and when you need it, can do to improve the powers of applied critical thinking.

Melanie Amann gives us an insight on…

Let’s revisit the issues of Bidenomics.

Previous editions of this series have focused on Biden’s dismal record with regards to subsidies, inflation, protectionism, household income, fiscal policy, and red tape.

The assessment has not been positive, which shouldn’t be very surprising since Biden is basically a slow-motion version of Bernie Sanders.

Today, we’re going to look at Biden’s record on jobs…and that’s not going to improve the assessment.

The problem is employment rather than unemployment.

In a column for the Wall Street Journal, Nicholas Eberstadt writes about the millions of Americans who have disappeared from the labor force.

Never has work been so readily available in modern America; never have so many been uninterested in taking it. …For every unemployed person in the U.S. today, there are nearly two open jobs, and the labor shortage affects every region of the country. …Why…