Guest post by Hannah Wygiera, 31 August 2022.

The boundaries between orthodoxy and heterodoxy changed repeatedly throughout the English Reformation. Despite changes to what constituted a heretical belief, what remained constant was the ability to punish heresy as a crime. However, in 1677 members of Parliament, motivated by anti-Catholic fears, abolished the centuries-old punishment for heresy: death by burning.

Heresy had been a long-standing religious concern in England and in 1401, it also became a criminal offence with the creation of the writ de Heretico cumburendo.[1]This writ looked back at the precedents for burning people deemed heretics and made it the punishment for heresy at common law. The writ lasted until 1677, when Parliament abolished it and effectively decriminalized heresy. This was not an act of toleration. It was an act of self-preservation by members…

Recent newspaper headlines and reports on cable news have pointed to the threat of a nuclear disaster in the war in Ukraine.  It appears that the Russians have seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe.  They have forced Ukrainians to operate the massive complex and have turned it into a military base to fire missiles at enemy positions.  The Russians know full well that using the plant as a “shield” would preclude the Ukrainian army from firing its own missiles at the plant or even trying to retake it.  Western powers have requested that the International Atomic Energy Commission investigate, and finally after obfuscating for days the Kremlin has agreed to let inspectors into the plant today.  As the situation evolves it has placed Ukraine, Europe, and even Russia in a precarious position if a nuclear accident occurs.

In this…

An unflattering analysis of climate models. Using mean values from numerous models is questioned. Climate attribution studies don’t fare any better: “these approaches are likely to be flawed”.
– – –
A team of Australian scientists, financiers and economists have issued a stark warning over the use of “flawed” climate models to predict financial risk, says Net Zero Watch.

Writing in the journal Environmental Research they say building future strategies on information that is not understood and potentially misleading is likely to expose the global financial system to systemic risks of its own making.

Politicians and policy-makers are increasingly seeking to assess the potential risks to the financial system associated with climate change.

The greatest fraud in history started with the idea that you can run an economy on sunshine and breezes.

Sequentially, inevitably, every myth and lie put forward by renewable energy rent seekers and their shrinking band of acolytes gets busted and exposed.

Lines like: wind power is cheaper than coal (it isn’t); the wind is always blowing somewhere (it isn’t); this wind farm will power 30,000 homes (it doesn’t and never will); and that the ‘transition’ to an all renewable energy future is simply inevitable (sure, provided it’s a transition to the Dark Ages that you’re looking for?) – sound even more nonsensical, by the day.

There there’s the central, endlessly repeated lie upon which the wind industry seeks to ‘justify’ the colossal and endless subsidies upon which it critically depends; the destruction of wind farm neighbours’ health, wealth and happiness; and the slaughter of millions of birds and bats…

Fifty years after its release, screed-writing screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky’s dark comedy “The Hospital” still has the power to make your jaw drop.

Released amid growing cynicism about institutions that Vietnam inspired and Watergate proved, with documentaries such as “Titicut Follies” laying bare the stark realities of American medicine, and “M*A*S*H” puncturing the TV-burnished image of doctors as “ministering angels,” “Hospital” must have felt like a kick in the teeth.

The ensuing decades have seen nothing that went this far, with only TV’s “Saint Elsewhere” and a few edgier moments on the soapier “E.R.” or comical “Scrubs” etc. even trying.

That said, the black humor in Arthur Hiller’s “comedy” doesn’t really start to work until late in the picture. And it takes the ears and eyes a while to adjust to any visit to Paddy Chayefskyland. Few conversations sound natural. Characters launch into speeches and others in the scene simply yield…