Utopia, you are standing in it!

Original Air Date: February 1965/October 14, 1986
Star Date: 2254 (unknown in-universe date)
Writer: Gene Roddenberry
Director: Robert Butler

“There’s a way out of any cage and I’ll find it.”

Once notoriously rejected by NBC for being too “too cerebral,” this now legendary pilot episode of Star Trek offers a panoply of rich, complex ideas worthy of consideration. Rather than easily hooking its audience with flashy effects or explosive gun fights, “The Cage” is a slow-burn prison mystery which forces us to examine the nature of evil. Are the Talosians truly an evil alien species? According to the Talosians, the answer is emphatically “no.” The Talosians believe they are mere investigators and conjurers of innocent but deceptive imagery in order to offer a better world, test humanity’s limits, and hopefully save the future of Talos IV, their own decaying planet. The Talosians are anthropologists and…

Original Air Date: September 8, 1966
Stardate: 1312.4
Writer: Samuel A. Peeples
Director: James Goldstone

“Morals are for men, not gods.”

After NBC initially rejected Gene Roddenberry’s pilot episode for Star Trek entitled “The Cage” (they claimed it was too cerebral) Star Trek was offered the rarest of opportunities: a second chance. This was thanks in part to the earlier efforts of Lucille Ball and her company Desilu Studios which was impressed by the show’s diverse cast, in particular its elevation of women to more prominent roles. Somewhat ironically the series’s second chance removed “Number Two” (Majel Barrett) from the show. Instead of Captain Pike’s character (played by Jeffrey Hunter as featured in “The Cage”) he was replaced by Captain Kirk (played by William Shatner). Shatner had previously made a name for himself in a variety of Broadway productions as well as on The Twilight…

Sheep farming in Wales [image credit: BBC]
Another example of unintended consequences caused by the irrational pursuit of climate obsessions by governments.
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A fifth of Welsh farms are running at a loss and there is a risk that farmers will be priced out of agriculture by big corporations buying up farmland for carbon offsetting schemes, according to a new report on family farms in Wales.

The findings of an inquiry by the Welsh Affairs Select Committee published today (7 April) paint a concerning picture for Welsh agriculture, an industry where the average farm size is just 48ha, compared to 87ha in England, says TW News.

From pressure on incomes and land availability to a lack of opportunity for new entrants, the report highlights some of the key concerns and sets out a series of recommendations to governments to address the issues.

During the Glorious Revolution of November 1688 James II-VII, king of England, Scotland and Ireland was deposed and replaced by his daughter Mary II and her husband, stadtholder William III of Orange, the de facto ruler of the Dutch Republic. The Glorious Revolution
can be seen as both the last successful invasion of England and also an internal coup that toppled the reigning monarch.

William III, King of England, Scotland and Ireland, Stadtholder of the Netherlands with his Imperial State Crown

The Revolution ended a century of political dispute and strife between the Crown and Parliament by confirming the primacy of Parliament over the Crown, a principle established in the Bill of Rights 1689.

English coronations were traditionally held at Westminster Abbey, with the monarch seated on the Coronation Chair. Main elements of the coronation service and the earliest form of oath can be traced to the ceremony devised by…

Death and taxes are certainties, so too the wind and solar industry’s critical dependence on massive and endless subsidies.

Those pushing wind and solar keep telling us that the power they produce is ‘free’ and getting cheaper all the time.

Every so often, rent seekers and their political enablers are faced with the retort that, if wind and solar really are so cheap and, therefore, truly competitive with coal, gas and nuclear, then it’s surely time to do away with the $billions in subsidies directed at the unreliables?

Shortly after the stuttering and spluttering stops, wind and solar scammers then start waffling about subsidies to fossil fuels. For sport, try pressing them on the precise nature those subsidies and their total value, and they’ll flounder some more.

The producers of oil, coal and gas all pay royalties to governments based on the volumes extracted, as well as taxes on the…

Original Air Date: September 8, 1966
Stardate: 1513.1
Writer: George Clayton Johnson
Director: Marc Daniels

“The last of its kind. Earth history, remember? Like the passenger pigeon, or… the buffalo.”

The year is 2266. We are introduced to the USS Enterprise, a starship working under Starfleet of the United Federation of Planets. It is on a five-year mission “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” The ship arrives at a planet called M-113, a red and arid place inhabited by Dr. Robert Crater, an archaeologist (played by Alfred Ryder who actually suffered a severe arm injury just prior to filming this episode hence why he appears somewhat stiff if you pay close attention). Dr. Crater resides on this remote planet with his wife Nancy. They have been conducting a nearly five-year survey of the planet’s…

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide
Another climate sucker falls for the idea that nature’s life giver carbon dioxide is a threat to human existence which can and should be controlled, when a lack of it would be the real problem.
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A deal between Sweden’s political parties positions the country to take responsibility for the carbon footprint of imported goods, says Climate Home News.

Sweden’s political parties agreed on Thursday to include consumption-based emissions within its climate targets, making it the first country in the world to make the leap into the complex realm of overseas emissions reporting.

National climate targets rely on reporting the emissions that are created on a country’s territory.