Utopia, you are standing in it!

Jack Ketch in the Plotter’s Ballad (1678-9). Ketch is seen right of center holding a rope and an axe.

[From the archives] Jack Ketch, otherwise known as John Ketch or Richard Jaquet, began his twenty-three year career as London’s leading executioner in 1663. He was not the only executioner dispatching the condemned at Tyburn, but he was the most infamous, earning a reputation for brutality remarkable even for a man in his profession. After his death in 1686, his name became slang for any executioner, the devil, and even death itself. Over time, his reputation took on such epic proportions that he became a sort of bogeyman. So who was he?

Like many executioners, Ketch spent much of his early life on the wrong side of the law, and is known to have spent time in Marshalsea Prison. Little is definitively known about his origins. He is first mentioned in…

In the latest blog for the Georgian Lords, Dr Charles Littleton considers the way in which 18th-century elections were frequently decided on the results of petitions in Parliament, after the initial returns were challenged.

The weeks before this year’s election in the USA have been marked with commentary considering the potential for voter fraud, disenfranchisement, and the role of the courts. Although on a much larger stage, this USA election has had many of the features of the numerous disputed elections that came before the House of Commons in the 18th century. Attempts to reverse the results of elections were a normal part of parliamentary business, as every new Parliament began with a flood of petitions seeking to unseat freshly returned Members, either by trying to disqualify their voters or complaining of fraudulent methods at the polls. The high number of election petitions submitted throughout the first half of the…

Wind and solar ‘powered’ Californians and South Australians know what it is to have their power cut when the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in.

Mass blackouts and load shedding are part and parcel of our inevitable transition to an all wind and sun powered future. But now we are told, that none of this is a concern and, instead, what’s required is an ‘attitude readjustment program’. Under which we will thank our political betters for living in a brave new world, where power comes at the whims of mother nature; we’ll be glad to get it when it does and not the least bit miffed, when it doesn’t.

So, the idea of having reliable and affordable power as and when we need it is to become a mere blip in our present state of human consciousness. [Note to Ed: these characters might do a quick straw poll amongst…

For what it’s worth, my presidential prediction for 2020 will probably turn out to be more accurate than my presidential prediction for 2016.

But I doubt anyone cares about that. Let’s instead look at what happened last night (and, in some cases, what is still happening).

President

It appears that Biden will prevail in the battle for the White House when the dust settles, but you can see from this Washington Post map that the race was much closer than most people expected (Pennsylvania is expected to shift to Biden as mail-in votes are counted, and perhaps Georgia as well).

If that’s the final result, here are two obvious takeaways based on where a president has a lot of unilateral power.

• Trade policy will move in the right direction.
• Regulatory policy will move in the wrong direction.

Other policy areas generally require agreement between the executive branch…

Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “roots”, came with this email note:

France deserves more support than it’s getting from its allies.

That’s for sure. And there’s a link to a Foreign Policy article (click on screenshot):

An excerpt. Note how the NYT changed the title of its article. What a rag!

In the latest of a series of personal attacks against the French president, Erdogan claimed that “Macron needed mental treatment” for his response to the attack. Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan asserted on Twitter that Macron’s words encouraged “Islamophobia,” while Mahathir Mohamad, the former prime minister of Malaysia, upped the ante by commenting that Muslims have a right to “kill millions of French people” in reaction to the “disrespect” they suffered. Some of the U.S. media coverage seems to take at face value the opportunistic accusations of illiberal leaders such as Erdogan. One article spoke grandiloquently of…

Cough up, or the kid gets it!

So-called smart meters are a very dumb response to intermittent wind and solar, even dumber energy sources. Wherever governments attempt to run on sunshine and breezes, the push to control and micromanage household power use, quickly follows.

Over the last few Australian summers, we’ve been treated to power rationing on a grand scale – which the Market Operator euphemistically tags “demand management”.

‘Demand management’ is not about supplying power consumers with what they need, it simply means shutting off power to industry, businesses and households – and even forcing hospitals to switch their lights and air conditioners off – among other indignities, whenever the sun sets and/or calm weather sets in. That’s what our ‘inevitable transition’ looks like at the macro level.

At the micro level, there’s the push to have smart meters installed in every home or business premise, in order that…

Prof Caludia Goldin gives a fascinating history of role of women in society:

My talk will take us on a Journey across a Century of Women — a 120-year odyssey of generations of college-graduate women from a time when they were only able to have either a family or a career (sometimes a job), to now, when they anticipate having both a family and a career. More women than ever before are within striking distance of these goals.

…

I recently finished most of a book on this century-long journey. But my book, like the Old Testament, was written in a BCE world — in this case, Before the Corona Era. Many inequities have been exposed by the COVID-19 economy and society, most notably those concerning social justice and our criminal justice system. The COVID economy has also magnified gender differences at work and in the home. Women are…