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Abundant cheap renewable energy? Imagining will make it so
Drove to Melbourne and back a few weeks ago. Haven’t driven interstate for decades; haven’t owned a car for about eight years. Could I still drive? Still not sure because the Hume Highway offers little challenges. Two generous lanes, dual carriageway, all the way. Rest areas aplenty. Not long out of England, many decades ago,…
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Diversity, a one-way street
Efforts are afoot to make North American (ice) hockey more diverse. Apparently it’s too white. I am not aware of any similar efforts being made in water polo or swimming or in chess for that matter. Nor am I ware of any complaints that American basketball and football and, say, athletic sprinting are disproportionately too…
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Callow Pipedreams ahead? Already here
I see that Jacinda Ardern is intent on lowering the voting age to sixteen in New Zealand. It’s a developing trend. Let’s face it, nobody remotely believes that the voting age will be restored to twenty-one from where it should never have been lowered. All the impetus, from the left and from the greenies, is…
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All we can do is think of England
Changes in my personal life meant that I was forced to downsize in 2014. My new (small) place is ultra-convenient. No need for a car so I didn’t buy one, until now. Didn’t fancy dying carless. Ordered a new yellow MG hatch in mid-May. I cancelled at the end of October, have been told yet…
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Covid’s variant of Munchausen by proxy
Minding my own business watching TV late the other night. I am assailed by professor Michael Kidd, who is apparently deputy chief medical officer. He warned me that I needed to stop the spread; to wear a mask when inside in crowded situations, to keep my distance from other folk, to wash my hands. Is…
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A tangled web of electric make-believe
I looked it up. Apparently, pylons are needed each 75 to 100 metres to support high-voltage overhead transmission lines. In England and Wales there are 7000 kms of high voltage overhead transmission lines and 90,000 pylons. Roughly one pylon per 80 metres. Seems about right. I’ll use this number. Peter Dutton referred in Parliament to…
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Conservatism Doomed?
In a recent piece on another site, I suggested that conservatism would have wide appeal among regular folk in Western countries if only it had a centre-right parties to carry the torch. My list of conservative positions went like this: Promoting unashamed patriotism Rejecting lies about the nation’s history (like the non-existent Stolen Generations in…
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More Mainstream-Media Mediocrity
I know, I might have mentioned it once or twice before. We have no decent mainstream newspaper in Australia. The Australian is the best of a bad lot, having to do very little to scale to the top of the pile (of leftist mediocrity). The biased vindictive coverage of Trump said it all really. But…
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Post-Christianity, and then what?
A Christian minister condemns same-sex sex and abortion as being sinful. Cue outrage. Bigoted and hateful says the supposed Catholic Premier of Victoria. “I send my kids to Catholic schools. My faith is important to me. It guides me every day…It also guides me in my sense of what is right and what is wrong,…
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Weather telling a climate tale
The hurricane season in the United States goes from June to November. Prior to Hurricane Ian, the season had been “remarkably quiet.” Strange business when climate change is roaring about causing havoc to human populations; and goodness knows how our cousins the animals are faring. Dying out, like polar bears, I would guess. Hurricane Ian…