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Chat GPT review of Popper’s OSE
Question. Write a 2000 word review of The Open Soceity and Its Enemies by Karl Popper The money quote. He warns that any attempt to suppress intellectual freedom, whether through censorship or propaganda, will inevitably lead to the suppression of all other freedoms, and ultimately to the destruction of the open society itself. Karl Popper’s…
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Bring back the dandy
Generally dandys don’t get a very good press but a conservative hippy has come to their defence. This prompts a memory of Sir Roderick Murchison, a great entrepreneur of science. This is a review of a book about his life and work, in a collection of papers on the theme Making Science Pay. The main…
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Rafe’s Roundup 6 May
Drop in and see what the usual suspects are up to Bettina Arndt and Alexandra Marshall are now on the list of usual suspects. CIS The Energy Realists The Conservative Vagabond Jo Nova Quadrant on line The Free Press IPA Climate and energy program The Sydney Institute Menzies Research Centre Mannkal Foundation Advance Australia Taxpayers Australian Inst…
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Environmentalism vs “green” power
How much longer can people who claim to care about the health of the planet put up with the wind and solar power industries? Public opinion in the US appears to be trending our way. An overwhelming majority of Americans say that conserving local land and wildlife is more important than building new sources of…
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Whats wrong with Australia
In a single job advertisement.
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Snowy2.0 update
Today there is a report in The Australian on the latest official news about Snowy2.0. It is still going on, so we can expect more bad news for some years to come:) My comment was published on line, with a reference to our briefing note 22.8 which shows that it is a dog of a…
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The people’s vote
This week in The Spectator Mike Ryan revived the idea of the citizen-initiated referendum. This is a welcome suggestion and it recalls the memory that in 1987 the Centre For Independent Studies published a very well researched book on the various forms of the citizen’s vote, including the provision for recalling politicians who don’t take…
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Captain Cook, seaman
We read in The Spectator this morning that Captain Cook has been effectively cancelled in the National Curriculum for schools. To set the record straight, there is a stirring account of Cook’s career in the very first edition of Quadrant in 1956 which appeared in 1956. This is the article, with the editor’s introduction to…
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Dark deeds of the official wind watchers
Cockup or conspiracy? The fourth in the series of Spectator articles on wind droughts pointed a finger of suspicion at the meteorologists for failing to issue wind drought warnings. Was it just bad luck and bad judgement that accounted for the failure of the meteorologists to notice wind droughts? Or did it suit them to…
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Famous last words “green investment opportunities”
Australia is on the cusp of a surge of private investment in climate initiatives, according to the new chairwoman of the Climate Council, well-known businesswoman and philanthropist Carol Schwartz. “What’s exciting now for business is that we have a government that’s very supportive of initiatives to address climate action, and we have businesses that are…