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Last year, physicists discovered that red wine can turn certain materials into superconductors. Now they’ve found that Beaujolais works best and think they know why. – The Physics arXiv Blog (with thanks to the ever alert Instapundit – how does he keep doing it?)  March 24th, 2012 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave . . . Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death. – Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775, at the second of the Virginia Conventions. The full speech is available here It’s not long so, as Glenn Reynolds would say, “read the whole thing.” March 23rd, 2012 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ‘A,’ ‘B,’ ‘C’ and ‘D.’ Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.'” – Barry Goldwater, as quoted by the blog, Unforeseen Contingencies. He is talking in relation to the absurd Rick Santorum. The Republican Party has, in my view, paid a high price for not heeding Goldwater on this issue. I sometimes wonder if a similar thing could ever happen in Britain with the Tories. I think it is, hopefully, unlikely, although the spirit of old puritanism does stalk the land in different guises, some of them not, on the face of it, remotely religious as traditionally understood. March 23rd, 2012 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
It’s funny, BTW, how the Left are against rich white immigration, and the “Right” are against poor brown immigration – they do have something in common, don’t they. – serial commenter Alisa March 22nd, 2012 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is a terrible thing to do — unless there’s a fire.” Thomas Dolan, Barron’s. He was writing about a wonderful financial market practice – sometimes legal, sometimes not – known as “naked short-selling”. His article explains what that means. I got interested after getting a DVD in the mail, called The Wall Street Conspiracy, that reckons that this practice was responsible for destroying many an honest business. Sounds a bit like Michael Moore, but I will give it a view to see if it stacks up or is a pile of crap. One quick thought: the idea of selling something you don’t own or haven’t even borrowed yet does sound awfully close to outright fraud, like insuring a house against fire if you don’t even own the house. Or like fractional reserve banking……….Aaarrgggghhh… March 19th, 2012 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
March 18th, 2012 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
I dislike windmills because they are inefficient, destabilise the grid and put up my electricity bills. That I think, should be enough to stop building the things. That they kill bats and birds is not something that we should making too much of a fuss about. Buses, aircraft, and just about everything that moves does too. If we ban windmills because of the threat they pose to wildlife then logically there is an equal case to do the same to really important things. Remember, the Green lobby don’t actually love animals, they hate humans and anything they can do to screw up our society they will do. – Bishop Hill commenter “AndyS” March 15th, 2012 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
(David Cameron is) a communitarian, he is not clever, but he is fashionable. – Delectably named commenter ‘New Boiled Potato Peeler’ March 12th, 2012 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’m single and have no children and I would love to meet someone – but looking like Kim Jong-il doesn’t help. – William Cheong, 43, a plumber who lives in Acton, West London. March 9th, 2012 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
The current U K problem seems to be that despite the growing conflicts there of principles with interests, there is no “grass roots” movement nor electorate concerns that no election party is strong enough to represent principles. – Redoubtable commenter RRS March 8th, 2012 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Amazingly, @SteveBakerMP is a Tory. But when it comes to preventing bank abuses, he’s the man: http://bit.ly/yVwuXT March 7th, 2012 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines today is: zero. – Matt Ridley hails The Beginning Of The End Of Wind. Let’s hope he’s right. The piece is quoted from at greater length by Bishop Hill and at WUWT. See, or rather, hear also: Matt Ridley’s eloquent recorded talk a while back, on the general subject of environmental scaremongering, of the sort that has been used to excuse the wind farm disaster, also linked to by Bishop Hill. March 5th, 2012 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
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