December 04, 2021

Fossil Fuel Restriction Dam Starting To Break

December 04, 2021/ Francis Menton

Somewhere a couple of decades or so ago, the rich parts of the world embarked on a program of replacing energy from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) with energy from intermittent “renewables” (mainly wind and solar). In trendy academic, journalistic, and otherwise progressive circles, the idea took hold that this was the way to “save the planet.”
This program was undertaken without any detailed engineering study of how or whether it might actually work, or how much it might cost to fully implement. In the trendy circles, there took hold a blind faith in the complete ability of the government, by dispensing taxpayer funds, to order up whatever innovation might be needed to move us forward to this energy utopia.
The latest UN-orchestrated effort to implement the renewable energy program, known as COP 26, has just broken up. To read the verbiage emanating from the affair, all is on track, if a bit slower than one might have hoped.
But I have long predicted that this program would come to an end when (absent some miraculous innovation that nobody has yet conceived) the usage of the renewables got to a sufficient level that their costs and unworkability could not be covered up any longer. Until very recently the pressure of elite groupthink has been able to maintain a united front of lip service to the cause.
But consider a few developments from the past few weeks, just since the end of COP 26:

November 30, 2021

The Malicious Dead End Of "Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion"

November 30, 2021/ Francis Menton

“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) — That’s the officially-established creed/cult currently devouring American higher education (not to mention plenty of other institutions at the controlling heights of society).
At elite academic institutions, what began fifty and more years ago as a reasonable effort to identify talented but previously overlooked black candidates for admission, has gradually morphed into a crazed obsession that overwhelms and obliterates any and all other purposes and goals of the institution.
Where once, with a purpose of educating students, we sought out and hired talented faculty, now our main purpose is DEI, and we hire dozens of new “diversity” deans, sub-deans and sub-sub-deans. Where once we created national standardized tests (e.g., SATs) to find and rate the most qualified candidates even from obscure places, now we ban use of such tests because members of “marginalized” groups don’t score high enough. Where once we valued academic rigor in our curricular offerings, now the key evaluation criterion for any course is its “diversity” component.
Let’s step back for a moment and take a look at this DEI obsession in academia. Does the whole thing make any sense?

November 27, 2021

November 27, 2021/ Francis Menton

Is President Biden doing anything right? To this observer, his policies range from at best merely incompetent, to at worst malicious hatred of the country and people whose interests he was elected to advance.
Somewhere in between those two extremes we have Biden’s energy policy. In this arena, appropriate adjectives would be inconsistent, incoherent, and destructive. Don’t even attempt to make sense of it. To summarize in one word, it is complete madness.
I’m old enough to remember the 1970s, and the two “oil shocks” that occurred during that decade.

November 26, 2021

November 26, 2021/ Francis Menton

The Chinese Virus (aka Covid-19), including the Xi variant, may or may not be fading away. But here in Greenwich Village, despite the best efforts of our politicians and health bureaucrats to keep the population cowering in abject fear, Covid fatigue has definitely set in.
On the West end of Bleecker Street, the many store fronts that became vacant at the peak of the pandemic are almost all now re-occupied with optimistic new ventures. The shoppers are back in force, almost all unmasked. Today looked to me to be unusually busy even for a Black Friday.
The fashion this season is for the storefronts to surround themselves with elaborate floral displays.

November 23, 2021

November 23, 2021/ Francis Menton

Like many people, I followed the Kyle Rittenhouse trial out of Kenosha, Wisconsin fairly closely over the past several weeks. As discussed in Jane’s post on Sunday, that trial proved to be a riveting instance of a totally false and racialized progressive narrative (“white supremacist vigilante crossed state lines with illegal firearm to go on shooting spree against innocent mostly peaceful BLM protesters”) getting completely contradicted by incontestable facts (mostly videos) introduced in evidence at the trial.
But following the Rittenhouse trial has inherently meant little time left to follow another high-profile trial unfolding simultaneously in Brunswick, Georgia — the trial of Gregory and Travis McMichael and Roddy Bryan for the alleged murder of Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020.
Having not devoted much attention to the Arbery matter before now, my brain was of course, as is inevitable, heavily infected with the official progressive narrative of the situation.

November 21, 2021

November 21, 2021/ Jane Menton

The Kyle Rittenhouse trial has given us an unusual opportunity to contrast uncontestable facts as shown on many video recordings with an endlessly repeated media narrative that seems to exist in an alternate reality.
To my amazement, even after two full weeks of livestreamed trial, most notably featuring videos taken on the night at issue and a witness testifying that he had pointed a gun in Rittenhouse’s face, many on the left cling to the prior narrative of the case.
They seem to feel as though that narrative contains a greater truth about our justice system and racism in this country and therefore cannot be disputed by facts.