What I like about these covers is that they provide a kind of HYPERREAL MEMORY of the original recordings. They’ve each been flawlessly replicated and/or interpreted and, of course, electronically enhanced. They also feature greater instrumental variety and firepower.
But what makes them particularly special is their connection to those periods in my young life when I first heard them. Years worth REMEMBERING.
And, yes, it applies as well to many of us who grew up leaning Left until the Left became TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL and LEFT US BEHIND.
After a week once at a conference in Spain, where LATENTLY nervous European colleagues of mine never stopped smoking, I reached the conclusion that for MOST OF THEM, lighting up was a form of PERFORMANCE ART.
The poses, gestures, flourishes and head tosses all said one thing to me: THESE FOLKS — SO NORMALLY SUAVE AND ELEGANT — were STAGE MANAGING THEIR ANXIETY beneath not only a veil of smoke but also an array of STYLIZED BODY MOVEMENTS.
Anyway, Europeans still smoke A LOT, and I’m sure the PERFORMANCE ART aspect is STILL A LARGE PART OF IT.
To know what’s going on here is not NECESSARILY a gateway to SPECULATION.
There’s still a thing call WILL.
But should the WILL be WILLING to CHANCE this stuff, there are also things called PRUDENCE and DISCIPLINE.
What happens with CRYPTO is ANYONE’S GUESS, but the BLOCKCHAIN is HERE TO STAY.
So, with that in mind . . .
CAVEAT EMPTOR.
The videos that follow are useful.
The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. So, both wind and solar require storage capacity using batteries made of crucial elements which then lead to toxic disposal issues.
Plus, enormous quantities of fossil fuels are needed to build the components used in these “green” technologies. And since they also wear out and need to be replaced, they don’t constitute RENEWABLE energy sources so much as ones that are better described as REPLACEABLE.
So, despite the SOMEWHAT IMPRESSIVE numbers shown in the graphic below, the INSTANT TRANSITION to wind and power envisaged by CLIMATE ZEALOTS ISN’T HAPPENING. Which is to say FOSSIL FUELS will be with us for a VERY LONG TIME.
I’m not a Victor Davis Hanson fan. Never have been. Yet, there’s VERLY LITTLE in this op-ed of his that I disagree with.
No, Victor, inflation isn’t Joe Biden’s fault, and there’s a lot more DARK MONEY in US politics than what emanates from Silicon Valley. And no, both the Electoral College and filibuster are ANOMALIES we could well do without.
But as for his other points regarding the squandering of our bedrock advantages, such as “a stable economy, energy independence, vast surpluses of food, hallowed universities, a professional judiciary, law enforcement, and a credible criminal justice system,” I’M ALL IN.
This is a serious, well-conceived piece.
Check it out.
And what is she doing working in government monitoring information? She sounds like someone from a not-for-profit stumping for $$$.
And what an INSUFFERABLE SMUG-BUSYBODY AFFECT. Do liberals simply not understand what RED MEAT a person like this is to the RIGHT?
Damn, she’s JANKY, all right.
Though burn we must, we DON’T HAVE INFINITE FUEL.
Still, burn, baby, burn.
TUDOR PLACE: From Joakim Book at the at Mises Wire.
“Eighty-five percent of human energy usage comes from burning things. Either plants or trees grown in a geologically recent past or plants or trees (and decomposed animals) from ancient times. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc.—all the things that occupy a climate-conscious citizen, activist, or politician’s dreams—are frizzles around the edges.”
TUDOR PLACE: Greta Thunberg notwithstanding, THIS WILL NOT CHANGE OVERNIGHT. As Book points out:
“Renewables don’t power our societies, they’re not about to any time soon, and the fact that they’re not isn’t a policy choice—or “greedy capitalism” preventing this utopian (dystopian) vision.”
TUDOR PLACE: Book then quotes Vaclav Smil, an energy VISIONARY I first started reading in 2006:
“We are a fossil-fueled civilization whose technical and scientific advances, quality of life, and prosperity rest on the combustion of huge quantities of fossil carbon, and we cannot simply walk away away from this critical determinant of our fortunes in a few decades, never mind years.”
TUDOR PLACE: Indeed, as I’ve often pointed out, A GREEN ECONOMY INFRASTRUCTURE BUILDOUT IS A TWENTY YEAR PROJECT THAT WILL REQUIRE GREATER USE OF HYDROCARBONS THAN EVER.
Back to Book:
“To hammer home the “renewable revolutions are impossible” point, let’s use the poster child for renewables, Germany. Here is its energy use over the last half century:
“Let me know if you can spot Germany’s revolutionary Energiewende in the early 2010s.”
More Book:
“At great expense and inconvenience, the world can indeed increase its use of solar and wind—but remember: they destabilize grids and constitute a vanishingly small portion of world energy needs. To replace what we need, and accommodate growth for the billions globally who scrape by on a minimum of energy, the IEA says we must add solar and wind capacity at a vertiginous rate, never before achieved, at way faster than their own forecasts.”
TUDOR PLACE: Who after reading a passage, such as this cannot help but conclude that RENEWABLES as part of CLIMATE CHANGE DOCTRINE are anything more than that feature of the WOKE CREED meant to “CANCEL” HYDROCARBONS?
As for ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION, Book has this to say:
“Green electricity sources, because of the unpredictable load that makes them unsuitable for modern civilization, have expanded in consort with natural gas because the dirty secret of the former is that they require rapidly available backup power—for which the latter is the convenient choice.”
TUDOR PLACE: And tying in the POLITICO-RELIGIOUS ANGLE, this:
“Because all things “carbon” are considered bad, politicians, journalists, and the Greta Thunbergs of the world have done everything in their power to sway more people into putting solar panels on their roofs and electric vehicles in their garages. That strains an already fragile grid by adding more demand and another variable supply: crucially, it requires lots more nickel, palladium, and silver—with Russia among the world’s largest supplier for those key commodities.”
TUDOR PLACE: Which is not to DEMONIZE SOLAR PANELS OR EV’S PER SE. It’s just that they’re neither UNIVERSALLY APPLICABLE AT THIS STAGE or WITHOUT UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES.
Book concludes with this:
“It’s becoming increasingly clear, to more and more people, that withdrawing from fossil fuels “for environmental reasons” is not a choice. A society and a world of 8 billion people more advanced than that powered by a horse and buggy, cannot do without the explosive power of fossil fuels.”
TUDOR PLACE: AT LEAST NOT FOR NOW.
Here’s the whole piece if you’d like to read it though I think I’ve distilled its essence.
Lighting the Gas Under European Feet: How Politicians and Journalists Get Energy So Wrong
This is FAIR’s Amicus brief on behalf of petitioner, STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS v. PRSIDENT AND FELLOWS of HARVARD COLLEGE as respondent.
Students For Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College
INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE
The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding and humanity. FAIR advocates for individuals who are threatened or persecuted for speech or who are held to a different set of rules based on their skin color, ancestry, or other immutable characteristics.
ARGUMENT SUMMARY
Principles of Equality Mandate Equal Treatment Regardless of Skin Color.
Group Preferences Negate the Primacy of Individual Rights.
Group Preferences Benefit the Powerful over the Powerless.
Preferential Admissions Have Steep Costs.
Conclusion
A vibrant and diverse student body is a laudable goal. But it does not follow that skin color preferences can or should be the way to achieve it.
FOR THOSE OF US WHO’VE BEEN MAKING THESE ARGUMENTS FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS NOW, IT’S GRATIFYING TO SEE THEM AT LAST BEING MADE IN COURT.
THIS IS A NATION OF INDIVIDUALS — NOT GROUP IDENTITIES. WE ARE NOT A COLLECTIVIST SOCIETY.
I HOPE THE JUDICIARY REAFFIRMS THAT.
Tudor Place 