Myponga News

The dashboard from my new solar panels tells the story: so much cloud and rain at the end of this past week that the batteries had not even fully recharged each day:

Not that it mattered much; I was too busy working. However, the sun came out again today, so I was able to

Why Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and Why Feminism Widens the Divide between Rich and Poor

There is a theory about why gentlemen prefer blondes which started as a sort of academic joke. It goes like this. It is much easier to tell whether a blonde woman is healthy or not.  Sick blondes look red and blotchy, whereas illnesses in brunettes, with their darker skin, are harder to spot. But then evolutionists tended to take the theory a bit more seriously; after all, there is indeed an evolutionary advantage for a man in choosing a healthy-looking blonde as a mate, since he can be better assured that she will be able to bear and look after healthy children.

Not all that far up the road from this theory is one about feminism. Before feminism, there was relatively little opportunity really smart men to meet really smart women. They would meet the children of their parents’ friends, of course, and their neighbours. They really wouldn’t meet many women at all at university, because there were very few women at university. If they qualified as young doctors, it would meet nurses, and if they joined an office, they would meet secretaries.  Some nurses and secretaries are smart, but not all.

Now, there is much more opportunity for really smart men to meet really smart women. As fellow students at university. As colleagues in their professional life. And in every

Talking about a Post-Brexit World

It is now over a year since Francis Hoar’s careful analysis that the UK is not prohibited by European law from now negotiating trade deals with non-EU countries which will take effect in March ’19. But it is an analysis that is becoming more compelling now.

Jean-Claude Juncker has suggested that the UK cannot negotiate these trade deals during the 2 years period under Article 50 (Frans Timmermans is more realistic), but it seems clear that Juncker is wrong about this.

It is true that in the Blue Skies Case (Commission v United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Germany), the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) declared illegal an agreement entered into by various EU countries with the USA for co-operation in the area of aviation. But note the summary of that case

Quiz IX

What do the following have in common:

Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, Adam Watson, from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Banchory, Aberdeenshire, Dr. Morris Bender, from NOAA, Steve Running, a wildfire expert, ecologist and forestry professor at the University of Montana, Dr. Felix Landerer of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany, Dr. Jerry Mitrovica, professor of geophysics at Harvard University, Prof. Wieslaw Maslowski from Dept. Oceanography of the US Navy , NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally, University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber,  Mark Serreze, director of the NSIDC, Prof. Peter Wadhams, head of the polar ocean physics group at the University of Cambridge (UK), James Hansen, NASA scientist, Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), Janos Bogardi, director of the Institute for Environment and Human Security at the United Nations University in Bonn and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Cristina Tirado, from the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, Dr. John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy for the Obama administration then a professor at U.C. Berkeley

Hint: They are

The Diet’s Work

 

My love is like a bread bread roll

With hardly any butter.

I am no more a cheerful soul,

My cry, a broken mutter.