Sep 8, 2023 at 12:57 AM | Robert Swan

This is the kind of taxpayer-funded non-job you can expect when when fourth-rate politicians devolve powers to sixth-rate politicians.

Listened to an interview on an ABC radio podcast. Interview wasn't worth much, but I latched on to the very now title of the interviewee: the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales. A weighty responsibility to be sure (weighty enough that she has already departed and a new bloke has taken over).

I'm sure the role is thought of as looking after the interests of today's citizens' descendents, but that's not what it says on the label.

It has often struck me (typically when hearing a litany of woes about historical injustices) that the people who are here today don't have a simple correspondence with the people who were here before. They're descended from some mixture of the baddies, the collaborators, the keep-your-head-down resisters, the outright cowards, only very rarely from the "good guys", and a substantial portion from later immigrants. Where will future generations spring from? The good commissioner has a bit of predicting to do.

"Future" is rather open ended too. How many generations forward is this commissioner expected to see? Is he looking after the interests of the Chinese descendants after they occupy the British Isles in 2085, or will he prepare the way for the Betelgeuseans who take over the planet in 2450 after an experiment with wind-powered wormholes goes badly wrong?

Yes, silly, but better to ditch the silly role and do something for today's residents.

WOW Folks!

'Obama was running all around Chicago doing crack and powder cocaine, making stops at the Comfort Inn to do oral sex'

Well, at least according to a guest the great Tucker gave some airtime to.

Oh dear.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/07/tucker-carlson-obama-sex-expose-ridiculous

Two articles picked up from comments at Jo Nova's.

A nice piece on what investors should make of climate science. Quite lengthy, and a little jumbled up for my liking, but it contained this, which sums it up pretty well:

... climate change isn’t a systemic risk: it’s a mass hysteria

A book foreword written by Bess Price explaining why *NO* is the right response to the upcoming "Voice" referendum. Well worth reading, but this quote gives a fair one-sentence summary:

The Voice is being promoted by those who are living off our peoples’ miseries.

I see Jo Nova is onto Britain's criminalising of home owners for eco-naughtiness. She has a good way with words. This pretty well sums up all the global warming nonsense:

There is no natural endpoint. No moment when the weather will be perfect and not in need of changing somehow. No day when they can declare, “We stopped the storms — you can have your fridge back”

Bit mortified at my spelling yesterday. I know it's "euthanasia", but the fingers sometimes go for familiar patterns and the eyes see what is meant rather than what is there (at least until after posting). That I was seeing red at the time may not have helped.

tomo,
Yes, if Ramaswamy's responses are an act, he's a much better actor than the typical politician, but that's what the presidential system tends to select for. I've previously mentioned how Americans like to think they're voting for President Atticus Finch, but they actually get President Gregory Peck (who does a damned good impersonation given an appropriate script and direction).

Happy for Tucker Carlson to ruffle feathers. Quite enjoyed his talk with Viktor Orban (who, surprise surprise, didn't come over as the Devil incarnate).

With you on the public servants wagging the dog. But it seems we're both blessed that we *don't* live in Canada.

Whole video bears watching, but 16 minutes in is the part that incensed me. "Can I have a new wheelchair? My old one's falling to bits" "Tsk tsk. It may take some time" "Can't you speed it up. It's very difficult getting around when the wheels don't turn". "Oh, well. If life's getting difficult, we do have assisted dying you know."

Ok, it might just be a particularly insensitive "public servant" she was talking to, but it feels very like we're converging on a Terry Gilliam style dystopia where the call centre gives incentives to staffers who encourage veterans (and other pensioners) to take up offers of euthenasia: convince three in a month you get an extra day off; convince ten and you get a week's vacation in Cancun, all expenses paid.

I'm in favour of euthanasia as an escape from an awful existence. Cynical as I might be, I hadn't thought of the corollary: Have we made your life awful enough yet? Go on, you know you want to. Tail wagging the dog, as you say.

As for criminalising people for not making their house "eco", that's pretty draconian. If you're right that it's a wealthy eco-warrior paying off lawmakers, best hope he doesn't hear about Canada's approach to hard problems. Maybe not so sure that legalising euthenasia would be a good sign.

Quite enjoyed the recent EconTalk on whether *any* form of cancer screening is worth doing. Accorded well with my own view — if you have no symptoms, why go looking for problems, especially when finding such "problems" is often the *only* problem.

tomo,
Little chance of confusing this fumigation idea with the HHO nonsense. Just to clarify what might have been a bit cryptic in yesterday's, spark ignition has all the combustibles ready to go when the spark occurs, so pretty much all the combustion happens there and then at TDC: constant volume. Compression ignition gets air hot enough to ignite fuel, then introduces fuel. Piston goes on travelling as the fuel is squirted in over a few milliseconds leading to a longer push instead of a sudden bang: constant pressure (well, kind of).

But fumigation adds in the idea of *some amount* of *some kind* of fuel being in the combustion chamber of a compression ignition engine, not able to ignite under the pressure alone. When the injection starts, combustion starts, and that will be the "spark plug" to set off the charge. That adds quite a few "moving parts" to the balancing act: which fuels go where? what to do with the compression ratio? how much fumigation at low rpms/loads vs. high? Hybridise a diesel engine with a petrol engine's manifold-injection setup and there'd be many interesting experiments to try.

Tricky part that springs to mind is the air. You have to have enough to burn ALL the fuel, and that means that initial fumigated charge is going to be very lean.

Anyhow, I like thinking about these things but obviously I'm way behind on developments. With setups worked out and available commercially, the questions must have been resolved satisfactorily.

Maybe I should give up on the thinking anyway. Back when direct petrol injection was introduced I was sure it was a big win. It seemed to be at first, but then I heard about the inlet manifold gunk and walnut shell blasting etc., required to deal with it. At a mileage where DI *may* have saved you a couple of hundred dollars in fuel you're faced with $1000 bill for manifold cleanup.

A comment at Jo Nova's had this link to a fellow doubting Vivek Ramaswamy's authenticity. Seems the candidate might be a "tell them what they want to hear" salesman.