The recent ban by a bookseller of Jordan B. Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos highlights the propensity to try to shut down ideas that one doesn’t understand or those ideas that challenge one’s position. Using any tragedy as justification, no matter how disconnected. [Do I smell a Reichstag fire?]
Suppression of “bad ideas” is a toehold of tyranny. 
Continue reading
A reminder of gentler times found at Historic UK
By the late 1800s, large cities all around the world were “drowning in horse manure”. In order for these cities to function, they were dependent on thousands of horses for the transport of both people and goods.
… The main concern was the large amount of manure left behind on the streets. On average a horse will produce between 15 and 35 pounds of manure per day, so you can imagine the sheer scale of the problem. …
Each horse also produced around 2 pints of urine per day and to make things worse, the average life expectancy for a working horse was only around 3 years. … The bodies were often left to putrefy so the corpses could be more easily sawn into pieces for removal. …
This problem came to a head when in 1894, The Times newspaper predicted… “In 50 years, every street in London will be buried under nine feet of manure.”
That calamity was averted by the introduction of motorised vehicles; some electric in the cities and others by internal combustion engines.
What a tangled web we weave …
New direct-injection gasoline/petrol engines will be equipped with particle filters to meet evermore stringent emissions limits, imposed quite arbitrarily by bureaucrats let off the leash to run amok.
Let’s look at the scale of the “problem”:
Germany’s premier weekly print magazine 
is wrapped in a scandal that is set to rock the foundations of trust in the publication.
The new fabrication scandal in which reporter Claas Relotius falsified his articles on a grand scale; inventing facts, persons and quotations in at least 14 of his stories. They were indeed “good stories” that fitted the narrative of editors and other German media colleagues. Recently the New York Times reported:
Mr. Relotius invented a condescending fiction. On the venerated pages of Der Spiegel, a German newsmagazine, Mr. Relotius portrayed Fergus Falls as a backward, racist place whose residents blindly supported President Trump and rarely ventured beyond city limits. He made up details about a young city official. He concocted characters, roadside signs and racially tinged plotlines.
Der Spiegel is trying to set the record straight but a repair of the reputation is likely to take many years.
“When the narrative fits, facts become secondary“, wrote Mathias Bröckers, author and editor for various German publications, indicating that Der Spiegel had a history of fake news going back at least as far a 9/11; an attack on the USA by Islamic terrorists.
The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.
George Washington
Update 2018-10-24: Marathon Runners cause limits to be exceeded. Details below.
For those who don’t know, the EU set ambient NOx level limits to 40 µg per cubic metre. The limit have recently been (ab)used by Lawyers Without Reason (DUH) to take legal action against German communities, having them ban certain types of vehicles; notably diesels. DUH threatens to sue cities if they fail to do something to reduce NOx levels.
Germany differs somewhat from other EU countries in that their Feral Environment office positions the metering equipment directly at the side of the road whereas in e.g. Thessaloniki (Greece), air quality measuring equipment is located on top of the 4th floor of a university building.
German Science Skeptical Blog writes about a the German city of Oldenburg (Lower Saxony) which noticed that the permitted limit was exceeded at times when the road was closed to traffic; exceeding 60µg/m³; and adding traffic appears to have initially lowered NOx levels. 
City authorities have confirmed with the Environment Federal Office that its metering equipment is regularly checked, calibrated and certified to be operating correctly.
So here you have another case of an arbitrary limit set so low that it’s within “natural” variation and has little to nothing to do with the purported “damage”.
The indoor levels for NOx in the EU are allowed to be as high as 960µg/m³ in the workplace and in the home. The vast majority of people arguably spend much more time at work and at home than at the kerbside.
That’s right. Same road was closed in the morning for a Marathon and an average level of 37 µg/m³ was recorded, just under the 40 µg/m³ permitted. Levels peaked shortly after the event at 54 µg/m³.
Pierre Gosselin reports at NoTricksZone on Germany’s War On Diesel Takes A Setback … Environment Ministry Activism Exposed, Absurd Risk Claims
Ministry of Environment’s, media’s absurd claims
To underscore the risks of diesel fumes and to spread fear of diesel engines, Germany’s Ministry of Environment (UBA) recently released “new findings” claiming diesel engines are responsible for 6000 premature deaths every year.
Those of us who’ve educated ourselves with the help of John Brignell’s Sorry, wrong number! and its companion The epidemiologists – Have they got the scares for you! will immediately suspect the figure to be derived from bad epidemiology serving political purpose. Continue reading
Breitbart publishe
d the text of a speech drafted by Martin Sellner, replacing the one that he’d originally planned to deliver at the centre of the Free Speech Universe; Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, London, England, UK. As Herr Sellner was denied entry into the UK, lest he upset the thugs, it was instead delivered by “Tommy Robinson”, having made the most of the verboten aspect to maximise the number of eyes and ears at the event and around the globe.
THE FULL SPEECH BY SELLNER FOLLOWS:
Dear Friends, dear Britons, dear lovers of free speech.
I assume you all are lovers of free speech because you have come to Speakers’ Corner.
You might not understand all the fuss happening today around this speech. Honestly, I don’t understand it either.
My name is Martin Sellner. I am an Austrian patriot, and at the moment, I’m sitting in a detention cell in Colnbrook Bypass near Heathrow. My smartphone was taken and my girlfriend Brittany was separated from me. I currently don’t know where she is. We will be deported on Sunday.
Five minutes ago, they unlocked our cells and my fellow inmates are gathering in the prison wing. They are mostly illegals and eastern European criminals.
What brought me into this situation? What was my crime?
Democracy is not how one elects one’s masters; it’s how one selects one’s servants.
US President Donald Trump’s political response to the rust belt could do more harm than good to middle America with a virtual tax that will help a diminishing number in the manufacturing sector.
A recent Breitbart article about Trump’s tariff scheme titled ‘Our Factories Were Left to Rot:’ American Workers Thank Trump for Ending ‘Betrayal’ of Unfair Trade was brought to my attention on Facebook. I responded off the cuff:
Protectionism isn’t all beer and skittles.
It can hurt consumers more than what it benefits workers. And the unskilled workplaces of yore in the industry are exactly where they were 30 years ago: 30 year ago.
