A never-asinine April

I didn’t get very far with my ‘best-of-2014’ posts until we were all shocked out of our summer slumbers by the involuntary religious sacrifices in Paris.

So, to get back on track, here’s my top several still highly relevant posts from April of last year, beginning with…

• I keep being asked the same question: “How come you keep bashing religion on your blog? Especially at Easter and Christmas!”
  Here’s my answer…
  “So, How Come You Keep Bashing Religion?”
  See, I'm far from alone
  
  
• “Put down your symbols of torture for a moment, grab a couple of good old pagan Easter Eggs, and consider something more uplifting than your traditional Easter story, courtesy of Lindsay Perigo.
  Easter Uplift: It’s Your Revised Sermon on the Mount
  
  
• “John Campbell is shilling for warmists again – in the process setting himself against observations made by none other than Charles Darwin.”
  John Campbell versus Charles Darwin
  
  
• Yes, I still chuckled …
  OMG, But They’re Breaking the Law!
  
  
• “…pointing out among other things the conjunction of historically ultra-low interest rates and a mortgage bubble grown by 165% in a little over a decade, with the fact that nearly half of all NZers mortgages have floating interest rates, with mortgages themselves accounting for nearly 60% of banks’ loan portfolios…  the industrialised world’s fourth-worst household debt-to-GDP ratio, and a place in which agriculture as a source of wealth is vastly outstripped by “the finance, insurance and business service sector,’ a sector in which banks ‘dangerously exposed to the country’s property and credit bubble’ comprise the lion’s share.
      Naturally, National Party cheerleaders issued a cogent dismissal which began by shooting the messenger and ended by blinking,  “Bubble? What Bubble?”
  “12 Reasons Why New Zealand's Economic Bubble Will End In Disaster”
  New Zealand’s Bubble Economy Is Vulnerable
  
  
• “’' ‘695-pages of rollicking neo-Marxist agitprop against inequality and in favour of massive new taxes on the rich. The book is a sensation on the left, a nuclear target for the right, and an endless battlefield for economic theorists of all stripes.’ …
      “ ‘There’s a lot in Capital, but the book has three basic foundations. There’s the Marxist Set Up, the Capitalist Straw Dog and the Utopian Tax Plan.  All the rest is elaborate if sometimes fascinating filler.’”
  Piketty: Egalité, Fraternité–but Let’s Have No More of that Liberté 
  Thomas Piketty on Inequality and Capital
  
  
• “Which leads to an obvious question:  Are the rules around licensing designed to protect doctors’ patients? Or to protect doctors’ salaries?”
  This is what a cartel looks like
  
  
• “There was already abundant international evidence that the “bottom-up” approach is the only way to go. For a recent illustration, see: Beito and Smith: Tornado Recovery—How Joplin Is Beating Tuscaloosa. Strangely, the biggest disaster has not been the earthquakes themselves but the political and bureaucratic response. It still is.”
  Strange Bedfellows: Christchurch Mayor Lianne Dalziel & the Rockefeller Foundation