http://www.samizdata.net/blog/ A blog for people with a critically rational individualist perspective. We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. en-us tom_hedley2002@yahoo.co.uk Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:17:44 +0000 http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/samizdata_quote_610.html "Churchill, who was prone to the black dog of depression, went to bed on the night of the 5th of June 1944 with a heavy heart. Gloomily he told his wife, Clementine, that by the time they awoke in the morning many tens of thousands of young men he had sent across the Channel might lie dead on the beaches of Normandy. In Alanbrooke’s diaries (he was the finest of the WWII diarists) it is... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/the_toyota_reca.html Toyota is recalling thousands of motor vehicles around the world to deal with certain problems, such as possible brake failures. The story was the lead item on the BBC TV news today, not surprisingly, given the large number of people who now drive Toyota cars. On one level, this issue is being billed as a terrible embarrassment for the Japanese company, but to an extent I find the comprehensive recall of the cars to be... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/a_possibly_outd.html Scanning the news headlines at lunchtime today, I read through the Wall Street Journal and saw this item, in relation to the expenses scandal of British Members of Parliament: I thought the headline was interesting, in that the WSJ - still an overwhelmingly US-centred publication, covering world affairs through the prism of certain American assumptions, likes to refer to MPs as "lawmakers". To be pedantic, it is true that they do continue to make some... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/samizdata_quote_609.html "When I hear the word “holistic” I reach for my BAR and don’t worry about the safety." - Regular Samizdata commenter NickM, over at his CountingCats redoubt. He's talking about Prince Charles. Of course, if Charles wants to revert to an age of Divine Right, witchburnings, absence of notions of individual rights, logic, science and so forth, then maybe he should remove himself to a place more congenial to his outlook.... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/how_the_cancer.html The British Prime Minister, Mr Gordon Brown, is going to promise nursing at home for all cancer patients who desire this. Such nursing is already provided by the Macmillan charity (hence "Macmillan cancer nurses"), but people will soon forget that. If the plan goes ahead and (a rather wild assumption) the British government manages to stagger on for a few more years without bankruptcy from its endless schemes, people will soon be saying "if it... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/samizdata_quote_608.html Ballet by elephants. - Mike Carlson, commentating for BBC1 TV during the first quarter of Super Bowl XLIV, describes the Indianapolis Colts offence as they run in the first touchdown. 10-0 Colts at the end of the first quarter.... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/global_warming_2.html No doubt it must be global warming that has caused the most severe snowfall on the US capital in ninety years. I eagerly await an IPCC report on this! I can only wonder if Dave Cameron actually reads the newspapers. The first rumbling of disquiet on his caring/sharing Green Tory-ism started last year and it is not too late to get rid of this half wit and replace him as leader of the Conservative Party... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/skoolznospittle.html Mental hospitals in this case. I sometimes get stick on Samizdata for pointing out that the demands of practical politics in a media democracy mean that it is pointless to try the public statements of politiicans against an ideological touchstone, and unreasonable to believe that they believe everything they say from day to day. But I do greatly resent two consequences of populist pandering: first, the willingness to distort the facts to flatter or inflame... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/samizdata_quote_607.html A North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. - Christopher Hitchens writes about A Nation of Racist Dwarfs... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/was_climategate.html There has just been a burst of speculation about whether a certain Paul Dennis leaked the Climategate files. In a comment on a posting at Bishop Hill, Dennis denies it. The police did talk to him. But that's all, he says. A few weeks ago, in among the comments on this posting at Watts Up With That?, I came across the following comment from Anthony Watts himself, following earlier comments speculating about who the leaker... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/this_is_too_eas.html Hanoi, Vietnam. February 2010... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/journalists_sti_1.html For several years now, most of us mainstream bloggers have been loftily contemptuous of paper and television "journalists". They are ridiculous dinosaurs, say most of us, slaving away fully clothed at desks and at computers that they often don't even own, pushing prejudices and biases that may not even be theirs, stuck in their own myopic little worlds and blind to the larger forces at work in the world. Worse, these bizarre individuals often insist... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/a_32gbsd_card.html Every now and again I have one of those "It's amazing what you can buy nowadays" moments, when I am confronted with some aspect of the modern world that is working really well. As parts of it most definitely are, even as other aspects of human civilisation remain shambolic or worse. So it was yesterday, when I saw and snapped this, through a rather grubby and blurry shop window, just across from the ticket barriers... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/the_climatechan.html I am going with my son to the Royal Institution on Friday to hear the debate between Roger Pielke, Jr, and Bob Ward, of LSE's Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment (Bob Ward recently starred in a Samizdata post by Brian Micklethwait). The debate is titled 'Has Global Warming increased the toll of disasters?' Not hard to guess Bob Ward's answer. A flavour of Pielke's position is given by this extract from... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/02/playing_the_pat.html Tom G. Palmer, a writer I greatly admire, nicely calls out some rather boorish behaviour by the leftist writer, Jonathan Chait. I am a bit surprised: I always figured that Chait was one of the more reasonable leftists, so it seems a bit disappointing that he is a sneering jackass. Mr Chait's powers of reasoning are in any event, somewhat over-rated. I fisked something by him in relation to the Great Depression some time ago....