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 amon@vnl.com Sat, 31 Jul 2010 21:43:29 +0000 http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/air_defense_las.html According to a Janes newsletter: US Navy successfully tests laser with close-in weapon. The US Navy has for the first time in a maritime environment successfully destroyed four unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) targets with a laser, essentially proving the basic premise of adding a directed-energy weapon to Raytheon's Phalanx close-in weapon system. The trial was sponsored by the US Naval Sea Systems Command's (NAVSEA's) PMS 405 Directed Energy Weapons programme office and used the navy's... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/a_tyrants_tantr.html The North Korean football team has aroused the ire of the Dear Leader. Early this month the players were summoned to an auditorium at the working people's culture palace in Pyongyang, forced onstage and subjected to a six-hour barrage of criticism for their poor performances in South Africa, according to the US-based Radio Free Asia. Only Jung Tae-se and An Yong-hak were spared a dressing down as they flew directly to Japan, their country of... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/the_gulf_oil_sl.html An interesting piece about how the oil slick disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Something is getting attention: there is not as much of an oil spill as some might suppose. Apparently, in warm water like this, and due to certain acquatic organisms, the oil is gradually absorbed. It is, in a manner of speaking, gobbled up. (Belch). That got me thinking that yes, oil slicks caused by human error are obviously going to cause... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/adam_smith_on_i.html “The regard for the laws of nations, or for those rules which independent states profess or pretend to think themselves bound to observe in their dealings with one another, is often very little more than mere pretence and profession. From the smallest interest, upon the slightest provocation, we see those rules every day either evaded or directly violated without shame or remorse. Each nation foresees, or imagines it foresees, its own subjugation in the increasing... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/samizdata_quote_683.html We can confirm that eight of the nine people quoted on the website at the time either worked for the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), the Home Office or another government department or agency. - A spokesman from the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) of the Home Office, in answer to a Freedom of Information request from Phil Booth of No2ID, asking how many of the people quoted on an IPS website expressing enthusiasm... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/well_i_am_glad.html Blogger Eric Raymond - who plainly is not on Steve Jobs' Christmas card send-out list, points out the less-than-stellar launch of the new version of the iPhone. What is noteworthy, however, is that at least when a product is brought to market and there are problems with it, then as demonstrated by the Eric Raymonds of this world, a swarm of bloggers, professional product evaluation writers and magazine journalists can weigh in. Capitalism will force... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/samizdata_quote_682.html If you want to cut your own throat, don't come to me for a bandage. - attributed to Margaret Thatcher... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/at_the_2010_far.html Last Saturday, Michael Jennings, Rob Fisher and I went to the Farnborough Airshow, to which, of course, we all brought our cameras. The one with the cheapest and cheerfullest camera tends to take the most pictures, (a) because the pictures tend to be smaller and will fit with ease onto today's infinite SD cards no matter how many you take, and (b) because with a cheap and cheerful camera you want to give yourself lots... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/one_less_public.html The UK Film Council has been scrapped. I am not sure why it was needed. According to a Guardian article, its inclusion in the quango scrappage scheme is a catastrophe. Presumably that is luvvie hyperbole for a bad outcome. Yet, who has come to this conclusion. Tony Hayward, Chief Executive of the UK Film Council. Not an impartial view then. More a biased testament of UK Film Council puffery helped by the Quango Support Group... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/donkeys_lead_by.html So... the global economy has been tanking in no small measure because certain states provided perverse incentives and pushed lenders to offer vast quantities of money to people who had no realistic probability of ever paying it back... and the solution to get us out of this whole mess is to twist banks arms into making loans they would rather not make. The Lib Dem members of the Coalition favour a more interventionist approach to... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/journolist_why_p.html Yet again "JournoList" (the international organization by which leftist journalists cooperate to serve the cause of collectivism) has been exposed. Tucker Carlson over at the "Daily Caller" has exposed more of their propaganda and disinformation campaigns. Specifically the effort to distract attention from, and smear as a "racist" anyone who tried to report Barack Obama's two decade membership of an extreme "Black Liberation Theology" (an ideology that mixes Marxism with black racism and then puts... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/david_aaronovit.html From the latest Radio Times: McCarthyism: There Were Reds Under the Bed In the light of recent spy revelations, David Aaronovitch uncovers dramatic evidence that the notorious Communist hunter Joseph McCarthy may have been right after all about Soviet infiltration into the US government. That's this coming Sunday, July 25th, at 1.30pm, on BBC Radio 4. Google, google. Here is more about the programme: David Aaronovitch thinks the unthinkable about the McCarthy period. The hunt... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/nothing_new_to_1.html I wish I had something new to say on the Ian Tomlinson case. I wish the new thing was "the person who was caught on video as, unprovoked, he hit a man from behind and pushed him to the ground, with the result that the man died soon afterwards, is going to be prosecuted, and the fact that he is a police officer will make no difference at all." But of course I am not... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/what_with_the_i_1.html Michael Tomasky blogs for the Guardian on American affairs. He is a fairly left wing Democrat, and is currently feeling down. He describes in this piece how a piece of internet humour cheered him up. He was sent a letter to the Red States (i.e. the ones voting Republican in the weird American convention for political colours) that reads: Subject: Letter to the Red States: Dear Red States. If you manage to steal this election... http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2010/07/getting_your_pr.html Things have been a little odd in Australian politics recently. In the last month, the governing Australian Labor Party has sacked Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and appointed Julia Gillard as Australia's first woman Prime Minister. While this has been going on, former Labor PM Paul Keating has been having a weird slanging match with former Labor PM Bob Hawke and his biographer/wife Blanche d'Alpuget. She was his biographer first. Long and somewhat tawdry story, which...