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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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In London just now there is a big push on to make the place more pedestrian friendly, and less car-dominated. The Congestion Charge is part of this trend. So are the three new footbridges across the Thames, in the form of the Millenium Bridge between the City and Tate Modern, and the two new footbridges they’ve put on either side of the old Hungerford (railway) Bridge to replace the one old puddle-ridden sewer of a footbridge that used to be there.
As a confirmed pedestrian, I consider all these changes to be big steps in the right direction, especially the Congestion Charge. The long term threat is that London may one day stop being a living city, and become a tourist city, like Paris. Paris is pretty. Of course it is. But the trouble with Paris is that increasingly, that’s all that it is.
In London, for the time being, tourism is no threat. London is far too big, busy and ugly for that. Tourism is the seasoning of this great city, not its basic nourishment. And one of the more entertaining sights to be seen in London in recent years has been the tourist related one of seeing one of these things trundling about, these being DUKWs.
DUKWs, or “Ducks” as they have always, inevitably, been called, were originally used for amphibious landings during World War II, and although I’ve never witnessed them actually making the transition, the London ducks are amphibious here too, being both buses and boats at different stages of their travels about London.
While putting this together, I found myself wondering, not for the first time in my life: why DUKW? Well, according to this:
D = First year of production code “D” is for 1942
U = Body style “U” utility truck (amphibious)
K = Front wheel drive. GMC still uses that on trucks today (K5 Chevy Blazer)
W = Two rear driving wheels (tandem axle)
So now you know.
I also learned on my google-travels that London is not the only city where DUKWs are still making themselves useful, and keeping people employed driving them and looking after them. They are to be found all over the place, it seems.
We in England have been neglecting Zimbabwe. There have been very few postings on the subject here lately, just this from me since the Iraq war, unless I missed something in my backtracking.
That is now changing. Today is day one of the test match cricket series between England and Zimbabwe. The first test is a Lords, the St Peter’s Rome of cricket, and frankly the cricket has been fairly dreary. In a rain interrupted first session England, in the persons of Trescothick and Vaughan, managed 28 without loss. While I wrote what follows, England got to about 100 for the loss of Vaughan. (I could explain, but if you don’t know what that means, you almost certainly don’t care.)
But of course the real story is off the pitch, and frankly this aspect of the situation is proving a whole lot more satisfactory and less embarrassing than I for one had dared to hope.
Take the TV coverage so far, on Channel 4 TV. There has been some play, so that has focussed some attention on the situation. But the rain interruptions mean that Channel 4 have been wheeling out all their if-it-rains plans, and one of them concerns the matter of the, er, regime in Zimbabwe, and any demonstrations against and reactions to that regime.
There have already been demonstrations, both inside (one gutsy demonstrator made her point and got herself shepherded out) and outside the ground. And more to the point, much more to the point, Channel 4 have pointed their cameras at some of this.
If you know anything about TV sports coverage, you’ll know that it can be very misleading when a real world news item erupts in its midst. The tiresome habit of certain English exhibitionists invading sports events in the nude was inflamed by the promise of TV coverage, and is now being suppressed by TV coverage of these idiots also being suppressed. When British soccer fans behave really, really badly, they don’t always make it to the TV shows either. What actually happens between rival fans at Celtic v Rangers soccer matches in Glasgow, for example, is nobody’s business, and certainly never gets to be the business of TV viewers in anything like its full lack of glory. All of which means that the Channel 4 recognition of the “regime problem” is very significant. An enthusiastic pro-Mugabe-ite watching the TV coverage here today would not be a happy bunny.
Pitch invader, demos outside the ground, mainstream news coverage of demos outside the ground, above all the prospect of this relentless drizzle of media focus going on and on throughout the tour, destroying all attempts to suggest that things out there are in any way normal – it’s looking a lot worse than such a person would have been hoping for.
It may even be that the tour going ahead, but surrounded by the ever louder claim that it shouldn’t have, is the worst possible media outcome for the “regime”. I surely hope so.
Above all, there is Henry Olonga. → Continue reading: Cricket is drawing English attention back to Zimbabwe
On Monday night I watched a Channel 4 TV documentary about the battle between Lockheed and Boeing for the contract to build the next US jet fighter. Winner takes all, and Lockheed won with this. It’s all completely new stuff to me, although I’m sure Dale Amon has been all over this for years.
At the end this show there was a tantalising reference to unmanned flight, in which, it just so happens, one of the companies that is doing best is … Boeing. Ever since I’ve been on the lookout for uses for this kind of aircraft, besides searching out and bombing enemies on a battlefield I mean. I’m sure Dale Amon has been all over that question as well, but to me, it’s a new one. What can you do with these gismos? War, yes, but what else?
(By the way, I take it there are people on the ground paying attention to these things when they’re in the air, and that they don’t genuinely and completely fly themselves. Tell me this is true.)
In the small hours of Wednesday morning I found myself watching another TV documentary, this time about how they’re using swarms of these unmanned planes to make better weather forecasts. And here’s something else which was apparently made possible by unmanned flight, this time in the form of a movie about birds.
Any other offers? There have to be lots of other brilliant things you can do with flying robots. One obvious application springs to mind, which is unmanned cargo planes full of stuff which, at a pinch, you can stand to lose.
And what about stuff you can’t afford to lose? How about “unmanned” passenger planes? After all, there are unmanned passenger trains now. We have them in London, on the Docklands Light Railway. So why not an unmanned 747? I can of course well imagine why not, but seriously, could that ever help at all?
From the ever alert b3ta.com comes news of giant microbes. My favourite is the common cold.
Billions of people a year catch the cold. Now you can get one too — without getting sick! Learn all about the Common Cold with this cuddly companion.
GIANTmicrobes, in a fit of propriety, calls these things “health dolls”. No GIANTmicrobes, they’re sickness dolls.
What, you are probably asking, does this mean for the prospects of western civilisation, immediate and longer term? I do not know. They are cute, I think.
This, on the other hand, also via b3ta, has got to be bad news for France. → Continue reading: Further proof of how weird other people can be
Not everything in this will make sense to everyone. Who’s Biagi? Just someone they quite like but argue with a lot, if memory serves. Who, for that matter, is Tupy, the poster of the bit below? He’s one of their ex-activists, now making his presence felt in the USA.
So, the Liberty Club AGM is over and I have just been e-mailed the names of the new LC committee members. Some of them I know and some of them I don’t know. But what struck me about the new composition of the LC leadership is how “diverse” it is. Yuck – the “d” word again! Still, the new LC committee will transcend the boundaries of gender, race and sexual orientation. And the best part is that none of that had to be doctored! The LC does not have a specific committee position for women, gays or non-Europeans and yet it attracts all these people. Why? Because freedom is close to their heart and they are prepared to work for it. Eat that Biagi!
Liberty Club – you rock!
After a brief flirtation with Scotland, it would seem from that last bit that Tupy is becoming a full-blown American.
Seriously, what this shows is how tenacious intellectual traditions at universities can be. And isn’t it interesting how these university covens are staying in touch these days, via the internet?
Mind you, if the circa 2000 Liberty Club crowd do stay connected and have consequences, they won’t be the first St Andrews alumni to do this. St Andrews was the cradle, a quarter of a century ago and more, of this.
First they went for New York, then they hit Bali, now they are hitting their own backyard. This is terrorism back in serious business? That’s what I was thinking, and now this guy, damn him, an unnamed e-mailer to this has said it all for me. Best to read the whole thing, but here are a few key paragraphs:
The most telling aspect of these last two attacks is the geographic locations – Arabic countries nearby radical Islamist regimes. In the case of Saudi Arabia, parts of their own country can be considered radically Islamist; Morocco’s location adjacent to Algeria has always made it a prime target.
Why did they hit New York? Because they could. Now, they can’t. Why did they hit Bali? Because they could. Now they can’t. So why are they now hitting their own back yard? Because they can. And that’s all they can.
Why is this telling? These locations are within the “local” sphere of Arabic influence. The infrastructure and resources required to bring the fight to the enemy’s territory (us) has been effectively disrupted. Logistical planning and operational expertise has been effectively eliminated. Al-Qaeda can rely only on local extremist support, as that is what is left. The low-tech, Palestinian method, effectively demonstrates that few resources are available and that the imagination and planning required for more sophisticated attacks is just not present.
Well maybe it’s not all they can now hit, and sometime Real Soon Now maybe they’ll prove me, and this guy, wrong. I’m only optimistic that they won’t hit New York (or London, or Paris, or Rome) because a lot of smart and hardworking people are absolutely not taking this for granted. It’s like how you back a good sports team to win their big game, precisely because they don’t assume that they’ll win, that being all part of what makes them so good.
That necessary caveat aside, my bet about how things are now going is the same as this guy’s bet:
The war on terror has been a success. The arena has not shifted. The roll back continues. Arabic countries have now been forced into the realization that, for their own survival, these groups must be destroyed. These regimes are nothing if not ruthless. Expect a surge of beheadings in the near future.
Soon, in other words, they won’t even be able to hit their own back yard. With luck, and lots more not taking things for granted by our team, there will then, or eventually (after a few more horrors in out of the way spots), be a long period of silence. And then slowly, very slowly, it will dawn on everyone that it just might be … over.
And the moral is, if you have a clever thought, post it fast, or someone else will get to it first.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but it’s this or nothing. Seriously, there’s been nothing here for nearly twenty four hours, so I’m going to write about Tesco moisturised and elasticated No Fuss 2 in 1 anti-dandruff shampoo and conditioner, because it’s a subject I feel strongly about. (Sorry, I can find a link to the Tesco enterprise as a whole, but no direct link to any information about this particular product.)
For the last few decades I’ve always assumed that shampoo, by its nature, is something that can’t be entirely convenient. Does the lid hold the shampoo in tightly? If so, it will be a bother opening it, by unscrewing it or by otherwise gouging it open, and that means you’ll tend to keep it open, and that means that it loses its moisture and gets stuck at the bottom of the container, and you have to hold it upside down for about a minute, waiting for it to appear, or perhaps dilute it, which risks diluting it too much and turning it into an uncontrollable liquid rather than a semi-controllable sludge (no disrespect intended). Then, once it has appeared, I assumed it to be a law of nature that not all of it would end up in my hair, but that some of it would assemble itself just outside the hole in the container from which it had emerged, where it would dry out and perhaps block the hole. Which is why I probably should keep the container shut, by screwing it shut again, or by forcing the lid back on. (Remember, a lid that is easy to force short is a lid that can easily fall open again, and that defeats the purpose of the thing.) But that’s so much bother that I can seldom be bothered.
Actually, the procedure I eventually got around to using was to put the lid back on, but to keep the container upside down so that I didn’t have to wait for it to journey laboriously to the exit every time.
I hope this is making sense.
So, let’s take those two adjectives that I apply (for they do not appear on the container) to the latest Tesco shampoo (and conditioner) one at a time. Moisturised, and elasticated. → Continue reading: Tesco moisturised and elasticated No Fuss 2 in 1 anti-dandruff shampoo and conditioner
Well it seems to be kick-Mugabe-until-he’s-down time here at Samizdata, and I’d like now to add my little thousand Zimbabwe dollars‘ worth of additional reportage. There’s nothing to link to, because I found out what follows for myself.
A few years ago I and two other persons were cooperating on a project of mutual concern to us. One of my colleagues, the boss of the enterprise, was and still is a good friend of mine. The other, a black lady friend of my friend, I’d not met before. But her face seemed familiar as soon as I met her. Who was it? Some film star? Then … bingo. Robert Mugabe. She was the spitting image of Robert Mugabe.
Mugabe wasn’t her name. She had an English married name and had been in England for the last twenty years or so. So far as I knew, there could be a whole tribe of Mugabe lookalikes out there, and maybe she and he were not in any direct way connected or related. But it turned out, I can’t remember how, that she was Robert Mugabe’s niece. She was in no way responsible for or in involved in the present horrors being suffered by Zimbabwe. She had a life of her own in England. She was also a most likeable, attractive and decent person. But she was also very – how shall I put it? – determined. Once she was set on a course of thought or action, that was it, that was what she was going to think and to do, no matter what.
Such determination as hers can be a virtue in all kinds of circumstances, and I’m sure that many times in her life it was. Wherever events are too uncertain and too fluid for comfort, an individual who knows exactly what he or she is doing and who sticks to it can be a great blessing. Such people can radiate security and safety and certainty like the rays of the sun, especially if what they have decided upon is good in other ways also, but often just because it is at least certain.
But in other circumstances such determination can be a real problem. In the project the three of us were working on, it became a serious liability, for the simple reason that what she had decided upon was wrong – not wicked wrong, you understand, just foolish and mistaken wrong. No matter how much trouble her determination to do things her way and in no other way seemed to the two of us to be causing, and in defiance of the expert guidance we were all getting, she never deviated from – as we and those experts all saw it – folly. That she might be mistaken simply never entered her head. She did things her way and that was it. Nothing could stop her short of overwhelming force, in the form of the refusal of her colleagues to work with her any longer, which is eventually what we had to inflict upon her. At which point she remained convinced that she was the only one in step. She was genuinely baffled at the foolishness of the world in failing to see the wisdom of or to fit in with her preferred methods.
If Uncle Robert Mugabe is anything like Niece Never-you-mind, then any plan for sorting out Zimbabwe that is in any way dependent upon Mugabe coming around to seeing even tiny glimpses of the many errors of his ways is doomed, utterly doomed.
This thought occurred to me as soon as I became acquainted with the Niece and learned who she was, so to speak. Her Uncle has since done nothing to change my understanding of his character. I’m open to persuasion, of course, in the face of evidence to the contrary, but I now believe that he isn’t. Only overwhelming force is going to stop this man.
Death, for example. That would do the trick, whether by natural or artificial causes. An invading army, that would be good. But such things as economic sanctions or condemnation from the Commonwealth, or any other diplomatic attempts at persuasion that are at all diplomatic – forget it.
On the BBC they’ve just finished listing Britain’s hundred “best loved” novels, as voted for by viewers. Harry Potter figures prominently, all of them so far being in the hundred, and I’m now watching some rather disdainful literary experts mulling it over. (Germaine Greer has just described the works of Tolkein as “nazi tosh”.)
Last time I was listening out for such things, I picked up a lot of official literary disapproval for the Harry Potter phenomenon. That at any rate is what I said on my education blog, while describing my god-daughter’s extraordinary powers of concentration when confronted by HP number 4. Somebody called Cameron agreed, and I think his comment deserves a wider readership than it will ever get at its original destination.
What had the most influence on my decision to finally cave in and read the series was the fact that literary critics and others who see no shame in the “intellectual” label were so nastily (sometimes politely) negative in their reviews.
Reading the reviews of the first book carefully, I noticed that the criticisms were both uniform and vague. The writing style was sniffed at, the characters lacked nuance and subtlety, as did the overall plot, which had the temerity to be about something as crass and silly as a “good” boy fighting an “evil” villain. In other words, it was a children’s book, which fact really, really seems to confuse Smart People.
Of course, I was delighted to read it. It smacked of the same kind of kid-growing-up flavor as Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series.
My own enjoyment of the books aside, what I see in the whole Harry Potter argument is simply more proof of an argument made recently by best-selling author Orson Scott Card about Tolkien’s books; to wit: Serious “LitCrits” hate the Lord of the Rings because the public loves LoR. This is because the public is still quite unashamed to enjoy stories while the LitCrits had that trait wrenched, I mean, trained out of them in the universities. For the serious student of Great Literature, stories are for the uneducated; real intellectuals deal with what stories mean.
Except that the literature that is most loved by the greatest percentage of, well, people who like reading is the kind of literature that defies the very methods of interpretation and intellectual gymnastics that Intellectuals enjoy so much. [how’s THAT for a sentence?]
It is a control issue. Speaking as a current English Literature major (hey – I won my college’s “Best Writing About Literature” award last year – I’m a bona-fide Smart Guy), what I’ve come to see is that the people who really hate the “Potter” books (and I know you are not one of them, so this does not apply to you) hate them because they can’t control how people read them – the unwashed have embraced scripture that the priests didn’t write, and, OH, how this bugs your average professor(!).
Think about it: Every last “ism” an Eng Lit major has to study is the product of some wind bag who couldn’t stand that people weren’t seeing the same things in literature that he or she was seeing.
And, furthermore . . .
Good heavens! I apologize for going on a rant.
Apology accepted. That was obviously a first draft as well as a final version, and as such pretty good stuff, I say.
“This week it cost me 2,750 dollars to airmail a letter to Britain containing three A4 sheets of paper.”
– Jan Raath in yesterday’s Times reporting from what remains of Zimbabwe
Last night, on Have I Got News For You, a British TV comedy quiz show held in high regard, one of the regulars, Ian Hislop, who also edits Private Eye (but who presumably pays rather less attention to the Private Eye home page), launched a spectacular attack on the European Union and on the idea of Britain being any part of it. The gist of it was that Europe was being dealt a new constitution by a man (Giscard d’Estaing) who would be in prison if he were British. “It’s as if Jeffrey Archer was in charge of Europe.”
Left wing comedian Mark Steel tried to take the sting out of the attack by implying that Hislop was attacking all French people. (“And how about those bloody Italians, crooks all of them, …” etc.) He played the xenophobia card, in other words. But Hislop wasn’t attacking all French people and saying they were all crooks, just Giscard, and, in general, the kind of people who become French Presidents. He steam-rollered right over Steel, not least because this is Hislop’s home turf and both he and Steel knew it.
I can’t remember much of the wording of the attack, and I don’t have it on tape. But in any case, it was the ferocity and the protracted nature of it that was astonishing, rather than the details. Everyone else looked rather embarrassed. Ian, easy boy, you can’t say this kind of thing on TV, BBCTV, BBC comedy TV, said their faces (but not their mouths). But he just raged on regardless.
To Americans who may doubt the significance of all this, Hislop is a much loved figure in Britain. For years now, he and Paul Merton have been swapping gags and banter on HIGNFY, and whenever Hislop has been on the receiving end, he has taken it like a good sport. As editor of Private Eye, Hislop has been involved in savaging many dishonest and unpopular public figures – Jeffrey Archer being only one of many, and unlike politicians, he is considered honest. Whether this is true is beside the point I’m making; the point is, he’s a considerable British personality. So when he lays into the EU as a racket run by racketeers in a manner fit to bust, that has got to count for something, public-opinion-wise.
You had the feeling that Hislop has been waiting for the right moment to throw all his chips onto the table and make his anti-EU pitch, and if that’s right then it is very interesting that he reckons now to be the moment.
One other thing. I say that I don’t have this on tape. By this evening, assuming all goes well, I will have it on tape, because the show is being repeated tonight on BBC2 TV tonight, at 10.05 pm.
If you want something cultural to read, I recommend postings numbers one and two of Nikos Salingaros week, over at 2Blowhards.
The postings are interesting. But even better, in my opinion, are some of the comments. I’ve posted tangential comments of my own about the “New Urbanism”, briefly on Transport Blog, and at somewhat greater length at my Education Blog. Meanwhile here are bits from two of my favourite of the Blowhard/Salingaros comments, so far.
First, here is “Tom”, replying to something Michael Blowhard had said about suburbs:
You are so right about the zoning, transportation department, fire department rules ossified since the 50’s creating inevitable horrible suburbia. I have done work in suburban areas and the results are completely predetermined by setbacks, maximum lot coverage areas, single use zoning, minimum parking space numbers and transportation department road standards. This is where the problems with modern architecture really are – a socialist/utopian attitude towards city planning. Even in many areas where they object strongly to this kind of thing, the solutions are always increased regulation – appearance reviews, stricter zoning, etc which just makes the problem worse. The reason all suburbs in america look the same is because there are two (i believe) companies that publish model codes for towns that they just buy off the shelf. The role of new urbanism should be fighting these standards.
→ Continue reading: Comments on Salingaros
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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