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The world’s financial system, run by institutions that were a few short years ago considered to be too big to fail but which are now too big to bail, is collapsing. But, the making of mere things, not now nearly so fatally deranged by government imposed regulations or corrupted by government supplied moral hazards, continues to flourish. Will thing-making survive the financial turmoil of the next few years? Who knows? Meanwhile, it has been and it remains a good time to be alive and thing-using.
A thing I particularly enjoy using is my digital camera. However, my current camera feels a bit ancient, and I believe I could now get a better one. But which? In this posting I solicit advice on the matter.
Very roughly, there are now three types of digital camera. There are the little ones like face powder cases which people carry for fun, such cameras often nowadays being included in mobile phones. At the other extreme, there are the SLRs with a small mountain of lenses you can attach to them, for people who, facing the choice between life and photography, have chosen photography. And then there are cameras for people like me, who adore photography but who also want lives. What we want is the absolute best camera we can have, without having to swap lenses all the time.
Well, that’s how it sometimes seems to me. To be more polite to the SLR crowd, it may be more a matter of how they like to photograph, compared to how I like to. They photograph slowly and carefully and infrequently. I photograph voraciously and opportunistically, one moment snapping something right under my nose (like a mad safety notice), and the next moment wanting to capture something I spot in the far distance (like a big new tower with something else amusing in the shot between it and me – often involving a trick of the light which may vanish at any moment), and I never know which it will be until I see it. You can surely appreciate how annoying swapping lenses back and forth would be for me. What I want is one super-versatile lens, which I can either make erect or flaccid depending on distance, within about one second. For the SLR fraternity, artistic impression and precision of image is all. For me, those are good, but the point of the snap is what is being snapped. So long as you can see that okay, usually in a photo that I include in a blog posting, good enough, technically speaking, is, for me, good enough.
For several years now I have had a Canon S5 IS, and very satisfactory it has been. But now, things have moved on, and I can now get a technically much improved camera, with does much better pictures and has massively more zoom, hardly any bigger and while still not having to faff about with those lenses.
Those who think I am wrong and that I should get an SLR can comment away to that effect all they like, but I will pay no attention. What I want is comments about what I am now looking at. And what I am now looking at is two cameras of the sort that I have just described, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ150 and the Canon SX40 HS.
There are already an abundance of reviews of these two beasts on line, including even reviews like this, which compare the two head to head. But, I would love to know what our commentariat is able to tell me about this choice, before I go ahead and make it. → Continue reading: Which superzoom camera should I now buy?
Most politicians don’t know any better. They certainly don’t know any economics. So the same toxic policy mix of Keynesian deficit spending and Monetarist money printing has been implemented around the world since this crisis started four years ago. Just like in any other recession of the past forty years, ever since Nixon cut the last link to gold and fulfilled every interventionist’s wildest fantasy: unlimited paper money under full control of the state! Yeah, baby, no more recessions!
Alas, it is not working, is it?
Rates were cut and the state did not only spent money it didn’t have, as usual, it spent much more money it didn’t have. But the economy did not recover. So more of this policy was implemented. And then, more again. In fact, by any standard, never before in modern times has the economy been ‘stimulated’ more through Keynesian and Monetarist government intervention than over the past four years. Balance sheets of major central banks have tripled, banks have been receiving limitless funds for free and will continue to do so forever, and governments are running deficits the likes of which mankind has only ever seen at the height of major wars, and which are increasingly funded by the printing press.
It is still not working.
You would probably guess that the interventionists of Keynesian and other ilk would be a bit more humble by now. Maybe check a few of those premises in their models? Or maybe start thinking again about those elusive explanations for what’s wrong with the economy in the first place? Are we really suffering from a lack of paper money and government spending? Maybe it is not simply down to all of us being too depressed, morose, and in need of some policy Prozac. Maybe something else is broken.
Alas, no. The academically trained Keynesian economist is too committed to his or her beliefs to let the facts get in the way. Why has policy not worked? Because, wait for it, we have been too timid. We need the same policy. We just need more of it. A lot more.
– from the latest Schlichter File, posted today.
LATER: See also this recent interview with Schlichter.
Yesterday, they closed off Regent Street, the famous central London shopping venue, to traffic, to make way for … some cars. I made my way to Regent Street, on the off chance of some photo ops, and was not disappointed.
There were E-Type Jags and Minis (i.e. real Minis – not the horribly huge German rehashes we see now), because both are celebrating their fiftieth birthdays this year:
And there were even more exotic vehicles, like this one:
If there was a sign explaining that, I missed it. Anyone? It looks vaguely familiar, as having been involved in something like a land speed record.
There were also new vehicles on show, involving various drearily alternative means of propulsion, but looking exactly like regular cars.
But the really old cars were something else again:
There were lots and lots of those. And it would be putting it very mildly indeed to say that I was not the only digital photographer present:
Nor was I the only digital photographer who was intrigued by many of the smaller mechanical details of these old cars:
The weather was rather grim, but the rain held off long enough for me to take all these snaps. Click on all of the above to get them bigger, and if that isn’t enough, go to my own blog, to see many, many more.
By the way, I’m not anti-German about everything they’ve done to Britain’s motor industry. I love what they’re doing with the Rolls Royce.
In my youth, we libbos used to go to P.J. O’Rourke for American libbo laughs. Now that mantle – of American, deceptively profound, politically right on the money laughs – has passed on to IMAO man Frank J. Fleming, whose book, Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything is coming out quite soon now.
Good recent Frank Jism:
Things often overwhelm and underwhelm, but seldom do things just whelm.
You see? It’s funny (I think), but it also gets you thinking. Where did the word “overwhelm” come from, from which the word “underwhelm” has recently been derived (because as soon as you say “underwhelm” everyone immediately understands)? “Overwhelm” means that “whelm” must once upon a time have meant something too. But what? Is it an upper class mispwonouncing of “realm”? Does “whelm” have a future, as a word? I’m not trying to be funny (although that is one of the standard methods of actually being funny). I’d really like to know.
This is good too:
I support double standards. I expect better behavior out of conservatives than I do liberals.
And this:
You know how everyone has their idea of what a fair tax plan is? Well, I have now unveiled the “Frank J. Fleming Super Double Extra Fair Tax Plan” at PJ Media and it is the fairest of them all. I mean, it’s crazy fair. You’ll recoil in horror and scream, “No! Too fair!” That’s how fair it is.
I need something to end this with, now. I know. Here’s my funny yet deceptively profound and right on the money tax plan: The Top Rate of Income Tax Should Be Cut To Zero. If FJ’s tax plan is too fair for you, that might be just right.
Earlier this evening I attended a libertarian get-together in the upstairs room of a pub (the Rose and Crown in Colombo Street, London SE1), organised by Libertarian Home, and in particular by leading LH-er Simon Gibbs.
If what you would like would be a convivial evening in a London pub where, if you are not a libertarian you are going to have to explain yourself, whereas if you are you aren’t (unless you feel like it), then why not get in touch with Simon Gibbs and invite yourself along to the next one of these things. If my experience this evening was anything to go by, you will be made very welcome.
Here is a photo I took of the other end of the table from where I was:
And here’s another snap from the same spot, moments later, after I’d asked if I could interrupt everything, and “take some photos”:
I am surprised what good photos these are, technically, given the light. If you are surprised what bad photos they are, technically, then clearly you don’t know my photos.
These photos do not include anything like everyone who was present. They are accurate in suggesting that the gathering was youngish (certainly compared to me), and bright, but inaccurate in suggesting that this was an all male affair. It’s just that the ladies present were seated nearer to me, and my lens is not wide-angle enough to have included them.
In particular, missing from that snap are two of the people who, it so happened, I spent a bit of time conversing with. For the first time ever, I got to meet Trooper Thompson in the flesh, whose blog I have long had a liking for. And, I also got to meet “Misanthrope Girl”, whose blog I have not properly noticed until now. Trooper Thompson got chased out of the Samizdata commentariat for saying something rude about a gun (I think that was it), approximately a decade ago, which, having finally met the guy, I now think is a shame. Misanthrope Girl would also fit in here very well.
I had to leave earlier than I would have liked, but I am still very glad I went. I heard about this gathering by attending the Liberty League Conference, where Andy Janes (mentioned here recently already because of that Zimbabwean bank note), who also helps organise these evenings, suggested I might like to attend the next one. Perhaps, I thought to myself, and perhaps not. But then Andy gave me a physical copy of the leaflet that he had been handing out at the Occupy London occupations. These guys, I thought, maybe have something about them. (See also this open letter to the London occupiers.) Maybe they do. We shall see.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts.
– Richard Feynman, quoted by Matt Ridley in his Angus Millar lecture at the RSA in Edinburgh, the entire text of which you an read at Bishop Hill. Do read the whole thing. Following on from the above quote comes one of the best summaries of why climate skeptics are climate skeptics that I have ever encountered.
Does anybody know if Ridley’s brilliant lecture is, or will be, available on video?
I’m now reading that book I mentioned here earlier, by Harvey Sachs, about the first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth.
The event itself was nearly shifted by Beethoven, for both financial and organisational reasons, from Vienna (where Beethoven lived for all his adult life) to Bonn, which caused a great gang of Viennese high-ups to write Beethoven a public letter, begging him to keep the show in Vienna. Of this letter, Harvey Sachs writes (pp. 30-31):
The letter-signed by seven aristocrats and various well-known local bureaucrats, musicians, music publishers, and the piano maker Andreas Streicher – is valuable not only as proof of the esteem in which Beethoven was held in his adoptive city but also because it demonstrates how deeply the notion that great music could be both “immortal” and widely disseminated had taken hold in Europe within Beethoven’s lifetime. Pre-nineteenth-century audiences had tended to lose interest in music that failed to follow the dictates of fashion. Bach, who was born in 1685 and whose works were already stylistically passé at the time of his death sixty-five years later, would have been delighted but astonished to learn that his music would be venerated and widely performed nearly three centuries after it was written. He may have believed in the hereafter, but he wrote for the here and now – for the church ceremonies and court occasions that took place as his life unfolded and for the instruction of the musicians of his day. Haydn (1732-1809) and even Mozart (1756-1791) still worked within the specific-piece-for-specific-occasion system, although the fact that Mozart began at the age of twenty-eight to keep a catalogue of his works, and the even more significant fact that he and Haydn published as many of their compositions as possible, demonstrate composers’ dawning ambition to have their works survive them, perhaps even for a considerable time.
Not until Beethoven’s day, however, did winning a place in posterity become a major goal – the greatest goal, for many composers. With the rise, in his lifetime, of the bourgeoisie, middle-class families were able to give their children music lessons, and Hausmusik – music in the home became the home entertainment system of the 1800s. The equipment required for making it comprised a piano, one or more other instruments and/or voices, and printed music, the demand for which increased almost exponentially. This phenomenon occurred just as the figure of the Romantic genius – the artist as a being unhampered by normal constraints – was taking hold. The music of the brilliant, eccentric Beethoven circulated widely, and the conviction that this music would become “deathless” was a logical consequence of both his persona and the diffusion of his works. In the letter from his Viennese admirers, the reference to “the many who joyfully acknowledge your worth and what you have become for the present as well as the future” is an exceptionally significant sign of the times: The arts were no longer to be considered mere “means and objects of pastime.” Composers were becoming the high priests, perhaps even the gods, of a secular religion; the best among them were expected to create works that would endure, . . .
All of which reminded me of something Benjamin Britten once said:
The rot set in with Beethoven.
Meaning, Beethoven was the first of a huge tribe of artists who from then on took themselves, and were also taken by others, a whole hell of a lot too seriously. Beethoven was, of course, entitled to think of himself as a genius. In his case, it helped to turn him into the genius he became. Most of his imitators got the trappings of genius off pat enough, but neglected the bit in the genius rule book where it says that you have to produce works of genius.
After writing that, I tried googling that Britten quote, and look what I found, almost immediately. Yes indeed, a review of The Ninth by Michael Henderson, which begins thus:
‘The rot set in with Beethoven’, said Benjamin Britten, who, cold fish that he was, could never understand the idea of the artist as hero (though he admired Mahler, whose music is nothing if not attention-seeking). He had half a point, because the past century has been chock-full of artists, or ‘artists’, who have asked us to soothe their fevered brows. They are still around today. No matter. Their egotism cannot disguise Beethoven’s greatness, . . .
Snap.
Favourite climate-related quote of the week so far:
The claim that AGW is consistent with heavier snowfalls wasn’t mainstream until it needed to be true.
It’s a comment, from Nicholas Hallam, on this, at Bishop Hill. Heh.
Although, actually, the recent Bishop Hill posting that I find most interesting is this one, which is about a bunch of solar power grant guzzlers begging to have their grants renewed at the level they have become accustomed to. Something along those lines. The absence of any widespread public support for these chancers will reveal just what a propaganda beating the greenies have been taking for the last few years, not least from blogs like this one. Most people will react to these green supplications, if they react at all, only by saying something like: “Oh you’re losing your jobs, bad luck, join the club, but actually what we really don’t like is our fuel bills doubling.”
Until now, it’s all been sane people begging the politicians to stop chucking money down the green drain. Now the politicians are starting to rearrange things a tiny bit against the interests of some of the politically less well connected greenies, and these greenies are now also starting to beg. Yes, folks, it’s the reversing of the burden of proof. We no longer have to convince them that all that “settled science” isn’t so settled after all. They have to convince us that they aren’t scam artists. Or deluding themselves. Or a bit of both. Good luck guys.
Billions are still being tipped down the green drain. This is only the very beginning of the end of the great green scam, which will probably never completely disappear. But, once the politicians realise how little support there is for green subsidies, they will get bolder, and cut them some more. And the greenies will scream some more. And the arms of the general public will remain folded, their faces blank with contempt.
About time.
LATER: More:
“We built a business on the back of David Cameron’s promises. He has betrayed us twice. Anybody thinking of investing in government-sponsored green opportunities, I would advise them to run away.”
Or government-sponsored anything else, come to that. Welcome to politics, mate.
Remember when Samizdata used to have lots of beautiful bird photos? Well, here is another:
Beautiful bird or beautiful photo? Both, I would say. It’s a Cape Weaver Bird, which lives in South Africa. It’s the way that I at first thought that it had legs on its back that made me do a double take. And this particular snap appeals even after you’ve sorted out exactly what it’s doing and which way up everything is.
I found this photo at what has long been a favourite blog of mine, if only because he often says nice things about me. When I came upon these latest kind words about something I had blogged, I immediately went looking for something good by him for me to say nice things about, and it took me no time at all. I was only looking for something to be nice about at my own blog, but I think this photo deserves a wider audience, don’t you? Click on it if you want to see it bigger.
Further proof, if you need it, of the value of always having a camera with you.
It’s now two very loud something-I-read LOLs for me in three days. First there was this, and now this from ABC News, quoted in this piece by Mark Steyn:
At a million-dollar San Francisco fundraiser today, President Obama warned his recession-battered supporters that if he loses the 2012 election it could herald a new, painful era of self-reliance in America.
There’s going to be a new, painful era of self-reliance no matter which politicians get to preside over it.
I don’t often do that LOL thing, but I did yesterday, in a crowded café, when I read this:
Beethoven’s contempt for most human beings conflicted with his all-embracing love for humanity.
That’s on page 54 of a book by Harvey Sachs entitled The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824, which is about the composition and first performance of the Ninth Symphony, and about the world and the time in which this happened.
Remembering that I had written here before about Beethoven, I just reread an earlier piece I did called Eroica (at first mis-read by some as Erotica – what can you do?). It still reads well, I think. And it tells you all you need to know to enable you to forgive Beethoven a hundred times over for preferring humanity to humans.
I haven’t read this Sachs book yet. Yesterday I was just doing a preliminary flick-through, and came across the above sentence only by the sheerest good fortune. I certainly now want to read to rest of it.
NFL stands for National Football League, and the football in question is of the American sort. British TV has been showing American football games for the last three decades or so, games which I sometimes watch, either as they happen (during the small and not-so-small hours of the morning), or (which never seems nearly such fun) from a recording I have made the night before, the following evening, or even later than that.
There are quite a few American football fans on this side of the Atlantic, as a result of this TV coverage, and also because Europe has contained quite a few Americans during the last few decades, doing this and that, and also playing and spreading enthusiasm for their version of football. Not so long ago there was even an American Football European League. They couldn’t make it stick, but it has all helped to spread the word.
Last weekend, many of the more devoted of these fans descended on London, to attend a Fan Rally in Trafalgar Square last Saturday, and then on the Sunday to watch the Chicago Bears play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, at Wembley Stadium, no less. Part of the point of this posting is to provide me with an excuse to link to these fan shirt photos which I took last Saturday in Trafalgar Square. Further snaps of this event that I took, which show what the event looked like as a whole, here.
The better to excuse this blatant ego-linkage, what I really wanted next was a Samizdata-friendly hook on which to hang an NFL-related posting, and right on cue, the NFL has recently been obliging. For the NFL is, right now, offering the world a truly exquisite example of that all too familiar circumstance, the unintended consequence that results from a perverse incentive. You didn’t intend to incentivise this or that bad thing. But, perversely, you did. → Continue reading: The NFL is now in the grip of a perverse incentive
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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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