The whole difference between statistics and astrology is supposed to be that statisticians make statements of statistical significance to determine how likely or unlikely it is that an observed outcome could have happened chance, while astrologers are satisfied with merely anecdotal confirmation of their hypotheses.
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Some people I chat with in Indonesia on an almost daily basis have just told me that the Indonesian government have just blocked all access to YouTube, MySpace and Rapidshare. Apparently using proxy servers lets you get to a YouTube page but they cannot actual view the videos for some reason. Does anyone out there have any technical suggestions to pass on to some freedom loving folks in Indonesia? If so, leave them in the comments here. Quite a few people there want to make a mockery of this blatant censorship, which is being done to pander to the most intolerant Islamist elements in that country. April 8th, 2008 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
 It is occasionally an accolade when a person’s name becomes a figure of speech, such as ‘Churchillian’ for example. Far more commonly however it is a sign of cultural stigmatisation: a Hitler, a Napoleon, Fisking, Dowdification, Pilgerisation… these are not saying anything nice about the source of the respective terms. And to which must be added, to be ‘a Spitzer’. There is a magnificent article on TCS Daily called The Universal Spitzer that I strongly commend to everyone:
Great stuff. Read the whole thing. The article also links to an excellent article by Virginia Postrel about the deeply unpleasant John McCain which I missed first time around. April 7th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I realise it is only April, so there is ample time for someone else to win the much vaunted Samizdata prize of ‘oddest remark of the year’, but this has to be a real contender:
So the fact good workers are arriving in the UK is a ‘problem’ and that employers have them to hire rather than having to try and coax an honest day’s work out of the least unmotivated native born lumpen is… a bad thing for people in Britain overall? Hmmm. Also as the total number of job has been rising steadily for quite some time, it is hard to hide the fact the children of the British ‘welfare’ state are simply acting as the state has conditioned them to act. Of course the irony is that the people in some part replacing them are high initiative individuals arriving from former communist countries in search of better opportunities. And such people filling jobs grows the economy, so again the advantages overall take wilful blindness not to see. Locals who cannot compete with Eastern European need to ask themselves why that is. My guess is that they are not really trying to compete very hard because after all, they can always just sign on for the dole. I find it hard to be sympathetic when a person’s poverty is simply a function of a lack of motivation. Of course one is not suppose to say things like that. My bad. April 6th, 2008 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
To hell with constructive engagement. This is a state that imprisons, tortures and kills its political opponents. It is a state that pollutes public discourse with untruths, and that not only seeks to suppress truths, but that seeks to suppress the free exchange of thought between its citizens. It is a state that gives succour to the genocidal regime in Sudan, and has backed itself into the position of casting Buddhist monks as dangerous terrorists. – Sam Leith, writing in the Telegraph why we should subject China to an Olympic boycott April 5th, 2008 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
Now this is something I look forward to seeing, at least virtually:
What a pity it is going to be in Jeddah as much as I would like to see it up close, not even that marvel could induce me to set foot in that theocratic hell hole. March 30th, 2008 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
Over on The Line is Here, they are hosting the Carnival of the Libertarians, where various folks sound off about, surprise surprise, issues to do with liberty. Check it out. March 30th, 2008 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
There is a great little article in Slashdot about a well known German hacker group, Chaos Computer Club, publishing the fingerprints of German Secretary of the Interior as part of their protest against state use of biometric ID.
Sweet. I suppose that is a ‘hardware hack’ of sorts! March 29th, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
From NRO ‘The Campaign Spot’:
Holy. Crap. And this is the Republican candidate. Read that again: “government should support parents, and how it should help, not complicate, how parents pass on their values to their children”. Just de-construct that for a moment. Is that not a phrase that should send cold shivers down the spines of anyone who thinks civil society has been fucked over by the state quite enough for the last fifty or so years, thank you very much? Clearly the government does not want any old values passed on to the kiddies, so John McCain must see a role for state approved politically vetted family values. And what if someone want to pass on the values of respecting the property of others and so not tolerating proxy theft via third parties (like, say, the state), is Johnny going help out there somehow? How about atheism? Contrary to the popular perceptions, I know a great many God-Free Americans (almost all of whom are self-described hyphenated Republicans). Will the state give them a hand passing that one on to Junior too? How about utter contempt for the political elite and their army of functionaries? John McCain’s kind offer to ‘help‘ is another manifestation of the baseless arrogance of so many members of the political class who think that civil society revolves around the state and is something for them to tinker with. So John, let me tell you how to “help, not complicate, how parents pass on their values to their children”… mind your own goddamn business. There is nothing complicated about that. March 28th, 2008 | 59 comments - (Comments are closed)
I previously reported on the saga of Mikko Ellilä. Here is the trial (in English) and now the state has spoken its verdict: guilty. So it has happened: thoughtcrime is now officially a crime in Finland. Stating your opinion, moreover stating your opinions based of government statistics, is illegal. Finns may now only express a politically sanctioned range of opinions subject to supervision by official Gauleiters like Mikko Puumalainen. The fine is small but so what? The message is clear. Dissent will not be tolerated by the Finnish state. It should not matter a damn if you agree with what Mikko Ellilä says, it is outrageous that he is not being allowed to say what he thinks. The thing I find so nauseating is these sanctimonious pathological control freaks act as those they are not repressive government thugs using force to prevent dissent. The freedom to only state popular opinions is no freedom at all because freedom of speech is the right to say what some other people do not want to hear. It is the right to express opinions that may offend because if you cannot do that, you do not have freedom of speech. People like Finnish bureaucrat Mikko Puumalainen exist everywhere (see the Ezra Levant case in Canada) and they must be resisted by any means necessary. March 28th, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
The crazy guys from VBS have 14 parts of strange-but-interesting video footage from that open air prison known as North Korea… check it out. I do not think they are going to be invited back. March 25th, 2008 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Can you believe this place?” Admiral Driscoll said to me. He sounded like a bit like a kid on Christmas morning. I felt weirdly like a jaded old man who had seen it all even though he is older and more accomplished. I understood then what some American soldiers and Marines mean when they say the top brass lives and works at “echelons above reality”. I’m not blaming the admiral. His job requires him to be isolated from nuts, bolts, and the street most of the time. March 24th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
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