We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
It should be clear beyond any reasonable doubt that the judgement, discrimination and taste of the previous King of Jordan, Hussain, was remarkable… astonishing even. It should also be absolutely clear that the current King, Abdullah, was not just an inspired choice to succeed him but has in fact taken the talents of his predecessor to undreamt of heights of excellence.
Am I referring to their handling of Jordan’s relations with Israel? Was I thinking of how they have dealt with the dangerous and unpredictable Syrians? Did I mean the wide ranging internal reforms within Jordan? How they walk the tightrope of the ethnic dimension of Jordanian politics? No, none of those things.
I am of course referring to the Hashemite Kings outstanding taste in elegant, exquisite, intelligent women! Queen Noor was, and Queen Rania is, simply breathtaking. In these days of geopolitical turmoil, terrorism and economic confusion, let us pause for a moment and applaud a world leader for his taste in babes. As Mel Brooks said “It’s good to be the King!”
We do have some genuine friends in the Middle East… and is it such a bad thing that some of them are real lookers?
Actor Bruce Willis refuses to fly to Britain ‘because his children pleaded with him not to’, cricketers Robert Croft and Andrew Caddick refuse to fly to India due to ‘security concerns’. Fine, that is their prerogative. It is also the prerogative of others to judge these ‘public’ individuals by their actions. In spite of the fact these people are far more likely to die whilst crossing the road, they allow misplaced fears to determine their actions.
Terrorism works when people allow themselves to become terrorised and that seems to have occurred with the timid of heart. Apparently Willis wants his children to react to even the most indistinct nebulous ‘threat’ by cowering behind the gated walls of their mansion. I hope his next role as an ‘action hero’ is greeted with the same derisory smirks and pithy asides that greeted Ann Heche when she played the heterosexual love interest for Harrison Ford in ‘Six days, Seven Nights’.
In less dissembling times, I think Willis, Croft and Caddick would have been called ‘cowards’.
So when Ann Heche’s former partner Ellen Degeneris stands up at the Emmy’s last night with a red, white and blue ribbon and says “What would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit surrounded by Jews?”, it becomes clear that not only is she a very good comedienne, not everyone in Hollywood is cringing in terror and blaming it on ‘their children’.
So here’s to you, Ellen. As we always suspected, you are indeed the one wearing the trousers.
The state is a core of malevolence surrounded by a thick cloying crust of incompetence
-Perry de Havilland
Whilst I am far too modest to tell anyone how many notches I have on my bed’s headboard, someone can reasonably add two more notches now that Dale and Natalie have lost their virginity by blogging (presumably the ‘someone’ in question is the seemingly omnipresent ‘Joe Blogs’… who obviously ‘swings both ways’ it would seem, unless Joe is short for Josephine).
Good to have you (oops) both aboard.
Regarding the Samizdata displacing the Libertarian Alliance Forum, I don’t think so. A blog is not really as interactive as a forum and thus suggests we post in a less ‘immediate’ way. I think blogging is more akin to sending a letter to the editor of some dead tree publication. When we blog, we are letting the world know what we think either by re-posting something we have found of interest or, primarily, by writing our own editorial on the events that are of interest to us as critically rational individuals. I regard a forum such as the LA-F as more akin to public conversation.
Tony Blair addresses the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on the 5th of Novermber and says his policies of ‘restraint’ and ‘prudence’ are going to continue. Yet we are in the middle of an explosion of non-military public profligacy. Government spending is increasing at a much faster rate than the economy is growing and surely every member of the CBI knows that.
Now I realise Blair is a statist politician and thus dissembles by profession, yet the ‘great and good’ of British capitalism just sit there and listen politely. Was it something about the acoustics that nobody except the TV microphones actually heard what he said? Why were there not hoots of derision and gasps of disbelief from the bovine CBI members, given that it is their companies that in large measure will actually have to stump up the money for this spending binge?
And now I hear that our political ‘masters’ are maybe/maybe not planning to ‘raise taxes’ but will most likely be increasing National Insurance ‘contributions’ (i.e. a tax on employment). So let me get this right… the LABOUR Party wants to make it more expensive to employ people’s labour just as the economy is starting to go into recession.
On that day of all days, Guy Fawkes Night, the 5th of November, the people listening to him should have been making a bonfire of their conference programmes and telling Tony Blair the best thing he can do for the economy is to go fight his war in Afghanistan and leave the business of creating wealth to the people who actually create it.
Please, someone. Wake me up!
Articles like this are always useful when trying to make up one’s mind in the ever interesting ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate
—
UCLA Team Maps How Genes Affect Brain Structure, Intelligence
Source: Science Daily
Published: 11/5/2001 Author: University Of California – Los Angeles
UCLA brain mapping researchers have created the first
images to show how an individuals genes influence their
brain structure and intelligence.
The findings, published in the Nov. 5 issue of the journal
Nature Neuroscience, offer exciting new insight about how parents
pass on personality traits and cognitive abilities,
and how brain diseases run in families.
The team found that the amount of gray matter in the
frontal parts of the brain is determined by the genetic
make-up of an individuals parents, and strongly correlates
with that individuals cognitive ability, as measured by
intelligence test scores.
More importantly, these are the first images to uncover how
normal genetic differences influence brain structure and
intelligence.
Brain regions controlling language and reading skills were
virtually identical in identical twins, who share exactly
the same genes, while siblings showed only 60 percent of
the normal brain differences.
This tight structural similarity in the brains of family
members helps explain why brain diseases, including
schizophrenia and some types of dementia, run in families.
We were stunned to see that the amount of gray matter in
frontal brain regions was strongly inherited, and also
predicted an individuals IQ score, said Paul Thompson,
the studys chief investigator and an assistant professor
of neurology at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging.
The brains language areas were also extremely similar in
family members. Brain regions that were found to be most
similar in family members may be especially vulnerable to
diseases that run in families, including some forms of
psychosis and dementia.
The scientists employed magnetic resonance imaging
technology to scan a group of 20 identical twins, whose
genes are identical, and 20 same-sex fraternal twins, who
share half their genes.
Using a high-speed supercomputer, they created color-coded
images showing which parts of the brain are determined by
our genetic make-up, and which are more adaptable to
environmental factors, such as learning and stress.
To create the maps of genetic influences on the brain, the
UCLA scientists teamed up with the National Public Health
Institute of Finland, and the Finnish Universities of
Helsinki and Oulu.
In a national initiative, the Finnish team tracked all the
same-sex twins born in Finland between 1940 and 1957
9,500 pairs of twins many of whom received brain scans
and cognitive tests.
Their genetic similarity was confirmed by analyzing 78
different genetic markers. These individual pieces of DNA
match exactly in identical twins, and half of them match in
siblings.
Recent research has shown that many cognitive skills are
surprisingly heritable, with strong genetic influences on
verbal and spatial abilities, reaction times, and even some
personality qualities, including emotional reactions to
stress.
These genetic relationships persist even after statistical
adjustments are made for shared family environments, which
tend to make members of the same family more similar. Until
this study, little was known about how much individual
genotype accounts for the wide variations among individual
brains, as well as individuals cognitive ability.
The UCLA researchers are also applying this new genetic
brain mapping approach to relatives of schizophrenic
patients, and individuals at genetic risk for Alzheimers
disease, to screen them for early brain changes, and help
understand familial risk for inherited brain disorders
where specific risk genes are unknown.
Other UCLA researchers involved in the project are Tyrone
Cannon, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral and
human genetics, and Arthur Toga, professor of neurology and
director of the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging.
Images from the study are available online for viewing or
downloading from here
Guy Fawkes (1570-1606)
Remember, remember
the Fifth of Novermber.
Gunpowder treason and plot.
We see no reason,
why gunpowder treason,
should ever be forgot
– Traditional English 5th of Novermber chant as the bonfire is lit.
Guy Fawkes was the only honest man to ever enter Parliament. Have an excellent bonfire night.
(Here is some interesting tech info sent to me by Walter earlier)
Ready, aim, wired — information is a weapon
U.S. armed forces are developing the strategy and systems to turn every
soldier into both a gatherer and a consumer of instantaneous information
about a battlefield environment, Darwin’s November issue reported. In
the not-too-distant future, soldiers in combat will connect to a
wireless communications network that tracks ground, air, and sea
military assets.
With so much information at their fingertips, soldiers in combat would
be able to make field-level decisions about how, where, and when to move
their troops. For the commander sitting miles away in a high-tech war
room, a wall-sized version of a soldier’s handheld map would provide a
complete tactical picture of the military operation. This eagle-eyed
view of the battlefield will give operation commanders highly detailed,
real-time situational information to make decisions faster and target
their troops and firepower with greater accuracy.
Editor’s comment: Given the power that information has to break down
hierarchies, how will the hierarchical military command structure adapt?
Will the brass jealously guard information and the status it provides,
or radically change its methods to build a different kind of soldier?
What happens when every squad leader in the field has the same
information as his commander? Will squad leaders continue to follow
orders without question or will they demand more input in the
decision-making process?
Corporations have discovered that ready access to critical information
enables decision making to be pushed down to lower levels and to occur
with greater speed. In turn, this enables the flattening of hierarchies
and a sharp reduction in middle management overhead. One of the
challenges to every organization is to change tactics and organizational
design in response to evolving technology. Superior technology won’t
yield superior results when it’s used in the old ways.
Digital doubles debut
Digimask has developed a method for creating a virtual twin, BBC News
reported yesterday. It can be used to accompany text messages on mobile
phones, turn e-mail messages into personalized greetings, act as an
animated screensaver on your desktop PC, and even represent you in
online game worlds. Unlike many other avatar technologies, the
three-dimensional model does not require a visit to a scanning booth.
Instead, it is created from just two digital images.
Face recognition effectiveness is challenged
The face recognition technology that airport officials are rushing to
install after the Sept. 11 attacks can be outsmarted by a pair of
sunglasses and is an invasion of privacy, Reuters reported yesterday.
“They say they’re going to use this to catch the bad guys, to catch the
terrorist,” said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American
Civil Liberties Union. “Well, there is no database of terrorists. And
the terrorists are not exactly lining up to submit their photographs to
Langley.” A spokeswoman for Visionics, a face recognition technology
company countered: “What do you call the FBI ‘s 10 Most Wanted. …
Terror is not faceless.”
or how to make the traditions of the left our own
Libertarians come in many hyphenated flavours, but very few genuine libertarians see themselves as being on the political left. So called ‘Socialist’ libertarians are not libertarians at all. They are as oxymoronic as meat eating vegetarians: any value set that would deny economic free association and true several property, denies personal liberty, and you are not a libertarian unless you advocate personal liberty as first amongst civil virtues.
Thus from this fairly self-evident proposition, most libertarians see themselves as either being on the ‘right’ or at least they do not see themselves as being on the ‘left’. However just what does left and right really mean in this post-cold war era? I would contend that within the context of libertarianism, left and right are actually meaningless ideologically speaking. Conservatives and socialists ascribe various meanings to these terms based on their respective statist perspectives. However as we do not share those views, we can safely look beyond their definitions and see rather different essential differences and similarities for ourselves. Whilst conservatives and socialists see what differentiates them, as libertarians our perspectives allow us to see the shared statist axioms that in fact make them so similar in modern western societies. This sort of observation is hardly ground breaking. In the 1940’s Hayek pointed out in ‘The Road to Serfdom’ the truism (to us) that far from being the antithesis of the left, the Nazis were just another form of socialism. Similarly early 21st Century libertarians can see that there is actually little to choose between Tory ‘Conservatism’ and Blairite Labour ‘Socialism’ circa 2001 in real terms of policy and underpinning assumptions as to the role of the state.
What libertarians need to understand is that there are indeed important differences between the ‘left’ and ‘right’, but they are meta-contextual rather than ideological now that we no longer live in a simpler bipolar world. That is to say, the left and right come from very different traditions that strongly colour their respective views of how the world really works and thus how they interpret any ideological issue presented to them.
Bearing this in mind, libertarians need to realise that by mentally allying themselves to the ‘right’, they are actually not making a useful ideological distinction at all. In fact, by doing so, they run the risk of clothing themselves in cultural meta-contextual baggage that is often profoundly unhelpful. What is needed is a more dispassionate analysis as to what other people understand by ‘left’ and ‘right’ and a more pragmatic, or dare I say, even cynical use of that meta-contextual baggage for our own purposes.
For example, a key ‘vibe’ of the ‘left’ tradition is the view of the world as a struggle from the bottom against forces of hierarchy. Thus an anti-business proposition that portrays the corporate boardroom as an essentially hostile power centre to the ‘common man’ employee is an ‘easy sell’ when presented to someone who views the world from within that meta-context.
However, a meta-context is just a tradition of thought, not a philosophy per se. Let us take the fact that as the airline industries across the world are said to be in dire troubles, various interventionist governments are pouring tax monies into flag carriers to prop them up. This is not really the sort of issue to greatly exercise people on the traditional ‘left’, who view economic intervention as perfectly normal or the ‘right’, who view ‘helping’ companies as perfectly normal, provided they are big companies. However, this issue can indeed be made to resonate with the ‘left’ by framing it precisely in the terms that fit their traditions of thought:
“Yet again the boardroom is using its corrupting influence with politicians to screw the common man and take our tax money to reward poor management by the board and bale out some fat cat shareholders. It is hard to say who is worse, the incompetent directors who did not plan for unforeseen problems, the greedy shareholders or the money-for-the-boys politicians doling out our tax money.”
What have we just done? We have just made a seemingly “anti-business” argument designed to fit within the meta-contextual world view of the left. We have also just made an argument in favour of laissez-faire.
Many on the ‘left’ are actually natural allies of the libertarian view on civil liberties, yet they cannot extend the same logic to economic liberties. Part of the problem is the fact that libertarians, largely speaking from the meta-context of the ‘right’, frame economic issues in such a manner as to predispose opposition from the ‘left’. If we are to rescue the ‘left’ from collectivism, we must learn to speak the language of the left and tap into deep traditions of resistance and non-deferential social values that could serve us well. It is not just a case of picking the issues to attract people from the left but how we present them.
Hostility to business regulation is almost invariably presented as a ‘right’ issue and framed in the language and meta-contextual frames of reference of the ‘right’. Yet why not pitch this very issue to the left in terms that resonate for them as well?
“See how entrenched businesses work with their political stooges in government to keep under capitalised common people from competing with them? They raise regulatory barriers to keep the working class would-be entrepreneurs out by raising the cost of establishing a new business, thereby keeping the market safe for the forces of oligopoly and faceless chain stores.”
Rather than the usual ‘right’ arguments involving imposed costs to the established business being regulated, we take an equally true consequence of regulatory imposition and serve it up with a left spin. Whilst the use of language may be cynical, no ideological compromise is required and there is nothing dishonest about the argument being made. Once we realise that ‘left’ and ‘right’ are just traditional meta-contextual frames of reference and do not have any real objective political content in and of themselves, we can effectively inject our libertarian memes into both the ‘left’ and ‘right’ world views. By doing this, we broaden our ability to communicate with people who might otherwise see us as being ‘one of them’ rather than ‘one of us’. When in the ring and fighting the good fight, do not deny yourself a good left hook.
[This article is also available in slightly expanded form as Libertarian Alliance Tactical Note pamphlet no.29 in pdf format. Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or similar]
If we can eventual get enough people posting to this blog, then we will be able to attract interest from outside our circle of heavily armed capitalist libertarian illuminati. Initially I expect we will be ‘preaching to the choir’ but if the Libertarian Alliance Forum is anything to go by, libertarian choirs tend to like singing out of key 
As for your tech oriented posts, Walter, I suspect you will find Dale Amon a kindred spirit. Hopefully we can induce him to post techie items as well for us techno-weenies to go ‘ohhhh…ahhhh’ over.
Blog away, me heartie!
The objective of this blog is to disseminate news and views of interest to people who view the world from a critically rational libertarian perspective. Blogs can give us a means to break free of the old meta-contextual world views of ‘left’ and ‘right’ and establish a meta-context of our own, independent of statist and collectivist assumptions and underpinning.
Samizdata wants to receive content that deals with libertarian issues, but we also want to read whatever is of interest to critically rational people, from the deadly serious to the utterly frivolous. We are a group of people with wide interests and highly divergent backgrounds: a motley crew of Libertarians, Extropians, recovering Neo-Conservatives and wild eyed anarchists.
Post away and remember… let’s NOT be safe out there!
|
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.
|
