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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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Well, I am back in the UK after a very busy – but also very enjoyable – trip to the US, visiting both New York and San Francisco. One of the problems in flying eastwards from somewhere such as San Francisco, as I and my wife did yesterday, is the jetlag. People have their own solutions or countermeasures, such as making sure you drink plenty of water to combat in-flight dehydration, and so on. I rarely sleep much on aircraft unless I have the luxury of a very roomy seat and can recline it. Being the cheapskate I am, I flew economy, and kept partly awake for most of the 10-hour flight. (I flew Virgin Atlantic, which I think is pretty good).
So what to do? Well, a number of friends of mine in the US recommend Melatonin. You can buy this easily enough in any decent US drugstore. In the UK, so I am told, you have to get it via prescription. But there appear to be websites where you can buy it, so I am not sure what the legal issues are, if any. I took a tablet last night, slept the sleep of the righteous, and now feel fine. It does not necessarily work for everyone, but it works like a charm for me. I am told that you should avoid caffeine and booze for a while before taking the pill and hitting the bed.
I first read about this substance via the Extropian crowd of friends – a group of futurists and transhumanists – back in the early 1990s. Melatonin is a substance that is produced by the body, but it reduces with old age, and some have argued that taken in the right quantities and used sensibly, that it has beneficial health effects. Here is a Wikipedia item on Melatonin. I know people who have suffered from insomnia, and it is no joke. So something that might handle that issue can make a big difference to quality of life.
Here is an article that caught my eye from the Wall Street Journal about some of the effects of China’s “One Child” policy, a policy that has led to a significant imbalance, as high as 60-40, between men and women. Yet another reason, you might think, to resist the coercive nonsense of some of the population control folk.
Mind you, perhaps one reason for a relative dearth of marriage-potential Chinese women is that many of them, as far as I can tell, seem to be in New York at the moment. I have been in Manhattan for a business trip – here until Friday – and I have never seen so many beautiful Asian ladies in my life. And I am off to San Francisco for the weekend, where the Asian population is even more pronounced.
Good to be back in the USofA, by the way. New York is as magnificent as ever.
This is a development which, despite whatever natural skepticism that I might have about such items, could be enormously positive for the millions of people – not just the very old – who fall victim to the terrible disease of Alzheimer’s.
The greatest passions, however, require privacy, and the good society would not deserve to be so-called if it lacked ample opportunities for seclusion and solitude. In work and in love, creativity requires time alone, to think and plan. Great, passionate works of art are not usually brought into existence by committee. The deepest friendships and loves also need time away from prying eyes to blossom; time to share intimacies not shared with others; time to build a special microcosm of private meaning within the wider, public world. A society devoid of privacy would be a society with no room for great passion, and hence not a place I would want to live. Warrantless wiretaps and extensive networks of closed-circuit television cameras have contributed to the United States and England being ranked alongside other “endemic surveillance societies” like Russia and China, according to Privacy International. But those who say, in defense of such invasive government actions, that people who have done nothing wrong have nothing to hide, reveal a profound misunderstanding of the importance of privacy. Privacy matters not because of the bad that it hides, but because of the good and the great that it nurtures.
– Bradley Doucet
“I just caught the last couple of minutes of a cable-TV documentary about Playboy magazine, which featured a clip of Hugh Hefner opining about the huge cultural impact the magazine has had in its 50-plus years of existence. And it struck me as an illustration that, even in the realm of culture and ideas, it’s the supply side that makes the greatest difference. Two young men in the mid-1950s had vastly different ideas of what the American audience really wanted and needed, and ventured forth to create magazines that reflected these views. Hugh Hefner, convinced that America was too sexually conservative and really needed to let its hair down, founded Playboy in 1953. Bill Buckley, convinced that America was too politically liberal and needed to restore its older, small-r republican virtues that had been eroded in the Progressive and New Deal eras, founded National Review in 1955. Now, think about how these ventures must have appeared at the time. Playboy was an outrage to conventional pieties about sexuality. National Review was an outrage to conventional pieties about politics. How much money would you have bet, at the time, that either one would survive for very long? “A dirty magazine? Won’t people be embarrassed to buy it?” “A magazine that’s to the right of Eisenhower and Nixon? Are there that many real fringies out there?” But the supply side takes a chance. And, quite amazingly, both ventures succeeded beyond imagining. Playboy bore fruit in the Sexual Revolution, which may already have reached its high point but shows little sign of receding. And from National Review emerged Reaganism, and conservatism as the broadly dominant system of political thought in recent years.”
Michael Potemra.
It is an interesting piece of commentary. Is it really true, though, that conservatism (however defined) is the “broadly dominant system of political thought in recent years”? I suppose it might be to the extent that the rise of Obama is in fact an aberration rather than anything else. But even if that is true, then it would be nice to see this reflected, long term, in the relative decline, not rise, of state power and spending.
Anyway, Hefner and Buckley were indeed very influential figures, no doubt about it. I have always had a lot of time for Hefner – he upsets the sort of people who need to be upset.
Update: Hefner has taken his business private.
“For as long as I can remember, I have been shouting at my TV screen. Possibly the first occasion would have been circa 1971, in sheer irritation at the infuriating, self-defeatingly named kiddie programme Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead? Perhaps it was even earlier than that. Though I liked Teddy, I used to find Andy Pandy incredibly wet. Bill and Ben were incomprehensible. The Clangers whistled too much. ZsaZsa the Cat and Kiki the Frog were quite maddening in the way they ganged up on Hector the Dog. As for Florence in the Magic Roundabout, what a goodie-goodie!”
– James Delingpole
I would say that one of the great benefits of blogging has been that where before a person would get dangerously high blood pressure watching or hearing some drivel on the TV or radio, now they can work off this rage by blogging about it.
Apologies to non-UK readers who may not get the children’s TV references in the quote. That is why Wikipedia was invented!
There are many reasons to hope that President Obama is a one-term president, and they have been rehearsed on this blog many times. But occasionally there are arguments against him that strike me as seriously off-base. One such has surfaced during the recent commentary about how he is not “doing enough” in the Middle East and North Africa; he is not, apparently, giving enough angry speeches about Egypt, or Libya, or sending vast carrier fleets to the Med, or the Gulf, or generally behaving like a Teddy Roosevelt and doing the “let’s give those furriners hell” thing. Well, at the risk of drawing heavy fire from the hawks who lurk around this site, I would argue that funnily enough, there may be a measure of method in this supposed madness.
For instance, I fail to see what, really, the US or other major powers could or should have done about Egypt. Far better, in my view, to let the Egyptians take ownership of their country’s problems and challenges. If anything positive does come out of the “Jasmine Revolution” (whoever comes up with these terms?), better that it be an achievement by the locals, a source of pride and genuine self esteem, not something associated with “abroad”. For far too long, the Middle East, and many other places besides, have had this oh-so-convenient excuse that their problems were all the fault of the Great Satan and his arrogant, silly interventionism in pursuit of oil, or whatever. The US has often played the part, not always willingly, of being the world’s designated driver (the person who stays sober so he can drive his drinking buddies home at the end of the evening). The trouble with being a designated driver is that it starts to encourage the drinkers to drink even more, become more rowdy, and then they can start to vomit on the street, get into fights, or then almost resent that goody-goody who is always there, with the car, to take them home again. Time for some adult responsbility rather than constant reliance on the West.
I am not of course suggesting that Obama has necessarily been taking a wise, cautious stance based on thoughtful reflection. Other issues may have played a part. But I think we should perhaps give a bit more credit where it is sometimes due here. There are limits on what even the most powerful of countries can and should do. In the case of Egypt, and possibly Libya, the smart policy may be to watch, pay close attention but in general, to stay out of the mess. It is, in fact, a conservative stance. Maybe, just for once, The Community Organiser has shown a bit of common sense. He may, in short, be behaving like a “Swiss”, but I fail to see why that is necessarily terrible or something to be ashamed of. (It should be noted that since Obama’s ascendancy to the White House, the US has put the Swiss banking system under relentless, even hysterical, attack).
Normal service will be resumed later. Stay tuned.
UPDATE. Well that did not seem to persuade anyone. But read carefully, gentle readers. I am not suggesting that this is all a consequence of deep thought, or of anything broadly benign. It may well indeed be that The One is paralysed, out of his depth, a silver-tongued twerp who is in over his head, whatever. But unlike Christopher Hitchens in the article to which I link, I do not think that what the North African crises call for is mass-scale US interventionism. Sure, the US could and should have been quicker to get US nationals out; maybe also it should have acted faster to realise the fallout of all this. But why should the US, given its heavy commitments in other areas (Iraq, Afghanistan) feel called upon to sort out the mess of yet another region of the world?
Socialists love analogies to Sweden. But they are always unconvincing because they are based on some fantasy Sweden, rather than on an actual Nordic country bordered by Norway and Finland. In the Sweden of lore, every single woman is also 18 years old, blonde, busty, lonely, naked and waiting for you in the sauna.
– Claire Berlinski, Why Thatcher Matters. Page 154.
One of the highlights of the book are the interviews she carries out with Neil Kinnock, former leader of the Labour Party. He comes across as the buffoon he is with a layering of rather pompous Welsh charm. And for those who might have forgotten the mid-80s, there is a vivid pen portrait of Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers. He was not just a Marxist, he was an avowed admirer of Stalin.
This is a funky-looking camara from Sony – one of its “Alpha” models. When I first saw this picture over at Engadget, I thought it was an underwater camera – I am planning on doing more scuba diving later this year. Then I realised it was just a transluscent design.
I like this selection of odd-looking cameras. Some of them look as if they were whisked up by Q Branch. “Now James, this is something I am particularly proud of……”
This is pure class, pure, unalloyed hilarity from today’s Evening Standard newspaper editorial, page 14, as it talked about how Britain has paid some sort of bribe to Gaddafi to get landing rights and extract British nationals:
“As with other aspects of the rescue effort, the comparison with the response of other nations does ministers no credit. It is difficult to imagine the French military asking permission for its air force to rescue French citizens earlier this week, much less paying special bribes to do so.”
The French don’t pay bribes. Riiiiight. (Cough).
A less daft argument, in the same newspaper, comes from Sebastian Shakespeare:
“It is a sad indictment of modern Britain that a crisis immediately turns into a blame game and everybody expects to be mollycoddled when the balloon goes up. But the days of gunboat diplomacy are long behind us. The time has come to put aside sentiment and face economic reality. The FO [Foreign Office] cannot perform miracles when natural or geopolitical disasters occur. Nor should it be expected to foot the entire bill.”
“And why should the FO be bailing out oil workers, of all people? Yes, they are British citizens but many won’t be paying tax in the UK but earning tax-free salaries. The companies who employ them are enough to charter a whole fleet of 747s to repatriate their staff. They should bear the costs. And why should we put the SAS at risk? BP could hire its own private army.”
Hmm. I guess if people travel and work for high salaries in places known to be dangerous – and Libya and many other thugocracies are clearly dangerous – then it is a bit much to get this sudden surge of moaning when the home country does not immediately come to the rescue. Fair point. And it is also a fair point that oil companies could afford to give good security to their staff. Many do so. Security is a huge growth industry not just for oil industries, but also for the likes of many other multinationals, such as banks. I know of a few ex armed forces guys, including an ex-SAS officer, who earn very good money in this area. This topic has a slight connection to my posting about piracy on this site.
Having said all of which, I think Shakespeare is perhaps being a bit too dismissive, here. A citizen from country A who temporarily – a key point – lives in country B while working for a firm does not, in my view, surrender the protection of his host nation entirely. Of course, simple prudence and commonsense suggests that people who choose to work in a dangerous place are taking a risk and cannot expect that risk to be underwritten by fellow taxpayers who live in safer places. But I am not entirely at ease with the idea that we say to expat workers, even very rich ones, that we leave them to their fate. This is particularly so if such people are working for firms that play a part in the prosperity of say, the UK. This is not a cut and dried issue, in other words.
In the meantime, this whole business must be surely forcing some people in the Ministry of Defence to wonder whether recent UK defence cuts – driven more by understandable cost issues rather than strategic thinking – need to be thought through more carefully. For instance, does it make sense for the Royal Navy to go without any kind of working aircraft carriers for years until the new ones arrive, leaving the UK with no real ability to project airpower to protect things like UK shipping? Here is an interesting associated article at Standpoint.
The US-based Koch brothers, who back organisations such as the Reason Foundation and the Cato Institute, are used to getting plenty of hostile media and political criticism from statists of various hues, who of course, are perfectly happy to receive money extracted by state-backed violence – tax. The Obama folk, the unions and some cheerleaders in the MSM will be doing everything they can to discredit the Kochs, hurt their business empires, etc. Good luck with that. The Koch brothers have been patiently supporting classical free market organisations for decades and are hardly likely to retreat now. Excellent. Back here in the UK, the support for free markets and classical liberalism by business owners has been far more muted, in part for tax reasons, in part because there is less of a climate in favour of these ideas. But there have, of course, been honorable exceptions: the Institute of Economic Affairs, for instance, was founded with backing from a businessman/ex-RAF officer, Antony Fisher, in the post-WW2 years.
In any event, considering how the likes of George Soros, Ted Turner and others have shovelled gazillions at various statist causes in recent years, what is clearly really upsetting the Left is that the playing field is not as uneven as they would have hoped. And this whole nonsense also demonstrates the utter stupidity of the McCain Feingold unconstitutional assault on the First Amendment, carried out in the last decade. Far from driving private and corporate money from US politics, all it has done has to encourage money to adopt a different route.
Here is an amusing item on the matter over at Pajamas Media.
You can imagine the thought-processes of your average Obamaniac: “These businessmen are supporting the free market! This is terrible: there oughta be a laaaaaaawwwwwwww!”.
Update: more insanity via Reason’s Hit and Run blog.
“There must be a way for Tony Blair to make money out of all this”.
Commenter on an article about the situation in Libya and other parts of N.Africa and Middle East. Well, our Tone has done jolly well so far.
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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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