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]
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This is bloody clever:
Italcementi, which spent 10 years developing its TX Active, said the building material is capable of reducing urban pollution by more than 40 percent, the Italian news agency ANSA reported Tuesday.
Tests on a road near Milan showed TX Active cut the level of nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide by as much as 65 percent.
I came across this story while browsing through the weekly magazine, The Business (which has been re-launched from its previous format of a Sunday newspaper). The story says that the cement’s amazing properties were discovered quite by accident and emerged from nanotechnology research undertaken by an EU-funded project (good grief, something positive via the EU, Ed). The Business article says that the photocatalytic cement building materials can get rid of up to 80 percent of air pollution.
The applications of the new kinds of materials technologies coming out from the worlds of nanotech and beyond are legion. I particularly like the idea that concrete, which normally turns a sort of gunky, greyish colour in Britain’s damp climate, could stay a more pristine colour thanks to stuff like this. One of the reasons why so much modern architecture is so crap is not just the basic shapes of the buildings but the materials they are composed of.
I wonder whether it gets rid of grafitti, though.
(Update: another story on the subject)
One of the reasons why I like the idea of a “flat tax” is that, by sweeping away all the existing loopholes, it removes a whole group of people who have a vested interest in pushing for special treatement from the Inland Revenue and instead creates a simpler system that is far easier to run, less distortive of economic activity. As a libertarian, of course, my main aim is to see the overall burden come down rather than be flatter; the flatness of the tax code is not, ultimately, as important as its weight.
One of the groups that have managed to chisel a tax break out of finance minister Gordon Brown is the domestic film industry. Apparently, the End of Civilisation As We Know It may possibly be arriving soon if we no longer make movies in England. It is all tosh, of course. Many British actors, directors, producers, technicians and photographers work all over the world, very successfully too. While financed with U.S. money and so forth, many of the biggest hits in recent years have had strong British themes, such as the Harry Potter series, and even the latest James Bond movie.
Boris Johnson has a nice article demonstrating the absurdity of trying to define what is a “British” film for the purposes of qualifying for tax treatment. Just get rid of these loopholes and focus on cutting taxes across the board, Boris. And please do inform your statist-minded Tory leader, David Cameron, about that aim.
The other day I wrote about the charms of Suffolk, that county in East Anglia in which I was brought up. A place famous for gentle, flattish countryside, nice buildings, coastal scenery, fine beer and a once-very-good football team (Ipswich Town FC won the FA Cup in 1978 and the European UEFA Cup in 1981 in the glory years when the team was managed by Sir Bobby Robson).
Alas, Ipswich is now likely to be known some time for very different, appalling reasons.
Now is not the time to really go into much analysis of the crimes themselves. My heart goes out to the friends and families of the victims and like most people, I hope the piece of scum that carried out these killings is quickly brought to justice. While I have my doubts about using the death penalty in a world when so much of our Common Law has been damaged by stupid governments, it is hard not to feel sympathy for despatching such a lowlife rather than leaving him – I assume it is a he – to rot in jail for years at the taxpayer’s expense.
The victims in this case are described as prostitutes. Blogger Tim Worstall has thoughts about the nexus of drug use and prostitution and, being the pro-liberty guy he is, reckons that the women who ply this trade would be safer if prostitution was legalised. I agree (I had quite a joust with an authortarian if probably well-meaning chap by the name of Martin on Tim’s comment thread). I think that a person who sells his or her sexual favours for cash is entitled to do so with consenting adults and it is no business of the state to say otherwise. The harms that people usually associate with prostitution stem from the fact that it is often illegal and thus controlled by organised criminals, many of them drug-pushers as well. Legalising it, and taking prostitution out of a legal twilight zone is not a cure-all for the ills some people associate with it, but it would reduce problems, I think, such as sexually transmitted diseases, and perhaps reduce the sort of horrors that we have seen in the Ipswich area. Of course, if this monster strikes again and this time attacks someone from a very different set of circumstances, then the debate will shift.
This terrible saga also prompts me to wonder what could and should be done to encourage people to learn and practice self defence, but that is a whole topic in itself and I don’t have the time right now to explore it, but I am sure that commenters will want to think about it. I’d be interested to know if there are comparable recent incidents from other parts of the world and what happened subsequently. Send in any examples.
Perceptive article on the local area by Times columnist Libby Purves.
(Update: fixed silly typo in original).
I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
– Winston S. Churchill, war leader, soldier, journalist, historian, painter and amateur pig-farmer.
The Daily Telegraph’s Charles Moore has good and important things to say about how the Armed Forces are viewed these days in Britain. He cites several examples of how soldiers, sailors or airmen returning home from a tour of duty frequently feel completely unvalued, sometimes despised, by the home population.
To a certain extent, this has to be placed in historical context. Since the end of compulsory military service in the early 1960s and the end of the Cold War, the forces have shrunk, so a smaller proportion of us are likely to encounter people who are serving in the forces. I know a couple of people in the RAF and my father was a navigator in the 1950s – on aircaft with spiffing names like Meteors, Javelins and Venoms – but many of us do not. I wanted to follow my old man’s footsteps but I developed a small defect in my eyesight in my late teens so the prospect of Johnathan Pearce at the controls of a Typhoon was zero (probably to much relief to you readers). The idea of having a career in the armed forces is something that occurs to very few of us these days. None of the youngsters I know would be remotely interested in joining up. The pay is not attractive compared with what one could earn in other walks of life and the whole catch of travelling around the world, meeting interesting people and subsequently killing them does not appeal to a generation that can backpack around the globe on a cheap flight anyway. And the killing stuff is clearly not popular. Maybe the impact of television, culture and politics has sapped the military ethos. This is a good thing mostly, but it clearly comes at a cost in the supply of motivated personnel.
Moore’s article concludes with a plug for a very fine charity that helps support our services. Without apology, I recommend those so minded to donate something. May I also suggest this RAF Benevolent Fund site as a place that people can visit. Other branches of the forces have similar bodies looking after people who have served and now need some help.
These words of Rudyard Kipling, the great poet for the British Army, are nice:
“Troopin’, troopin’, give another cheer –
Ere’s to English women and a quart of English beer.
The Colonel an’ the Regiment an’ all who’ve got to stay,
Gaw’s Mercy Strike ’em gentle! Whoop! w’re goin’ ‘ome to-day.
We’re goin’ ‘ome, w’re goin’ ‘ome,
Our ship is at the shore,
An’ you must pack your ‘aversack,
For we won’t come back no more.
Ho, don’t you grieve for me,
My lovely Mary-Ann!
For I’ll marry you yit on a foup’ny bit
As a time-expired man.
(From the poem, Troopin’).
EU Referendum has a long and detailed article on the problems the British Army is having with its equipment in the Middle East and the lessons that could and should be learned from other forces, such as the Canadians. The EU Ref. blog has become a regular read for me, and it specialises on two or three consistent themes and sticks to them solidly. You will not get closely-argued analysis of the armed forces like this unless you buy a specialist book or attend a lecture by military historians such as John Keegan. First class stuff all round.
Via the Adam Smith Institute blog I came across this excellent essay over at the LewRockwell site about South Park. Definitely worth a read. Of course it is not the first time that the outrageous but wonderfully sharp series has been noted for its libertarian, anti-puritan content. Blogger Andrew Sullivan even coined the phrase – I think – South Park Republicans. I doubt that the makers of the series would want to be seen dead with many modern self-styled conservatives, and I would love Parker and Stone to have a go at our own benighted David Cameron’s Tories. There was a whole book on the subject by Brian Anderson called South Park Conservatives, which I quite liked, although it had some flaws. Reason magazine had a recent nice article about the characters.
Of course, arguably PJ O’Rourke was ahead of them all with his Republican Party Reptiles, which is essentially a libertarian credo in most respects. The nearest we have in Britain to such a celebration of brash material wealth and fun, irreverence towards do-gooders of all forms is motoring journalist Jeremy Clarkson.
Two senior American politicians, one a Republican, one a Democrat, have sent a snotty letter to ExxonMobil in order to tell that firm that it should cease funding views that challenge the Green consensus. The effrontery of these twerps really takes the breath away. It further bolsters my view that many environmentalists, at least on the edges, are hostile to free speech and liberty more generally. If were a senior manager at this oil firm, I would reply by informing these characters over exactly what they can do with such letters. There is no longer any point pretending to be nice to these people.
The Wall Street Journal has a strong editorial here on the subject. Thanks to Reason’s Hit and Run blog for the pointer.
I count myself as a very fortunate man in many respects. I have a job I enjoy – most of the time, anyway. I am in decent health, have a lovely wife, no serious money troubles, and a supportive family. One of my greatest pieces of good fortune, I reckon, is to have been born in the county of Suffolk. Yes, it may not pulsate with the energy of London or New York, and East Anglia is a part of the world that is unlikely to become one of the great tourist sites of the world. But it has its charms: its ancient churches, pink-washed cottages, attractive seaside towns like Aldeburgh, and a heritage of art and literature that holds up well against all-comers. Gainsborough was a Suffolk man, while Charles Rennie Mackingtosh, whom one normally associates with the city of Glasgow, spent some time painting in Suffolk in the small seaside town of Southwold (which has a great little pier). I grew up in the country on a farm, and am probably the only person in my company who can claim to have driven a combine harvester, ploughed a 300-acre farm and shot game birds.
And of course Suffolk has the glory that was John Constable. There was a recent excellent exhibition of his works at the Tate. His Hay Wain (spellings of this picture seem to vary) is probably one of the most famous paintings of all time. Thousands of people have his prints on their walls and probably wonder what the scenes of Flatford Mill and the River Stour that Constable depicted look like now. The answer is that not much has changed in terms of the scenery, apart from roads and cars. The village of Dedham is pretty recognisable. One of Constable’s paintings is on the walls of the village’s main church.
It was a grand place to meet up with my parents for a pre-Christmas gathering in the area as I will be spending my Christmas in Malta. But one thing left a sour taste and that was the standard of service I received in a pub/restaurant in the area. It is fair to say that television chefs Gordon Ramsay or Nigella Lawson have no fear of competition from this part of the world. The food was indifferent, and the service and the staff so gormless that I began to wonder whether the old cruel saws about country folk being a bit simple might have some basis in fact.
U.S-based blogger Kim du Toit had a recent similar experience of British pub food and service. At a time when the pound is trading high against the U.S. dollar, it is already expensive for Americans to visit Britain on holiday so it hardly makes sense to make the situation worse by bad service. Constable Country, as the Suffolk-Essex borderland is known, is a well-trodden place for Americans, particularly older people who may have spent some time serving in the US Airforce during WW2 and the Cold War at the many bases dotted all over East Anglia. (The region was one big aircraft base, in fact. Here is a book I recommend for aircraft junkies.)
Anyway, Suffolk has that prince of beers, Adnams Ale. No further reasons to go there are needed, surely.
(Update, well, having thought this through I will name the establishment: The Marlborough, in Dedham high street. Let’s be clear, the place is fine in most respects, but the quality of service on Sunday was just not good enough.)
“Why hate someone for the color of their skin when there are much better reasons to hate them”.
Denis Leary, comedian, actor and champion of American firefighters and emergency workers.
One of the things that seems to bug people these days is expressions of how the world is getting better, wealthier, and happier. My recent comments on the glories of global capitalism flushed out some pretty stubborn adherents of fixed-wealth, mercantilist economics. Much of the attitudes I encountered in the comments are based on a profound pessimism about the ability of people to adapt to change, or even enjoy the challenges of change. Even so, in these gloomy times, it is good to have a clear statement about how good many developments now are. Allister Heath has noted that optimism is almost a taboo an attitude these days as admitting in Victorian times that one enjoyed sex. Anyway, pessimists be damned, read this by Allister:
For billions of people around the world, these are the best of times to be alive. From Beijing to Bratislava, more of us are living longer, healthier and more comfortable lives than at any time in history; fewer of us are suffering from poverty, hunger or illiteracy. Pestilence, famine, death and even war, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, are in retreat, thanks to the liberating forces of capitalism and technology.
If you believe that such apparently outlandish claims cannot possibly be true, think again. In a book which will trigger intense controversy when it is published later this month, the acclaimed American economist Indur Goklany, former US delegate to the United Nations’ intergovernmental panel on climate change, demonstrates that on every objective measure of the human condition – be it life expectancy, food availability, access to clean water, infant mortality, literacy rates or child labour – well-being and quality of life are improving around the world.
A remarkable compendium of information at odds with the present fashionable pessimism, Goklany’s The Improving State of the World, published by the Cato Institute, reveals that, contrary to popular belief, it is the poorest who are enjoying the most dramatic rise in living standards. Refuting a central premise of the modern green movement, it also demonstrates that as countries become richer, they also become cleaner, healthier and more environmentally conscious
I love articles like this. It must drive the gloomongers nuts. And driving such people nuts is not just a pleasure, but a public duty.
Hope has become a commodity in short supply in the West. Even though more progress will always be required, our victories over famine and extreme poverty during the past two centuries are civilisation’s greatest achievement. It is time we took a well-deserved break from worrying about terrorism, rising crime, social dislocation and all our other problems to celebrate what we have actually got right.
Indeed.
John Scalzi, a science fiction writer whom I admire and learned about via the blogs, is giving free copies of his books to servicemen and women in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, leaving aside what one thinks of either military campaign, I think this is a grand idea, and I hope and trust that authors, film-makers and musicians do the same. These armed forces personnel are risking their lives and deserve a bit of comfort and support, particularly now when so many people, even “moulting hawks” like me, are doubting the wisdom of military intervention in the Middle East. We put them there, God help us.
Scalzi’s first book, Old Man’s War, is definitely worth a read, and the successor, The Ghost Brigades, is also pretty good. If you like Robert Heinlein or Peter Hamilton, for example, you will like Scalzi. I hope he is around for a long time to come. He writes hard science fiction with characters you believe in, can like and admire, warts and all.
(Thanks to Alex Knapp for the tip).
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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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