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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The June edition of technology, futurism and culture magazine Wired has a fascinating piece by Steve Silberman about growing government restrictions in the United States on home-chemistry kits and how this could bar children from learning from, and getting excited by, science. Instead, children are likely to increasingly encounter chemistry and science not up close in a lab and by playing around with kits, but via video or school labs where experiments are conducted in highly protected environments. I can see the thought process here: “If youngsters get home-kits to make chemical experiments, then the odd potential bin Laden brewing up a concoction in his bedroom could go out and try to blow people up.” Small-scale amateur rocketry has already experienced similar bans or restrictions on stuff like the fuel used (“some nut might shoot a plane out of the sky!”).
But the security services are missing the “Pack not a herd” point of Glenn Reynolds and others: namely, that in a rich civil society where lots of people have hobbies and interests including messing around with chemistry, physics and technology in their spare time, it creates a natural “social capital”, if you will, of people who can prove mighty useful in an emergency. The same edition of Wired magazine has an article on how companies like Proctor and Gamble use home-based scientists – what Wired calls “crowdsourcing” – to fix problems that their own in-house professionals take more time and a lot more money to solve. If I were a defence or security official, instead of treating all amateur scientists as potential trouble-makers, I’d co-opt them, issue prizes for new ideas, and so forth. I suppose this links to my point below about the value of X-Prize contests.
So by all means be vigilant in the fight against terror. But if geeky children want to learn more about chemistry at home, I think that is a healthy thing to be encouraged. Our ancestors, such as these fellows, who often arrived at scientific breakthroughs after exploring scientific ideas in a far less regulated environment than today, certainly would have agreed.
I have read Andrew Sullivan’s blog pretty much from the moment he started it. I have a natural sympathy for anyone who defies conventional stereotypes, and a man who is Catholic, gay and a small-government Reaganite conservative, a fan of Madonna and Michael Oakeshott certainly breaks more sterotypes than most. He has been magnificent in taking a stand on the issue of torture, for example. But even our heroes – and Sullivan is one in my eyes – have their feet of clay or views that I regard as stand-out dumb. And on the issue of cars, Sullivan (who does not drive) reverts to nannystatism in all its ugly glory. He endorses an article by Jonathan Rauch arguing that President Bush should press for an international pact to phase out the use of gasoline in cars over the next 30 years. Oh great. So do we humble, much-harassed motorists get a say in this? Don’t give me a line about how this would be ‘democratically’ decided. Oh yeah. Why not leave it to the market, already driving new alternatives to petroleum-based engines? If the real price of oil continues to be high, as it is at the moment, then we will get more hybrids, more hydrogen-powered cars, more innovations and new transport sources, without the need for some Grand International Treaty or 30-year deadline. If Bush did make such a pronouncement, how seriously would anyone take it? Would it not be regarded as the sort of ‘eye-catching initiative’ one has come to associate with our own Tony Blair.
A far better idea, in fact, would be to rely on innovation contests such as the X-Prize to encourage new technologies rather than go for a big Treaty with a deadline. Now that strikes me as the sort of idea a small-government advocate like Sullivan should be pushing.
I can understand the wish to reduce use of oil from the Middle East and curb C02 emissions. But in my gut I feel that Sullivan and others like him just don’t like cars very much and are mystified by most American’ love of a set of wheels (clue, Andrew – America is seriously BIG). Sullivan has lived in the States now for more than two decades, but I fear that in some way, the fella never really left this little damp island known as Britain.
I recently read This is Burning Man by Brian Doherty, chronicling the remarkable phenomenon of the Burning Man annual festival/event/blowout in the middle of the harsh Nevada desert. Despite the occasional slip into Sixties hippyspeak which might suggest a sort of communalistic mushiness, the book contained at its core the profoundly rational message that we can enjoy civil society by reducing the state to its barest minimum. Very subversive of statism, Doherty writes with obvious passion for the festival and affection for the often nutty but loveable characters who have developed the event. A great way to while away the hours while waiting to catch my delayed flight out of Nice after a business conference yesterday. Money quote:
“Any political virtue I saw in Burning Man always had to do with its avoidance of politics as I see it – the game of some people telling other people what to do. Burning Man to me was about liberty, and ordered anarchy, the inherent strength and possible joys of a civilisation in which all the “government” you need can be purchased in a freely chosen market.”
I may even go there one day and try and combine a Burning Man trip with a visit to the magnificent Reno air race festival. Yowza!
Like many folk, I get my fair share of free newspapers pushed through the letterbox. These publications live on advertising and in some cases are quite useful, full of details about local plumbers, plasterers, doctors, new restaurants and the like. In my central London neighbourhood of Pimlico, there are a few of these things floating around. I normally give them a cursory glance and either jot down any handy numbers or put the rag into the trash.
The Pimlico and Belgravia Eye has this interesting ad which definitely caught my eye (not available online):
The latest craze hits Pimlico, Victoria!. Experience the ultimate sense of self expression. Not only is it an alternative form of fitness, but it is an overall empowerment source for women. Whether you want to learn new moves for personal enjoyment or for professional career development, we have just the class for you… Students are from all walks of life, ages, shapes and sizes. The school is designed for all levels of experience – total beginners, professional dancers and even aspiring pole dancing performers.
Pole dancing – now associated with ’empowerment’ and ‘professional career development’. Say what you like about we stuffy Brits – there is none of that stuffyiness in deepest Pimlico.
Here is their, ahem, website.
This story about a drugs bust at a drive-thru restaurant may get some folk chuckling but I am not getting the joke. One of thousands of examples, in fact, of how the war on drugs is a waste of time, energy and law-enforcement talent. At a time when we live with the threat of terrorism, one would like to think that priorities were a touch different on both sides of the Atlantic.
Football, whether you love it or loathe it, is now a huge global business. It stands to reason, then, that the temptations on the part of some folk to bend the rules to make themselves rich are considerable. There are currently extremely serious allegations surrounding a number of big-name Italian clubs, including AC Milan and Juventus, to the effect that officials and others collaborated to fix games. And all this while the game’s main showcase, the World Cup, is going on.
And then there is this story today:
Juventus team manager and former defender Gianluca Pessotto has been seriously injured after falling from a building at the club’s headquarters.
“Gianluca suffered multiple fractures, but his life is not in danger,” said Juventus spokesman Marco Girotto. It is unclear where exactly the 35-year-old fell from – early reports suggested he had fallen out of a second-floor window, but now it seems he may have fallen from the roof of the building. Club officials said they were unable to give details and were looking into all possibilities.
Oh I bet they are. Consider the final paragraph of the story:
Juventus are currently facing charges relating to the massive match-fixing scandal rocking Italy. The scandal began last month with the publication of intecepted telephone conversations between former Juventus general manager Luciano Moggi and Italian Football Federation officials discussing refereeing appointments.
Italian clubs are now a major part of the corporate structure of that country. Questions about the trustworthiness of Italian corporate leaders have already been stirred by the scandal of collapsed food group Parmalat, a scandal that was a European equivalent of Enron or the Fannie Mae debacles.
Football needs trust to survive. The antics of players who writhe in fake agony after being tackled in a bid to get an opposing player sent off, or who fall over in the penalty area to get a goal (Italy arguably did this in the match yesterday against Australia) are part of a cancer eating at the game. I can put up with the antics of footballers off the pitch and I do not get upset at their huge salaries – they operate in a market after all – but without trust, without a sense that the players concerned are giving their all to win, then the game is in grave danger. Similar scandals have besmirched cricket and remain a shadow over horse racing. I hope the Italian authorities prosecute any guilty folk severely. If found guilty, some of the clubs could be relegated from the top-flight league and forced to sell some of their star players, presumably at a loss (I wonder if Ipswich Town can afford any of them?).
What a mess.
The American standup comedian and actor Denis Leary has a wonderfully raucous sketch in his Lock n’ Load show when he loses his temper, unable to get someone, anyone, to serve him a regular, ordinary cup of coffee. You feel for the irascible Irish-American as the fella goes on his folorn search (he fails).
Coffee. I drink the stuff every day and there is no doubt that in my brief lifetime, it has gone from being the nasty stuff brewed from ‘instant’ granules in a jar to a massive industry boasting tremendous variety and choice. Companies like Coffee Republic and of course, Starbucks, have played a huge part in this. Sometimes the sheer headspinning variety of choices and the names of some coffees bring out the Denis Leary in me, but on the whole I have to accept that this choice has done a lot for the consumer. There is a fine article here by Edward Hudgins of the The Objectivist Center defending Starbucks and other chains from the chidings of our modern-day health scolds. There is also a fine and detailed article here via Reason magazine about the Fair Trade coffee movement. While fairly friendly to the Fair Trade outfits, the article, written by Kerry Howley, also raises some uncomfortable questions about just who wins or loses from the Fair Trade business model, and whether it is really simply about feel-good consumerism, benefiting poor farmers or just raising the quality of coffee. However, it is a paradox that the Fair Trade model has become a hugely successful business phenomenon. The FT brand is ironically, pitched at precisely the sort of folk who might claim to despise brands generally, writes Howley, in a passage reminiscent of David Brook’s work, Bobos in Paradise:
“The hippie spilling buckets of ake blood may never break bread (or sip coffee with straight-laced businessmen talking quality, but the consumer has little to lose from a synthesis of strong words and strong lattes. Another Starbucks, a better coffee, a calmer conscience: What caffeine fiend can argue?”
Related thoughts here.
European steel giant Arcelor looks as if it is going to be bought by the Indian Mittal family company. If the ink is allowed to dry on this deal, it will create the world’s biggest steelmaker and do so at a time when metal prices have been rising strongly, as have pretty much most other commodities.
That India’s economy has been on the rise is pretty much a part of the received economic wisdom these days. What is clear, though, is that country is a lot more than about lots of call centres. It is becoming a breeding ground for a whole crop of entrepreneurs able and willing to take on the biggest businesses in the established industrial world and where necessary, put a few noses out of joint in the process.
Top of the Pops, a BBC programme that has shown Top-40 pop acts since the days of the Beatles, has been axed by the BBC. I grew up in the late 70s and 80s watching the show, including favourite bands of mine like the Stranglers, Undertones, Madness, Ian Dury (RIP) and the rest. Now it is all gone. Some of this must have been driven by shifting demographics. When ToTP started, there were relatively more folk under the age of 20 versus the rest of the population than is the case now, and the music industry tended to chase after what was thought to be a large and expanding number of young people with money in their pockets.
The development of new musical techologies, CDs, downloading and the Internet has also affected, and is continuing to change, the way that people listen to music and the sort of styles that get played. This is also affecting how folk come across music for the first time and how a band or act can make a “breakthrough”. The old music labels, under threat as they must be from the changing music industry, are no longer able to support something like a “Top 40” on which something like the old BBC programme could be based. This is neither a good or bad development, in my view, just a change driven by shifting demographics and technology.
So making it to “Number One” no longer has quite the same resonance now that it may have done in the heyday of the Beatles or Duran Duran. Some may regret the passing of all this, but I am indifferent to it. I increasingly hope that new technologies will make it possible for talented artists to circumvent Big Music and push their own offerings on to the Net, using such avenues as the wildly successful GarageBand route. (Uber-blogger Glenn Reynolds has written about this recently in a book).
Anyway, the demise of Top of the Pops should not lead one to conclude that a supposedly vibrant era of great music is going to be replaced by something worse. It is the error of any age to assume that whatever went before is better than what is happening now (a sure sign that one is getting old. I have just passed 40 and intend to resist that trap). This book by Tyler Cowen points out, for example, how the often wildly controversial music of the R&R era in the 1950s has taken on the mantle of classic music in the ears and hearts of many people (including me):
“Musical pessimists also have claimed that contemporary music provides an aesthetic that is overly accessible and directed at the lowest possible denominator. They view rock and roll and other genres as a succession of pop songs, well suited to catch the ear of the casual listener but of little lasting value. We should keep in mind, however, that many western creations have stood a test of time, one of the most significant indicators of cultural quality and depth. It has now been more than forty years since the release of the early classic works of rock and roll, such as Chuck Berry and James Brown.” (page 179)
Or this, (page 178)::
“Contemporary music, for the most part, encourages freedom, nonconformism, and a skeptical attitude towards authority. The totalitarian states of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did not hesitate to permit Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. Jazz, swing and blues were banned. The free and vital sense of joy communicated by these musical forms clashed too obviously with adherence to totalitarian ideals. Similarly, the communist and socialist leaders in the Eastern bloc saw rock and roll as a special threat to their authority, precisely because it was based on the personality of the individual performer.”
Rock on.
Well, I had to return to normality eventually. I have just come back with the new Mrs Pearce from Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean lying off the east coast of Africa and south of the Equator. An extremely interesting island with a mixed history and a heady brew of different cultures, part Anglosphere, part French, part Indian and part African.(Here is a good collection of literature linked to it). About 11 hours direct flying time from London, the island is pretty much geared these days as a “romantic destination in the tropics”. I liked the place and its people a lot as we travelled around the various nature parks, looking at the coral reefs, the fish, birdlife and assorted animals. If I have one grumble it is that, much to my amazement, the whole island is besotted with English football. Egads, I go all this way and they are still raving about the World Cup.
It is funny what sticks in the mind, often completely unexpected. I discovered that the island produces some of the finest and most fantastically detailed model boats I have ever seen. You can, for a fraction of what it would cost in Britain, buy a scale model wooden Victory, or Constitution, or Sovereign of the Seas, or an America’s Cup racer, WW2 battleship, cruiser or Blue Riband liner. There is a substantial industry of locals churning out these boats. The Napoleonic era – when Mauritius was seized by the British from the French – seems to provide the inspiration for most of the models. Unable to resist – I am an amateur sailor anyway – my wife and I bought a model of the 1840s U.S. schooner Albatros, now sitting proudly on the mantelpiece. Hardwoods are the base for much of the boats that are made and as a result, will last for years. The detailing on the rigging, sails, tiny cannon and masts are incredible. (Okay, I am an overgrown boy at heart).
And of course while on the island I read Patrick O’Brien’s The Mauritius Command. For a moment, sitting on the beach sipping a beer, I thought I saw Lucky Jack Aubrey walking along, staring out to sea to spot French raiders…
Anyway, it has been good to give blogging a miss for a while and re-charge the writing batteries. Thanks to everyone for their good wishes and messages. I really appreciate it.
I occasionally watch the Top Gear motoring-lads-having-a-laugh show on a Sunday evening, fronted by the bumptious Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson is a sort of British version of P.J. O’Rourke, (although O’Rourke is at his best in print, rather than on the box) in that he loves to mock cyclists, Greens, do-gooders and other earnest protectors of our public welfare. Excellent. It is amazing really that his show has run on the BBC for so long. His mails must include a fair share of rudeness from those he mocks and it looks like he has really got up the nose of veteran Green campaigner Jonathan Porritt, a person who at one stage was very much the “reasonable” face of environmentalism.
Porritt misses the point completely. He is part of a puritanical new establishment dedicated to the removal of fun, or at least that of those other than themselves. We have had more than a decade of this, and Clarkson is rather like a shot of brandy to the half-drowned. He may be overly laddish for some people’s tastes, but he acts as handy counterweight to the scolds. Long may he sing the praises of Ferraris, supersonic jet aircraft and other fast machines.
(I have classified this post under “Arts and Entertainment” since Top Gear is purely entertainment. Do not expect to learn a lot about practical car maintenance.)
It appears that so-called “animal rights” thugs’ targetting of scientists and attempted intimidation of investors has backfired, at least in terms of trying to win around public opinion to their cause. Well, it is true that the majority of Britons loathe such groups, but I don’t think these folk are really concerned about winning hearts and minds as so much working out their own damaged psychological problems through a “cause” that gives them a sense of power and fame. The sadness of it all is that the case for advancing animal welfare – hardly a trivial issue – gets lost in the noise. For all that I am an unapologetic meat-eater, I certainly think everything practical should be done to minimise suffering of animals. In fact, one of the great things about growing advances in the fields of biotech, genetic engineering and the like is that it reduces the need for animal testing, possibly removing it altogether.
Green terrorism is not something cooked up by science fiction. It is all too real and threatens immense damage to our economic and material wellbeing. Maybe the famously sentimental British animal-loving public are getting the point.
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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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