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Some wonderful photos and informative writeup here about the lost, and now found, treasures of Alexandria, which at one point ranked as one of the wonders of the world, boasting the world’s tallest lighthouse. The photographs are outstanding. Enjoy. (Thanks to Stephen Hicks for the link. Stephen has written a fine book debunking that steaming pile of intellectual hocus known as post-modernism, incidentally.) May 20th, 2006 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
 As I write this, it is raining in a slight but persistent drizzle outside my Pimlico flat, central London. It has been a mixed bag on the weather front recently: some spells of great warm weather but a fair amount of rain. The cricket match at Lords was briefly interrupted by it. One can bet that the Wimbledon tennis tournament later in the summer will undergo the familiar ritual of thrilling matches being interrupted by rain (although I hear there are plans afoot to put a giant cover over the Centre Court stadium in due course). Despite all this, we are told that Britain faces an unprecedented drought. All manner of water restrictions are threatened, although thankfully, given the less-than-wonderful personal habits of Londoners (any Tube user will know what I mean) it is still allowed for us to take a morning shower. In short, shortages. This appears insane in a country famed or infamous for its damp summers. It is an island in which few places are more than 100 miles from the sea. In a wider context, most of the Earth’s surface is covered in the stuff. What’s the problem? The ‘shortages’ we have now have a number of causes, from what I can glean. There has been a substantial population rise in the southeast of England. Greater affluence means more dishwashers, bigger washing machines. Increasingly, many people will often have more than one bathroom in a house. Other, wetter, parts of the UK like the famously wet area to the west of the Pennines have not seen the same sort of population growth. There is plenty of water in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. → Continue reading: Water and some basic economics May 16th, 2006 | 78 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ronald Bailey does not pull his punches when dealing with opponents of biotechnology:
His praise for the idea of material progress reminds of me what Brian Mickelthwait wrote a few weeks back on this blog. I also liked this passage, where he refers to the unashamed opponent of material progress, Bill McKibben and others:
Bailey’s book is strongly recommended and I pretty much agree with all of it. A point of his that I would emphasise is that of course, people are entitled to say that if they don’t want biotech or whatever, then they should not be made to pay for it. If biocons want to stop tax-funding of stem cell research, then as a libertarian, I entirely defend their right to refuse such funding but of course my view changes if such folk try to actually prevent private funding of such ventures. Another argument that Bailey confronts head-on is the idea that by penetrating the mysteries of the physical world, we somehow lose our reverence or respect for life. That always struck me as a dumb argument. My amazement at the wonders of space is hardly dented by the insights of a Newton or the glorious photos taken by space probes. Quite the opposite. And whatever some genetic determinists (some of whom are sadly racists) may say, I don’t believe that the argument for free will and Man’s capacity for making meaningful choices in life is reduced one iota by our understanding of genetics. The more we know, the more power that gives us to shape our futures. I think it was a chap called Francis Bacon who said something to the effect that nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Bailey is one of the better writers for Reason magazine. I definitely can recommend this book for those looking at controversies in this area, such as this subject. May 15th, 2006 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Onion just keeps on getting better. May 14th, 2006 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Alan B. Shepard, aviator and astronaut. I also rather like his terse message to Mission Control at the time of his flight in 1961: “Why don’t you fix your little problems and light this candle”. I am sure he would be thrilled at the private sector space ventures that Dale has been tirelessly writing about lately. May 11th, 2006 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Flicking through the Reason blog, Hit & Run, I came across the link to the recent appearance by Reason’s editor, Nick Gillespie, on the O’Reilly Factor. Gillespie argues that it is silly to pass a law stating that folk should sing the national anthem of the United States in English. I agree (it is not exactly a Top Government Priority), although I would have thought that immigrants, if their intentions are to make a long-term home in their adopted country, should value it enough to try and speak the local language. Language is a part of assimilation. If I went to live in France, I would expect to learn the language, even if I spoke in an atrocious accent. But passing laws to force language is silly. That said, I do not think Gillespie helped his case by what I thought was a singularly boorish performance on the show. Not a great advert for libertarianism. Virginia Postrel would have never acted like that, and she is much better looking. May 8th, 2006 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
May 7th, 2006 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
City Journal, the New York-based magazine, is rapidly turning into one of my favourite reads (many of its articles are now on-line). It carries writers of wit and grace on all manner of issues, many on education, urban life and business. It is now, in my view, streets ahead (‘scuse the pun) of the Spectator, which lost the plot under the editorship of Boris Johnson, whom I now regard frankly as a twerp. City Journal ranks alongside the rejuvinated Atlantic Monthly and Prospect magazine as a place to go for having one’s views challenged and stretched. I strongly recommend the latest issue, which has an appreciation of the late writer, Jane Jacobs, who helped take apart the case for centralised planning of towns, and a review of the life of Robspierre, and a must-read piece on Iran by Mark Steyn, who happily is still churning out great material despite parting ways with the Telegraph Group. May 6th, 2006 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the oldest refrains of those who bash capitalism is that speculators are bad people, inflating the ‘true’ price of X or Y from its supposed ‘correct’ level. It is no surprise that at the moment, those who speculate in the market for oil and other sought-after commodities like copper and gold are getting a lot of abuse. I guess they can take it. As I mentioned in this post on the same issue of the oil price, the level that crude oil is fetching in the market has been pushed to high levels for a whole host of reasons, with speculation playing a part, but not necessarily the major part. In any field of endeavour where there are different appetites for taking on risk, you will get speculators. Speculators take the risk of a price going up or down that others are unwilling, for whatever reason, to shoulder. If it were not for speculators trading in those mysterious things like interest rate swaps or futures, I would not be able to have a fixed-rate mortgage on my house, for example. At the moment, hedge funds and other operators are willing to bet that the price of oil will go higher, and presumably could get cleaned out if the price turns, on say, a sudden discovery of a major oil reserve, an outbreak of peace in the Middle East, return to political sanity in Venezuela, or whatever. So just as one should not weep over the losses speculators make, it would be equally foolish to carp about the gains they are making now. As for the Greens, they ought to be praising those strange-sounding investment vehicles called hedge funds. By pushing up oil to near $75 per barrel, they are doing their bit to show the folly of taking one’s children to school in those small trucks called SUVs, leaving the lights on all day and shunning alternative forms of energy. No wonder the share prices of alternative energy firms and even the nuclear sector are looking promising. UPDATE: And this guy does not think much of the economic grasp of New York legal blowhard Elliot Spitzer, on a related topic. May 6th, 2006 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
May 4th, 2006 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Today is local council election day in England and Wales. As a voter in the area of Westminster, I decided to stick to my local Conservative councillors since whatever I think of the national party (not all that much), the local lot seem to have done a reasonably decent job, and I know them reasonably well as sane individuals, so I duly put my cross against their names. At a national level, meanwhile, it is hard to figure out quite what the Tories are doing. They are confronted by a ruling Labour establishment in meltdown mode, corrupt, incompetent, arrogant and, on the field of civil liberties, positively dangerous. Yet so far leader David Cameron prefers to romp around in the Artic Circle to prove his supposed Green manliness to Guardian Man. All very unimpressive. Oh well. At least Boris Johnson is honest about the future of the Tory Party: a sports club. Maybe Dave and Boris should pack up their bags and run a light entertainment show. They might even make a decent go of it. May 4th, 2006 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
Isaiah Berlin, reminding us of the value of stating truths over and over, even if you fear you are just preaching to the converted. May 3rd, 2006 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
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