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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So, just three things here so far today, one very short and two rather serious. So here are a couple of curiosities.
First, there is this map, which was originally claimed to have been taken posthumously by Columbia before it burned and crashed. You want this to be true, don’t you? As did Michael Jennings. But as I commented at Michael’s, those killjoys at snopes.com have now killed this particular joy. But it is still a thing of beauty, and certainly has my little country looking its best. Snopes says it is “false”, but their map is even bigger than the one Michael put up, so they liked it even as they trashed it.
And the other is a beating heart, courtesy of b3ta.com. Who are those guys?
When you consider all the metaphorical baggage that has been loaded onto the human heart over the centuries, it turns out to be very small and yucky, and you can swap yours for another with “you” carrying on pretty much as usual. It’s just a pump.
And a picture is just a picture.
An article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph Sports section speculates as to why the bid for the Olympic Games in London for 2012 might fail. Apparently the expected losses for hosting the games will be a massive £2,600 millions.
However, as no one has actually published what the toal budget would be, I can only assume that normal public sector project costs will apply: i.e. the original sum multiplied by ten. It is easy to see why the government is apparently unconvinced by the urgency of commiting to such a scheme.
My critics may argue that this sum of money spent on promoting the Olympic Games will do a lot less harm than if allocated to almost any other public programme. This is true. One shudders at the thought of what dregs passing themselves off as doctors would be employed in state hospitals if this sort of money got awarded the National Health Service.
Oh dear, I just realised, the NHS has been given that extra sum over the next two years. Perhaps we should have persuaded the government to spend vast amounts of money on hopeless attempts to bring the football World Cup to Staines, or the Winter Olympics to Blackpool, or even finance half a dozen Americas Cup challenges.
I missed this story last week, and so, I’m guessing, did most of you.
A bricklayer plagued by migraines has turned his torment into a brainwave.
Hywel Edwards, 28, from Merthyr Tydfil in the south Wales Valleys, has invented a cap which allows a migraine sufferer to block out the light as well as surround their head with a cold press.
And the idea – thought up after two days’ agony when tablets and lying in a darkened room was not working – is set be a business winner.
The interesting thing about this invention is that Mr Edwards didn’t need any specialised scientific knowledge to think of it, and make it work. He just needed to know what already worked for him, but in a much less user friendly form. He knew that he needed cold applied to his head, and that he wanted the light to his eyes blocked out. It wasn’t rocket science. He just made it work.
Good for him. I hope Mr Edwards gets rich, and gives lots of others the idea that they too could strike it rich, simply by applying common sense and by applying, well, application.
The Centre for Policy Studies published a report warning that the National Health Service is “on the brink of implosion” as government plans for a record 40 billion pound cash injection risk being squandered on bureaucracy. The author of the report, Dr Maurice Slevin, is a cancer specialist at a top London teaching hospital:
“I have seen at first hand the steady decay of a great public institution … The NHS is on the brink of implosion.”
Slevin, who came to England from South Africa and now works at Barts and the London NHS Trust, said he was full of enthusiasm when he started working for the NHS 24 years ago. But today it was clear that the quality of care delivered in Britain was far below that of other western countries. He warned that without major reforms, the 40 billion pound promised for the NHS over the next five years would “simply disappear into deeper and deeper layers of bureaucracy, with more and more monitoring of more and more targets.”
“Waste is endemic. The Department of Health itself admits that up to a fifth of the NHS budget is lost through waste, fraud and inefficiency.”
So it’s not more money that needs to be thrown at the public services as some community minded people would have us believe. The NHS is a strange institution, rooted in the meta-context of the collective effort the British nation experienced during the WWII and resisting any rational discourse by both the politicians and the public. Horror stories of patients suffering at the hands of NHS are part of regular reporting routine and yet, it still seems to be a political suicide to talk about real modernisation and de-nationalisation of the health care system.
Public services, being the most direct way for politicians of bribing the public into voting for them, have always been the most sensitive political issue. I have this horrible vision of the entire GDP disappearing into the NHS blackhole before the British public acknowledges the failure of the NHS as a system of health care provision and confronts the gruesome reality of public services.
It seems the shakedown artists (sorry, legal campaigners) trying to sue fast food colossus McDonalds are not giving up their fight easily, even though a judge recently threw out a case from a man claiming he had been been turned into a lardbutt.
At first, it is tempting to file stories like this under this blog’s ‘humour’ category, and of course in the past stories about overweight folks suing fast-food joints would have been the sort of thing to have been written up in the The Onion or Private Eye. But no longer. It seems one feature of decades of Big Government has been the steady infantilisation of large chunks of the populace to the point where the concept of taking responsibility for one’s own actions no longer applies.
Perhaps folk who sue fast food retailers should instead sue the State education system for making them so dumb in the first place.
I have now been a non-smoker for seven days. A week. Nearly a fiftieth of a year! It is my sad duty to report that I don’t feel any better for having quit. In fact, I feel worse.
The cravings, though fewer and less severe, still lap tauntingly at my nervous system. It’s like having an itch between the shoulder blades. My temper is, shall we say, far from even. I no longer have anything resembling a sleep pattern. Oh I do sleep. At least, I think I sleep. I find myself standing in the bathroom, scratching my arse, yawning and wondering what happened to the last seven hours. That’s sleep, isn’t it? I hope so.
I no longer eat, I graze. Strange hungers afflict me at unorthodox hours. Oh Lord, why don’t cheeseburgers come in packs of twenty? I am accumulating fat like a bear preparing to hibernate.
The mood swings are the worst. Last night the BBC Weather reported roads blocked by snow in the West Midlands. I was on the verge of tears. Euphoria to desolation in the space of half-an-hour is about the norm.
People say stupid things when you’re trying to quit smoking. ‘Hey, David, it’s all in your mind’. ‘No kidding??!! And there was me thinking it was all in my foot. Of course, it’s all in my f*cking mind, you stupid c*nt. If it was all in my computer’s hard-drive I could just delete it and have done with.’
Testy. Did I mention that I was a little testy? Well, I’m a little testy.
I have been asked on more than one occasion why I smoke cigarettes. The answer is all too simple. I smoke cigarettes because I enjoy smoking. No, I love smoking. I love the film-noiresque pose of cupping my hand around a lighter in a breezy street; I love the silky rolling comfort of the little cylinder between my fingers; I love the draw of tangy, rasping smoke into my lungs.
Let’s face it, smoking is sexy. The effortless self-assurance required to exude sex-appeal is precisely the quality required to look good with a cigarette. Healthy food is not, and will never be, sexy. Working out is not sexy either, regardless of the number of leotard-clad catalogue models prancing around aerobically to 80’s disco beats.
Smoking is sexy despite being dangerous. In fact, it is all the more arousing because it is dangerous. It is a daring and insouciant accomodation with a prowling, patient, predatory beast. For those of us who will never know the adrenalin rush of sitting in the cockpit of a Tornado or an F-15, smoking is a defiant dalliance with death.
For me, cigarettes are like a mad, unpredictable and fatally attractive mistress. Even though I know her wild behaviour, her endless painful taunts and unreasonable demands are both eroding my life-force and gouging out my bank account, I love her desperately and irrationally. And for all that she hurts me, I must have her in my life.
Until now, that is. Because I am in the process of ending this corrosive love-affair. Why? Because although I believe that the risks of smoking have been exaggerated for political reasons, even I can no longer ignore the symptoms of the harm being done to my respiratory system. Wheezing after climbing a flight of stairs is one thing but combine that with the trademark hacking, staccato cough I have now developed and that’s enough to set alarm bells ringing. I fear that if I do not end this relationship soon, then my mistress will do me some harm from which I will not have the option of being able to walk away.
So, as I type these words, it is now two-and-a-half days since I stubbed out what I hope will prove to be my last pleasure stick. Despite the nicotine patch on my arm, I am fighting the tickling, torturous craving that sweeps over me in savage, but mercifully brief, waves. Whenever they come they are accompanied by the roaring sound of my mistress banging frantically on my front door demanding to know why I have suddenly stopped returning her calls. Given time, she will tire, get the message and leave me alone. By my reckoning, after four days of this hell, things will get easier.
By this time next week, I hope I will have completely de-coupled myself from this harridan and although I know I will be a better man for being free of her tyrrany, I also know with doleful certainty that I will miss her forever.
I am a fairly regular reader of New Scientist for its take on fast breaking technological news. The magazine does have a downside though. It is very… well… representative of UK “liberal” politics.
I have just finished an item in the 29-Nov-2002 issue, “I see a long life and a healthy one…” about entrepreneurial companies making genetic testing available to the consumer. One would think a science magazine would be praising them for taking cutting edge science and bringing it to the consumer in an affordable and appealing way while potentially creating many high paying jobs for scientists in the UK, generating yet another path for massive capital infusion into genetic and health research and adding to UK exports to top it off?
Naaah.
I’ll let these quotes from the article stand on their own:
British regulators were caught on the hop when Sciona’s tests first went on sale. No one had foreseen that consumers would suddenly be able to learn something about their genes without a doctor’s agreement, or even knowledge.
Another option would be to return control of genetic testing to the medical profession, banning companies from providing tests unless requested by a doctor. Companies say this is a step too far towards meidcal paternalism, and argue that people have the right to obtain genetic information about themselves. But [Helen] Wallace [of GeneWatch UK] disagrees: “We need to ensure proper consultation through GP’s to ensure that people understand the implications of taking a test,” she says
What could I possibly add?
I’ve decided to reply to the responses on my previous article “in-line”. Issues of personal choice and personal liberty are at the very heart of libertarianism. It is not a matter of whether you agree with a behavior or not. A libertarian society removes from you the “right” to use force and coercion, whether by self or by state proxy, against acts you do not like. You may either mind your own business or you may spend your own time and money to advertise and campaign to change people’s minds one at a time. If you are Bill Gates or Ted Turner and spend every last pence you have to make people stop being part of Group X and all but one person does – that one person may still freely go about their business as before and there is nothing you can do about it.
You could be an Imam convincing everyone to accept Shari’a, and if one person doesn’t you are stuffed1. Tough. They can shoot back if you annoy them too much, and likely large numbers of others who agreed with your initial ideas will turn on you for breaking the Meta-rule of non-coercion.
There is no libertarian argument which could support the status quo of the Drug War. Drug usage – THC, Ethanol, Nicotine or stronger – are issues of personal choice. The results of those personal choices are personal responsibilities. If someone drinks themselves into a gutter, it is not the State’s responsibility to pull them out. If someone injects heroin into their veins and kills themself it is likewise not a public issue.
The minimal libertarian position is the Minarchist state. One which is responsible for Defense, Police and the Courts – killing terrorists, shooting down nuclear missiles, rescuing hostages where possible… and finding, trying and locking up snipers.
There is no room in that description for “outlawing a behavior of Group X that Group Y does not like or that Group Z thinks is unhealthy”.
In a free society, you do what you want so long as you don’t directly harm others… and the consequences of those actions are fully your own to deal with, whether it be getting laid and having a great time or morphine addiction, lung cancer and liver cirrhosis.
T’ain’t nobodies business but your own.
1 = For some Imams in certain Medieval nations, the very ideas expressed here are a heresy. That’s why we leave the Minimal State with Defense. So we can get them first if they try to “Kill Infidels in the Name of Allah”. A liberal society assumes everyone accepts a very minimal social pact of non-coercion.
A US court has ruled Ashcroft’s storm troopers can no longer hound doctors and threaten license revocation if they prescribe weed for pain.
Grass is legal for medical purposes in a number of States – notably California -and effectively decriminalized in several. Unfortunately the Feds believe they can override state laws at will.
Libertarians long have played a prominent role in legalization campaigns. One former National Chair also spent time as a major player within NORML.
“Come the Revolution”, the DEA will be one of the first organizations to go. I’d suggest they all keep their CV’s current, but I’m not sure what sort of productive jobs they could get. There’s not a lot of call for their skillset in a Civil society, and I don’t believe Saddam will be hiring after this winter.
Russell Whitaker sees sections of the medical profession’s distaste for accessable services for what it really is
From the “I saw this on Fox News several weeks ago but just got around blogging about it now” department, comes another tale of indignation, this time from the medical guild.
In an article transcription of a TV news feature featuring an adversarial interview of obstetrician Dr. Leon Hansen, founder of Fetal Foto versus Dr. John Hobbins, one of a stable of media medical expert witnesses who hew to the usual AMA trade unionist line.
Fetal Foto is a shopping mall medical imaging service. It’s apparently harmless, and lets prospective parents get a real head start on boring their friends with their family photo albums. Dr. Hobbins is incensed that Dr. Hansen is providing it on the cheap:
The high-tech scan, which isn’t covered by insurance, costs $60 at a Fetal Fotos facility and $280 at his doctor’s office, according to Hansen.
But the trend has angered the FDA and other critics, who argue it’s exploitative and dangerous and is commercializing a sensitive medical procedure.
“Here’s a group that’s using this wonderful technology to put bucks in their pockets,” said Dr. John Hobbins, head of obstetrics at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
What really angers Dr. Hobbins and his cronies is that the bucks are lining someone else’s pockets, and in a shopping mall of all places. As Fetal Foto’s Dr. Hansen notes:
“Twenty years ago, they felt it was inappropriate to have a pregnancy test available to the general public,” he said.
Other shopping mall boutique medical success stories include adult whole-body imaging service AmeriScan, which rightfully claims to have contributed to the saving of a number of lives through early diagnosis of various ailments, e.g. male colon cancer.
The Fetal Foto business model explicitly excludes medical diagnosis – it most vehemently is not in the diagnosis or treatment businesses, by charter – but this is not what bothers the boys in the AMA.
No, what riles the unionists is that they have no control over the use of an interesting medical procedure used for non-medical purposes. They’re embittered by the fact that, after all, medical people provide services that people want, and some people are willing to take those services to what they and other “public health” gatekeepers revile as among the worst venues in the capitalist world, the modern bazaar of the American shopping mall.
After all, it boils down to tired arguments of guild protectionism and class warfare with these people. Long live the crass temples of capitalism!
Russell Whitaker
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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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