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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Do you ever find the structure of a situation in the news fascinating in its own right, as you would the plot of a novel, almost irrespective of how it pans out in the real world?
Some documents were tricked or leaked out of an anti global warming thinktank, the Heartland Institute. Most of these documents have been admitted to be genuine, and while opinions differ as to how shocking they are, they were certainly not stuff that the Heartland Institute had wished to share with the world. So far the tables are turned on the the Climategate affair.
Only…
The juiciest document, the one that had the really damning quotes (it spoke of “dissuading teachers from teaching science”) is different from all the others. Megan McArdle, not herself in the sceptic camp, says it is looking faker by the minute.
If it does turn out that it is a fake, then the tables are turned on the table turners. But… but… why would anyone be so daft? Having pulled off the trick, got the goods, why put your gains at risk for such a trivial advantage as that of providing a quotable summary?
One of the reasons for the veracity of this particular document being in doubt is that it is sloppy. It contains errors of fact and is written in an unprofessional style. Still, that happens sometimes. “Organisation Contains Sloppy Writer” is not exactly a headline to make them hold the front page. Maybe the sloppiness is a reason to suppose it genuine. But let us run with it being fake for a while – was the faker in a hurry for some reason? It reminds me (and a lot of people) of the Rathergate memos. What a daft error it was to publish them in the default Microsoft Word font of 2004 when they were meant to have originated in the 1970s. I thought then and still think now that they were a first draft released too soon. Could something similar have happened here?
The Guardian pulls in its horns a little. Its story now carries a rather grudging little update saying that the Heartland Institute now claims one document is a fake. The Guardian does not make it as clear as it ought in my opinion that the doubtful document is the very one that had all the good quotes.
At this point, like all good detective stories, a whole new sub plot bubbles up. The climate sceptic blogs have a suspect and name him with what seems to me ridiculous confidence given that the stated evidence against him is vague; mostly a matter of similarities of style. Now who’s risking all they have gained for a trivial advantage? If their suspect turns out to be wrongly accused, the story, which they had snatched back and made into one about fakers rather than leakers, will be forfeit again.
And so it goes – and so it stalls, last time I looked. The person named has not responded to emails; he appears to be offline. But why shouldn’t he be offline? Do you spend your Saturdays checking your email to see if you have been accused of any career-ending shenanigans in the last few hours? Meanwhile other strange portents are seen; open letters are published then retracted and both sides go about with an air of knowing more than they are letting on.
Agatha Christie would put in the second murder about now.
UPDATE, 21 FEBRUARY:
The second body duly falls.
That “person named” to whom I alluded so delicately was Peter Gleick. He has now admitted obtaining the documents by deception. I note that the very thing that led to his name being mentioned as a suspect were similarities of writing style between Gleick’s published writing and the “different” email. Nonetheless he claims that he did not alter any of the emails he obtained. As to that, here is a page listing 100 interjections of the sort that express emotion without actually pinning one down to having said anything. Choose as appropriate. I quite like “hmm” and “ahem” myself, but my favourite must be “uh-huh” (affirmation) differing by only a breath from “uh-uh” (negation).
Hat tip to Douglas2 in the comments.
They said it would never be agreed. Then they said it would never be launched. Then they said it would fail. When it was a success, the euro-haters still insisted that the single currency was a recipe for economic chaos and political instability. The phobes are proving to be wrong again. At a time when so much of Europe’s political leadership is in flux, the single currency is the steadying point in an uncertain and worrying world.
Imagine that the recent turbulence on the continent had occurred when Europe still traded in pre-euro currencies. What would have happened to the French franc when neo-fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen forced the Prime Minister to quit? The franc would have plunged. What would have happened to the Dutch guilder when an anti-immigration party with a dead leader impelled itself into government? The guilder would have plunged too. Before a German election too close to call, even the stolid old mark would be gyrating. And instability in currency markets would be fuelling even more political chaos: a vicious, downward cycle.
That this has not happened is thanks to the euro. The single currency has taken all this political upheaval in its calm stride.
– From an anonymous editorial in the Observer headed “A tolerant euro”.
From 2002, in case you were wondering.
Via Japan Probe comes the news that 14 luxury sports cars were involved in a recent pile up. This will have been expensive. The crash took place as the cars were cruising along at (what for a supercar is) the rather sedate pace of about 90mph. This will have been embarassing.
My Japanese isn’t up to much but the video seems to suggest that the pile-up took place on the ‘China Road’. I cannot help feeling there’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
I took this photo yesterday afternoon, not far from my home in London:
Maybe I am being very dim, but what happened here? Did the former user of these crutches have some kind of accident and get whisked off in an ambulance? Did he (or she) encounter a faith healer, and thanks to him (or her), make a miraculous recovery and thus no longer need the crutches? Did the crutches fall off a lorry, and then get put helpfully on the pavement, to stop them getting run over? I strongly suspect that there is an uncontroversially obvious explanation for this circumstance, and that when a commenter provides it I will look very silly, but I can’t now think what it could be.
Beijing, China. November 2011
Part three in an ongoing series
Remember when Samizdata used to have lots of beautiful bird photos? Well, here is another:
Beautiful bird or beautiful photo? Both, I would say. It’s a Cape Weaver Bird, which lives in South Africa. It’s the way that I at first thought that it had legs on its back that made me do a double take. And this particular snap appeals even after you’ve sorted out exactly what it’s doing and which way up everything is.
I found this photo at what has long been a favourite blog of mine, if only because he often says nice things about me. When I came upon these latest kind words about something I had blogged, I immediately went looking for something good by him for me to say nice things about, and it took me no time at all. I was only looking for something to be nice about at my own blog, but I think this photo deserves a wider audience, don’t you? Click on it if you want to see it bigger.
Further proof, if you need it, of the value of always having a camera with you.
For some light relief amid the gloom:
Fresh from his decidedly mixed record as the governor of California (which he pronounces “Calliwornia”), Arnold Schwarzenegger has an Austrian museum in his honour. This must make him feel every one of his 60-something years.
Odd bunch, the Austrians.
The Left needs to defend the riots; not to valourise the burning of grannies’ cars, but to make clear that we reject the whole bourgeois construction of events, that we stand in solidarity with the oppressed and that, when it comes to it, we will, without hesitation, join the “rioters” to overthrow the legitimised exploitation, state-sanctioned violence and sham “democracy” that oppress us all.
– Ian Grigg-Spall
The easy part is taking all the photos. The slightly harder part is knowing which are worth foisting on other people, not least because foisting is more complicated than taking. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these Brittany holiday snaps which I took a couple of months ago and have now picked out as worth exhibiting here.
My usual Brittany airport destination has been Brest, quite close to where the friends whom I regularly visit live, in Quimper. But, probably because of the new and very obviously architect-designed buildings, all plate glass and shiny metal at peculiar angles, that have been constructed at Brest airport, Ryanair no longer sends its 737s from Stansted to Brest. It either costs them too much or it takes them too long to turn their planes around, or some combination of the two. Ryanair prefers its airports to be not very glorified sheds.
So instead I arrived in Brittany at Dinard, near the coastal town of St Malo. And when my friend came by car from the other end of Brittany to collect me, it made sense for us to have a wander around St Malo, which has a particularly fine smaller and older version of itself, right next to the sea, with a wall around it that you can walk on top of.
On the evening of my arrival I observed this:
What could it be? A wreck perhaps? Odd.
A week later, in the course of my return home, we visited St Malo again, and once again took a stroll around the old town walls. The tide, having been in when I arrived, was out, and all was revealed:
It’s a swimming pool, refreshed and replenished every time the tide comes in. Which makes a lot of sense. When the tide goes out in that particular part of coastal France, it goes out a long way, and wherever the sea is, my guess is that the currents in it can play evil tricks, what with the tides having such a long way to travel, and through such complicated places. How much nicer to wait for the tide to be out, and to take a swim in a nice safe pool, as this person obligingly proved for me.
Now here are a couple snaps of images done by other people, both timeless and universal in their different ways. First, an advertisement, on a bus shelter:
I don’t think I need comment on that, other than to say that I haven’t seen this particular advert in England. Which proves … I don’t know what.
Second, another universal set of circumstances:
Not very well photoed by me, for which apologies, through a shiny shop window. Had I been a cleverer photoshopper, I might have been able to straighten that out, but you surely get the picture, and clicking on it makes it that bit clearer, as with all of these snaps.
A sheep in the middle is saying “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me”, to get to the precipice quicker.
Again, I’ll let readers draw their own conclusions about what particular contemporary circumstance is being portrayed. Euro purchasers perhaps? You decide.
Finally, a surfer, photoed through rain:
This was taken at something called the Baie des Trépassés, which does not mean the Bay of the Very Out of Date. Trépassés means people who have trespassed as in “crossed over”, in other words people who are dead. The very same complicated coastal currents which caused anyone drowned at sea anywhere near it to wash up at the Baie des Trépassés (hence the name) now cause the waves in the Baie des Trépassés to be bigger than in any nearby places, hence the surfers. Of the many intriguing places I have visited in Brittany, this was the weirdest. The vile weather when I saw this place only added to the weirdness.
There are few headlines I have enjoyed more, ever. Sadly, owing to BBC Online’s disreputable habit of invisibly editing stories, this one has lost its original title, which was:
Deadly cucumbers claim more lives
What’s glorious in this story is not just that incongruity, not amusing if you or people you know suffer organ-failure owing to an infected salad vegetable; it is the way the world stubbornly refuses to adopt superstitious man-made categories of what’s safe and wholesome. The cucumbers were deadly because they were organic.
“Robbers perform surgery on God inside this domain (or stately home).”
– Antoine Clarke’s translation (see the comments) of the French bit of a multilingual sign warning against thieves, that I recently photoed in the Brick Lane part of London.
Usually we like to joke about how the foreigners get English wrong. So, it’s good to notice when we get one of their languages wrong.
There have been three Chinooks with US markings circling overhead above my house in London for quite some time now, and for a moment I thought that maybe the rapture was at hand and they were here to air lift me off to heaven… or wherever else it is that rotorheads go when they kick off for the last time.
Actually a place with large helicopters perpetually circling overhead fits my preconception of ‘heaven’ rather well, so maybe the world *did* end as I was certainly watching them in complete rapture.
Result!
Hello? Is there anyone else out there?
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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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