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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Recently I have been reading gadget blogs a lot, and it would seem that I am not the only one who likes to do this. This week, all the gadget blogs,along with the rest of the world, have been screaming, in among their regular stuff about incomprehensible boxes: iPhone iPhone iPhone. Which is understandable. Either the iPhone is a truly remarkable thing, or the hype surrounding this unremarkable thing is all the more remarkable.
Now hats off to Apple and all that, especially for keeping it all so secret for so long, although, they do rather seem to have screwed up the calling it the iPhone side of things. But the iPhone, for all its various innovatory features, is just another mobile phone with some add-ons. It is the embodiment of the claim that mobile phones are destined to swallow up all the other mobile objects people like to travel around with, such as music machines and digital cameras (the camera is the only iPhone add-on that really gets my attention), but this notion has been rattling around for some years now. The iPhone looks like being a smash hit precisely because so many people already understand why they want one.
However, of all the things I have read about on the gadget blogs this week, this item was the one that I found the most striking. This, for me, has the look and feel of a life changer:
In a patent filing Google has revealed that it is looking into entering the physical advertising industry. The patent filing itself alludes to placing adverts on billboards, with the primary innovation being that they’re interactive and connected to the internet – what, you didn’t really believe that Google would go in for static ads did you? The system apparently works by only advertising products that are available and in stock within stores in the local area. Stores will be able to buy advertising on these local electronic billboards through a similar system to how AdSense currently works: by logging into a computer and buying them. One of the key positive developments – at least for busy consumers — is that once stock of the product has run out, the advertised project on display automatically switches onto the next one that’s in stock. This whole project relies greatly on there being adequate infrastructure for Google to make a return (which obviously isn’t a problem when it comes to the internet), so this patent is far from an assurance that you’ll be seeing “Ads by Goooooogle” reminding you to pick up some milk from your local 7-Eleven any time soon.
Now once again, this is something that the sort of people who saw this coming saw coming. But, to me, when adverts change moment by moment in a semi-intelligent way, perhaps even in response to their understanding of who is in the area that they are pointing at, then that will be a very different world to the one I have become used to. It will look different and it will feel different. → Continue reading: Billboards are about to become computer screens
Signs of technical advancement from Britain’s own constitutional monarchy.
Frank Johnson (journalist, editor, columnist and all round newspaper man) has died at the age of 63.
Mr Johnson was of working class origins in the East End of London and left school at 16. However, he never viewed any of this as a reason why he should be hostile to high culture and from his boyhood was a great admirer of opera and ballet. Indeed Frank Johnson was fond of pointing out that many individuals among the working classes were once a lot more cultured than their self declared friends of more fortunate birth gave them credit for, with (for example) the biggest sales among early recordings of music being for serious works, and many men whose hands were hard often being also very well read.
Mr Johnson was no friend of the left – either in the Labour party, or of those in the Conservative party who were patronising statists (always out to ‘help’ the poor with more government spending, taxes and regulations).
Nor was Mr Johnson afraid to write unpopular things. For example he pointed out that for working men in the south of England and in the Midlands, the 1930’s were not a time of collapse, indeed that Britain did better in terms of the rise of real incomes in the 1930’s than National Socialist Germany – and vastly better than FDR’s vaunted ‘New Deal’ United States.
As for the sacred cow of British politics – the Welfare State, Frank Johnson pointed out that it is not a matter of it being “something designed in the 1940’s which must be adapted for changing times” (as cowardly people on the conservative side of British politics used to like to put it), but something that had a powerful negative side from day one, both collectivising hospitals that had been provided free for the poor by charitable effort and helping to destroy the tradition of self help and mutual aid that had once been the greatest aspect of the working classes (of course such things as the Friendly Society movement had been undermined by government activities all the way back to the early schemes of the ‘New Liberal’ government that was elected in 1906).
Even the supposed higher living standards of the 1940’s being an illusion – the war time “prosperity” (boasted of by upper class leftists like A.W. Benn) being a matter of American aid and eating our overseas investments. And the post war time being a matter of rigged stats (claiming that wages were higher than the 1930’s whilst ignoring real inflation – i.e. the black market price of rationed goods) and neglecting future investment. Although it is worth remembering that government spending on the Welfare State started off in a very small way (the real economic harm of the late 1940’s being nationalization, general high taxes and high government spending and the vast web of regulations by which the “educated” men in Whitehall told everyone else what to do and what to do). The real growth of the Welfare State and, more imporantly the changes it was making in the British character (as opposed to such things as the decline of the Friendly Societies and other voluntary associations), did not really even start to be seen till the 1960’s
Mr Johnson remembered the “stoicism of the London working class” (of course he accepted it was more than the London working class – but he was a Londoner), as to what there is now it is best to say nothing.
I will miss Frank Johnson.
I do not buy the Financial Times because, whilst there are some decent people on its staff, its employees are mostly European Union supporting New Labour types.
However, I do make a point of checking it from time to time. I have been amused by its relative lack of coverage of the KGB/FSB activities in London and Italy (in connection to the recent murder in London). It celebrated the sacking of three top Italian intelligence chiefs (in the same issue that it demanded that Donald Rumsfeld be put on trial for the “torture” of poor innocent Muslim head hackers) as these men were too close to the evil CIA and had made charges against the noble Italian Prime Minister (and ex-head of the European Union) Mr Prodi.
What these charges were was not mentioned, the Financial Times (due to some of its staff over the years – the old Soviet Union liked to have links with the newspaper of ‘Finance Capital’) tends to get a bit nervous when KGB links are mentioned.
The Financial Times did invite an expert on Russia to write an article for them – Mr Putin himself (it was like “a word from our sponsor”… as Richard Littlejohn would say “you could not make it up”).
However, there was a Russian story right on the front page of the weekend edition of the Financial Times: The Russian state gas company has ordered new offices to be built – there was an artists impression of the new offices all over the page.
No doubt for its next Russian story the Financial Times will inform its readers that the PLAN has been over-fulfilled by X per cent.
Last Monday morning I did what I think was probably my best recorded conversation yet, with a man named Leon Louw. Here is the conversation we had, and here is the publication that Leon Louw was talking about. I recommend both with enthusiasm. Here is my bloggage about it all. Anyone even slightly interested in what distinguishes successful governments from failing governments, nice countries from nasty ones, will profit from following at least one of those links.
A few days before that, I did another recorded conversation, about the Libertarian Alliance and its workings, with Tim Evans, (pictured on the right here), who is now its President. Bloggage about that from me here.
And then last Tuesday, I had another of the regular conversations I have with Antoine Clarke about elections and related matters around the world, this time about the recent US midterms.
These conversations, especially the one with Leon Louw, have stirred me into setting up another of these things, with someone I have long wanted to talk with in this way, namely Samizdata’s own Perry de Havilland. I have just spoken on the phone with Perry and he has no objections to me flagging this up beforehand here nor to me asking the Samizdata commentariat if they have any questions that they would particularly like me to put to Perry. I do not promise to use every such suggestion, but all suggestions that do materialise will be considered.
This conversation will be happening this coming Saturday afternoon. Perry and I will be talking about what Perry did before Samizdata, what made him start it, about what it has been like doing it for the last five years, and about what effects it may or may not have had, during that time and in the future. That kind of thing.
I am going to start whatever preparatory reading I manage to do here.
There are quite a few fans of Sean Gabb who read this blog, so they might like to be told, if they have not been already, that Sean will be on 18 Doughty Street TV this evening between 9 and 10pm, discussing libertarianism. Sean is a fluent and experienced media performer and should be well worth seeing and hearing.
Here is a picture of him that I took last weekend, hatching who knows what plots with fellow Libertarian Alliance supremo Dr Tim Evans, at the LA’s Conference in the resplendent National Liberal Club.
Captions anyone? Mine goes: “One day all this will be ours! Ours I tell you!”
I was on 18 Doughty Street intertelly last night, and I really enjoyed myself, not least because Iain Dale, presiding, also seemed satisfied with the efforts of me and my fellow late night chatterers. I was also on 18 Doughty Street on only its second night in action, and it was a mild relief to get asked back. That is the only compliment that really matters after you’ve been on something.
Many intriguing things got alluded to, but the basic message I want to put across here, now, is that, basically, 18 Doughty Street is doing very well. When I was first on, there was a palpable air of panic, with people saying things like “I can only do one thing at a time” through clenched teeth and with that terrifying evenness that people do just before they explode. This time, things were working more smoothly. Which is just what you would expect. → Continue reading: 18 Doughty Street TV is doing very well
I normally have to get into my office in London’s docklands financial centre of Canary Wharf at some ungodly hour in the morning, so I rarely get the chance to browse the news headlines on television or radio before rushing off for the Tube. But laid low with a nasty headcold this morning, I watched the BBC Breakfast television show for about 30 minutes. This is what I saw:
Item: The local council in Richmond, west London, is proposing to slap heavy parking taxes on people who own cars that are deemed ecologically incorrect (SUVs, etc). The programme interviewed a few bedraggled locals moaning about this, a retired TV personality who said it was a jolly good idea, and left it at that.
Item: A group of MPs want to ban sale of fireworks to ordinary citizens because loud bangs emitted by such things frighten animals and the elderly. We had a brief “debate” in the studio between a puritanical MP and an elderly lady who said what a shame it would be if fireworks were banned. No clear defence was made of the right for law-abiding people to have their fun. The safety-trumps-liberty issue was taken as a given.
Item: The pop star Madonna, who is trying to adopt a baby boy from the African nation of Malawi, has spoken of her anguish about this bureaucracy involved on the Opra Winfrey TV show in the US. This was deemed to be a news item worthy of the BBC’s attention.
Item: recycling of baby’s diapers.
Item: Litigation continues between ITN, the British television network, and the US authorities, over the death of ITN veteran broadcaster Terry Lloyd in Iraq about three years ago.
Item: BBC business journalist discusses how to avoid back injuries in the workplace. It is taken as given that companies must be forced to spend more money to ensure their staff are comfortable.
Now I think a trend is at work here. Many of the “news” items are pretty minor stuff, compared to the ongoing crackup in the Middle East, etc. They are relatively minor stories, what I would call “consumer journalism” stuff that typically used to be confined to daytime television and the dumber ends of the tabloid press. Maybe the producers figure that viewers are unable to digest anything more substantial at 7 in the morning and maybe they are right (but radio news and current affairs seems to have more gravitas, or at least it used to). However, the choice of subjects also reflect the current liberal/left intelligentsia’s obsession with bossing us around in order to protect the environment; they reflect a distinct strain of neo-puritanism (such as Richmond’s persecution of owners of big cars and bashing of fireworks), and an assumption that the child custody arrangements of a person, even a famous one like Madonna, are any of the State’s business.
Bring on Guy Fawke’s Night, is all I can say.
The occasions where I am prepared to wade in on the side of a bunch of a civil servants are as rare as hen’s teeth but this one is truly no contest:
THE Ministry of Defence has banned Britain’s biggest commercial news broadcaster from frontline access to the nation’s forces, The Times has learnt.
In an unprecedented move that risks accusations of censorship, the Government has withdrawn co-operation from ITV News in warzones after accusing it of inaccurate and intrusive reports about the fate of wounded soldiers…
“As bad a hatchet-job as I’ve seen in years. Cheap shots all over the place, no context, no reasonable explanation…”
In other words, the standard operating procedure of the MSM. The stink is now so bad that it is finally getting in to some very lofty nostrils.
My friend Russ Willey has written the London Gazetteer, a brilliant book which explores all of the lesser known nooks and crannies of this city. Russ is a life-long obsessive about ‘Hidden London‘, and if ever someone was born to write a book like this, he was.
On October 12, Will Self wrote the following in his Evening Standard column:
HOW COULD THEY FORGET TOKYNGTON?
IT IS with sadness that I censure the London Gazetteer. This handylooking tome was sent to me by its publisher, Chambers. It claims to be “An A-Z guide to the famous and hidden quarters of Britain’s capital”. However, the very first quarter I looked up, Tokyngton, wasn’t in it.
I myself have never actually been to Tokyngton but I’ve often noted its peculiar name while perusing my bog-ordinary A-Z map. Now it’s been so unjustly neglected by Chambers I feel an almost insuperable urge to travel to what a website describes as “the most populated part of Harrow”, albeit in the medieval era. The “farm of the sons of Toca” was first mentioned in 1171, so it seems rather shabby that it doesn’t make it into Chambers’s Gazetteer 900-odd years later.
Except that, er, Tokyngton is actually right there in the book, and fills nearly half a page between the entries for Three Mills and Tollington. Perhaps Will Self is alphabetically-challenged, but you would think he and an editor would have double-checked this claim before slamming a book whose success depends on being viewed as comprehensive and authoritative. Having had the error pointed out, no correction has been issued by Self or the Evening Standard.
Sadly, it is not likely that as many people will read any correction as have read the original, prominent damning column – even if Self does the right thing and makes the correction in his next column.
I have just done a posting on my personal blog about Sierra Leone, where a British Army friend of mine is now working. He is back in London just now, and passed on some photos of Sierra Leone that he and one of his friends had taken, and I picked out my favourites to put on my blog.
They illustrate an idea I have had for a while now that maybe one of the nice little things that digital photography, in combination with the internet, will do for the world is to present to it a slightly more balanced notion of what life in Africa is like just now. On rich country TV we only ever get slaughter and catastrophe from Africa, because only slaughter and catastrophe is news. But now, in addition to superbly photographed famine and mayhem, we get less well photographed … well, just stuff. Photos that a generation ago would (a) have been far less numerous, and would (b) have merely languished in the photo albums of a certain sort of expat, are now being displayed to the anyone in the world who cares to glance at them.
I do not claim that the slaughter and catastrophe is not happening. Sierra Leone itself had a horrific civil war less than a decade ago. “Worse than you can possibly imagine”, my friend said. But now, touch wood, things are going better.
Mobile phones have been a particular success, apparently, mostly because regular landline phones, such as rich countries have long had, have been such an abject failure, but perhaps also because mobiles enable Africans to cooperate much more effectively while still not having to commit to something days in advance. My friend says that Africans, just as Western stereotypes have always said, at any rate the Africans in Sierra Leone, are still very bad at doing this.
That is a mobile phone top-up and recharging booth. Mobile phone companies are now making lots of money in Africa. Good for them.
While reading the October 14th issue of New Scientist I came across the following statement in an article titled “Nuke test sends shock waves round the world”:
It may even have been only half a kiloton – the same explosive power as the terrorist bomb in Oklahoma City in 1995
Do you see something wrong with this sentence? → Continue reading: New Scientist Innumeracy
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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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