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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I have a theory about gadgets, which is that we all get fixated on a particular type of gadget, on account of the particular sort of life we lead, or were leading when the fixation struck. I now live a very settled life, so, although I love my favourite sort of music considerably more than life itself, the iPod now holds no appeal for me. When on the move I prefer to read books. But when I first got bitten by the computing bug (which rapidly became the computing necessity), I lived a very unsettled life, and I thus became fixated on the idea of a really good, but really portable, computer. My first computer was an Osborne, which I could just about shift from one work surface to another, or move from one house to another, every few months. But, not surprisingly, I yearned for something lighter. Much lighter.
Laptops as currently understood have never enthralled me. Too expensive to take everywhere, and risk losing, to accident, forgetfulness or thievery. And still too big and heavy for my feeble arms.
So it is that I have been tracking the Eee PC, ever since they first announced that they were working away at it to the point where they would be able to announce it for real, with things like specs, a price, and somewhere you could actually go and buy it. The trouble with all ultra-portable computers up until now is that the smaller they have been, the more expensive they have been. What I have always wanted is a proper computer small enough to fit into a big pocket – and by the way why don’t they make pockets bigger? – yet cheap enough to be purchasable out of semi-petty cash, and hence, at a pinch, if someone does pinch it, or if I drop it or something, I can just about afford to buy another without severe financial meltdown.
So anyway, the news now is that I am apparently not the only one on this planet thinking like this. The Eee PC is about to become a runaway hit:
The company first said the computer would be on shelves by August, then September, before it finally arrived Oct. 17. The holdup, says Shen, was making sure the interface worked well. To test it, Asustek took 1,000 prototypes and distributed them to employees and vendors, with strict orders to share them with family members of all ages. Bloggers on Eee PC Web sites that sprung up after the Computex show groaned that the product was taking too long to come out, but that didn’t bother Shen. “The user experience must be very high,” he says. “So we delayed, because with all the momentum built up around this product, I want to make sure it’s exactly right.”
There’s nothing as cheap as a hit, and when you have a hit, make ’em queue round the block. Bloggers groaning? My oh my. But yes, me too.
However, I will not be buying an Eee PC until I can physically handle one, either owned by a friend or in a shop. Or, you know, maybe I’ll meet a stranger with one and ask to have a go on it. I hope the keyboard is very small, so that it is. I have very small hands, and you know what that means. Finally, this may be of some advantage to me.
At the recent Libertarian Alliance conference in London, one of my favourite speakers, Leon Louw, mocked the idea that water on earth is scarce. Two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is covered with the wet stuff, in fact. What people mean when they say that water is scarce is not that there is a lack of H20, rather, there is a lack of drinkable, clean water. But the idea that water is scarce is, in and of itself, bonkers. As Leon said, if an alien from outer space talked to some ecological doomsters and heard their moans about water shortages, he would probably fly off in search of more intelligent life elsewhere.
Heaven knows what an intelligent alien would make of George Monbiot.
I love this mighty beast, linked to by David Thompson in his latest batch of ephemera links (which he does every Friday and which I highly recommend):
This rusting hulk is (was) one of the world’s biggest digging machines. It now resides in an open air museum, where the captions and propaganda messages are all about the ecological folly of big digging machines. But for me, this is a glorious monument to man’s continuing and growing ability to impress his imprint upon nature.
And thereby, incidentally, to create all manner of interesting new habitats for other forms of nature beside man, once man has finished with using them for his original purpose. Last night I happened to watch a TV show about some defunct clay-excavation-for-brick-making site, somewhere in the Midlands I think, which has now become one of Britain’s most satisfactory habitats for various particularly interesting sorts of newt. In general, I think the way that the First Industrial Revolution churned up the landscape and thereby made it more varied and interesting, is an under-talked-about topic.
The Norfolk Broads, no less, which I have fond memories of sailing on as a boy, began as peat mining:
It was only in the 1960s that Dr Joyce Lambert proved that they were artificial features, the effect of flooding on early peat excavations. The Romans first exploited the rich peat beds of the area for fuel, and in the Middle Ages the local monasteries began to excavate the “turbaries” (peat diggings) as a business, selling fuel to Norwich and Great Yarmouth. The Cathedral took 320,000 tonnes of peat a year. Then the sea levels began to rise, and the pits began to flood.
So, good for Dr Joyce Lambert, good for the Romans, good for exploitation, and good for rising sea levels. The Romans would have loved that giant digger, even as they would have been amazed and discomforted that it was made by their arch-enemies, the Germans.
In further interesting environment-related speculations Bishop Hill reckons we may be due for a cold winter, on account of the sun taking a bit of a rest just now. Interesting. We shall see.
I do not pay attention to the Libertarian Alliance Forum, but many do of course, and according to one of these guys, Sean Gabb recently posted there a link to this:
It is a video clip of a bolshy brummy filming a couple of policemen. The policemen spot him doing this and tell him to stop. He tells them to take a hike. He is breaking no laws. He also, as if interchangeably, says: “I’m doing nothing wrong”, and of course I agree. But, however right, and however desirable from the point of view of restraining the misdeeds of the powerful, how long before this kind of behaviour becomes illegal in Britain? I actually worry that too much publicity might be given to stuff like this, because it may give our meddling legislators ideas (was it wise to do this posting?)
Somebody told me last night (I think it was Perry de Havilland) that it is already illegal in some states of the USA to record the police. Commenters here often say that freedom etc. is doomed in Britain and that if you want such things you must emigrate to the USA. Hm.
At present the British Government already films whatever it wants. But cheap video cameras are rapidly becoming so small that soon everyone else who is inclined – rather than just wannabee spies and private investigators with money to burn – may be filming whatever they want, wherever they want. How will that play out, I wonder?
Hey you! Yes you there, slouching over your computer, clad only in your pyjamas while you wait for the next remittance from your greedy, unscrupulous, oil-baron paymasters. Who the hell gave you the right to question global warming, you maggot? Don’t you know that it’s SCIENCE??!! Yes, science! What part of the word ‘science’ don’t you understand? Scientists KNOW things. That’s why they are called ‘scientists’. And who are you, pray tell? Why, you are nothing more than a bunch of demented, anti-human global-warming DENIERS. Yes, that’s right, you’re just a rabble of depraved neo-nazis who can only drag your knuckles off the floor for long enough to count your Exxon paycheques.
So go back to doing whatever it is you heartless, moronic goons do with your spare time and just leave the scientists to the important business of making the world a better place.
Got that? Good. Excellent. Carry on.
One of the world’s most respected scientists is embroiled in an extraordinary row after claiming that black people are less intelligent than white people.
James Watson, a Nobel Prize winner for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, has provoked outrage with his comments, made ahead of his arrival in Britain today…
The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.”. He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.
Is somebody paying him to say that?
Regular readers will know that I have a sort of allergy to the Sunday Times columnist, AA Gill. In the glossy magazine section, Gill spreads his wisdom about the utter pointlessness of space exploration and settlement. Bravo AA! No doubt some commissioning editor thought that what with all this renewed interest in space flight, the Google project, Richard Branson’s support for the Rutan project, etc, that it was time to do what Gill knows how to do best, arguably, the only thing he knows how to do – take the piss. Here is a paragraph (no web link available):
The one lasting aesthetically beautiful thing that did comes from the whole guzzling, ugly space business was that photograph of the blue planet; astonishing and moving and vulnerable, our great group photo. And ironically, that image did more than anything to galvanise the nascent ecology movement.
There is a nugget of wisdom here, but he grossly exaggerates. The back-to-nature-can-we-just-turn-off-the-whole-industrial-thingy?” movement arguably started as far back as the bucolic sentimentality of Rousseau and the Lake poets and their horror at the Industrial Revolution; I’d argue that books, however flawed and tendentious, as Carson’s Silent Spring did a lot to encourage the Green movement. Pictures of the Earth taken from space are indeed fantastic, but I doubt it got a lot of would-be Greens going; what those photos demonstrated was the brilliance of the space project, the daring, the sheer bloody-minded persistence required to get up there in the first place.
Gill lists, with his usual sneer, all the various inventions that are sometimes linked to the space race, like teflon coatings or GPS navigation equipment, the latter being ridiculous, he reckons, in that it allows us to reach Leeds without using a toll road. Such wit, such intelligence! (Has Gill ever met a person in the military, or a sailor or mountaineer for whom GPS has proved a lifesaver? Probably not). But one might as well sneer at say, the discovery of tobacco, the potato or other plants as a result of earlier “pointless” explorations. Earlier explorations drove the development of accurate clocks, which in turn improved standards of engineering; they encouraged development of storage of food, improved medical treatments to avoid problems like scurvy, and so on. No doubt some equivalent of AA Gill in the 18th Century would have mocked such things then (I am sure these people existed; they are of an ineradicable human type, alas).
Yet amidst all the smart-alecisms of Gill, he misses the really big criticism that one should make of the space race: it was almost entirely funded and directed by government. As a result of the gigantic sums raised in tax to spend on spaceflight, other, less spectacular but in the long run arguably more useful private ventures were squeezed out. If such private ventures could get going, it is hard to see how AA Gill or others could object to people risking their own money on such things although as his article implies, I reckon Gill would be quite keen to ban such “pointless” things if he thinks it somehow diverts precious resources from preserving the status quo on earth.
Here is a blast of fresh air on the subject, meanwhile.
I hate chewing gum. Well, not chewing gum itself, but the annoying things that a hideous proportion of gum chewers do with their gum after they have chewed it. These are the gum scum, and a conspicuous blot on Western Civilisation they are too.
During my summer blogging break, I more and more found myself ignoring politics on the internet. But I kept up with the gadget blogs, cataloguing as they do one of the most positive aspects of Western Civilisation. The gadgets just keep on coming, cheaper, smaller, better.
So, you can imagine my delight when I came across this posting at Engadget:
Revolymer’s latest concoction won’t play music or record your favorite shows, but if it passes European health and safety tests, it could end up in your mouth before long. The Bristol University spin-out company “claims that it has created a new material (dubbed Rev7) which can be added to gum that makes it much easier to remove from surfaces,” and in testing, it actually “vanished from street surfaces within 24 hours,” presumably from rain or street sweepers whisking it away. Moreover, the newfangled gum would even dissolve quicker than traditional pieces, and if all goes as planned, it could be launched as “early as next year.” Shoe soles, rejoice.
And pavement cleaners. More here.
This is how Western Civilisation works. It has a problem, and people moan about it, often believing it to be insoluble without social transformation or draconian punishments. But then, the techies get to work and deploy a technical fix. I am not saying that this particular technical fix will work perfectly, or that even if it does work well, technically speaking, everything about its deployment will be good. But this at least might be a step in the right direction, gumwise.
I mean, will non-non-stick gum become illegal to sell? It shouldn’t, but if mandating this new non-stick gum could result in cleaner pavements and fewer defaced adverts, you can bet your last fiver that it will be, which would be wrong. Chewing actually existing gum is not wrong; it is the throwing about of it afterwards that is the problem.
So, one step forward, half a step back is my guess as to how this story may develop next. That’s Western Civilisation for you.
I have just come across this interview with Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish statistician who has rained on the parade of eco-gloomsters to memorable effect, but it is worth a read despite this rather sniffy sign-off:
Lomborg looks startled when I put the charge of utopianism to him. He sees himself as a pragmatist. He believes in progress, but sees where it can go wrong. But the deep green and antihumanist intuition – most beautifully expressed by the American biologist EO Wilson – that we are utterly dependent on the earth and must, therefore, approach nature with reverence and humility, means nothing to him. He cycles only in the city, not in the forests. And if, in spite of your own hypocrisy, you feel uneasy about that then you are right to do so.
I imagine he looked “startled” because the suggestion is such utter crud, to be blunt about it. Lomborg does not, as far as I can tell from his writings, contest the idea of man-made global warming as an issue, nor does he dismiss concerns about such things as some pro-capitalists are wont to do (although I can see why they do so). What Lomborg keeps banging on about is that if we use or sacrifice resources to combat such threats, then those resources cannot be used on other things, which might be just as important from the point of view of human wellbeing, such as clean drinking water, sanitation, health care, etc. Lomborg has had the temerity to remind people that resources are scarce and they have alternate uses. Nothing remotely utopian about that.
Appleyard also refers to the late Julian Simon, the economics writer, as a “right-wing” thinker. Oh please. So to be a broad optimist about technology and Man’s ability to deal with supposed terrors like population growth is now “right wing”, is it? It shows how one almost misses those old-fashioned socialists of the Eastern bloc with their posters of smiling factory workers standing in front of a building belching out smoke. What Appleyard and others don’t seem to quite grasp – or perhaps they do and are not letting on – is quite how reactionary a lot of the Green agenda is.
Here’s Lomborg’s latest book, Cool It. I like the title and have ordered a copy.
Whoops, looks like this spiffy-looking gadget has not achieved a trouble-free start but it may be too early to scoff. Even so, even a gadget nut like yours truly is sticking to his Blackberry (yes, I am semi-permanently attached to it) for the time being. Does any reader own an iPhone and have any views about whether it is worth the money?
For people with the sort of money to burn on one of these things, surely a spot of good, old-fashioned luxury is more appropriate if you want to have something snazzy to show off to your friends. I think a few members of the Samizdata crew should pay a visit to the wine and cigar department of the glorious Wonder Room of Selfridges. (Mr Jennings, Perry?) Keep a tight hold on those credit cards.
I’ll be poised to grab a cinema seat for this one when it comes out.
Google comes up with a great prize idea.
One of the problems of living such a busy work life is falling behind on reading books that have been around for a while. I finally have managed to complete “Project Orion” by George Dyson, the son of the famed scientist and writer, Freeman Dyson. The book recounts the story of how various US government agencies and some private contractors got together in the late 1950s and early 1960s – the project was finally halted in 1965 – to develop a rocket that would be launched by firing nuclear bombs underneath it. The basic idea was that you could put a seriously large rocket into space and fly it major distances – such as to Mars – by firing a nuke underneath the rocket, and use the force of the blast to push against a plate underneath the craft. By using this method, craft could travel far further than using the liquid fuel rockets developed at the time by the likes of von Braun and other engineers. There is a lot of complex engineering and scientific material in this book, which may send the head of a non-scientist spinning, but after working through this book, I get the strong impression that there is no insuperable obstacle to the technology actually working, although there seem to be practical issues such as how to avoid nuclear fallout problems near launch sites and how to avoid areas becoming seriously contaminated. Even so, we may hear again of nuclear rockets, although to assuage fears, I reckon they will be called plasma rockets instead.
Several things struck me about the period in the late 50s and early 60s when this project operated. First, the race by the US to beat the Soviets in space clearly was a massive impulse for technical and engineering advance, but it also sucked vast amounts of taxpayers’ money into a variety of projects, many of which came to nought. The book raises the old issue of whether military/other competition between states does generate significant new knowledge that would not otherwise be generated (I remain unconvinced). Second, there was a remarkably tolerant attitude among the public – at least until the mid-60s – towards big scientific projects of all kinds, including nuclear power. These space projects were cool. This was the age, after all, of Alan Shepherd, John Glenn and Chuck Yeager. All of these men were heroes in the media as well as renowned in their own profession. Nowadays, it is a different story, although as Dale Amon of this site regularly reminds us, a tremendous amount of good work is going on to promote commercial spacefaring. Even so, in the time when the rocket was being developed, the environmentalist lobby that has done so much to lobby for restrictions in certain areas was hardly visible on the radar. Reading about the scale and number of nuclear tests in the Pacific or in the western US desert, for example, reminds me of how long ago the 1950s are in some ways.
A final thought about this excellent book: it demonstrates how the US federal government and its agencies developed a huge and sprawling bureaucracy to run different space projects. At times, I found it hard to follow the ins and outs of all the various acronyms representing different agencies of government as the scientists and adventurers begged and campaigned for funding. After a while, I started to drown in alphabet soup. After reading this remarkable book, I am more convinced than ever that when space flight technologies really do take off, they must do so as far away from the maw of the State as possible.
And on that final note, here is an author I really recommend.
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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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