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 been doing more chucking out of old paper today, mostly of old newspaper and magazine articles that were vaguely interesting, but not interesting enough to be worth the bother of keeping them for another decade and a half. My life having worked well enough without me having read any of them during the previous decade and a half, out they went. Demand for black plastic bags in the Pimlico area has definitely surged lately. I am that surge.
The irony is, however, that much of the space thus liberated is going to be used to store … books. Remember them? Piles of paper in little heaps, glued or sewn together at one side. I find that the difference between an actual heep of articles just piled up, in an almost random order, and articles joined at the hip, so to speak, and then – and this is absolutely crucial – labelled at the edge, and on the outside, is: all the difference. Books do not merely contain lots of printed verbiage. Crucially, they also include their own automatic filing system built into them. Books still matter. Why, we even review them here, from time to time. Come to think of it, my last posting but one here was about a book. And nobody thought that odd for a blog to be publishing. (My next posting here could well be about another book.)
The mere disembodied article, like all those Libertarian Alliance articles that I chucked out a week or two ago, has now almost entirely migrated to the Internet. It may have a brief paper infancy, but then it enters the world of virtuality, only to return to print if a computer owner decides to print it out. But this print out soon dies. But books refuse to hide among the electrons. They remain, stubbornly, on their shelves, this being one of the most famous Internet businesses on the planet.
What this leads me to want to learn more about is not just the history of the printing press as such, but about the history of book binding. Who worked that out? And who invented the idea of books having a spine at the side, and having a title on the outside? When were hard cardboard covers decided upon, so that books could be stored vertically, in shelves. I did some googling a day or two ago, and got to this generic piece about what a wonderful advance books would be if they had only recently been thought of. But I could find nothing about the details of who sorted out binding, spines, outside titles, etc., and where, and when. My googlincompetence, no doubt.
The person I would normally ask about such things is my friend Sean Gabb, who writes this. But he is away just now. So instead I ask the Samizdata commentariat, a group of people who are, I believe, at their best when asked exact, technical questions about matters of fact, preferably technical or better yet technological fact.
And when we have sorted all that out, we can discuss whether the compact disc has any future. (I have been making new CD shelves also.) If the CD does have a future, it is, I think, because the CD is rather book-like. It has a spine, pointing outwards, and stores easily, vertically, and can be found with relative ease, especially when you consider that, unlike books, CDs are all the same size and thus do not cry out to be sorted into clumps that are merely the same size (as happens with books – mine anyway) but can instead be ordered rationally and hence retrievably. No, I am not really serious about that. But if the CD (and its proposed higher-tech successors) does stagger on for a few more years before it is engulfed by all our hard discs, it will be because it is like a book. And that is an entertaining irony, I think.
Having recently completed Edward O. Wilson’s flawed tome on updating the Enlightenment: “Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge“, I was struck by the passages that he wrote on colour perception. To summarise Wilson’s description, there appear to be four basic units of colour if a wide range of languages are compared: red, yellow, green and blue. However, these units are either incorporated or discarded within the range of human languages.
Human cultures are so diverse that the range of colours or shades within languages stretches from two to eleven. The science of colour perception has now settled upon a consensus that endeavours to construct “a model of the evolution of color terminology systems that attempts to derive the typology and evolutionary trajectories of basic color term systems from facts of color appearance“, as declared by Paul Kay, a distinguished scholar in this field. This school is opposed by the empiricists who follow Piaget’s argument that colour perceptions are learned as part of the environmental stimuli and by the culturalists, who argue that all colour representations are culturally constructed. Both the empiricists and the culturalists reject any role for biology in the formation of colour representations.
One of the most famous and controversial examples of a culture where colour perceptions were limited to two terms was the Dani tribe of New Guinea. They had two terms for what they saw: mola (white) and mili (black), although further study demonstrated that they were able to perceive the full range of colours despite the lack of colour terms in their language. Current experiments conclude that perceptions of colour are not as naturally determined as biological determinists have argued and that perceptions can be altered through linguistic categories, though not to an extent that would justify the conclusions of the empiricists or the culturalists.
At the opposite end of the range is the English language. Wilson concludes that English has eleven terms to describe colour, although others have only identified eight: red, blue, green, pink, purple, orange, yellow and brown. In addition, the Russians have an additional blue hue. Yet, as an Englishman, the question arises how additional colour perceptions in language may influence the culture. As a foundation, one could argue that a language which supports more complex partitions of colour perception may predispose the speakers towards a greater use of simile, description and metaphor: that it aids language, and possibly music, as well as the visual arts. This is a mere speculation. Yet this aspect of the English language, with its panoply of colour perceptions, must have enriched rather than disabled our culture and its impact appears to be unknown.
The Royal Society has published its government sponsored report on nanotechnology. Professor Ann Dowling, the chair of the working group that wrote the report, produced a positive response in the press release:
The report does not find any justification for imposing a ban on the production of nanoparticles.
However, since these new technologies are uncertain and dangerous, the Royal Society called for the death of a thousand regulations. The Report concluded that all products including nanoparticles should be regulated by EU chemical regulation and the Health and Safety Executive:
Because of their novel chemical properties, the report recommends that nanoparticles and nanotubes should be treated as new chemicals under UK and European legislation, in order to trigger appropriate safety tests and clear labelling. Furthermore they should be approved – separately from chemicals in a larger form – by an independent scientific safety committee before they are permitted for use in consumer products such as cosmetics.
As the EU wishes to implement a new EU Directive (the Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals legislation – REACH) that introduces the precautionary principle to all chemicals produced within its borders, this sounds the death knell for nascent nanotechnology within Europe. The government has obtained the authority of the scientific profession (most of which works within the public sector) to justify conforming with EU regulation.
Will Europeans lynch their leaders when they realise they have been cheated out of an Age of Miracles?
This is the New York Times quote of the day, from Stephen Hawking, he of the technologically enhanced vocal chords:
“I’m sorry to disappoint science fiction fans, but if information is preserved there is no possibility of using black holes to travel to other universes.”
Until now I have taken it for granted that any idea that black holes might ever make a contribution to long haul transport was black pudding in the sky. But now I am not so sure.
I do not know exactly what Hawking means about information being preserved, just as I am seldom completely clear what he means about most things, but the rest of this quote reads so very like those it-will-never-float it-will-never-fly only-six-computers-will-ever-be-needed electric-guitar-groups-will-never-catch-on prophecies which are periodically gathered together into anthologies of Things They Wish They Had Not Said, that I suddenly find myself becoming more optimistic about the possibility that one might one day be able to hail a Black Hole Cab and take a trip to another universe.
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Bill Bryson
Black Swan paperback, 687 pages
This is one of the best books of scientific popularisation I have ever read. Bryson brings the skills of a hugely successful and confident travel writer to bear on the Entire History of Science, no less, and does so in a way that chalks up another huge success for him.
Being an established writer of best sellers, Bryson was confident enough of his own ability, and of the support of his publisher, to be able to spend some serious time getting to grips with his mighty subject, knowing that whatever he finally came up with would be read. Yet, he also brings to it the humility of the seasoned travel writer, who knows that he cannot possibly say everything about Science, any more than he could have said everything about America or Europe or Australia, and who concentrates instead of saying as much as he can, as entertainingly and engagingly as possible.
Tone of voice is a lot of the reason Bryson’s books are so successful. His politics are vaguely leftish to middle of the road (like those of most of his readers, in other words), and his number one aim is not to change the world, simply to explore it and to describe what he has found. He doesn’t badger you every other page with what he thinks you ought to do about it all. Nor does he have big personal scientific axes to grind. He does have his own opinions about various things, but these are secondary to his principle aim which is to learn, and to continue to make an honest living by passing on what he has learned. → Continue reading: Bill Bryson journeys through science
As a general rule, I am not a huge fan of Microsoft. I am not tremendously keen on their software from a design or reliability point of view, and I find their business practices at times to be a bit dubious.
However, yesterday they won 3.95 million dollars in damages from a spammer in Washington DC, who sent out huge numbers of e-mail messages that claimed to come from Microsoft in order to encourage people to download a toolbar that then downloaded all manner of nasty spyware and advertising.
Microsoft have won a total of $54m in recent judgements in their campaign against spammers. Generally the judgements have not been against the practice of spam per se but against the deceptive practices of the spammers (ie the spams have been full of lies).
Might I wish Bill and the boys continued success in this campaign.
Joseph Brennan, one of my regularly occasional Brian’s Friday’s attenders, has taken to emailing me with useful links to things that he thinks might be bloggable. It was he who told me about these great photographs, so that I could tell you. Well, now Joe Brennan he has sent me a link to a piece by Chris Bennett, about the possibility that the world’s oil reserves may not be going to run out any time soon after all.
Personally, on the basis of zero scientific knowledge, I have never been very convinced by the idea that oil has its origins in living organisms. There just seems to be too damn much of it for that. Why has this particular life relic hung around when so much else has just vanished? And why is it all so yuckily similar looking? Life is not like that, even when it is dead. Why could oil have not bubbled up from below, on the same basis that lava does? Such were my ignorant suspicions.
Chris Bennett supplies a more scientifically educated speculation to this same effect. Oil, it is apparently now being thought, may indeed have seeped up and be seeping up still, from the depths of the earth. The organic look that it acquires is because bugs merely like to swim in it, rather than because bugs (or any other living thing) actually perished to create the stuff. From time to time, for example, oil bursts upwards into the caverns otherwise known as the regular oil fields where humans have characteristically tended to find oil before, which results in certain ever dwindling reserves mysteriously refusing to dwindle as much as they should. And so on.
If this theory comes to be accepted, this does not necessarily mean that oil companies will immediately be drilling in new ways and in new places, to new depths. It may merely, to start with, result in a general willingness to commit to continuing oil exploration and to oil-based industry, more than would otherwise have happened. It may be many decades before anyone actually gets a direct tube installed to these vast – and no doubt vastly deep and inaccessible – new oil reserves. For the time being, the oil companies may merely rely on Mother Earth having an occasional attack of the squirts into her underwear, so to speak. And on her farting too, if I understand the theory correctly. Gas is also involved in all this.
I, of course, want to believe that this is all true, if only to see the look on the faces of the environmentalists when they are eventually persuaded that the internal combustion engine is here for ever. And there is now also the fact that I have here tipped this idea as a cheap intellectual share bet, so to speak. So I am sceptical also of my scepticism about the oil-is-dead-bugs theory – or whatever is the official theory now. But this is certainly a fun fence to be sitting on.
Chris Bennett’s article was published as long ago as May 25 of this year. Has there been much discussion sparked by it? What did anyone think? Is there any truth to this notion that oil is of an entirely different origin to the one now generally accepted, and consequently that it is massively more abundant than previously assumed?
All those readers of this who particularly liked Dale Amon’s reporting of and ruminating upon this, and whose reaction to this was: I want more! … should look at these.
These being, in English rather than pure linkese, a stunning set of photos taken by Richard Seaman of the first flight of SpaceShipOne into space, on June 21st 2004. (My thanks to Joseph Brennan for an email with the link.)
Great as the photos of the various air and space craft are, I especially like the very first photo, of all the people watching it, and of course photographing it. Although I doubt if many of them got photos as good as Richard Seaman’s.
Seaman used a Canon 1Ds digital SLR camera, a snip at $8,000.
Seaman is a fine photographer, but much of the genius of these photos lies in the automatic focus system that this camera has in it. More fuss should be made of the people who devise things like this, I think. Boy would I love one of these – but smaller and for nearer $80, in a couple of years time.
The 1Ds sports the same 45 point auto-focus system as its predecessor, the 1D. Users on the Canon chat group I follow insisted that the auto-focus system is not only effective in achieving sharp focus, it also does so blindingly fast. One story I remember hearing is that if you point a 1Ds and a D60 at the same object at the same time, and someone walks between the cameras and the object and keeps walking, then the 1Ds would refocus on the person and then back on the object, while the D60 wouldn’t react to the person at all!
Ideal for space ships, in other words. Although I recommend a general rootle around Seaman’s photographs. If that appeals, I suggest that this list of recent additions would be a fine place to start.
… and leading directly on from how the state uses cameras to mess people around, here is another story (from the same source – top right column again – June 3rd) about a capitalist-supplied camera that helps motorists, and also anyone they might otherwise fail to notice and drive into.
Simply, on the very front of the car, some capitalists have attached a camera that can see sideways in both directions. Inside the car, there is a screen showing the (two) results to the grateful driver.
At the home where I grew up, and where my mum still lives, driving out past those high hedges and that high wall and across that very narrow pavement into the road was and is still a perpetual worry, with much craning of the neck forwards and asking of any front seat passenger to help by doing likewise. I do not use a car now, but when I did, I used constantly to think how handy such a camera would have been. Well, if I ever get another car, I may be able to have just such a camera on it.
Apparently these gadgets are already very big (metaphorically speaking – they are of course literally tiny) in Japan, where they were first devised and have first been made available. Japan is a land, I would guess, with many awkward little corners and hard-to-negotiate exits. As is ours.
The state is not your friend. Business has to be, or it goes out of business.
In what may one day give people a way to keep even GCHQ and the NSA out of their private affairs without them makes a huge effort, quantum cryptography is starting to finally emerge as a useable technology.
I look forward to the day the entire global communications network is a less friendly place for systems like Echelon and Carnivore.
During the last few days, the British media, all of them, have been making much of D-Day, and quite properly so. The survivors from among those who fought that day who still remain with us now will mostly be gone ten years hence, so now is the last big moment of public thanks and public acknowledgement for these gents. And today will surely not pass without further mentions here of the sacrifices made on June 6th 1944, and the great purposes for which those sacrifices were made.
But the bit of the story that I keep thinking about is … the weather. How pleasing that one of our great national obsessions should have proved so extremely pertinent, at that time of all times.
The story is well known. The weather during the first few days of June 1944 was vile, and Group Captain Stagg, the man whose job was to analyse and present the weather news to those in charge of Operation Overlord, was the bearer of these bad tidings. On June 4th, D-Day, ready to happen on June 5th, was postponed, because of the weather, by one day.
But it could not be postponed for much longer than that. Too many men were revved up to go. A serious postponement would do dreadful things to that most crucial of military variables, morale.
Then, the miracle. Stagg discerned a magical moment of calmness in the middle of the weather system that was causing all the headaches, and through the eye of this meteorological needle Supreme Commander Eisenhower was able to thread the Normandy Landings. And they were all the more of a success for the fact that the Germans knew for certain that they just could not be done when they actually were done. As it turned out, the weather for D-Day was perfect, and all the more perfect for having seemed to be so imperfect.
My main purpose here is not to salute those ageing D-Day survivors, although I do salute them in passing, of course I do. No, the point I want to make here is that weather forecasting is one nationalised industry that really does seem to work, and to have been working well for some time now. → Continue reading: Weather forecasts are up there with dentistry
While researching for my weekly CNE Environment column I came across a barking mad website. This led me to another loony story. Unfortunately, neither of these would do for an environment column that is meant to present a credible analysis of the eco-fascist movement.
So I ended up with this story from the French TV station TF1. In what has to be the most perfect economic suicide note since the 1920 Soviet Constitution, the French National Assembly has voted to amend the French constitution so as to enshrine the precautionary principle by 328 votes to 10. This could make any future government decision to deregulate anything illegal.
It is a shame that the precautionary principle is not applied to government regulation: in the absence of any overwhelming proof that it will work, such regulation ought to be prohibited. One might expect such lunacy in the French Assembly to be supported by the extreme left and the Green parties (there are several of these in France). But no.
The “centre-right” parties of the UMP and the UDF voted in favour, the Socialists and the Communists abstained, and the Greens voted against.
If this was appeasement, it failed. So which story was the barmiest?
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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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