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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There is an interesting posting by David Farrer over at Freedomandwhisky, about the now quite familiar experience most of us have had of buying an incredibly cheap airline ticket. David talks of the Edinburgh to London route, because although Edinburgh and surrounding parts is the Freedom & Whisky target-rich commentary environment London is obviously the centre of the universe and he has to visit it from time to time to keep in touch, but of course it’s the same for everyone.
One of the reasons airplane tickets can be so cheap is that buying and selling them has got so much cheaper. You can now buy airplane tickets on the internet at a price that fluctuates from day to day – even hour to hour or minute by minute – according to the vagaries of supply and demand.
This is one of the most characteristic uses of computers in our time. A new business has not in any obvious sense been invented. What’s happened is that an old one – ticket touting – has been re-invigorated. And I think I’m right in saying that the same principle is now being applied to cinema tickets, and of course the package holiday trade has been doing this kind of thing for years.
This experience surely helps to spread libertarianism. Oh, I don’t mean that, as soon as you’ve booked your ticket for your last-minute emergency trip to Athens to get your mad uncle out of jail and been flabbergasted by how little you had to pay for it, you experience an uncontrollable desire then to log in to amazon.com and purchase the collected works of Murray Rothbard. What I do suggest is that several very important libertarian memes, about such things as the fact that prices are a totally subjective matter in no way dependent upon the history of how much it cost for the thing being sold to be made in the first place, and concerning the general desirability of free markets as the best way to coordinate complicated collective activities (such as a hundred or so more people all deciding to share the same plane trip to Athens – tomorrow morning at 6 am) surely are being popularised by these kinds of arrangements.
Note the word “collective” there. Collectivism not only messes with individual activity (because that’s its nature); it also can’t now do collective activity nearly as well as voluntarily co-ordinated individual choice-making.
The plane trip has already been decided upon by the airline, and they can’t now cancel it. The taking-off and landing slots, the crew, the maintenance and the petrol have all been committed to. Whether you are on the plane or not makes hardly any difference at all to the airline’s fixed costs. What does one less empty seat cost them? So if there’s a chance they could maybe fill the plane in a last minute rush by damn near giving away the seats, it makes sense for them to try to do just that. So, you get your bargain ticket.
An airline ticket futures market, you might say. My point is: computers are now turning everyone into Gordon Gekko. Gordon Gekko’s opinions are accordingly that much more likely to spread to everyone.
That’s not an original thought, but it is quite a thought.
I don’t recall any of those “wonders of capitalism” postings lately, so here’s one, scanned in from the November 2002 issue of Prospect (paper version so no link), referred to in an article about nanotechnology (“The Science of the Tiny”) by Michael Gross of Birkbeck College, London.
I’ve been hearing for years about how wonderful nanotechnology is just about to be. But where’s the stuff? Where are the nanotechnologically produced products that we can buy? In the shops? Says Gross:
… There is at least one that you can buy already. It is the self-cleaning window. It uses a combination of two clever molecular tricks. First, it contains a catalyst that uses the energy of light to oxidise common kinds of dirt, to convert them into smaller, more soluble molecules that wash away with rain water. At this point, the second trick comes in. Ordinary glass is fairly water-repellent (hydrophobic), which means that water does not cover it smoothly, but tends to form droplets. The surface of self-cleaning glass, however, is coated in molecules that attract water and encourage it to spread out. So, instead of sitting around as drops which leave drying spots when they evaporate, the rain will cover the surface evenly, dissolve what the photocatalyst made of the dirt, and run off. Simple. Yet it would not be possible without molecular design on the nanometre scale.
I don’t need it. Correction: I don’t want it. But I’m a big fan of skyscrapers, and skyscrapers are going to want this stuff by the square mile, and presumably they already do. I assume that technophiliac Samizdatistas like Dale Amon and Russell Whitaker have known of these magic window panes for years but this is the first time I’ve heard about them, and I’m impressed.
I seem to recall some mention here of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Yes, here, in the comments. All who seek a painless way of learning a little more about this truly great man, and also about a rather interesting British broadcaster whom not all Samizdata readers will know much about, should read this Patrick Crozier piece for Biased BBC, which proves that Biased BBC is not itself nearly so biased as you might expect it to be. (Once again the blogger archive system is a deranged mess which blanks out the very piece you are trying to get to. All must move from Blogger to Movable Type. All, I say, all. So go to the top and scroll down to Wed Oct 23.)
Patrick begins thus:
The BBC is a bit like the dying days of the Soviet Union. Most of it is crap but just occasionally it can put on a show that makes you temporarily forget its manifold inadequacies.
Last night was just such a night, with Jeremy Clarkson’s biography of Isambard Kingdom Brunel playing the role of Olga Korbut.
You can usually count on Clarkson to be sarcastic and to throw in a few not-very-funny similes. But last night be dropped it. He played it straight. The effect was amazing – it was like watching a completely different person. In place of sarcasm was enthusiasm. In place of simile, passion.
Quite simply it was stupendous. Clarkson has never and will never do anything as good as this. For once subject and author (all part of the Great Britons series) came together for a moment of magic, transforming both. We will never look upon either of them the same again.
And I love this, towards the end of Patrick’s piece, about the end of Clarkson’s performance:
This is (approximately) how he ended: “I understand Princess Diana is up for this award. Now, I am sure she was a very nice lady but quite simply she wasn’t in Brunel’s league. John Lennon is another candidate. I am the eggman. I am the walrus. And then Shakespeare the man who has bored and confused generations of schoolchildren.”
“In ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Puck dreams of a Girdle circling the Globe. Shakespeare dreamt it but Brunel with his bridges, tunnels, viaducts, railways and ships built it.”
As I recall it Puck said he’d put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes, and I don’t remember Brunel ever launching a satellite into earth orbit. But had he been around now he undoubtedly would have.
Jeremy Clarkson, for the benefit of all you Americans, is a somewhat facetious but otherwise very capable, confident and good-humoured writer and TV broadcaster, mostly on the subject of cars. Politically Clarkson is a P. J. O’Rourke party-on libbo-rightie – O’Rourke also got a lot of his first writing assignments doing cars did he not? – and is definitely one of us. He gets right up the noses of all those whose noses we here want got up, so it’s very good news that Patrick reckons he did so well.
All of this is in connection with a BBC search to find “the greatest Briton”, and you never know, Brunel might do quite well. Princess bloody Diana indeed.
On the recommendation of a friend, this afternoon I went to see the IMAX 3D movie Space Station. I expected to enjoy it but I did not think I would be astounded by it. 3D filming sure has come a long way!
The experience was made even better by the entirely suitable venue of the IMAX cinema, which is the superb Science Museum in Kensington. After seeing the show, I wandered around and looked at the exhibits.
If you want to see the glory of what Islamic culture can produce, go visit the Alhambra in Spain. But if you want to see and understand the glory of what secular western culture can produce, go to the Science Museum and see the making of the modern world. This place is more than just a museum, it is a temple to the western mind and what makes us what we are. It is gallery after gallery of astonishing achievements, dead ends and curiosities. If you would know what you are then understand where you came from.
This is your heritage.
This research from Finland rates very high on the neatness scale.
It looks like it is useable anywhere with reasonably still air, so I can well imagine adverts floating in the aisles of department stores.
It’s a great Christmas gift for all those budding young tent preachers you know. They’ll get that Holy Appearance vetting them Officially for that lucrative TV contract they’ve always wanted. If your friends are of a more Shakespearean inclination, just think of the possibilities for their next production of Macbeth or Hamlet!
Ah, the future. I love this era.
There’s a market for “date rape” drugs and now a market for “anti-date rape drug” devices. Drink Safe Technology is producing ‘smart coasters’ which sniff chemical interference with drinks.
“You can carry this in your purse, take your drink to the bathroom with you, test it out, and if it comes out positive, you know something’s wrong with that guy you were talking to,” said Janita Patrick, a San Jose State University student. “Keep walking and get away.”
Just for the hell of it, here is a story that most certainly has its origins in someone’s exceedingly boring job. I mean, typing “go to hell” into Google is almost as bad as ego-googling.
According to Computerworld, the No. 1 search result is Microsoft Corporation’s home page. When asked about the devilish search result, Google spokesman Nate Tyler said it’s an anomaly that Microsoft ranks ahead of even Hell.com, not to mention AOL and UNC. Unsurprisingly, a Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on the results of the Google search; AOL didn’t return several telephone calls seeking comment. How on earth does a corporate spokesman deal with an enquiry like that?!
A reader of FlashGuru’s MX101 known as Atomgas says it’s not Google’s fault, but rather the result of all the Web site authors who have a bone to pick with Microsoft:
“It’s the they way Google works and what makes Google [the] best search engine ever,” Atomgas said. “The difference between Google and other search engines is exactly this: Google makes the priority of the found results by the number and target of found links. If many people have links ‘go to hell’ pointing at Microsoft, Google will think that this is the best match to show to you, so the result[s] just show the mood of many Web site authors, not Google’s opinion.”
Well, now we know why linking in blogosphere is such a big deal… 
NASA have attached a web cam to the shuttle’s external fuel tank and will be transmitting during the launch on the 2nd of October. There is a link on this page that takes you to NASA television.
Flight director Phil Engelauf (as quoted on the BBC web site) said:
the video’s “wow factor” should be high.
Regarding Dale Amon’s problem of uranium smuggling, he’s right, if the US can’t keep “wetbacks” out, and the UK can’t stop IRA terrorists from crossing from the Irish Republic, what chance for any country with a long, contested land border?
However, does anyone know anything EASIER to track remotely than radioactive isotopes?
If I were a terrorist I would order a truckload of ammonia and another of iodine, and a suitcase of coffee filters. A pistol to detonate the dynamite paste is probably the hardest item to locate in the UK (steal one from a police officer is probably the safest and most inconspicuous method).
In guerrilla warfare the optimum weapon is one that doesn’t break down, and is cheap. This is why the British Army’s SA80 rifle is a good weapon: no one has ever stolen one for terrorist use (because they are expensive and break if you look at them sideways  ). Until someone makes a mass-produced, miniature nuke which is less prone to malfunctions than Microsoft software, I’m not going to worry overmuch about the threat of nuclear terrorist attack.
Just a thought for the paranoia squad: how do you know there haven’t been a dozen dud nukes set off around the world last week in underground car parks? The triggers were just dodgy…
This is my favourite explanation for the non-appearance of Bin Laden: he’s waiting for the b***** things to go off
While doing some research on my previous news item, I ran across this fascinating article on the WWII German nuclear weapons program.
Much of it was shrouded in mystery and misrepresentation prior to the declassification of the “Farm Hall Reports” discussed in the aforementioned link. Werner Heisenberg was caught out by statements he made in a bugged room when first told of the American bombs. It is quite apparent he was indeed committed to building a German nuclear weapon and might have if not for an egregious theoretical error.
Sometimes the gods do smile on us.
You remember the DMCA? It’s that Digital Millenium Copyright Act that Americans concerned with freedom are getting so steamed up about. As usual the EU are not far behind in providing an equivalent for us over here to have bad dreams about. Chris Bertram of Junius has linked to an article by Julian Midgely which claims that:
…university lecturers or school teachers will need to appeal to the Secretary of State on each and every occasion that they need to make a copy of part of a copy-protected CD for teaching or research. Librarians, archivists, private individuals, and the disabled can expect to be similarly encumbered.
I stumbled across this site by accident. It’s getting almost scary when you can find and order copies of Meet The Press from the 1940’s! The list of names is a who’s who of that period of history.
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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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