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“The fundamental story about consumer taste, in modern times, is not one of dumbing down or of producers seeking to satisfy a homogenous least common denominator at the expense of quality. Rather, the basic trend is of increasing variety and diversity, at all levels of quality, high and low.” – Tyler Cowen, Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing The World’s Cultures. Page 127. First published in 2002. June 16th, 2011 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
– A spokesman from NHS North Central London, responding ineffectually to questions from The Register about having recently lost a laptop containing 8.6 million health records. The laptop was “password protected”, apparently, so everything is okay. June 15th, 2011 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Too many of our internet dreams depend on the internet being far less vulnerable to governments than it actually is. – August, commenting on a posting at my place about Bitcoin. I suggest comments about what August says about the internet: here. Bitcoin comments: there. June 13th, 2011 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
I tend to have a “half empty” view of the world – but even I do not believe that the British population contains no pro freedom people. Indeed I believe that there are millions of pro freedom people in Britain – and basically the British book trade was telling us all to bugger off, that we were not welcome in the book shops. Well we got the message – it is not all “the internet” that is the reason for the decline of the British book trade, basically they were telling non-socialists that our custom was not wanted. June 9th, 2011 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Violence must be replied to with violence. The only time I would suggest turning the other cheek is when firing off the left shoulder with a rifle after taking cover in a doorway. – Perry de Havilland commenting here June 8th, 2011 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Vote Labour and we’ll turn debt into investment” Written by a wag on the Guido Fawkes blog in the comments on an excellent item about inflation. The great thing about that quote is that I can actually imagine some prat such as Ed Milliband, leader of the Labour Party, saying such a thing. And of course this is pretty much what Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist, probably thinks also. Meanwhile, Niall Ferguson, the historian, weighs in on the issue of debt. June 3rd, 2011 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Meanwhile, over at the global superpower, the public is slowly waking up to the fact that this government, too, is going bust, thanks to out-of-control entitlement programs, expensive bailouts, and the suicidal policy of everlasting peace through everlasting war. For the past six months, all of the United States government’s issuance of new debt has been bought by its compliant central bank and paid for by the printing press. As the politicians of this empire in decline are fiddling on the aptly named Capitol about a few billion in savings here and a few billion there, trillions are getting burned by the unstoppable state machinery. And over in Albion, the hotly debated “savage” cuts in public spending still seem the figment of tabloid imagination as they have so far not prevented the country from accumulating another £145 billion in debt over the past 12 months. June 2nd, 2011 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
“The serf first obtained chattels and then land in property; on them he won his first power, and that meant his first liberty – meaning thereby his personal liberty. His title to these things, that is, his right to appropriate them to his own exclusive use and enjoyment, and to be sustained by the power of the state in so doing, was his first step in civil liberty. It was by this movement that he ceased to be a serf. This movement has produced the great middle class of modern times; and the elements in it have been property, science and liberty. The first and chief of these, however, is property; there is no liberty without property, because there is nothing else without property on this earth.” – The Essential Essays of William Graham Sumner, “On Liberty, Society and Politics”, (Edited by Robert C. Bannister), page 247. June 1st, 2011 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern. – Lord Acton May 31st, 2011 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
A moderate Muslim has not understood Islam. – Sam Solomon, twenty five minutes into a remarkable video interview of him by Ezra Levant. Solomon, who was raised a Muslim but is now a Christian, explains, in particular, just what is so explosive about the threat to Islam of Christianity. Built into Islam, says Solomon, is a huge bundle of falsehood about what Christianity actually says. Simply learning about Christianity by reading the Bible, whether you accept in or not, will automatically undermine your Muslim faith. May 30th, 2011 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Internet threatens their power and perks. That’s far more important than problems that merely threaten the world’s wellbeing. – Instapundit comments on a piece called As world burns, G8 leaders fiddle … with the Internet. Seriously? Indeed. Ignore the messages. Silence the messenger. Besides which, it’s asking a lot to expect the people who caused the problems, and whose first attempts to solve the problems multiplied the problems, to solve the problems. May 26th, 2011 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
“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. May 26th, 2011 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
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