George Monbiot aka Moonbat has joined the great and the good in the 2004 edition of Who’s Who, described as environmentalist and writer.
Oh dear.
(in today’s Telegraph’s print edition)
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An American scientist, William von Hippel has an explanation for racism. Well, a theory of why elderly people are more likely to be prejudiced than young people. And if his research is right, it’s not just because they grew up in a different era, because Blair’s Britain is a sink pit of immigrant crime, or because old people are brave enough to fly in the face of political correctness. Mary Wakefield explains in today’s Telegraph that a bit of their brain is missing:
I have no idea whether the theory will hold up to further scientific scrutiny. I also do not like the implication that older people’s opinions and behaviour are somehow not results of their rational discourse but determined by a neurological phenomenon. Nevetheless it is an interesting article that caught my attention and so it appears here without any firm conclusions from me as to its goodness or badness. If true, it has highlighted the importance of stereotyping and unexamined prejudices. Get your opinions in order before you are disconnected from them and begin to embarass your offspring. Of course, this means that there could be a psychological metacontext. January 2nd, 2004 | 50 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Clearly an off day here at Samizdata. So maybe today is the day for a question which I found via b3ta.com. This is a question that has always troubled me, ever since I first encountered the problem. Warning. If you do not like questions about toilets, and in particular about how disgusting they can be when they are being really, really disgusting, then stop reading now. I mean it. This is not a nice posting. This is a crappy posting. But the way I see it, after the previous posting, I have nothing left to lose, dignity-wise. Okay, here it is:
There then follows a picture of a North American cousin type toilet. But now, and this is your last chance to stop reading this if your disgustingness threshold is low, comes this basic and most troubling fact:
Last chance. Okay, you asked for it.
And then there’s a picture of that, in section, as we ex-architecture students say. And the rest of the piece can be boiled down to a one word summary: Why? What on earth, on the sun, and on all the other planets in circulation around the sun, is the point of this arrangement? Why do they do this??? The Samizdata commentariat has a growing reputation in the blogosphere for its combination of intellectual scrupulousness, technical savvy, and for its general ability to see the larger picture, to sense what are the important things in life and what are not. So people, let’s get this thing understood, and if necessary dealt with. Either we establish once and for all that there is a good reason for this apparently senseless, not to say plague inviting arrangement, and that it really does have a good reason, and then tell the world about it, or we establish that there is no good reason for this arrangement and we set in motion the (if the latter is the case) long over-due process of putting a stop to it. The internet is a powerful thing, with a global reach. Time to use the its powers for good once again. December 21st, 2003 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
Sorry, Natalie, but I am in a profound depression triggered by the US Supreme Court’s decision to jettison the First Amendment (which protects, or used to, freedom of speech and of the press). After I am suitably medicated (less than half a bottle of Laphroiag to go), I will have some thoughts on one of the fundamental flaws in the whole campaign finance debacle. December 10th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Right then. Desperate times, desperate measures. It’ll just have to be the kittens. December 10th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Surely, this time, that clique of tranzi panhandlers and chisellers have overstretched themselves just a bit?
You know what they say, there’s lies, damnable lies and then there’s UN predictions.
134 Trillion!!??. Why not add a few more zeros? Go on, really crank it up. Why be so conservative?
And whine for more funding, of course.
Then make war, not love. Has there ever been any organisation more scurrilous, more fraudulent or more transparently self-serving than that stinking, Augean mess known as the United Nations? December 9th, 2003 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
It has been tantalising everyone for so long now. Were they? Weren’t they? The little signs were all there. The furtive glances, the blushes, the games of footsie under the table, the electric crackle whenever they were in the room together and those oh-so-subtle gestures of intimacy when in public that were so charged with romantic frisson. Were they even aware that polite society was awash with all manner of fanciful and delicious gossip about their dalliances? Nobody was fooled by their calm exteriors. Everyone knew. Did they think they could hide their irresistably mutual animal magnetism behind their coquettish games for ever? Of course not. So now they have done the decent thing and formally announced their engagement. Socialism and Islamism are now, officially, an item:
They are going to make such an adorable couple. [Link courtesy of Harry Hatchett who also has some pointed observations.] December 8th, 2003 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Last night I attended the Adam Smith Institute Christmas Party, and I was once again struck by what seems to me to be a major fact of modern social life, and a major difference between the times we now live in and the times in which people lived in earlier times, say two or three hundred years ago. Present at the party were some hundred or more people, ranging from posh and clever schoolgirls enticed only a few hours earlier with the promise of free food and a rest from schoolwork, to opposition front benchers, and assorted policy wonks, friends of the ASI of extremely variable wealth, and of course a decent sprinkling of bloggers, ditto. And what I noticed, again, was that when you are in a gathering like this, it is impossible to tell at a glance how grand the person you are talking to is, unless you happen already to know. Take the nice chap I found myself talking to. Fifty-ish, matching jacket and trousers (that’s pants if you’re American), educated somewhere, you know, good. Pleasant, a job being Something in the City which I didn’t quite hear properly because the din was a bit loud and nuances got lost. And as I said to the man himself in my bonharmonious liven-up-the-party way, I simply had no idea how important a chap he might be. Dressed like that, I said, you could by anything from a wage slave to a billionaire, from a failing journalist to a major media player, from a pathetic wannabe politician to a Bilderberg Commissioner. I wasn’t that eloquent, but that was my point, and he got it well enough and with no offence meant or taken. Indeed, he amplified the point, by saying that me being dressed as I was (vomit coloured corduroy jacket, red cardigan, no tie, black corduroy trousers with safety pins to keep the improvised turn-ups turned up), I too could be anyone or anything. He reminisced about the various ultra-grand personages he had met in his time who dressed in a similarly down-market way. The big immediately visible social gulf, now, it seems to me, is the one at the lower end of society, between those who are just about clinging on, and those who have fallen off the social edge into the untermenchen class. Dressing as I do, in a socially concerned manner (i.e. badly), I get a lot of attention from the street begging variant of these people, and I can tell at once what sort of person I’m dealing with. I don’t know this person. Certainly not. But I do know exactly which side of the great divide he or she is on, and he or she is on the wrong side of it. Sorry. No. → Continue reading: Where the social gulf is now – thoughts after a Christmas Party – and on long-distance bus travel December 4th, 2003 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is such a comfort to know that our public authorities are prepared to crack down hard on this sort of thing:
Just in case Mr Rose happens to be reading this, he should memorise and repeat the following statement: “Osama bin Laden is merely the poor, desperate victim of oppression and social injustice”. With sufficient sensitivity training, I am quite confident that unpleasantness of this nature can be avoided in the future. December 3rd, 2003 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Arnold Kling of the Bottom Line (one of the Corante blogs) has blogged about an email exchange with one of the ‘intellectuals’ over at Crooked Timber. He suggested that they actually read one of his essays before denouncing them as illegitimate. The reply he received was incredible. I suppose that is how liberals argue…
There is more rudeness, arrogance and supercilious invectives. Judge for yourselves. November 29th, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some people have far too much time on their hands:
Okay, how about we use the term ‘Boss-man/Bitch’? November 27th, 2003 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
Guardian’s crime correspondent reports that scam-baiting – replying to the emails and stringing the con artists along with a view to humiliating them as much as possible – is becoming increasingly popular with more than 150 websites chronicling the often hilarious results. Mike, a 41-year-old computer engineer from Manchester, runs the scam-baiting site 419eater.com, which started two months ago.
His site specialises in collecting pictures of the scammers in order to make it more difficult to find new victims. Using the pretext that in order to believe they are real people they need to take a photograph holding up signs with the name of Mike’s character, he has succeeded in getting one fraudster to pose with a piece of paper stating: MI Semen Stains. Other sites feature similar pictures with signs reading ‘Iama Dildo’, ‘Mr Bukakke’ and ‘Ben Dover’. According to Guardian the oldest anti-scammer site is Scamorama, which aims to educate the public about the latest trends as well as waste as much of the fraudsters’ time as possible. The original emails often claim the author has suffered a personal tragedy, usually the loss of a parent. A typical Scamorama reply claimed the recipient has also lost a parent in shocking circumstances, having witnessed their own father being shot. The email was signed ‘Alfredo Corleone’. I had a go at some of the stories on the 419 Eater website and I recommend you have a look too. Marvellous stuff. What a way to brighten up a dull morning. November 25th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
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