Last century over 170 million people were murdered by their own governments, and your government doesn’t want you to have a gun. Doesn’t that bother you just a little?
– Unknown
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January 3rd, 2006 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Some time ago I referred to statistics on reported crimes in the UK, which prompted a rather heated discussion (that’s putting it mildly, ed) about the value of such numbers, given the obvious difficulties in knowing whether reporting of crimes gives an accurate picture of just how bad the situation really is. The British Crime Survey (BCS) which takes the public’s impressions of the impact of crime through interviews with thousands of people, can sometimes give a quite different picture. This story shows that reports of armed violence are on the rise, and also contains data showing that experiences of crime have also gone up. A rather sobering set of numbers with which to start the New Year. January 2nd, 2006 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
Putin is sending shivers through the world with his attempts to strong-arm the Ukraine back into the Kremlin’s zone of influence and no doubt more and more column inches are going to be directed at this emerging crisis. Yet it seems to me pretty obvious that that Russia, circa 2006, is almost hilariously weak to be throwing its weight around. The Russian economy is pathetic for a would-be imperial seat of power, running about half the size of India based on purchasing power. Its GDP per capita is about the same as such mighty global players as South Africa, Mexico and Trinidad. The antics of its kleptocratic and economically illiterate former KGB leadership makes the place less attractive to investors by the day. Frankly you would have to be crazy to put your money in Moscow. Even its military has repeatedly demonstrated that it is inept and corrupt in equal measure. All this talk of Russia’s importance is vastly over-stated. In short, Russia needs to be treated with respect, but only the sort of respect you give a drunk with a knife as he staggers down the street. The price of gas sold to the Ukraine is currently below market levels but the cackhanded way Russia has handled this makes it pretty obvious that markets are the last thing on Putin’s mind. But perhaps he is to be applauded for massively strengthening the hand of pro-nuclear power advocates with his preposterous posturing. Even the turgid political class of western and eastern Europe can now have few illusions that it makes sense to rely on an unstable place with delusions of grandeur for their energy supplies. Methinks it might be time for those with some spare dosh to invest some of it in nuclear energy stocks. January 2nd, 2006 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Incoming email:
Sounds like a laugh. Presumably this posting will help. I have no idea just how much of a shit this Brian Leiter is, and how much he contributes to the “Brians are bad” syndrome, but I expect that he is indeed a shit to some degree. I will visit this blog a few times, and then decide if I want to keep reading it. If I do, I will then blogroll it, here. Nearly forgot. Happy New Year everybody. January 1st, 2006 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Dissident Frogman has infiltrated Samizdata.net HQ, snuck into the wine cellar and photographed the target for tonight…  January 1st, 2006 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Signs of life have been seen from the famed Dissident Frogman, who has been been absent without leave from the blogosphere for far too long. December 31st, 2005 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
To say that the ancient Greeks have had a profound influence on Western civilisation is a truism so obvious to many who regularly read this site that it might seem silly to spell it out. The state of education in Britain, however, means that it is important and necessary to spell that achievement out and draw out the key elements of what the ancient Greeks ‘did for us’ as well as point to some of the shortcomings. Charles Freeman’s The Greek Achievement is a splendid tour of ancient Greece, starting in the Bronze Age and finishing with the advent of the Middle Ages. It covers military campaigns, notably the long-running Peloponnese war; the changing fortunes of the dozens of city states; the development of democracy and city government and the eventual rise of Rome. Interwoven with this is a masterful survey of developments in philosophy, maths, science, astronomy, law and language. Freeman also is excellent at explaining the role of myth and ceremony in Greek culture, and does not fight shy of showing the lousy treatment of women and the huge use of slavery. → Continue reading: What the Greeks did for us December 31st, 2005 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Register carries a scary story I have not seen reported elsewhere. Kieren McCarthy’s piece suggests that the independence of the internet may be one more casualty of the ‘war on terror’:
You have to read the whole thing, but the burden is that, far from preserving the net from the dictator’s club at the UN – a posture applauded by Samizdatistas here – the US has provided the political mechanism for its nationalisation. And that merely in order to do a couple of favours for client regimes. December 31st, 2005 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
As 2005 draws to its close it is customary to make some predictions about the following year. I won’t do so. The world’s stock markets are ending the year in better shape than I would have expected a year before, notwithstanding the impact of higher oil prices and the devastating hurricanes that hit the U.S. gulf coast. What is interesting to me though is how the market in making predictions has continued to accelerate, spawining exotic derivatives connected even to the weather. More than two years ago in the United States, some policymakers toyed with the idea of a predictions market to help figure out terrorist threats. The idea was killed off, partly, so it was argued, due to some terrible PR for the idea as well as a cowardly refusal to embrace controversial ideas. Lawrence Lessig takes a different view here. The market in making predictions has, of course, been around for decades, if one thinks about the commodity futures markets such as the great wheat futures markets in Chicago, for instance. This Wikipedia entry I linked to shows just how broad the prediction market now goes, such as people taking bets on future scientific innovations, and so on. And these markets can be harnessed to garner useful knowledge about where certain things may be headed as well as fund valuable research. That’s my prediction, anyway. (Wikipedia link fixed. Thanks to a commenter for pointing out the error). December 30th, 2005 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Commenting on the previous posting, RAB says:
It is not technology you lack, RAB; it is the right to do postings on Samizdata. But your point is a good one, I think, even though personally I loathe the word “Bliar”, because name-calling is the language of loser propagandists, I think. But getting back to that 800 million quid’s worth of government jobbery (as this kind of thing used actually to be called), I think RAB is right to ask us to post about this, and presumably he is referring to this:
I seem to recall Richard Littlejohn writing about this years ago, in a book. But that was then (i.e. 1995). This is now. All governments start out reasonably honest (I speak comparatively), but get more corrupt as they persist, and as the army of camp followers finds its way around and finds out where all the treasure is to be found and how to dig it out and take possession of it. Well, I reckon a big clear out of this lot may now be due any general election now. If not at the next, then pretty soon. → Continue reading: Snouts in the trough December 30th, 2005 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
The other night, while getting better from having been rather ill (which was why I contributed so little here over Christmas), I channel-hop-watched TV. Here were the two best things I heard on my travels up and down the channel numbers. First, during a reshowing of an earlier Dr Who episode, a very anxious person said:
And the second fun snippet I heard was from a show about crumpet, i.e. nice looking and happy looking ladies with fine cleavages but not much to say for themselves in seventies comedy shows and horror movies. The unashamedly excited interviewer asked the one and only Ingrid Pitt if she ever had any reservations about taking her clothes off? Replied La Pitt:
I am not yet a hundred per cent. Still coughing, alas, and with my ears afflicted by tape hiss, although the headache is largely gone. But those two snatches of chat did help me get a bit better. TV also tells me that I am not the only one thus suffering. The cold cure adverts do not sell anything that will cure you, but they do provide definite evidence that you have only got a dose of what lots of other people have also got. I could have had it far worse, and far scarier. Patrick Crozier was recently struck down by appendicitis. In Japan. December 30th, 2005 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Almost two years ago, David Carr posted a piece on this blog about statues in Trafalgar Square. In the comments, I made a brief observation that the person I would commemorate with a statue there was mathematician Alan Turing, who is rather inadequately commemorated given that his achievements were that he won the second world war and invented the computer. (Yes I am exaggerating, but not truthfully by all that much). Yesterday, I received a couple of e-mails and then a phone call from the letters editor of the Evening Standard newspaper here in London. The paper had a couple of days earlier published an article on a plan to put a statue of Nelson Mandela in the square, and they wanted to publish some responses from readers. He thought that my comment (that he had presumably found by Googling) was very interesting, and would I write a short letter to the newspaper saying the same thing? I was happy to oblige, but I asked that if they publish the letter that they credit this blog as well as me personally. And that is exactly what they did. They published my letter in this evening’s newspaper (slightly edited for space, unfortunately) and credited me as “Michael Jennings, samizdata.net” at the end. If you are a newspaper editor who wishes to use the blogosphere as a source, this is exactly the right way to go about it. Contact the blogger first, get him to update what he wrote, and always credit the blog and publish its address. We bloggers love being linked to. December 29th, 2005 | 47 comments - (Comments are closed)
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