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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Earlier this month, I wrote:
Hollywood is of course notorious for this sort of thing, where actors and actresses have their notions of their own worth and talent over-inflated by agents, publicists, and the media.
So it is only fair that I point to this welcome exception to the rule – the mediocre Woody Allen:
“I’ve disappointed myself most of the time.
“People think I’m an intellectual because I wear glasses and they think I’m an artist because my films lose money.
“My relationship with the American audience is exactly the same as it has always been. They never came to see my films, and they don’t come now.
“I’ve often said that the only thing standing between me and greatness is me.”
I have a similar problem with greatness, and I’m glad to see that I am not the only one!
I have not commented on the recent riots in Sydney, which have been reported in the global media, for the reason that the scale and size of them are not particularly great. They certainly have been overblown in the media, both in Australia and overseas.
Of course, that is not to detract from the nastiness of them for the victims. People have been beaten, stabbed, and had their property vandalised in a deeply unpleasant way. But compared to what happened in Paris, these disturbances are very small beer.
However they are also very different to the Paris riots because the causes of them are totally different. In Paris, people were rioting because of the perceived heavy handedness of the French state and discrimination issues. There may or may not have been an Islamic element as well.
The Sydney disturbances were nothing of the sort. They were started by outraged ‘surfers’ and beach bums who were incited by populist media types, and also by some deeply unpleasant racist thugs. They were continued by the people that they were protesting about- the gangs of thugs who have been causing a constant law and order issue for Sydney residents for several years now.
These gangs have been allowed to ‘run amok’ because, not to put too fine a point on it, they are Lebanese Muslims. The nominally ‘centre left’ ALP state government has been too terrified of being accused of racism to uphold the rule of law. This leads to massive double standards in the enforcement of justice, which has been a feature of policing in Sydney.
There have been two developments in consequence to these riots, both of which are deeply depressing. The first is that the NSW State government is using the riots to claim for itself massive increases in police powers in order to ‘deal’ with the situation. Those who have seen the NSW police force in action over a long period are unlikely to have confidence that these powers will not be abused.
Secondly, the Australian media has indulged itself in a veritable orgy of self-flagellation about race relations in Australia and ‘multiculturalism’. The few blogs willing to point out the law enforcement issues involved have been ignored.
Equality before the law is supposed to be a core principle of any government that fancies itself to be democratic. Yet in Australia, no one wants to talk about it. Draw your own conclusions.
This afternoon I was in Newport in South Wales. I had half an hour or so to kill before my train back to London was to depart, so I went to a nearby pub and ordered a pint of ale. Due to the general lousy state of WiFi hotspot provision in Britain, I was not able to connect my laptop to the internet. However, I also had my PDA with me. The PDA in question is branded as an O2 XDA IIi, but the device is in fact made by a company named High Tech Computer Corporation (HTC) of Taiwan, and is known generically as the HTC Alpine, as well as being rebranded by a variety of other companies under a variety of other names. It runs Windows Mobile 2003SE, which includes stripped down versions of Internet Explorer, Microsoft Word and Excel, and a variety of other applications. The device also functions as a GSM cellphone, and in what is I think is the way of the future, the device has several different wireless technologies built into it – 802.11b (WiFi), Bliuetooth, and at that moment most importantly. GPRS, the usual packet switched data overlay of the GSM cellphone system.
What did this all mean? Well, it meant that I could connect my PDA to the internet via a GPRS cellular connection and check my e-mail and browse a few blogs. The limitations of this were that I was using a rather limited browser and I had a slow connection – in practice probably only around 20kbps. This means that I didn’t want to view too many separate pages – each takes a while to load and as one is paying by the megabyte, one also doesn’t want to download too much in the was of fancy graphics. Being asked to browse through six pages to read one article is something of an imposition. Lots of popups and flash animation is also bad. Relatively straightforward HTML is best.
After a quick trip to Samizdata, I went to Instapundit to see what was up. I scrolled down, and came to the observation that Time Magazine’s choices as “People of the Year” were lame, and a link to a Michelle Malkin piece that had more to say about it. That wasn’t terribly helpful in itself, because I didn’t know who Time Magazine had chosen, but I followed the link.
Michelle didn’t say precisely who the award had gone to either, but there was a comment about philanthopists, rock stars, and Bill and Melinda Gates. Okay, so at this point my guess (which ultimately turned out to be correct) was that the award had been given jointly to Bono of U2, as well as Bill and Melinda Gates for charitable efforts in the third world.
Actually I find the (joint) award of Man of the Year to Bill Gates is kind of interesting. I have long thought that it was an absurd oversight that Time had never given the “Man of the Year” award to Gates. I am no fan of Microsoft’s products, but even I have to concede that that the man’s career is an extraordinary one, and even that the argument that he was the most significant man of the 1990s is quite a strong one. One man came from nowhere and in 20 did a considerable job of seizing control of one of the most important industries in human history. That Time missed this and failed to give him the award at any time in the 1980s or 1990s was really lame. (Time almost got off to a good start in recognising the PC revolution with “Man of the Year announcements”. They apparently intended to give it to Steve Jobs in 1982, but ultimately lamed out by giving it nebulously to “The Computer” instead after discovering that Jobs had a difficult personality. (Laming out is something they have been doing for a while).
Malkin does make some observations on this, stating that she thinks that Time’s vaguely blah leftist politics are in play here, and that they wouldn’t have given it to Gates in the 1990s when he was doing something significant because that was filthy capitalism of which they do not approve, and that they would now rather give it to him and his wife now that she has civilized him and he is doing something “worthy”. Although Time does have a bit of a history of rewarding starry eyed “one world” stuff, and that certainly explains the Bono thing here, I am not sure it does explain the Gates award.
In truth, I think that Time is almost trying to apologise for not giving the award to Gates before. → Continue reading: Time is lame in so many ways
Yes, it had to happen: a man has named a police dog in a lawsuit.
Woof!
(Thanks to the marvellous Overlawyered blog for the story).
I must admit to being saddened and a bit angered to read that Doug Bandow, a former writer for the CATO Institute, a leading U.S. libertarian think tank, has left after it was revealed that he was paid by a lobbyist to write articles specifically favouring said lobbyist’s clients. I used to like some of the stuff Bandow wrote as he came across as a relatively sane voice on domestic and foreign policy issues. It turns out that at least on certain topics, he was a shill. Ouch.
Of course, most of us have to work to earn a crust, and there is nothing specifically wrong in my view in a writer being paid by a company or organisation to advance a point of view so long as the writer is up-front about that. If a person writing skeptical articles about the so-called Greenhouse Effect is backed by Exxon or Shell, then one can obviously take that into account, even if the quality of the argument is impeccable. The same might go, say, for a writer getting backing from Greenpeace who writes all manner of doomonger articles, and so forth.
A lot of people who once enjoyed Bandow’s articles will be feeling slightly peeved.
Tom Peters, who presumably found it in this piece, reports:
This banner, in Chinese, hangs in each room of the Hua Xin Li Dress Co., Ltd., amidst the Rongcheng Industry Zone, 100 miles from Beijing:
“THE CUSTOMER IS GOD AND THE MARKET DECIDES EVERYTHING”
People say things like this from time to time, but they seldom mean them, and they never mean them when at all severely challenged
I mean, suppose you were to ring up the Hua Xin Li Dress Co., Ltd. and to say: “Hello, God speaking. I want you to design my daughter’s wedding dress. It must be genuine silk, with genuine gold fiddly bits sewn into it, with miniature iPods for buttons, and must win numerous design awards. However, being God, I don’t want to pay more than 50 pence. Got that did you? Fine. Tomorrow morning then. The wedding’s tomorrow afternoon.” I know, I know, God has no daughter, and if He did have a daughter, she would probably not get married. She would do altogether more dramatic things than that. Not my point. Which is: would the Hua Xin Li Dress Co., Ltd. knuckle under to such a demand? Would they obey God, the customer, you, and supply an expensive product at less than it costs them to produce it? I think not. They would surely respond instead with something more along the lines of: “Not quite our kind of job. If you want lots of cheap dresses to sell in your shop, maybe we can do business. Take a look at our website, and see if there is anything there that you like.” God might not be satisfied with an answer like that, but you, a mere customer, would have to settle for that, or something like it.
Or to put all of the above another way, “the market” includes everyone, and everyone’s desires and plans, consumers and producers. Customers are indeed sovereign, over themselves and what is rightfully theirs, but so are producers. Customers do not have to pay for things they do not want, and producers do not have to produce things they do not want to produce. The market is not some ghastly new tyrant who tells you what you must do, regardless of your rights or wishes. The market is not some hideous and only slightly nicer collective reincarnation of Chairman Mao. The market is the outcome of everyone’s rights counting for something, and nobody’s rights counting for everything.
So yes, the market does decide a lot of things, but the customer is not God.
This is an exaggeration for the sake of effect. The effect may, in a business sense, be good, but it is still an exaggeration, and that is putting mildly.
Tony Blair showed just how courageous he is… he chose to face up to an internal battle based on one idea – the European Union – rather than just doing his job as just Britain’s prime minister.
– Jacques Chirac
Pity Samizdata.net does not have a catagory for articles called “Treason & Betrayal”.
It has always puzzled me why the state pays ‘compensation’ to victims of certain crimes. Why are fellow taxpayers robbed to compensate an individual for a misfortune? Surely that is a job for an insurance policy.
There are now calls for victims of international terrorism to be financially compensated and again, I cannot quite figure why the general public should be required to stump up for this. Whilst ‘acts of war’ and terrorism are often specifically excluded from insurance policies, it is possible to find policies which include even that if you are willing to pay premiums. It just seems odd to me that folks should have any expectation of a non-charitable, non-insured payment from fellow national subjects.
Seldom in the course of European negotiations has so much been surrendered for so little. It is amazing how the Government has moved miles while the French have barely yielded a centimetre.
– William Hague
Almost uniquely amongst nations, the United States takes upon itself the super-ownership of its subjects even when they are not within the territory over which it claims sovereignty. Even if you live and work outside the USA, you are required to file tax returns and have US tax liabilities. It would appear Americans cannot escape the enveloping grasp of their government and its rules anywhere on this planet.
And yet as soon as you step outside the USA, even though US subjects retain their tax liabilities to the state, it would appear they loose any constitutional protection from its excesses.
Whilst in many ways the USA offers the world a splendid example of defended civil liberties, in so many other ways the freedom Americans assume is theirs is really an illusion.
The state is not your friend.
Perhaps this category should be referred to as prehistorical views. Usually, when we hear that palaeontologists and archaeologists have extended the prehistory of the human species, we think of the Leakeys, Africa, Lucy and the Olduvai Gorge.
For once, such an announcement comes from closer to home. The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project has discovered a site near Lowestoft dating human habitation in Britain to seven hundred thousand years ago. This date is based upon the vole teeth discovered on the site, compared with later discoveries at Boxgrove and Westbury sub Mendip in Somerset.
The dates involved are much too early for carbon dating – effective only to about 40,OOOBC – but scientists have been able to calculate good approximate ages from the known ages of animal fossils found at the sites.
In particular, the research centres on teeth belonging to a genus of prehistoric watervole, known as mimomys. About 700,000 years ago these voles had rooted molars, similar to those of human beings, which grow once then get worn down through adult life. But by 500,000 years ago, the animals had evolved rootless molars that continue to grow – an advantage to creatures that eat tough vegetation.
The voles found at Boxgrove are from the later era, but the East Anglian ones have primitive molars, dating the site definitively to at least 700,000 years ago. Those at Westbury are of an intermediate form. “The dating still involves some guesswork, but the best estimate is about 600,000 years ago,” Professor Stringer said. Simon Parfitt, a fossil mammal specialist at the museum and at University College, London, who analysed the vole fossils, said; “We can put everything in a relative order, and Westbury could be 100,000 years earlier than Boxgrove. The Best Anglian finds go as far back as 700,000 years.”
Early Man’s reach extended further and earlier than we have anticipated. Who knows what else prehistory will throw at us.
Tony Blair seems to be trying to make it into that dark pantheon of truly dire British Prime Ministers of the last one hundred years. Although given the procession of craven toadies who make up that list, that is really quite a task he has set himself, he is showing considerable promise of being a real contender.
Still, he has quite a way to go yet. He may have just given away £8.2 BILLION of British taxpayers money in return for nothing whatsoever… and it is nothing as all he got in return was a promise from the weak and politically toothless French government to review their huge farm subsidies in return for the UK actually giving up a huge chunk of money (yes, seriously, the French gave up a promise to do nothing more than review how much they get from the EU)… but he is still in the shadows of those who went before him.
Of course, Blair is minor league in his endless pursuit of surrendering British interests compared to such luminaries as Neville Chamberlain (he after all gave away Czechoslovakia, rather than a few billion quid, in return for another European leader’s empty promises), Ted Heath (The Three Day Week and First Great Betrayal to Europe) and the evil twins of Harold Wilson/James Callaghan (joint award for the astounding destruction of British liberty and economy via wholesale nationalisation),. As in all things, Blair is just… lacking… compared to these guys. But he sure shows willing, you got to say that.
In truth, this may well be a good thing in the long run as it brings that day of some sort of ‘Glorious Revolution’ closer, and for all you history buffs out there, no I do not mean a Dutch backed coup d’etat, I am thinking more along the lines of what Thatcher just hinted at. Let the enemy class squeeze harder and harder and until the nation that constantly votes them into power starts to choke on its entirely democratic stupidity.
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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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