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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Its enough to make you believe in parallel universes colliding, or something:
Doctors fear that the identity of a mysterious mute pianist found wandering on an English beach in April might never be known, a British newspaper reported on Monday.
[snip]
The so-called “Piano Man”, a tall blonde-haired stranger thought to be in his 20s or early 30s, was found on April 7 on the beach at Minster, on the south coast of England, soaking wet but fully dressed in a black suit and tie, with no clue as to his origin.
He has not spoken since and has not responded to written appeals while being kept under observation in the psychiatric hospital.
But he has fascinated social workers, the British media and the general public over his one means of communication: playing classical piano music.
When given a pencil and paper by hospital staff, he drew a grand piano — and then, when shown a piano at the hospital chapel, he impressed his carers with a remarkable virtuoso performance.
There are no leads.
Now, I am an imaginative guy, and I work with a major inner city hospital where all kinds of strange shit comes down, but I have a hard time coming up with any scenario at all that would explain this one.
Arnold Kling has brief thoughts here about the phenomenon of air miles. The “bonus” miles one accumulates due to air travel now equate to about $700 billion of value, according to a study that Kling cites. That is a lot of money. He is not very keen on air miles, largely it seems because he dislikes the way that dinner table companions go on about them. I know how he feels. An acquaintance of mine, who shall remain nameless, would constantly brag about how many air miles he got via Virgin or whatever… zzzzzz
On a more serious note however, one can see how some people might want to treat the air miles market as a sort of parallel currency. $700 billion dollars worth of air miles could buy one a lot of goods and services, conceivably, if exchanged by barter. Clearly they are highly restricted in terms of liquidity, the key advantage of money. But during a period of high inflationary stress, I could see how air miles could become quite popular as a medium of exchange.
The idea of competitive currencies is often rightly associated with the late F.A. Hayek. The idea seems to have gone rather quiet of late. Perhaps because we currently live in a period of relatively low inflation, the fears about the dangers of monopoly money and hubristic central banks have faded. It would be highly complacent, however, to assume that the current benign low-inflation environment will last forever. These things seldom do. Hayek’s idea may be ready for a comeback.
At first sight, this story is incomprehensible.
Secret terror courts considered
Special courts sitting in secret for pre-trial hearings in terror cases are being considered by the Home Office.
Forget the justice of the process–secret hearings with Home Office-selected advocates and judges–for a moment. What would the value of this be? If an actual trial must still take place under normal conditions, what’s wrong with normal committal proceedings, which rarely require much in the way of presentation of evidence?
There must be a prosecutorial advantage to be had, now or later, or the Home Office would not consider it. Is this a staging post to something more? A piece of impossible kite-flying for some bait-and-switch? Or is it a way to evade other procedural safeguards?
(A speculative example of the last: The Special Judge says there’s a case to answer. The accused is remanded in custody. A trial will take place when the prosecution is ready. Reporting restrictions are in place, to avoid prejudicing a future trial. But further evidence-gathering takes a very long time. In effect one has indeterminate imprisonment with a radically lowered burden of proof. There may be no opportunity to test the evidence. But there can be no public disquiet. No one will care, because next to no one will know–and those who do will be bound to secrecy.)
As a scientist and a practical man, I’m against manned-space flight; as a human being I’m in favour.
– Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, interviewed on Today this morning
The Independent (or ‘Al-Independent’ as some of us like to call that bastion of Islamo-fascist apologists) has an article predicting nothing less than a full blown domestic Islamic insurgency in Britain.
Whilst clearly we have a problem, I really do not buy The Independent’s scenario as presented, implying that the 100,000 or so “totally militarised” Muslims in Britain from various hotspots are just raring and ready to make large parts of the country into no-go areas. However I guess we will know who is correct soon enough.
“So what can Britain learn from Pakistan about fighting home-grown terrorists? Newsnight interviews President Musharraf”
– Martha Kearney.
Let us hope Gordon Brown was not watching, eh?
Hate the idea of ID cards? Do not keep your views to yourself.
I was sorry to hear that Robin Cook croaked. When he was alive I wanted to toss him into a vat of hot tar, to make him howl; but now he’s a stiff I realise what a loss he is to our nation.
– Harry Hutton
It is splendid news that the trapped Russian submariners have been rescued from the dreadful fate that overtook the Kursk a few years ago. Fortunately the Russians did not stand on their pride as they did the last time they suffered a sub-aquatic disaster. This time they seem to have fairly quickly accepted the help that was offered to them by many navies around the world.
Although the Royal Navy’s robotic sub was the prime mover of this rescue, it was really a very international effort with the USA and Japan providing vital assistance in the rescue. Hopefully this more enlightened approach by the Russian government and military authorities admitting they could not effect the rescue themselves is a sign of institutional change at the top, but the cynic in me wonders if it was not just a domestic political calculation that the embarrassment at having to have their submariners rescued by Western naval personnel represented less political damage than another scene on the television of angry family members on the dockside grieving over their dead sons.
Via Dave Barry, I found my way to this story, which seems to have escaped the attention so far of such dedicated Euroblogs as this one:
THE EU has declared a crackpot war on busty barmaids — by trying to ban them from wearing low-cut tops.
Po-faced penpushers have deemed it a HEALTH HAZARD for bar girls to show too much cleavage.
And in a daft directive that will have drinkers choking on their pints, Brussels bureaucrats have ordered a cover-up.
They say barmaids run a skin cancer risk if they expose themselves to the sun when they go outside to collect glasses.
A good way – not the only way but a good way – to understand the atmosphere of politics in any particular year in these times of ours is to ask: how old is the Baby Boom?
The Baby Boom is now nearly sixty. The men are at the pub, and the women are shrieking jealously that those strumpets behind the bar should stop flaunting themselves. But because in their youth these same now-jealous frumps scorned such puritanical opinions – and indeed did their share of breast baring themselves, at pop festivals and the like – they have to find a new way to say this boring old stuff. So, rather than talking the language of morals and of traditional decency, like grannies used to, they reach instead for health, the great modern excuse for ancient animosities and prohibitions.
It is partly to feelings like this that the EUroprats, of all ages and both genders, are now appealing. And partly, of course, they just want to boss people around for the sheer sake of it.
There has been quite a bit of press coverage in the last couple of weeks about the discovery of an object in the outer solar system, which has been given the astronomical name 2003 UB313, but which has been popularly dubbed “Xena”. In some circles this has been described as a new planet, and in others its discovery has been given as comprehensive proof that Pluto is not a planet and that there are only eight planets in the solar system. Personally I have two opinions here. Firstly, I think it should be “Rupert” and not “Xena”. And of the two viewpoints given, I tend to agree with the second, which is that the new discovery reduces the number of planets to eight. Although thinking about it some more, I am not sure that either viewpoint is right. A better interpretation might be that it reduces the number of planets to four. Or perhaps to zero. It all depends on your point of view.
Why do I think this? In order to properly understand the question, an astronomical primer is in order. Many of our readers will already know this stuff, but this is all quite interesting and is nice to put it all down in one place.
Let me describe the solar system. For the moment, I am going to leave Pluto out, as it does not fit into what I am to initially describe. The solar system is generally considered to contain two types of planet. One is the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and Mars). These orbit the sun at distances between 50 million kilometres and 250 million kilometres, and have radii of between 2500km and 6500km. They have surfaces made of solid materials (ie rock) . The second type of planet is the “Gas Giants” (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune). These orbit the sun at distances of between 0.75 billion and 4.5 billion kilometres, and have radii of between 25000 and 70000 kilometres. They basically consist of atmospheres that get denser and denser as the altitude gets lower and lower, and which gradually thicken until at some rather indeterminate point they go from being a gas to a liquid to a solid or to even more exotic things that defy simple classification. These planets are orbited by many small rocky moons, and planetary rings. Three of them (Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune) are also orbited by larger moons that would count as planets in their own right if they orbited the sun and were part of the inner solar system.
The orbits of these planets (of both kinds, but with one exception that we will get to) have two notable facts about them. First, they all circle the sun in approximately the same plane, known as the “plane of the ecliptic” or just “the ecliptic”. As a consequence, if there are a number of planets visible in the sky at the same time, they tend to be in a fairly straight line. Secondly, the orbits of the planets are approximately circular.
But they are not exactly circular, and they are not exactly in the same plane. Mathematicians have ways of quantifying both these things. The first of these is relatively simple. Simply measure the angle between the ecliptic and the plane of the planet’s orbit, and quote this number as the orbital inclination. With the exception that I will get to in a moment, the planets discussed already have small orbital inclinations of up to about three and a half degrees. See here for detailed planetary statistics of various kinds, including inclination.
While Copernicus was the first modern scientist to recognise that the Earth and other planets went around the sun, his theory did not quite successfully explain the movements of the planets in the heavens. That took someone with better mathematics. → Continue reading: There are more things in heaven than were dreamed of in the philosophy I was taught at school
One commentator this week suggested that Mr Blair’s administration is taking its anti-terrorism policy from Samizdata. I don’t think so. A copy of The Times for March 3rd 2009 has fallen into my hands:
Terror site closed down: Police hold 17
By Daniel Tendler, Stewart O’Neill and Sean McGrory
EVERY member of an international extremist group based in Britain was under arrest last night after an extraordinary day of police operations stretching from one of the smartest parts of West London to the United States and Australia. Charges are expected to be brought soon under the Incitement to Terrorism Act 2006, though police have up to three months to question suspects. The FBI is interviewing more suspects and has raided the group’s internet provider.
While police are jubilant following a series of successful armed raids across London, and have seized large amounts of terrorist property including a number of computers, they and their colleagues are still hunting for associates of the “sinister and heavily-armed” group. The organisation, known as “Samizdata”, runs a website showing members receiving weapons training abroad and frequently carries approving statements about armed resistence to the state–even its logo shows an automatic weapon menacingly supported on radical textbooks. The website has been shut down and all visitors for the past 2 years will be questioned, say Special Branch.
→ Continue reading: The Day After Tomorrow
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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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