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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Saturday night’s American Cinema Foundation panel at the American Film Institute in LA, moderated by media critic Cathy Seipp, was fascinating on several levels.
The theme of the event was “Mass market, smart content,” and featured four TV writers/producers/directors: Paul Feig (creator and executive producer: “Freaks & Geeks;” director: “Arrested Development;” director and writer, the feature film “I Am David;” author: “Kick Me: Adventures In Adolescence” and the upcoming “Superstud: How I Became a 24-Year-Old Virgin”), Scott Kaufer (executive producer: “Boston Legal;” writer: “Gilmore Girls,” “Chris Isaak Show,” “Murphy Brown”), Rob Long (co-creator and excecutive producer: “Men, Women & Dogs,” “Love & Money,” “George & Leo;” executive producer: “Cheers”) and Tim Minear (executive produer: “The Inside,” “Wonderfalls,” “Angel,” “Firefly”). Together, they tackled the issue of how successful television writers manage to keep their distinct viewpoints when writing for the mass market.
I believe wholeheartedly that there is no such thing as ‘the mainstream,’ and that the mass market is dead, and being replaced by a mass of niches. I also believe that the mass media is not being destroyed, merely altered radically, and individuals are being liberated from the mass by the unprecedented choice of personal relevance that (thanks to things like blogs, mp3s, TV on DVD, podcasting, and TiVo) they have today – and that choice of personal relevance is increasing exponentially at a rapid rate. So the topic of the panel was extremely appealing to me as a total geek on the social ramifications of emergent technology tip.
I guess I forgot that these guys write some funny stuff, and that they were going to make me laugh – which they did, in a big way. Some of my favourite exchanges and lines:
CATHY SEIPP: How do you react to people who say they never watch TV?
TIM MINEAR: I run them over with my Mercedes.
SCOTT KAUFER: After seeing [the movie] JFK, I thought, “Why don’t I make a movie called Oliver Stone, and just invent shit?
ROB LONG: What would you have to invent?!
PAUL FEIG: That he’s nice, he’s respectful of women…
TIM MINEAR (on not being allowed to have a serial killer character use the word retard): The network thought the serial killer was being awfully insensitive.
I did not want to hit the guys over the head with the beliefs I laid out above, so I asked them if they thought that TV series on DVD (which they all seemed to agree was the best thing to happen to TV in a long time, even if the lack of leadership in the Writers’ Guild means that they get screwed out of decent earnings, receiving only 2 or 4 pennies per DVD sale), TiVo, and that greater choice of personal relevance is going to affect what they do in any significant way. Every panel member had something to say about that, but the most interesting answer came from Paul Feig, who said that the bottom line is that the show that draws the most advertising revenue wins, and it will always be that way.
Except I am sure that it will not always be that way, and that the advances in emergent technologies and the rebirth of niche will bring about that dramatic shift a lot sooner than we may think. The business model of broadcast must change if it is not to die (and with only 12 per cent of US viewers getting their TV via antenna these days anyway, ripping it down is not a bad idea). As viewers (read: customers) get used to having that personal choice of relevance, they will throw their attention (read: value) to the places where they can get it: cable, satellite, and the internet. And if you think advertisers will not pick up on that and move their ad spend accordingly, I have some stock in broadcast that I would just love to sell you.
The kicker being, I do not believe that advertising revenue is going to be the bread and butter of TV on cable, satellite, and the internet. Sure, there will be ads in the world as long as there are lazy, clueless companies who believe in “just in case” marketing. But the costs of that kind of marketing are rising, the effectiveness declining, and profits down as a result.
Which brings us to my point: This drive to niche dovetails very nicely with the need of companies to put customers at the beginning of the value chain instead of at the end of it. The increasing emphasis on the individual also means a move from push marketing to engagement marketing. So instead of wasting a great deal of money on a TV ad, a company can spend a fraction of that on, say, developing great blogs to provide value and engage the niche they are targetting. (They can throw some podcasts up there while they are at it.)
So here is the question I really wish I had asked the panel: Ten years from now, who exactly is going to be spending the kind of money on network TV ads that they need to maintain this broken system? And if that money isn’t there, will you be running over non-TV-watching freaks with your Kia instead of your Mercedes?
I’m all for equality. I am. That’s why I let my female staff work longer than the men so they can earn the same.
– the Pub Landlord on telly last night
As has been mentioned, I am presently in southern China. At this precise moment, I am using WiFi in a Starbucks in central Shenzhen, just over the border from Hong Kong, recuperating from the heat and humidity outside, and taking an immense dose of caffeine to fight my jetlag.
The Pearl River delta is at this point in history the workshop of the world, particularly in terms of electronics manufacturing (although the goods with the high capital costs tend to still be made in Taiwan, Korea, and elsewhere). Much of the manufacturing tends these days to be done in places like Dongguang (a little further upstream) but Shenzhen is where you go if you want to buy the stuff.
I shall have a lot more to say on this (and lots and lots of photos) later. But for now, here is a picture of some graphics cards with really big fans that I took in a truly immense electronics market a few minutes ago.
This will no doubt make Perry happy.
At the moment, my fellow Samizdatista Michael Jennings is somewhere in South China. In fact, a few minutes ago, he crossed the border from the “Special Administrative Zone” in Hong Kong, and into the Shenzhen region(?) of China.
How do I know this? Well, he just sent me an SMS message saying so. Quite extraordinary that it is easy as pie to send a message from China to Australia in such a manner. Of course, it is amazing how blase one gets to modern technology. I have grown in the habit of sending him SMS messages to his phone when he’s in Europe, without thinking about it. Usually we send sports scores and commentaries to each other; as cricket coverage is thin on the ground in China, I’m keeping Michael up to date with the latest scores from the cricket Test in Wellington.
A curious thought- there’s a new “Star Wars” movie coming out soon, and I watched the trailer online last night. In the “Star Wars” universe, SMS has of course been rendered obsolete by holograms. It is all rather futuristic, but is it practical?
No doubt it is technically possible. One of the very bright engineers in the Samizdata.net readership might like to explain what it would require. But will it ever catch on? I am not so sure.
One technology that is here and now is video telephones, marketed here in Australia by 3 Mobile. A cousin of mine gave them a whirl, and I asked her how it went. She reported that it wasn’t as good as she thought; too often, she was not comfortable with her appearance or did not want to have her caller identify her exact location. Although she found the technology quite clever, she found it intrusive, and not as useful as she had hoped.
I think if a clever engineer ever developed a hologram means of communication such as we see in the “Star Wars” movies, they might be dismayed by the lack of interest shown in it.
I will tell you why. Like many bloggers, I blog in my pajamas, and I would shudder to think of letting anyone seeing me in such a state. Especially since, with today being Sunday, I’ve not the slightest of intention of dressing up. I can send SMS messages to South China and no one need know how badly dressed I am. This relatively simple method of communication will be with us for quite a while yet.
…no, not as in ‘Hollywood sucks’. Far from it in fact.
Our favourite lefty in Los Angeles, film producer, cigar addict, gun-owning pinko, O.G. blogger and all around gentleman Brian Linse kindly made his severely cool house in the Hollywood Hills available to me and fellow Samizdatista Jackie so that we would throw yet another blogger party for many very interesting people connected to the blogosphere…
Mickey Kaus demonstrated his improvised vampire repellent technique to a hushed audience
Many people stampeded into the bedroom when Amy suggested a game of ‘spin the bottle’
Eugene Volokh gave Jackie some legal advice in return for the famous Chilli Con Chelsea recipe
Arianna was described as a ‘once and future blogger’ but she seemed pretty blog-savvy right now Update: More reports and pictute of the latest LA Blogger Bash can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.
I always thought that NGO meant Non Governmental Organisation. How come any of them get money from the state?
– thanks to Natalie Solent for spotting a good point made at The Road to Euro Serfdom
Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945
Max Hastings
Knopf, 2004
I do not suppose that at any moment of history has the agony of the world been so great or widespread. Tonight the sun goes down on more suffering then ever before in the world.
Sir Winston Churchill’s bleak view, given to his daughter at the Yalta conference, reflects the deplorable state of Europe in February 1945. The end of the war in Europe was now clearly in sight; however, the finale promised, and delivered, horrors of a truely grotesque nature.
The nature of the German collapse was such that it has not received a great deal of attention by historians. Once the Allies were fully established on the Continent with their victory in the Battle of Normandy, the nature of the outcome of the war was set, and apart from Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, and the Battle of Berlin, not a great deal of attention has been given to the general course of operations in Europe.
That is not so surprising. The collapse of Germany was in the most part a gradual erosion rather then a swift cracking. The German army had been broken in France, but logisitical problems and the weather had halted the Allies progress; given time, the Germans were able to scramble enough forces to halt the Allies advance; even launch one last desperate counterattack.
The erosion and collapse of German military power forms the basis of this book, but it is much more then that.
→ Continue reading: Europe’s final agonies.
The American diplomat George Kennan passed away on Thursday night, at the ripe old age of 101.
George Kennan was famous for being the principle intellectual architect of the US policy of ‘containment’, as applied to the USSR. As a diplomat who served in the USSR, he composed what is known as the ‘Long Telegram’, which had a considerable impact on the thinking of US policymakers, which became even greater when it was expanded into a longer essay, ‘The sources of Soviet conduct’.
Kennan’s view was that Soviet expansionist tendencies were internally driven, and based on the fundamental illegitimate nature of Soviet power:
At bottom of Kremlin’s neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted Russian rulers rather than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form, fragile and artificial in its psychological foundations, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within. And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it.
Kennan’s view was that US policy should be to meet the Soviet challenge with firmness, patience and intelligent policymaking. In the ‘Long Telegram’, he compares the relationship between the US and the USSR as that of a doctor and a disturbed patient.
What is curious though is that Kennan thought this would be solely a political and diplomatic effort. He deplored the US military buildup in the Cold War. It strikes me as curious that a diplomat that lived through the rise and fall of Nazi Germany would under-rate the importance of military preparedness in dealing with militant totalitarian dictatorships.
But then Kennan had many curious views.
→ Continue reading: George Kennan 1904-2005
If you were annoyed at the support being shown for state regulation of fashion modelling, check out what they want to do to cheerleading.
Texas Representative Al Edwards wants state funding of schools to be cut for those schools that knowingly permit “sexually suggestive” cheerleading performances. Because everyone knows how hard it is for a bunch of jailbait dancing around in mini-skirts and showing their underwear to be “sexually suggestive,” right? According to Edwards:
It’s just too sexually oriented, you know, the way they’re shaking their behinds and going on, breaking it down…And then we say to them, ‘don’t get involved in sex unless it’s marriage or love, it’s dangerous out there’ and yet the teachers and directors are helping them go through those kind of gyrations.
That the state should not be instructing any children when it comes to sex, marriage, and love in the first place would no doubt never occur to this politician. More discouraging is the reaction from constituents.
J.M. Farias, owner of Austin Cheer Factory, said cheerleading aficionados would welcome the law. Cheering competitions, he said, penalize for suggestive movements or any vulgarity.
[…]
“I don’t think this law would really shake the industry at all. In fact, it would give parents a better feeling, mostly dads and boyfriends, too,” Farias said.
Gosh, if making dads and boyfriends feel better isn’t a good excuse to create more laws, what is?
Instapundit has already just linked to it, and to other responses to the same story, and copied and pasted the first two paragraphs. It being a CNN report about how Forbes has included Fidel Castro in its list of the world’s richest people, and about how Fidel Castro is not amused. This story will soon be everywhere, but I do not care. Count me in, if only as one delighted heckler among millions.
Funny as those first two paragraphs are, I think this sentence is my particular favourite:
Castro, 78, and in power since a 1959 revolution, said he was considering suing.
I cannot believe he really said that, but in the event that he did… you go grandad.
This reminds me of Danny de Vito’s line in Mars Attacks, where he says (if memory serves), to the invading Martians, something like: “You want to take over the world. You’re gonna need lawyers, right?”
Not that Fidel is trying to take over the world any more. It is just the idea of a hitherto unreconstructed Marxist-Leninist trying to protect what’s left of his revolutionary reputation by calling in the lawyers.
It is, alas, far too much to hope that he will really do it.
Various precincts of the US body politic are obsessed with Terri Schiavo, a young woman who has been at the center of an ongoing familial, legal, and now, sadly, political dogfight.
In very broad terms, Terri Schiavo is unable to make decisions for herself. She is apparently brain damaged, and has been in some degree of coma or “persistent vegetative state” for years. Her husband wants to withdraw artificial life support and let nature take its course. Her parents want her kept on life support indefinitely in the hopes that some day she will make some degree of recovery. As ever, you can find a medical expert to present just about any side of this that you want. This situation is, sadly, all too common.
The uproar around Terri Schiavo illustrates rather nicely the key distinction between libertarians and, well, everyone else. For libertarians, the critical question is “who decides?”, based on their belief that you should be able to make your own decisions in life. Most other folks, it seems, don’t care “who decides” nearly as much as they care about “what decision is made,” and particularly, “whatever decision is made, it damn will better be one I approve of.”
In Terri’s case, this means that all sorts of folks who you think would know better than to invite the state to participate in medical decision-making are doing exactly that, because Terri’s husband has made a decision that they do not approve of.
So, not only have we been treated the spectacle of the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, trying to elbow his way to Terri’s bedside so he can dictate what care she will receive, we also have various Florida legislators trying to insert the State of Florida into the mix. Now the US Congress, apparently not satisfied with embarrassing itself* in its ongoing investigation into steroid use in major league baseball, is preparing to abuse its subpoena power to block the decision made by Terri’s husband.
A fundamental principle of health care law, and one dear to the hearts of libertarians, is that you must give informed consent to any treatment before it is administered to you (with an exception in cases of emergency when you are unable to communicate, in which case the caregivers are allowed to assume you want life-saving treatment). A doctor who treats you without your consent has committed assault and battery. It is your right to refuse any treatment at all, even if it will mean your death, and so long as you are a competent adult no court or legislature can intervene to force treatment on you.
When the patient is not a decisional adult, someone who will make decisions on their behalf must be located. You can appoint your own surrogate decision-maker, via a health care power of attorney (which I strongly recommend). Some states have lists of “deemed” surrogate decision-makers on the statute books, such as spouses, parents, siblings, etc., in rank order so everyone knows who has authority in a given case. As a last resort, a court will appoint a guardian.
The whole process is focused on the proper issue of identifying “who will decide.” Once the decision-maker is identified/appointed, they stand in the shoes of the patient. The state retains (or should retain) only the most limited role, to ensure that the decision-maker does not abuse their power. Clearly, the decision to withdraw life support is a decision that Terri Schiavo could make for herself. Indeed, my wife has told me that if she were in Terri’s position, that is exactly what she would want. Her husband’s decision to make it in her stead is by no means an abuse of his power as her surrogate decision-maker – such decisions are made routinely, every single day, across the country by people charged with the heavy burden of making health care decisions for someone else.
What we have in the Schaivo case, then, is the legally appointed and recognized decision-maker making a choice that is well within his purview. Multiple court reviews have concluded that he is the right person to make the call, and his decision should be honored. To this libertarian, that is the end of the matter, because the very essence of being a libertarian is respecting the decisions of others even when you might decide otherwise. To a broad spectrum of conservatives, however, the fact that medical decision-making should be private is of no concern when the decisions made are decisions they disagree with.
*While at the gym yesterday, I caught a few minutes of the steroid hearings. It was painfully embarassing to see the solons of American governance earnestly seeking noted idiot Jose Canseco’s advice on public policy. A quick survey of the fellows in the locker room revealed that this latest Congressional exercise in nannying competent adults and chasing headlines is not being well-received by the public. The universal sentiment was, “Don’t they have anything better to do?”
I watched the beginning of Dirty Harry on the telly (before remembering that I already have it on DVD), and have just heard Clint Eastwood deliver the first version of the do I feel lucky? speech. And I just want to say something that I have long felt, which is that he delivers the line, at least on that first occasion, very badly. They should have done a retake. The actual “do I feel lucky?” bit is gabbled, and you can hardly hear it. There should have been a slight pause between “you’ve got to ask yourself a question” and “do I feel lucky?”, but there is no pause. The sentences just before are fine, but this particular bit sounds like an uncomprehending read-through, not a performance at all. I realise they did not want to upstage the rerun of the same lines later in the movie, when the real Bad Guy is asked the same question, but I reckon they downplayed it too much.
Not that I blame Clint Eastwood. Or, I blame him only if he was the one who chose this particular take. But I presume that this was the director, or maybe the producer. Actors are usually helpless in circumstances like these. Time and again, they get called bad actors, when it was really bad directing and bad editing.
Otherwise, excellent movie entertainment, full of good sense about the deterrent value of chasing and punishing criminals and the pointlessness of worrying too much about what makes them become criminals. The important thing is to hunt them down and lock them up, or worse. (One of the biggest reasons why they become criminals being that they do not expect this to happen.) This is a lesson which the USA’s rulers now seem to be learning fast but which our rulers here in the UK (see the comments on Tuesday’s murder posting) are still only groping towards.
Most of the mere people in both countries have of course always known this.
Thank goodness for the movies. On this particular issue, insofar as they have argued anything at all, they have mostly argued very sensibly.
And let no one kid you that movies like Dirty Harry are just “mindless” entertainment. When people call a movie mindless, it generally means that it is actually rather mindful, but that the mindfulness involved is something that the complainer would rather not face. So, he claims that there is nothing to be faced. It was the same with the (ridiculously titled) Death Wish series. Those movies are crammed full of ideas.
And mostly very good ones. When Bronson chalked up his first kill in the first of these movies, cinemas everywhere erupted with spontaneous cheering.
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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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