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]
|
Keynesian economics may have gone out of fashion, but it is still here with us today in a different form. That is the theory of ASI president Madsen Pirie, who writes that Keynesianism has been privatized by the current UK government.
Keynesian economics used to be about government spending being used to flatten the business cycle. Now the privatized Keynesianism is about pushing private citizens into doing it. As Pirie writes:
They make saving less worthwhile by burdening companies with taxes and regulations, depressing share prices. They make spending easier with lower interest rates and by measures which boost house prices and encourage people to borrow.
The privatized Keynesianism builds up indebtedness and inflated house prices, and cuts into investment and pension provision. Government hopes that the boom part of the cycle will come to the rescue, and that rising wealth and prosperity will solve these problems.
Or will the privatized Keynesianism inflict the same long-term damage on the economy that the old Keynesianism did?
Washington Post reports that the State Department is moving ahead with a plan to implant electronic identification chips in U.S. passports that will allow computer matching of facial characteristics, despite warnings that the technology is prone to a high rate of error.
Under State Department specifications finalized this month for companies to bid on the new system, a chip woven into the cover of the passport would contain a digital photograph of the traveler’s face. That photo could then be compared with an image of the traveler taken at the passport control station, and also matched against photos of people on government watch lists.
But federal researchers who have tested face-recognition technology say its error rate is unacceptably high – up to 50 percent if photographs are taken without proper lighting.
They then proceed to make a case for fingerprinting that has a lower error rate. Yeah, that will make things much better.
While face recognition is set as a standard, countries could add one or two other approved biometrics: fingerprints and scans of the eye’s iris. Several European countries are considering adding fingerprints to their passports. And branding with fire. Oops the last one wasn’t in the news.
Rebecca Dornbusch, deputy director of the International Biometric Industry Association is quotes as saying:
The important thing to recognize is that it [face-recognition requirement] is an improvement. [The State Department should] continue to implement as many biometrics as they can, so they can ensure . . . the most secure protection.
Oh really, and how about the most secure revenue stream to the International Biometric Industry Association.
proprietary. A blog publishing software package. Radio Userland is more popular with tech bloggers. radio.userland.com
proprietary. A blog publishing software package. Expression Engine is a powerful content management system and is particularly suitable for ‘high end’ group blogs that are full featured and expect heavy traffic. www.expressionengine.com
noun. A spambot is online code which automatically generates larg numbers of unwanted messages and directs them at members of the public. Within the context of blogging, it is code which enters unsolicited comment spam.
A spambot can enter dozens or even hundreds of unwanted spams in a matter of minutes into the comments of an unprotected blog
technical A Turing Test is a test which determines if the party on the other end of a remote communication is a human or a computer program (also known as a ‘Captcha‘ (qv)).
This is germane to blogging because many comment sections on blogs use non-machine readable systems prevent spambots from entering comment spam.
noun. ‘Spam’ is unsolicited online messages generally of a commercial nature, usually delivered as e-mail (i.e. virtual junk mail). Comment spam however is when someone posts off-topic commercial remarks with links in a blog’s comment section.
Some comment spam is overt but just as often it takes the form of innocuous remarks such as “I agree with your article!” or “Hey, great site!” in a blog’s comment section: the spammer’s ‘payload’ being in the personal details link, which takes you to a dubious (often pornographic) site. One reason comment spam is a major problem is that if readers visit the spammer’s link(s), their site often tries to install browser hijackers, tracking cookies or other adware/malware on the duped reader’s computer. Most comment spam is entered by spambots rather than actually people.
Increasingly blogs are using technical means such as Turing tests, pre-publish moderation or registration in order to prevent spambots from polluting their comments sections with Viagra ads, online pharmacy scams and links to Russian porn sites.
History is a flexible commodity. More like therapy really:
John Kerry started his acceptance speech at last week’s Democratic convention by giving a military salute and saying, “I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for duty.” He was introduced, very movingly, by a veteran who lost both legs and one arm fighting in Vietnam. On stage were other Vietnam veterans who served with Kerry on one of the so-called swift boats going up the Mekong river. That swift boat provided the metaphor for Kerry’s whole speech. Evoking “our band of brothers” he said: “We may be a little older, we may be a little greyer, but we still know how to fight for our country.”
There is plenty of this kind of eulogising in the Guardian.
Stange is it not? The very same people who would have been spitting at John Kerry and calling him a “fascist baby-killer” in the 1960’s are the same ones who are now getting all misty-eyed and choked up over his Vietnam war record.
Yesterday, I visited some friends in Cambridge. In the evening I was in no great hurry to go home, so I went for a stroll around the colleges and other attractions in the city centre.
The centre of Cambridge in August is a little strange, as most of the university students have gone home, but the town is none the less still bustling with tourists and language students. The many pubs and restaurants are full of people, but the feel of the town is entirely different to how it is at other times of year.
Wandering around the corner from Trumpington Street, I found myself passing The Eagle, described by the sign outside the door as “The most famous pub in Cambridge”. This is likely true, although these days it is not a pub frequented much by university people, as it trades on its fame, selling rather overpriced beer to visitors to the city.
This pub is famous for two things. One is that it was a favourite pub of RAF airmen based nearby during the Second World War. Much of the ceiling of the pub is covered with graffiti writen by airmen prior to dangerous missions. There are various other pictures, model aircraft and similar things in the pub commemorating this aspect of its history.
There are also pictures of assorted other famous Cambridge people (Newton, Byron, and others) on some of the walls, but there somewhat oddly there are no pictures relating to the other reason why the pub is famous. In 1954 two men had some lengthy conversations about a certain scientific matter in one of the bars. At the end of one such session they announced to the barman and fellow drinkers that “We have discovered the secret of life”.
These men were of course James Watson and Francis Crick. Oddly, the proprieters of the pub seem to lack a proper sense of the significance of all this, as the only mention of Watson and Crick anywhere in the pub is a small hand-written sign next to the bar noting that this was the bar where they made their announcement. (However, the significance is well known by others, and the role of the pub was mentioned in many of the obituaries of Francis Crick upon his death just a few weeks ago).
And it was this recent death I think that led me to walk into the pub, buy myself a beer, and raise my glass to the memory of the scientist. I was just considering the question as to whether the discovery that was announced just near where I was sitting was indeed the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century (on reflection quite possibly) when my mobile phone rang.
The phone did not show the number of the calling party. This usually means a business call, making it a slightly curious thing to receive at half past eight on a Saturday evening.
“This is <incomprehensible> pizza and kebabs. You ordered a ham and mushroom pizza”.
“No, I didn’t. You have a wrong number”.
“No. I am calling the number that came up on the phone when you called me.”
“In what city are you? I am in Cambridge. If you are not, it is unlikely that I ordered a pizza from you”.
“You ordered a pizza”.
“I am in Cambridge. Where are you?”
“You ordered a pizza from me”.
“No. You have a wrong number”.
“No. Your number came up on my phone. Don’t ever do this again.”
He was starting to get angry. At that point, my choices were to either get upset and start insulting him, to continue playing a game of “Where in the United Kingdom is Carmen Sandiego?” in the hope of convincing him that I could not have possibly ordered a pizza, or to just hang up, and I chose to hang up.
As it happens though, I now rather wish I had not done so, and that I had instead asked him some questions about his telephone. (At least if I could have got him to calm down). Either he manually transcribed the number that came up on his caller ID, and then made an error recording or dialing the number of his customer, in which case there was no mystery. Or, he had a system that automatically logged the number and then dialed me back without the number having to be entered manually. In this case, I do understand why he might not have believed me. This would have had to have meant that there was a bug or malfunction in his equipment or somewhere in the phone network. Which for simple things like forwarding numbers is not something we expect these days.
But as a disruption to the general karma of my day, this was a curious one. Not perhaps as curious as being stopped in the street by a teenage girl and asked if they had ice cream in Victorian times, but still curious. Somewhat sadly, it did completely destroy the solemnity of the drink I was having to the memory of a great scientist.
This is exactly the time one one should avoid writing: immediately after being poured out of a Belfast taxi on a Saturday night. But it is also the time when “In Vino Veritas” holds most true and one will say what comes to mind rather than considering details like flow and cute turns of phrase.
I go out for music. If a woman happens to fall into my lap during the search, that is certainly a plus, but not a prerequisite. Tonight, I decided on the Shaftesbury Square/Botanic Avenue area rather than the usual good chat and trad music at my local. For a bit of a change I started at Madison’s. A couple pints, a bit of girl watching… but after three or four songs I simply could not take the music. Not that it sounded bad. Au contraire. It sounded marvellous. The problem was… it was a Milli Vanilli band: karaoke tracks with occasional backup from live guitar, bass guitar and maybe vocals. To most of the audience I am sure it was just two guys making a lot of music. Never mind there was no drummer or cowbell or keyboard player on stage; never mind that sometimes the guitarist was playing a D chord when the sound was lead guitar. The guys on stage were making their nut; the audience was happy… capitalism at work.
But I was not a happy camper… and despite the pulchritude surrounding me I decamped for a more classical low down rock bar.
I found what I was looking for. Not that it was much of a search. I knew where I was going. I would tell you except I do not wish to get them into trouble. They had the real thing. Five live musicians with driving Rock and Roll so loud a Brussell’s regulator would have pissed herself. “If it is too loud, you are too old”. I was, naturally, up close to the stage where I could feel the volume. That is the proper way to experience AC/DC and Judas Priest covers… up where your clothes are vibrating.
Now I may have an advantage over some. I probably blew out half my hearing long ago standing in front of a Fender amp in a Pittsburgh bar band; or perhaps from that time I half laid on the stage at a Patti Smith concert at the Leona Theater in the South Side, my head resting inside the lower Altec Lansing. That was a good few years and a lot of substance abuse ago.
One thing you need not worry about. The rockers will simply not obey the regulators. I have said it here before. ‘Turn it down’ is simply not in an electric lead guitarist’s vocabulary. “Fuck off”, on the other hand, is definitely there.
You can only be enslaved if you are actually willing to obey the law… or, as Robert Heinlein said: “You can never enslave a free man. The most that you can do is to kill him.”
Oh yeah… I went out for a cheeseburger with bacon afterwards. Dripping grease and ketchup… yummy. Screw the Health Nazi’s too…
I am sure David Carr would have approved.
Republicans and Democrats, Labour and Tory, Christian Democrat and Social Democrat, Gaullist and Socialist … they all have a vested interest in maximising perception of their differences: and so the illusion of choice and empowerment that underpins the whole democratic shell game is maintained.
This is hardly a new phenomenon as the fascists and communists in the 1930’s and 40’s did the same thing because like today’s parties, they appealed to largely the same constituencies and the crossover of leaders, members and supporters between them was considerable. Yet like the situation today, what is striking is not how they differed but how similar they really were. Fetishizing the differences is a way of hiding the truth: you are being asked to eat a shit sandwich and the only choice on offer is the type of bread.
A few days past but who is counting? In all the talk of the anniversaries noted by the media on August the 4th (90th anniversary of the British declaration of war on Germany and the 300 hundredth anniversary of the capture of Gibraltar) I hoped (although I did not expect) that there would be a brief mention of August the 4th 1789.
The French Revolution was mostly just a story of murder and plundering (at least ten times more government officials, paper money, vast numbers of killings all over France, endless new regulations…) but there were a few good things (things that people like me often overlook) and most of them happened on August the 4th 1789.
It was on this date that the National Assembly abolished many of the old taxes and regulations of the Ancient Regime.
Taxes to the Church – abolished. Feudal dues – abolished. Many of the Royal taxes (including, I believe, the salt tax) – abolished.
True the good things were being overwhelmed by bad things even by August the 4th 1789 – but, to be fair, we should still remember the good things.
It was also the date when (again if my memory serves me correctly) serfdom was abolished. True French courts had hardly been in the habit of enforcing serfdom – but the fact remains that about half a million people were formally serfs in the France of 1789.
Sadly my memory fails me when I try to remember when the guilds were abolished – was it also August the 4th? True the guilds should not have been abolished, it was their legal monopoly on the production of various products (granted by Henry IV – before his time towns in France had varied in terms of guild rights) that should have been abolished – but the revolutionaries were sort of right in this area. They (or at least some of them) sort of understood that the effects of the guild monopoly (in-so-far as the courts enforced it) were bad.
|
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.
|
Recent Comments