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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After reading his Memoirs, I sent Edward Teller my enthusiastic opinion of it – and a personal “Thank you”. I did not expect, or receive, a reply.
Dear Professor Teller,
You will have received many tributes to your wonderful book and I should like to send you mine. During the last few years I have decided to write, just for myself, reviews of the books I read. Usually brief, this one has got entirely out of hand and I cannot expect you to read it, but perhaps its length will impress you of the impact your book has had on an ordinary person. Also a “Thank You”. I was interned by the Japanese in Shanghai and it is uncertain how things would have gone if the ending of the War had been long drawn out and messy. The Bomb you helped to make ensured it was sudden and conclusive.
Edward Teller died in on September 9th of this year at the age of 95. The review that follows was written shortly before his death. → Continue reading: The Memoirs of Edward Teller
I must be the last person in the blogosphere to have spotted this. Some guy seems to have been fired by Microsoft for posting a photo of a bunch of Macintosh G5 computers being delivered to some nameless warehouse in Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters.
It seems a tad capricious… unless of course there is more to this than meets the eye. Much as I dislike Microsoft, we have only one side of the story here so I feel no great need to follow the herd in leaping to this bloke’s defence.
For me the interesting thing is the way a personal problem of less than earth shaking import can flash around the world and get the blogosphere clucking… I guess it was a slow week for interesting world events to write about and anyway, who can resist the chance to bash the Evil Micro$oft?
Ms Shipley, a Labour MP, says allowing the adverts for burgers, biscuits, crisps and fizzy drinks to appear between programmes watched by the under-fives counters the government’s efforts to encourage healthy eating. And so she hopes that ministers will listen to her arguments and back her Children’s Television (Advertising) Bill, which will outlaw advertising during pre-school children’s TV programmes that feature food and drink high in fat, salt and sugar.
My bill will ensure that children’s health is placed before commercial interests.
Ms Shipley, responsible for the Protection of Children Act 1999, is supported by more than 100 MPs and 90 national organisation, including the National Heart Forum, Women’s Institute, National Union of Teachers and National Consumer Council.
I have been overwhelmed by the massive favourable response my proposals have received from parents, health professionals and the wider public. There is a growing consensus that a ban is the only way forward as self-regulation is demonstratively not working. Unfortunately, some sections of the food and advertising industries have not heeded the public and professional calls for responsible marketing.
Responsible marketing?! But of course! The left honorable Lady knows what’s right for our children and if the companies are just not going to listen, well, we will have to do something about that (defiant look, tight lips, chin out). Yes, we shall bloody make it a law so all those disgusting images will not pollute our children’s pure souls… and bodies. Bad, bad companies. BAN THEM!
It is a knee-jerk reaction, yet another page from the government’s book of we-know-what’s-good-for-you-and-we-will-force-you-do-it-even-if-it-kills-you.
I am no fan of junk food that I think is an Abomination unto Gastronomy and neither am I fond of large companies that in their enormity occasionally start behaving like states. But proposing a law that bans adverts of greasy food and sugary drinks is the most stark example of the dellusions governments suffer about their role in the society and individuals’ lives. The quote from Brian’s excellent post about the menace of government’s attempt to deliver outcomes contains the right message:
Government is not there to promote all the virtues. It is not there even to restrain or punish all vices. It is there to restrain and punish a very restricted set of vices, of the kind that cause direct and unjustified hurt to others, of the sort which if unpunished and unrestrained would mean people regularly coming to blows with each other. As individuals, government ministers may regret the fact that so many of us fail to display as much in the way of virtue as they might individually like, but so long as we do not do too much, too obviously, of the vice variety, they will not, in their official capacity, bother us.
Hear, hear, the honorable Lady and Gentlemen.
An article in today’s Fox News contains an interesting numerical statement, one of those ‘gee whiz’ comparisons we so often see:
Compounding Aziz’s information, U.S. intelligence agencies have been going over millions of documents — 9 1/2 miles’ worth if laid end to end — left behind by Saddam’s government after its sudden collapse around April 10.
There is just one problem: their math is wrong. There are 5,280 feet in a mile; and 12 inches in a foot. Since Fox is an American news outlet, the paper size can be assumed as 8.5×11 inches. So we have, using the archaic system of measurements based on lengths of a long dead English Monarch’s appendages:
9.5 miles x 5,280 feet/mile x 12 inches/foot = 601,920 inches.
If we take ‘end to end’ literally, we get:
601,920 inches / 11 inches/sheet = 54,720 sheets.
This falls a few short of millions. Oh well… let’s try again. We’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and line the pages up side by side instead of end to end:
601,920 inches / 8.5 inches/sheet = 70,814 sheets.
Either there are only .07 million pages or someone can’t handle simple math.
Any engineer who grew up using a Pickett (sliderule) would have immediately seen the unreasonableness of the statement.
French anti-terror police have arrested five people suspected of links with the Real IRA. This is the splinter group of the IRA that is opposed to the peace process (such as it may be) and has been blamed for a series of attacks since breaking away from the IRA. The most serious was the 1998 Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people and was the worst single atrocity in 30 years of violence.
The suspects were all French nationals and they are suspected of involvement in a support network for the Irish group. They were held after police discovered a cache of weapons and ammunition outside the ferry port of Dieppe.
I have mentioned before that I am a great fan of the movie Resident Evil… well the sequel of which I spoke is going to hit the cinemas soon and a tantalising teaser can be found here!
What on earth is the use of having friends in high places if they can’t do you the odd favour now and then?
The wife of Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father, was pushed ahead in the queue for emergency treatment at an NHS hospital after Government officials intervened on her behalf, it was claimed yesterday.
Mr Lee said that his wife, Kwa Geok Choo, 82, who had suffered a stroke, was given a brain scan four and a half hours earlier than planned at the Royal London Hospital after medical staff were contacted by Downing Street.
Using political leverage to get better treatment is just so much more ethical than paying for it.
This is excellent news. More and faster, please.
As some of you may be aware, I am presently in Australia. A get together is being held in Sydney this Saturday evening to commemorate the fact, and to allow a whole lot of people who know each other electronically to actually meet one another. A wide assortment of Australian (and other) bloggers will be present. Any additional bloggers and/or readers who will be in the area and would like to come are more than welcome.
When: Saturday November 8 at 6:30 pm until probably quite late.
Where: The Three Wise Monkeys Hotel at 555 George St, Sydney.
Who: Everybody is welcome.
Any questions: Please contact me here
This story offers a new slant on how the USA is preparing to deal with a smallpox terrorist attack: Smallpox: A Musical:
St. Cloud, Minn. – Here’s the way doctors in St. Cloud imagine a smallpox outbreak. Panicked hospital employees scurry about in a blaze of blue scrubs. A doctor dons a biohazard suit and sprays bleach everywhere. The beleaguered workers wring their hands and then belt into song, to an oddly familiar tune.
“Smallpox, smallpox, what a challenge for our docs,” they sing to the tune of “Charleston.”
It’s a performance of Smallpox: A Musical. Covers of hit musical tunes are cleverly revised to tell the story of mucus – that nefarious transmitter of smallpox.
Suddenly, the familiar sounds of music are back.
“The halls are awash, with the sound of mucus. And everyday ills, are now shown the door. ‘Cause deep in our hearts, what has so confused us, is fevers and pustules and festering sores,” sing hospital workers to the melody of “The Sound of Music.”
The musical is the brainchild of Dr. Daniel Whitlock, vice president of medical affairs at St. Cloud Hospital. But these days, in addition to his administrative role, Whitlock is busy making casting calls. His eyes twinkle as he runs a hand through his silver hair.
“I thought you’d be a good one,” he says to a perspective recruit, “because you have stage presence. And you’re dynamic.”
The medical profession has always been a bastion of bad taste and gallows humour. It seems to be my day for confirming stereotypes.
The Cabinet is increasingly split over the issue of introducing compulsory national Identity Cards for innocent British citizens. Despite this the Sunday Times reports that the Queen’s Speech is likely to contain reference to them in the form of a draft Bill.
The Sunday Times suggests that this is just a “fig leaf” to cover Big Blunkett‘s embarrassment and that ID Cards will not actually be introduced before the next general election if at all.
They might be right, but that’s not a risk we can afford to take. We need to redouble our efforts to oppose this dangerous idea.
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe – now with mailing list
Bernie Greene wonders just how scientific is the science behind the smoking debate?
Epidemiology began with a fellow called John Snow investigating to find the cause of a cholera epidemic in London in the 19th Century. He had the idea that it might be coming from contamination in a well. So he took a map showing the locations of wells and plotted the incidence of the disease on the map. Sure enough they were mostly in close proximity to one particular well. He had the well put out of service and there were no more new cases of cholera. That is a simple story of logic and surveying intelligently applied to test a theory.
It is very unfortunate that it was so simple to solve. He might then have left a better example for his followers.
What if he had found that the 166 1 total cholera cases were scattered all over the map pretty evenly but that they all had pink carnations on their coats? One hundred thousand people wore pink carnations and 99,874 did not get cholera.
What does he do now? Well if he were a tobacco investigator he would petition the government to do something about pink carnations. But let’s say he is a brighter boy.
He decides to go and interview the cholera cases in more depth. → Continue reading: Honest science or propaganda?
One of the pleasures of British television as the nights get longer and darker is watching the gloriously laddish and unPC gentlemen on the BBC2 show TopGear, fronted by irrepressible Jeremy Clarkson, a sort of British version of P.J. O’Rourke. I am not quite sure how the great man continues to work in the Guardianista-infested corridors of power at the BBC, but maybe the bosses there feel they need at least someone like him to ‘appease Middle England’ or whatever.
Sunday night’s show had a number of good features, not least the bit when Jeremy and his two co-presenters drove a variety of BMW sports cars, very, very fast around the country lanes of the Isle of Man. Apart from some built-up areas, there are absolutely no speed limits on the island. Yep, not one.
At one point, one of the younger presenters – sorry, I forget his name – said this place was the motoring version of Fantasy Island. And Clarkson waxed lyrical about how the place was a ‘nanny-state free zone’.
Yes, I know it is just about cars. But somehow, I find it mighty encouraging that these sentiments get aired on prime-time British telly.
We rag on the BBC a lot in these parts, and rightly. Well, TopGear is a veritable oasis of petrol-head good sense. Clarkson for Prime Minister!
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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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