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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This from Harry Mount in the Telegraph today, on speed cameras:
Speed cameras are no longer about safety – even the official at the Department of Transport, who I talked to yesterday, acknowledged, “We’re moving away from calling them safety cameras” – and all about raising cash. And when policemen’s eyes are full of pound signs, they can’t see whether your driving is dangerous, and they couldn’t care less, even when they claim otherwise.
It’s worth reading more of it of course, but that struck me as the killer para.
In Does Education Matter? Alison Wolf attacks, tin the words of the book’s subtitle, “myths about education and economic growth”. Here are a few paragraphs from the Introduction:
From the premise that a full-blown ‘knowledge economy’ is arriving now on our doorsteps, it is easy to slip into prescribing more and more of the raw material which apparently makes this possible: education. And of course it would be stupid to deny that education is central to any modern economy. Imagine the UK today – or the USA, or Greece, japan, Brazil – being run by a population. which is more than go per cent illiterate – the level of eleventh-century England.’ Imagine Microsoft or British Aerospace research and development in the hands of people all of whom had left school after only a primary-school education, or a drug industry dependent on people whose academic training was the intermingled science and alchemy of Newton’s day. Who could doubt that education matters?
But what doesn’t follow is that vast amounts of public. spending on education have been the key determinant of how rich we are today. Nor is it obvious that they will decide how much richer, or poorer, we will be tomorrow. The simple one-way relationship which so entrances our politicians and commentators – education spending in, economic growth out – simply doesn’t exist. Moreover, the larger and more complex the education sector, the less obvious any links to productivity become. Developed countries have now moved well beyond providing basic education. for all, and instead spend more and more on higher education, technical provision, vocational programmes, and adult training.
These are my main subject matter, for they are also the main recent targets of government policies inspired by ambitions for growth. Unfortunately, while an overwhelmingly strong case can be made for the state’s responsibilities in basic education – and, indeed, for the latter’s economic importance – not one of these newer enthusiasms deserves any such.accolade.
Alison Wolf
Silicon.com reports that David Blunkett is being called upon to incorporate his national ID card proposals into wider strategy to boost the adoption of smart cards for authenticating use of e-government services.
Concerns have been raised in a new policy framework on a ‘joined-up’ e-government smart card strategy issued by the e-Envoy this week that local and central government bodies will develop their own card schemes that will not be interoperable and result in people carrying a wallet full of different cards for different services. The document said:
The rollout and development of smart card schemes across the public sector has to date been somewhat fragmented and co-ordinated, resulting in duplication. If this continues, smart cards will not fulfil their potential to impact significantly on the e-government agenda and support e-commerce.
‘Multi-application’ cards have been touted by the e-Envoy for some time and another possibility put forward in the framework is the piggybacking of government services onto new or existing private sector schemes.
Sometimes, the gods of the internet just give you a gift.
A new panel charged with finding ways to make Connecticut government run more efficiently will release its report six months later than scheduled.
Yeah, I want to take advice on efficiency from these guys.
“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced
the expression ‘As pretty as an airport.'”
— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul (1988).
My esteemed colleague Brian Micklethwait yesterday made another post about the architecture of car parks: why are they so ugly and beneath contempt from an architectural point of view, and does this always have to be so? I left a comment saying that airport terminals had been similarly regarded about 15 years ago (as the Adams quote indicates) but were now plumb jobs for architects and perhaps carparks could go the same way, and Brian followed up further in his culture blog.
But the focus was still mainly on carparks, and there is lots more to say about airport terminals. I can think of two reasons why the attitudes to their architecture might have changed in the last decade or two. The first probably does not also apply to carparks. The second probably does.
One reason is the nature in which airports have changed. Large scale airports did not really exist before the second world war. After it, however, it was clear that every city needed one. Few cities had any idea how large they would ultimately end up being, and in most cities they kind of grew organically. You had a large patch of dirt on which aeroplanes landed, and you built a tin shed next to it to use as a terminal. As planes got bigger and passenger numbers got greater, the runways were paved and got longer, and the tin sheds were demolished and replaced with larger tin sheds, or (worse) they were slowly extended into larger, higgledy piggledy style buildings. Airports expanded physically, nearby houses were demolished, and airports just kind of grew, without much coherent planning. Because airport architecture was held in such low regard, and because what existed already was so awful, little effort was made to make the buildings any more than functional. Also, because in many cases nobody had any idea how big the airport was going to be when it was originally established, in many cases space was at a premium. This led to cramped, constrained buildings. → Continue reading: Why are airports more interesting than carparks?
You know, some days I wake up and I despair. Samizdata is filled with a waterfall of stories because we’re living in one of the most dangerous hate-filled ages of humanity, festooned with statists, hatists and ecologists.
The world is awash with these idiots, fools, and destroyers of the human spirit.
But then…
But then on other days I know, I feel it in my bones, from the smile on my son’s face, that we will emerge triumphant from this gathering gateway of horror.
Oh I pray, I pray to the atheistic God I worship, that a saviour will come to free us from this tyranny.
And then I realise that we don’t need a God, and we don’t need a saviour.
The spirit is within us all. This is the spirit of freedom, the spirit of adventure, and the spirit of hope.
It has sustained us since we crawled out of Africa one hundred thousand years ago, the product of four billion years of evolution. It has sustained us through four thousand bitter years of recorded history, and it has sustained us throughout that most terrible of centuries, the twentieth century of socialism, fascism, and communism.
We will not let these people destroy us; we will not let these people crush us underfoot. We will defeat them. We will free them from the horror which wraps their minds.
Yes, the past and the present belong to them, my friends, and may belong to them for a few more years yet.
But.
The future? The future, be assured. The future belongs to us.
The ubiquitous Instapundit, who is accumulating a stable of international correspondents, posts a missive from Afghanistan that is sure to remind you of why you loathe transnational progressives, their NGO tools, and all associated parasites, hangers-on, and do gooders. A juicy bit, to whet your appetite:
It’s not all monotonous or pointless in Kabul; at one French NGO housed in a stunning antique-laden chalet, I’ve devoured a seven-course meal prepared by a 4 star chef. Then there’s always the sumptuous UN House, where one can take a dip, mingle poolside among scandalous bikinis and dowse dehydration with inspired cocktails fashioned by our languid Euro masters. Unfortunately, since “American UN employee” is an oxymoron, our one attempt to storm the formidable barricades is a spectacular failure. We’re rudely turned away, despite flashing $20 bills to the Afghan UN security. My companion, a fierce Pushtoon-American licensed to pack a very visible Glock 19, glances back at the sunbathers as we’re escorted out: “We’ve paid for all this with our taxes, you bastards!”
One has to shake one’s head at the pistol-packing Pushtoon’s naivete; since when has the fact that a taxpayer funded something ever triggered appropriate feelings of gratitude and respect from our betters in government ‘service’?
The BBC’s flagship radio station, Radio1, has dropped below the 10 million listeners barrier for the first time in its history, as reported in today’s Grauniad.
In a related piece, in today’s Torygraph, Neil McCormick questions the way records are selected for Radio1’s main play-list. Apparently, it’s done in exactly the same way that commercial radio stations do it.
Which begs the immediate questions; what then is the purpose of Radio1? And why are we tax-plebs forced to contribute so much towards it, via the BBC licence fee? In the commercial arena its listeners could easily pay for it via the advertising market they would generate.
I hope the funding, which goes into Radio1, isn’t being used to support an otherwise large and unnecessary layer of grateful lefties, in palatial BBC comfort, to stop them having to work for a living.
And in return for such largesse, I hope these lefties aren’t then broadcasting the continuous message, to all of Radio1’s impressionable younger listeners, that the state is wonderful, in all of its great and holy facets.
I should coco.
It is now an established Samizdatista hobby whenever we gather: taking the piss out of Brian for his unhealthy interest in car parks.
Well, you’re all completely wrong, and you’re all missing the point completely, or rather, getting hold of the right stick, but at completely the wrong end. Don’t you get it? The very thing that makes my fascination with car parks so laughable to all you idiots is my exact point. Car parks, now, are, almost all of them, crap. So, obviously, a car park spotter is ridiculous. Ho, ho, ho. But the crapness of car parks now is my exact point, and I am only a car park spotter if the car park in question, unlike almost all car parks nowadays, is worth spotting.
Like this one, linked to about a month ago by David Sucher of City Comforts Blog, but which I’ve only just noticed his posting about, in Staunton Virginia.
Said ArchNewsNow.com all those weeks ago:
Staunton, Virginia, has worked hard to preserve and enhance its historic neighborhoods and to keep its downtown vital and attractive. The city’s ongoing attention to streetscape, underground power, and building preservation is creating a vibrant, resurgent, and energetic community.
One of the “stars” of the downtown regeneration is, of all things, the New Street Parking Garage. The design for the garage, by Staunton-based Frazier Associates, came out of an inclusive team approach: the designers worked closely with government officials and local citizens (in a city known for its resistance to change) through an intensive public design process.
The result is a new “landmark” building at the entrance to downtown Staunton. “In the past, architects designed beautiful buildings for visitors to arrive in,” says design lead Kathy Frazier, AIA. “Somehow that didn’t get translated to parking garages, and people grew accustomed to parking in these ugly utilitarian buildings. The question we asked ourselves is ‘Why can’t we make a parking garage beautiful and celebrate the arrival sequence like we used to with train stations?’”
The idea of an ye olde looking car park doesn’t really appeal to me. Why can’t it look snazzy? Like, say, a snazzy car? But the reality of the thing seems actually to be rather handsome. And if a railway station can look ye olde, why can’t a car park? Thinking about it, all manner of high tech structures actually used to be done up in Greek Temple or Roman Villa style, such as water pumping stations, power stations, railway signal boxes, railway tunnel entrances, railway bridge towers. It isn’t just the grand city terminuses. So why not car parks?
But don’t let the argument about style deflect from the important thing about this, or any other such design, which is that concentrating parked cars in a heap rather than letting them sprawl all over the landscape doesn’t just rescue the aesthetics of car parking, but the aesthetics of the entire surrounding neighbourhood.
While I’m on subjects Astronomical… don’t forget to keep an eye on Mars. On August 27/28 it will be at its’ closest approach to the Earth in recorded history. Calculations show humans have not had a Mars show this good in perhaps 50000 years. It is hard to be certain because chaos takes its’ toll when you run the solar system backwards that far.
This close approach is called an “Opposition”. It means the Earth and Mars are both in a line with the Sun and on the same side. It happens once every year when the Earth on its’ inner, faster track around the Sun catches up with the dawdling outer track Mars. The orbits of Mars and Earth are both slightly elliptical so the distance between the two varies with where the two bodies are on their elliptical paths. When Mars is at its’ closest to the Sun at the same time Earth is at its’ farthest, we have especially good views. The one coming up later this month is spectacular.
This does not mean you will see a Martian disk with your unaided eye. It does not even mean you will see views like a Hubble telescope from that cheap refractor you got for Christmas when you were aged twelve. However, if you have any amateur astronomer friends, they may be acting like giddy twelve year olds for the next two months. They will certainly be showing up at the office with bleary eyes and silly grins.
They will see detail they have never dreamed of seeing before. Of course there might be a global dust storm just after Opposition… in which case they will stare at the largest blurred reddish disk they’ve ever seen.
For the astronomically inclined there have been interesting goings on in the constellation of Scorpio these last three years. The star Delta Scorpii, a constant magnitude 2.3 for as long as anyone can remember, changed habits in July 2000. It has been a variable star ever since and not only that, seems to get a bit brighter on each cycle. It is now just a hair under becoming a first magnitude star. That means it is nearly bright enough to be seen in Manhattan and London.
As to exactly what is going on, no one seems quite sure, but it shows the sky is a changeable thing even on a human timescale.
A British mother and her two sons were given jail sentences yesterday, less than four days after they were arrested for allegedly attacking an Athens shopkeeper.
During a four-hour hearing at Athens criminal court the main prosecution evidence was read, with no opportunity for cross-examination. Police statements were contradictory and the British defendants had only five minutes each to state their case.
The family believes it has been the victim of a Greek backlash against the drunken and lewd behaviour of young British holidaymakers on the islands of Rhodes and Corfu.
We are being made scapegoats for the antics of hooligans on some of the islands. There have been despicable occurrences on the islands, but we are not that type of people.
No forensic evidence was presented, although it had been stated that Mr Karamichalous was bleeding heavily after the brothers kicked him.
The metal bar referred to both by the Britons and Mr Karamichalous was not recovered from the scene. Although the Johnsons had been locked up since the early hours of Sunday, officers did not take a statement from any of them.
Their only opportunity to give their side of the story was when each took the stand for about five minutes.
Regardless of the facts of the case, of which I have no detailed knowledge, the speed and manner in which the family of Britons living in Greece were sentenced smacks of political and nationalist gestures. Their prosecution is seen as backlash against the loutish behaviour of British tourists on Greece’s holiday islands. The case has made headline news in Greece where the Johnsons’ story has been illustrated with photographs and footage of British tourists misbehaving on the islands of Rhodes and Corfu.
Blimey! The Greek legal system makes the British courts seem like the pinnacle of civilisation.
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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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