02:15 am The Second British Blogger Bash continues and the tone of discourse has become more ‘interactive’ with the arrival of Andrew Dodge…
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Leather trousers should be tight because they are to men what ‘Wonderbras’ are to women September 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 10:45 pm: The Second British Blogger Bash in London is in full swing and as the picture below indicates, things are sober and sedate. 
Claire Berlinski and Alex Singleton September 7th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Readers concerned with Big Brother’s intrusive gaze or those who simply desire a little more privacy while surfing may find a recent article in the International Herald Tribune of great interest. Not to be confused with the game sometimes played at Blogger Bash parties, Peek-a-booty is a variation on the file-sharing peer-to-peer (P2P) networks popularized by Napster and kazaa. Instead of swapping music files, however, Peek-a-booty uses its P2P network to swap restricted web pages in encrypted format around firewalls. The site has been in the works for quite a while, but a refined version has only recently become available. The idea is to give those with oppressive governments (i.e. China, North Korea, Britain) a means to view those web pages the state has placed off limits. If you happen to live in one of those more actively repressive places you better check out this article before joining the peek-a-booty network. One other caveat: at last report, Peek-a-booty had not turned on the encryption bit so discretion is still advised. Other censorship evading sites exist. SafeWeb and one of their products Triangle Boy are the most famous. So famous, in fact, that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) apparently already has some hooks into them. Rumor has it (surprise, surprise) the CIA is also interested in Peek-a-booty. The spooks will find it more difficult to wield economic influence this time since the booty code was not created by a single private firm but by the hacker group the Cult of the Dead Cow. Instead, the CIA would appear to have some kind of blocking method up its electronic sleeve. Stay tuned. September 7th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Sometimes fate hits you with the Clown Hammer of Circumstance and there’s nothing to do but sit there and watch the little birds fly around your head.” – Tara Calishain, ResearchBuzz September 7th, 2002 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Locked in the midst of a long range exploration of East Coast watering holes and possible future Blogger Bash sites, the Samizdata Expeditionary Drinking Force is regretfully unable to join its comrades at the Second British Blogger Bash (2B3). We’ve established a perimeter of beer mugs and martini glasses and, in a display of solidarity with our comrades in cups, have vowed to hold out to the last drop or as long as we can stand. Pitchers of margaritas are even now being prepared for what promises to be an extended effort. Although rescue is unlikely, escape is still possible. Godspeed Samizdata. Godspeed 2B3. September 7th, 2002 | Comments are closed
The Blogger Bash is tonight, so I got myself in the party mood this morning by reading how David Farrer of Freedom and Whisky had responded to Adriana’s griefometer posting. He tried it on Soviet Communism, but deliberately took it all a bit seriously and tastefully, ignoring for example how very uncute lots of the victims of Soviet Communism were.
Have a nice weekend. September 7th, 2002 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
When was liberty in Britain at its height? First of all I discount the talk of either Celtic liberty or Anglo Saxon liberty being the peak of liberty on this island. We have little information of how much lords took in tribute/taxes so it is not possible to know whether the ancients paid less of their incomes in tax than, say, people in the mid 19th century. What we do know about the Celtic age is that it was time of war and plunder (as various lords struggled for power) – so even if we choose to ignore such things as human sacrifice the Celtic age does not seem very libertarian. It is true that in some periods the Anglo Saxons managed to set up a fairly orderly society in those parts of this island known as England – however (to give just one example of un-libertarian practice) the Domesday Book records that about one in ten people in the newly conquered England was a slave. So when was liberty at its height in this island? Well the ‘official’ reply to this (the reply I have given to children studying history) is “the early 1870’s”. The figures we have indicate that central taxes reached their low point (as a proportion of total income) in 1874 – also in 1875 we have a orgy of statism. Many functions which had been optional for local councils become compulsory by a Act of 1875, the trade unions are put above the law of contract by an Act of the same year and (finally) taxes begin to rise. True, the Education Act of 1870 (the Forster Act) meant that in some parts of the country there were boards of education demanding education rates before 1875 and there was a decline in agriculture (putting pressure on the poor rates in some places) after 1873. However, if we are basically interested in government spending, taxes and regulations the peak of freedom seems to be 1874 – and then everything goes down hill. However – is the above all that matters? In my ‘gut’ I would not say the early 1870’s were the ‘great age of liberty’ – I would say that this sounds more like the 1820s. → Continue reading: British Liberty September 7th, 2002 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Rydell has a theory about virtual real estate. The smaller and cheaper the physical site of a given operation, the bigger and cheesier the website. September 6th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Libertarians tend to reject the economic doctrines of J.M. Keynes. Some people may argue (as Lady Thatcher once did) that Lord Keynes’ thought was distorted by his followers, but most people (or most libertarians anyway) would accept that Lord Keynes and/or his follows were in error in regard to the understanding of political economy. The trouble is that most libertarians think that showing the errors of Keynesianism is very complicated and that one needs a detailed knowledge of Austrian School economics to show these errors – this is not so. Lord Keynes’ 1936 book (“The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”) implies that one can increase the money supply up to the “full employment level” without a trend of rising prices (as long as the new money is spent on such things as public works – rather than being hoarded or spent on imports). However, it does not matter if one interprets the “General Theory” to hold that Keynes accepted that his policy of money supply expansion would lead to a trend of rising prices (rather than, say, just restoring the prices of goods to the level they were at before some fall in prices). It does not matter because there is no long term trade off between unemployment and rising prices. In the 1950’s and after Keynesians played with such concepts as the “Phillips Curve” to claim that there was such a trade off – but eventually no amount of moving the curve (to fit the fact that the unemployment and inflation numbers did not fit the curve) could hide the fact that such concepts would not save Keynesianism. → Continue reading: Keynesianism is rubbish September 6th, 2002 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
More on the environ-mental note… (David, do you put the hyphen in to emphasise the ‘mental’ in the word? Nothing gets past me!) The Gauteng provincial government set up a scheme, encouraging delegates to the Earth Summit (governments and environmental groups alike) to pay into a novel fund to compensate for the pollution caused by flying to South Africa, using electricity and driving around. A remarkably free-market approach – a delegate travelling from the United States, for example, would pay about $100 to offset the 10 tons of carbon dioxide emitted by flying to and staying in Johannesburg. The fund will put the money raised into environmentally friendly schemes ranging from solar water heating to tree planting and improving energy efficiency in buildings. The contributions to the fund were voluntary and only 40,000 tons of carbon dioxide had been offset. What the environ-mentalists forgot, perhaps, that such voluntary contributions will also act as a signal about how credible, popular or appropriately priced such fund is. For who should know better than the environ-mentalists themselves just how deranged and pointless is their way of approaching the environment and its problems. 
Amazing image by www.scrofula.com (click image) September 6th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
In preparation of the anniversary of 9/11, The Brains Trust have devised a Griefometer to answer the question of “just how upset should you be when disaster strikes?”, using the death of Diana as a benchmark. All in the best possible taste, of course. For example, the Holocaust scores 4 Dianas and 7.7 Dandos1, with the statistics of 9,000,000 dead, on average 50% cute, in a location of 80% importance. The event had 90% visual impact and the story lasted for 825 days. Please have a go and let us know how you get on. I put in Titanic – it hardly registered… Note 1: For those not following the UK affairs too closely, Jill Dando was the BBC Crimewatch UK presenter murdered in April 1999. She was shot in the head at close range with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol, on her doorstep. Her death caused a tremendous public response. In other words: 1 dead, on average 35% cute, in a location of 55% importance. The event had 10% visual impact and the story lasted for 7 days – death of Jill Dando scores 1.0 Dandos. September 6th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
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