Isn’t it time to tell our elites: “Enough!”
The battle for Brexit appears to have been won. The battle to save the internal combustion engine – and, more generally, to stop a regression to the eighteenth century – may be upon us.
– Schrodinger’s Dog
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If the non-internal combustion engine cars were to be wondrous by that point then there’d be no need to ban them. For everyone would be purchasing them as a matter of choice. The only reason to ban people from purchasing ICEs is because they would be chosen given how appalling the alternatives are all going to be. The ban is thus an admission – and insistence – from government that non-ICE cars are going to remain pretty terrible. But we’re going to be forced to have them, aren’t we the lucky ones? February 4th, 2020 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
 John Harris is one of the Guardian‘s best journalists. He is a left winger who wanted to remain in the EU, but the series of video reports by him and John Domokos called “Anywhere but Westminster” showed their determination to literally and figuratively move outside their comfort zone on the issue of Brexit. Now he has turned his attention to a new subject: health apps and Big Data in the age of the Internet of Things.
Most people here will probably think that the article and even more so the comments give too much weight to the creepiness of private corporations monitoring your every breath and too little to the creepiness of the NHS doing it. But even the biggest fans of capitalism can feel unease at anyone having this level of knowledge of the most intimate aspects of our lives. (Time was it was only little green men from flying saucers who had such a probing interest.) Nowadays both the private and the public sectors are amassing data, and whichever of them gets a comprehensive health surveillance system working first will promptly sell it to the other. Then again, before you declare that you will never allow the Internet of Things anywhere near your body, read this comment from “ID20857”:
February 3rd, 2020 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the spirit of what Julie near Chicago said in a comment, at 11:33am, on this, which was this, …
(She then adds, by way of example, something about the Cloak of Invisibility, whatever that is. (I’m not asking.)) … I will add another little bit of arcane stuff here. Before today ends, because it concerns today. I refer to this:
I learned this in a tweet, which I encountered because the noted military historian Peter Caddick-Adams, with whom I was once upon a time acquainted and whose twitterings I now follow (and more to the point whose books I also read with great pleasure), drew it to my attention. Although, what if you just say 2/2/2020? Doesn’t that count as a “date format”? I think I just destroyed this posting. Personally, I always try to put the name of the month and only use a number for the day, because once you get confused about the all-numbers way of identifying dates the confusion only ends with your death. (When trying to work out when a photo taken early in the month got taken, I tend to get brain-ache and have to work it out like a crossword clue.) I notice that Samizdata also uses month names for all dates. Very wise, and further proof of why all should love Samizdata. February 2nd, 2020 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here’s how the Bursar of St John’s College Oxford responded to a student demand that the college “declares a climate emergency and immediately divests from fossil fuels”.
The appropriately named Hot Air got this report out from behind the Times paywall, and tells how the dialogue developed from there. Thank you Ed Driscoll of Instapundit for the link. February 1st, 2020 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
January 31st, 2020 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a kerfuffle here in the UK over 5G. I can’t in all honesty say that I have the slightest idea what 5G is but I surmise that it is one better than 4G. The issue is around whether the Chinese company, Huawei, should be allowed to supply some of the equipment. Lots of people, including James Delingpole say, “no”. And very few people say, “yes”. The first question that springs to (my) mind is, what has this got to do with the government? Which I suppose is bound up with the question of what is the threat? Assuming that there is a threat and that government should be “doing something about it”, what is that something? About the only thing I know about China and telephony is that you should never take your phone to China. Oh, and one other thing. Guido Fawkes observed that the real scandal is that Chinese technology should prove to be better than western technology. Is this true and is it a portent? January 29th, 2020 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
The virus outbreak in China and the clampdown on travel and other activity by a Communist country is inevitably going to cause some political commentary about the implications, and it already has. One comment I am bracing for is how this proves how dangerous globalisation can be because of extended supply chains, long-haul flights, etc. In fact I expect some on the Green, anti-trade side might make such points. What the episode shows is that all advanced societies need “firebreaks” that can be imposed – hopefully by public consent for a limited period – (I mentioned firebreaks in my previous item about the Australian bushfires). There may also be lessons to come out about local food and hygiene, as well as what is done to immunise young children and so forth. This echoes what I wrote the other day about how forest fires in Australia got more deadly because the “immunity” of the forests was undermined by neglecting to do controlled burns and thin out dead trees. But it is wrong in a broader sense to say that viruses are a point against greater human interaction via trade in general. One might as well draw the conclusion that we should all live in sealed boxes. When the Black Death raged, it killed a huge number in relative terms of the population in affected areas, and other plagues in early history have been as deadly, and yet most people at the time did not travel far from home. Some did of course, and human cities were dirty and unsanitary. But overall, the world of the 14th Century wasn’t as globalised in terms of human interaction as it is now. Let’s not forget that trade also increases options when a population is hit by a local disaster. Take the case of food supply if the local produce goes wrong. Lack of imported food access was fatal for Ireland in the 1840s because Corn Laws hampered imports of wheat into the country. It is true that people who even friendly to the free market economy and global trade use words such as “contagion” to describe how an issue in country X can affect a nation Y, and so on. (Some have even claimed that Chinese savings “surpluses” helped cause the 2008 financial crisis by funding the US housing binge. And writers such as James Rickards have even attempted to defend protectionism and capital controls on the same basis that one might defend a fire safety door.) There are also implications for the effectiveness or otherwise of “transnational” organisations (aka “tranzis”), as this article at Pajamas Media states. China is still a deeply oppressive place in many ways, and the disaster today is grim, and worrying. But bear in mind dear reader how far that nation has come since Mao, one of the greatest mass murderers in recorded history, has gone. The virus breaking out is horrible, but far less horrible than anything that bastard brought about. China is now much richer, and has the resources to tackle this plague. I wish them well. January 28th, 2020 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’ve always believed that libertarian ideology should be to a well-lived life what scales are to a symphony: essential to know but not the music itself. I don’t know when Tucker first crafted this quote. I read it for the first time this morning when it appeared on my Twitter feed, retweeted by a Twitter followee of mine, Preston Byrne, to whom my thanks. I now follow Tucker also. LATER: It would appear that Tucker said it this morning. January 27th, 2020 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
The BBC reports,
Those GMC guidelines are correct. Forcing a woman to have her hymen repaired is a serious crime, as is threatening her with violence because she had sex outside marriage to get it broken in the first place. That violent threats so often go unpunished is a national scandal. But the fact remains that most women who go to have their hymens repaired want it done. In less drastic cases they want the procedure for such reasons as to get and keep a husband, to avoid letting their parents know that they no longer adhere to traditional Muslim mores, or to avoid a breach with their husband’s family. You may say that it is a bad thing that such crushing social pressure for a bride to be a virgin remains prevalent in some communities in the UK. But the principle that an adult human being owns their own body does not cease to apply because he or she gives in to social pressure. Plenty of women get boob jobs and bum lifts because of social pressure, too. Are these bad decisions? Possibly. Cosmetic surgery has risks. But good or bad, the decision is theirs to make. In more drastic cases women want their hymens repaired because it is the only way to protect themselves from the twisted “honour” of their fathers and husbands. Of course no woman should have to resort to such desperate measures in order to be safe from murder. But what sort of idiocy is it to see a person taking extreme measures to protect themselves from murder and then to think the course of action that best serves justice is to prosecute the victim – or the surgeon who is helping her keep safe? The usual sort, unfortunately. January 27th, 2020 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
Start with this:
This Samizdata post from March 2019 contains a list of links to other posts that give the background. January 26th, 2020 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Wearing face masks in public is presently illegal in Hong Kong and compulsory in Wuhan January 24th, 2020 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
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