Stop calling what happened in Kenya a ‘tragedy‘. A bridge collapsing is a tragedy. A house burning down is a tragedy. Dying from Ebola is a tragedy. What happened at Garissa University in north-eastern Kenya was an atrocity. People did this on purpose.
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April 4th, 2015 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
 If you are an adult and want to work as a model in France, the French government will decide if the way you look is appropriate in their view. And if not, the people who hired you will be fined or jailed. April 4th, 2015 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
The dismal forces are indeed massing as I predicted. That well documented fountain of fraudulent claims the NSPCC and all the usual dismal censors, from assorted statists of the nominal right like Sajid Javid, to the usual leftists are indeed starting to metastasise into another effort to control the internet. For the children of course. We need products than make proxy servers and geolocation spoofing default-easy for the 95 IQ user, something people just use because it is cheap and largely invisible… with end to end encryption and all those other things that states hate integrated in at the lowest level possible. April 4th, 2015 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
The downside of zero inflation is that it does nothing to erode the value of debt, much of which is denominated in money terms. If your mortgage is £100,000 and the price level doubles, its real value has fallen to only £50,000. The world is still burdened with excessive debt, which is a worry for policy-makers. But a low inflation world forces them to confront this issue honestly, and not try to evade it by using the subterfuge of inflation. Of course it is only a ‘downside’ if you are in debt, it is an upside if you are a saver and lender. April 3rd, 2015 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
… and in order to fit in better with the people around you, feel the need to blast off about ten IQ points, you are in luck! Just watch this from our good chums over at the BBC. It is an experience a bit like holding a live piranha to the side of your head. April 2nd, 2015 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Libertarians on Reddit are calling out an executive order from Obama that appears to allow the federal government to seize property from anyone who donates money to anyone that the federal government does not like. The New York Times makes it sound far more reasonable and mundane. How bad is it? April 2nd, 2015 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
The horror in Kenya is almost beyond belief. Almost. One hundred and forty seven dead, mostly Kenyan university students. I wonder how ‘the west’ will get blamed for this one? April 2nd, 2015 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
Back in the 1986, we actually had that bastion of idiotarianism, Channel Four, run a program called “The New Enlightenment: the rebirth of liberalism”, about Frederick Hayek, Milton Friedman et al. But I would have never guessed that in 2015 we would be experiencing a New Endarkenment. Fuck you. No seriously, fuck every last one of you who turned off those lights and made parts of glorious London look like North Korea. Well my house was a gleaming beacon I can assure you, with every single light turned on. Maybe I will purchased some searchlights for next year’s endarkenment. Yeah, this is my ‘hang over’ from ‘Earth Hour’ rather than this incident per se. April 2nd, 2015 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was ill recently. In the end it was “just a virus” but I had symptoms enough one Saturday that I braved the local NHS walk-in centre. This is where you end up if you have the bad manners to get ill on a weekend. It was functional, in its way. I was told there would be an hour-and-a-half wait and that is what it was. There are no doctors, only nurses, but they are skilled enough to determine whether you are likely to survive until Monday, or so I imagine. But the economics of this kind of place are such that every body through the door is nothing but a drain on resources, and no-one is making any effort to conceal this fact. Truly it is a miserable place to be. I do not expect a medical waiting room to be jolly, but I saw not the merest hint of a smile from any staff, and the receptionist was very grumpy about my address being out of date on her computer. There is no welcome; no sympathy; no bedside manner. If you want to find a deep root cause of problems with the NHS, I submit the inevitable hatred of the staff for the burdensome customers. Here is another piece of evidence: when I said “thank-you” to the nurse, she replied, “you’re welcome.” April 1st, 2015 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whilst surfing for ‘Wet T-Shirt Contest’ sites, I accidentally came upon this wonderful advance… hardback novels for sale actually written in binary!
Is this not awesome?
Snappy! A true page turner. April 1st, 2015 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
For those interested in North Korea, this English language documentary from Japan is rather enlightening. The journalists involved interviewed former North Korean officials who once carried out the orders of the glorious leader to bring money into the aptly named “Royal Court Economy”. I have said for years that North Korea is more like a Feudal system than a Communist one. I suspect a Teutonic Knight would understand the system straight away. April 1st, 2015 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Metropolitan Police have today dug up the remains of Richard III, a week after he was re-interred in Leicester after resting under what became a car park after 500 years, in an exercise reportedly designed to show their commitment to tackling historic child abuse. Executing a warrant under Schedule 5 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 permitting them to exhume the bones, they claim to be looking for any DNA evidence linking Richard III to the deaths of the Princes in the Tower. A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said: ‘The Princes were held in the Tower of London, which is now within the Metropolitan Police District. As a service, we are committed to tackling all historic allegations of child abuse, even this instance of child abduction and a possible double murder. Whilst there is obviously no possibility of charges arising from this investigation, it will serve as a signal to those who may feel reluctant about coming forward to report abuse that there is no one who is above the law and the highest in the land will be investigated’. The spokeswoman also said that the timing of the exhumation was not an accident, they did not wish to prejudice any investigation by incurring publicity before Richard III’s burial, and to maintain operational secrecy they waited until after burial, as to have examined the bones beforehand would have meant applying to the Ministry of Justice for a variation on the licence granted to allow the bones to be tested, which might have led to political interference. The spokeswoman further justified the investigation by saying that it would provide a valuable exercise in testing the boundaries of forensic techniques, and may enable more recent ‘cold cases’ to be re-opened by stretching the boundaries of forensic science. The investigation follows a number of raids on the homes of VIPs by police investigating allegations of historic child abuse, and the news that late Sir Cyril Smith, a former Liberal Democrat heavyweight MP, was arrested at a children’s home and then promptly released following intervention from senior officers despite being found with two boys. Cynics might wonder if the raid had been timed to occur after the Dissolution of Parliament on Monday and as the General Election starts, to avoid the matter being raised in Parliament by sceptical MPs concerned about police wasting resources by stunts. April 1st, 2015 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
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