If Hobsbawm had been an unrepentant Nazi, I doubt he’d be getting so many tributes. Strange how that works out.
– Samizdata commenter ‘Vinegar Joe’
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While delighting here in the new camera I bought early this year, I included a picture of a new building, then being constructed in Victoria Street, London SW1, near where I live. 62 Buckingham Gate is now nearly finished. In February, as already show in that earlier posting, this was how it was looking:  There was a time when a building which looked like that when it was being built would end up looking pretty much like that when finished. This was the time of such architectural enthusiasms as “New Brutalism”, a time better know to civilians as the age of Concrete Monstrosities. And that building above would have carried on as the misshapen oddity that it was when being constructed, looking like it had been put together by a bunch of builders who got drunk every breakfast time, while supervised by an architect who was suffering from a nervous breakdown. But now look at it:  Yes it’s another contribution to the Buildings That Won’t Show Up On Radar style, already noted in an earlier posting I did here about One New Change. Here is another example of the style. Partly, as I already mused in that One New Change posting, architects now do this kind of thing because they can. Whatever new thing they can do at any particular juncture in architectural history tends to get exaggerated and turned into a style. And they can do this kind of geometrical weirdness because now they have computers to enable them to keep track of it all, as they did not during the Concrete Monstrosity era. They also have better technology, including such things as greatly improved glass of many different kinds, from which they can pick the exact one that is most suitable for their particular building. But there is also a deeper change in play here, a change of aesthetic philosophy. → Continue reading: 62 Buckingham Gate nears completion October 3rd, 2012 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Remember sing-songs down the pub? OK, do you at least remember hearing that once upon a time there were such things as sing-songs down the pub? And Fred would stroll over to the old Joanna and have a tinkle on the ivories… If this sounds as remote from modern life as the Wars of the Roses, that might be because for the last few years Fred would have been liable to arrest. The Licensing Act 2003 made live music at pubs illegal without a licence no matter how small the venue. The good news is that it is no longer a crime to play a mouth organ in a pub without a licence. The bad news is that for nine years it was a crime, and we submitted. October 3rd, 2012 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Lots of hard problems have proven to be tractable. The planetary genome and proteome have been mapped so exhaustively that the biosciences are now focusing on the challenge of the phenome – plotting the phase-space defined by the intersection of genes and biochemical structures, understanding how extended phenotypic traits are generated and contribute to evolutionary fitness. The biosphere has become surreal: Small dragons have been sighted nesting in the Scottish highlands, and in the American Midwest, raccoons have been caught programming microwave ovens.” Page 170 of Accelerando, by Charles Stross. (First published in 2005. ) Whatever you think of Stross’s non-fiction views, such as on libertarianism, his fiction often includes hilarious passages such as this. October 3rd, 2012 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
I like this (the second paragraph (of two) of this):
That, which I only just noticed, was posted on June 23rd. But some things will keep. Time was when lots of heads of states were, literally, in-laws. October 2nd, 2012 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Hobsbawm’s implacable refusal to recant his views when faced with their grotesque consequences tells us something about the belligerent mindset of the wider British Left. But the eminence that he and his fellow travellers have enjoyed also speaks to the bovine complacency with which, since Mrs Thatcher, the Conservatives have allowed such dubious figures licence to dominate the soft culture of the BBC and our universities.” October 2nd, 2012 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
October 1st, 2012 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
In addition, it’s getting much harder for pollsters to get people to respond to interviews. The Pew Research Center reports that it’s getting only 9 percent of the people it contacts to respond to its questions. That’s compared with 36 percent in 1997. Interestingly, response rates are much higher in new democracies. Americans, particularly in target states, may be getting poll fatigue. When a phone rings in New Hampshire, it might well be a pollster calling. Are those 9 percent representative of the larger population? As that percentage declines, it seems increasingly possible that the sample is unrepresentative of the much larger voting public. One thing a poll can’t tell us is the opinion of people who refuse to be polled. I increasingly resent being rung up by someone hoping to learn my opinions about this or that, and am not a bit surprised to learn that the feeling is becoming a lot more widespread. What’s in it for me? Nothing. Just a great gob of time down the drain. If you want to know my opinions, read Samizdata. In the particular matter of American pollsters claiming to discover how the presidential election will go, there is also the widespread belief that these people are not so much seeking to serve the voters by telling them what will be what, as to manipulate voters into voting Democrat. In which case, should you happen not to be a Democrat supporter, why would you be inclined to give them anything other than a brief suggestion that they go forth and multiply or words to that effect? September 30th, 2012 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
Rejoice! Ed Milliband will announce at the Labour party conference today that
At last Labour are to drop all that guff about “stakeholders” and “corporate responsibility”, although to make it compulsory to pursue profits at the cost of all else is rather repressive. But what a turnaround, eh? Can it really be happening? No. It’s all a mistake. They just haven’t noticed yet. Tim Worstall has cruel fun pointing out that Mr Miliband does not appear to have worked out that his proposal would make ethical investment illegal. Worstall concludes
September 29th, 2012 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Whoah. This is from a post on Less Wrong, wherein some more details and links to the study and video, along with discussion. September 29th, 2012 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’m now watching a video of Hans Sennholz, produced by the Foundation for Economic Education. Sennholz is talking about the Great Depression, arguing that freedom didn’t fail, politics failed, and that “if we repeat these government polices there is going to be another Great Depression”. I’m typing while he talks, but that is the gist of it. Until now, Sennholz was just a name to me. Now he is a name, a face, a voice, an attitude. And a prophet. This video was made (or should I say this film was shot?) on February 29th (!) 1988. I was steered towards it by Richard Carey (whom I SQotDed earlier this week) of Libertarian Home, to whom thanks. The First World War use to be called The Great War. Soon, The Great Depression is likely also to become known by a different title, which also includes the word “First”. September 28th, 2012 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
This comment was left on the Anandtech review of a solid state data storage device. Anandtech is something of a force in the tech world. It reviews computer components, developing ways of testing and comparing them. It describes in detail how they work and how this affects what they can and can not do, and how relatively well they do this or that thing. Because so much detail is provided, and because Anandtech listens to its commenters and makes corrections when errors are noticed, I find it is usually sufficient for my needs to skip to the end of a 10,000 word review, knowing that I can trust the summary. The quote above is in response to the description of an email conversation between the site’s founder, Anand Shimpi, and top executives at the company producing the solid state drives. The essence of the discussion is that Anand has found that use of internal components from different manufacturers affects the performance of the drive. Customers can not tell what they are getting just by looking at the outside of the product, so he would like the company to label their products accordingly so that customers can decide which ones to buy. Anandtech is such a force in the tech world that the company immediately agreed. Imagine that. Improved product labelling without any government regulation required. Update: title changed as suggested by Brian in the comments. September 28th, 2012 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
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