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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Another for the Ain’t Capitalism Great collection:
Thanks to the advent of smart phone technologies, many of us already carry the internet with us everywhere we go. But now, scientists have created the world’s first wirelessly powered, computerized contact lens with an integrated LED display. That’s right – the same access to information afforded us by the technology in our pockets could soon come to us via devices that rest directly on our corneas.
Here.
By wearing a pair of such lenses, you could presumably receive stuff in 3D.
Inevitably, a lot more work will be needed to turn this dream into a reality. But, you know, … wow!
“At times, Gingrich, who’s written more than 150 book reviews on Amazon.com, sounds like a guy who read way too much during a long prison stretch.”
– Gene Healy. He’s not a fan.
… because “This is private property” or any other version of “You have no right to be here” are open to some fairly obvious ripostes.
“We were here first” – “Er, not quite first. The actual owners of the space were there before you.”
“We are the 99%” – “We’re poorer than you, you middle class ****-ers”
“We represent the 99%” – “Who voted for you, then?”
“We are the official accredited Occupiers” – “We refuse to be defined by your oppressive structures, and hereby declare ourselves to be Occupying this Occupation!”
I have been reading the minutes of the General Assembly of the Occupy protesters who have taken over the empty UBS bank building in Sun Street, Hackney. One area of concern does seem to be people “abusing the space”.
If people want to stay over night (sleep-overs) they need (1) to be part of a working group (2) They need to have an on-going task that warrants their stay. There will be ‘monitors’ to make sure sleep-overs are not abusing the space. Individuals that stay over and are found to not be working will be given one warning before being asked to leave.
And if they say no, what then? When a warning is given, it must be a warning of something. Presumably it is a warning that the bigger group of Occupiers will eject the smaller group of Occupiers – because they can.
Unless, of course, they can’t. If a fight develops, what then? Call the cops? Problem with that.
Watts Up With That: “They’re real and they’re spectacular!” Scroll down to find the bit torrent link to the FOIA2011.zip file, though it is not working for me right now.
Leo Hickman in the Guardian: not happy.
James Delingpole in the Telegraph: happy.
I have already quoted from and commented on The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824 a couple of times here. Now I’ve read it. Unless I’m being paid to read a book, I only read it to the end if I’m enjoying it, so point one to make about this book is that I wasn’t paid to read it. Samizdata writers and readers are not brought together by a shared fascination for classical music and the world in which it was created and had its first impact, so I don’t know if you would also enjoy reading this book. But I can say a bit about why I did.
I know Beethoven’s music, and the Ninth Symphony in particular, quite well, possessing as I do a large classical CD collection containing lots of Beethoven and more than a few recordings of the Ninth. A painlessly entertaining way to learn more about classical music in general, and Beethoven and his Ninth Symphony in particular, is, for me, always welcome. This book was painless partly because it is all written in a language I can easily follow, English. Many books about classical music use lots of musical notation. I can just about decipher such symbols, but seldom with the fluency that is necessary immediately to get the points an author is trying to make with them. Sachs could easily have peppered his text with such hieroglyphics, having himself been a conductor before he became a writer. He did not. He relied on words. He also avoids using Italian words, saying very loud rather than fortissimo, and so on.
This book is also painless in being quite short. 225 pages, including all the extras. I’m a slow reader, so that, for me, was another plus. → Continue reading: Beethoven’s Ninth – before and after
The Daily Telegraph has an article defending the idea that general practitioners can and sometimes do out-earn the banking business. Of course, people have not traditionally gone into the medical field looking to make millions, although some innovators of medical patents, for instance, may have done just that. Generally speaking, I take the view that so long as doctors are operating in a free market, then what they receive is a matter of indifference to me. Good luck to those who do well, I say. If we had a genuine market in healthcare, then the high salaries paid to the best doctors would, in time, attract bright people to become doctors rather than say, derivatives traders, or whatever.
Of course, this is not the present situation. With many doctors, their pay is partly driven by their membership of a restricted profession and in the case of the UK, by the money spent by the taxpayer. And as for bankers, or at least some of them, they too benefit from the privileged access to central banking funding of their employers, from bailouts, from barriers to entry erected by regulators, and so on. So if people in Wall Street and the City do get sniffy about how much the men and women in white coats sometimes get paid, remember, they are not quite operating in a free market world, either.
Say what you will about the environmentalist and Guardian columnist Mr George Monbiot – not, apparently, the prototypical moonbat but merely a moonbat – he does have integrity. I have no doubt his recent conversion to a belief in the benefits of nuclear power cost him many friends in the green movement.
This article will not win them back. In it Mr Monbiot and Justin McCurry write that
The Green party’s former science and technology spokesman is promoting anti-radiation pills to people in Japan affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster, that leading scientists have condemned as “useless”.
Dr Christopher Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster, is championing a series of expensive products and services which, he claims, will protect people in Japan from the effects of radiation. Among them are mineral supplements on sale for ï¿¥5,800 (£48) a bottle, urine tests for radioactive contaminants for ï¿¥98,000 (£808) and food tests for ï¿¥108,000 (£891).
and
Launching the products and tests, Busby warns in his video of a public health catastrophe in Japan caused by the Fukushima explosions, and claims that radioactive caesium will destroy the heart muscles of Japanese children.
He also alleges that the Japanese government is trucking radioactive material from the Fukushima site all over Japan, in order to “increase the cancer rate in the whole of Japan so that there will be no control group” of children unaffected by the disaster, in order to help the Japanese government prevent potential lawsuits from people whose health may have been affected by the radiation. The pills, he claims, will stop radioactive contaminants attaching themselves to the DNA of Japanese children.
Regarding that claim, Monbiot and McCurry write:
Gerry Thomas, professor of molecular pathology at the department of surgery and cancer at Imperial College, London, describes his statements about heart disease caused by caesium as “ludicrous”. She says that radioactive elements do not bind to DNA. “This shows how little he understands about basic radiobiology.” Of the products and services being offered, she says, “none of these are useful at all. Dr Busby should be ashamed of himself.”
UPDATE: George Monbiot has also put up a blog post on Christopher Busby in the Guardian Environment section. There is fierce debate in the comments between pro-and anti-nuclear Guardianistas. Meanwhile the Green Party have made no statement on all this that I can see.
“This sub-prime revival is part of an alleged “growth package” which will have exactly the opposite effect to the one intended. It will further stoke inflation, inflict more misery on savers (pensioners especially) and further distort the market mechanisms whose proper functioning is vital to our economic recovery. One might expect this kind of crazed Keynesian recklessness from President Obama: he does at least have the excuse of being a Marxist, hell bent on destroying the US economy, with Paul Krugman as his adviser. But Cameron? Please can someone, anyone, explain what exactly the point is of voting in a conservative prime minister if he won’t cut taxes, won’t deregulate, won’t support free markets, won’t promote sensible energy policies, won’t defend Britain’s interests in Europe, won’t in fact do anything that Ed Miliband wouldn’t have done in the same position. And at least Ed Miliband has the decency to admit to being a socialist, so we’d know more or less what we were getting.”
James Delingpole.
Our own Perry de Havilland had Cameron more or less figured out in January, 2006. I have had no reason, and neither has Perry, to change my mind about him.
The tight financial integration of the eurozone, together with the essentially political decision to cement all domestic claims into a foreign currency (the euro) was deliberate: thereafter no sovereign could expect to regain independence. A razor-wire fence was erected to prevent members from leaving the enclosure. Now that some inmates are proving excessively troublesome, that same razor wire is a formidable barrier to getting them out.
– G. R. Steele
Yes, there are a couple of interesting recent postings up at the Adam Smith Institute blog, both involving falling prices and falling profits.
Tim Worstall writes about why the solar power business is not proving very profitable. This is not, he argues, because solar power is rubbish. It’s just that making the kit to capture it is not that hard, the price of such kit is falling all the time, and making that kit won’t be very profitable.
The other falling prices and falling profits ASI posting is by Sam Bowman, who links to a piece in the Atlantic Cities blog about how a sharp drop in the price of cocaine caused a similarly sharp drop in the murder rate in the USA, during the 1990s. The business stopped being nearly so profitable and became a lot less worth killing for. (The reason the price of cocaine dropped was that smuggling got cleverer.)
I have very little to say about how true either of these claims are. Mostly my reactions are: interesting! Can anyone here be any more informative than that?
I believe in legalising drugs no matter what. But if it is true that a freer market in drugs, and consequent fall in their price, already has reduced the crime associated with illegal drugs, then that surely strengthens the arguments that I can use to support what I already believe in.
As for solar power, is solar power really about to become economically rational in a big way? If so, how much is that reality talking, and how much the politically rigged and politically deranged energy market?
“As the Church of England keeps telling us how much it shares the aims of the St Paul’s protestors, I notice an advertisement in the Financial Times. The Church Commissioners need a chief operating officer. He will be paid a `six figure salary’, says the advertisement, to manage their `£5 billion multi-asset portfolio’. There is no mention of anything Christian, or even anything ethical. The language is all management-speak. The ideal candidate will have a `proven track record of driving continuous and consistent operational performance’. The job’s responsibilities include `to build and maintain internal controls and process and to lead a no-surprises culture’. Although it is pretty hard to reconcile a `no-surprises culture’ with the mystery of the Incarnation, one must admit that it might have come in useful in dealing these various `occupations’. As well as St Paul’s, there is no one else outside Bristol, Exeter and Sheffield Cathedrals. You have only to study the websites of the various Occupy groups across the country to see that they, too, stick to a no-surprises culture. Events include Palestine Solidarity Campaign rallies, performances by Billy Bragg, strikers’ benefit gigs, meetings of the Anti-Cuts Alliance. They are not forerunners of a Second Coming: they are the usual suspects. There is nothing unchristian about rounding them up (caringly, of course).”
Charles Moore, page 11 of Spectator, 19 November. (This is behind the magazine’s pay-wall. Be grateful to your humble Samizdata scribe for re-typing these words from the dead-tree version).
I like the point about Billy Bragg. He’s in danger of becoming a “national treasure”.
I took this photo yesterday afternoon, not far from my home in London:
Maybe I am being very dim, but what happened here? Did the former user of these crutches have some kind of accident and get whisked off in an ambulance? Did he (or she) encounter a faith healer, and thanks to him (or her), make a miraculous recovery and thus no longer need the crutches? Did the crutches fall off a lorry, and then get put helpfully on the pavement, to stop them getting run over? I strongly suspect that there is an uncontroversially obvious explanation for this circumstance, and that when a commenter provides it I will look very silly, but I can’t now think what it could be.
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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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