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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Well, here is a good way to start the week.
The photo reminded me of a joke I heard somewhere. Back in the 1950s, the-then President, Eisenhower, was famed for enjoying his golf. There was apparently a bumper sticker around at the time that said something along the lines of, “If We Wanted A Golfer President, Vote Ben Hogan”. That’s quite funny, but at least Ike, given his pretty weighty military record and – in my view – pretty decent performance in the Oval Office – was a better president than the current occupant. (H/T: Instapundit)
Disregarding my long standing feelings about Association Football, I have been watching the World Cup. England fans have rapidly gone from optimism after England’s excellent qualification campaign to pessimism after two lackluster draws in the first round against the United States and Algeria. From my present location in Spain, I can report that Spanish fans and the Spanish media are even more brittle than those of England: it only took one goal from Switzerland to get from “We are certainties to win this” to “Oh no, not again”.
As with most stock market swings, though, the supporters of both teams are guilty of massive overreactions to events, both before and after the games so far.
Firstly, England fans who have decided that their side is crap and that the sooner they are out of their misery the better should consider the performances of each of the five large western European countries:
Spain managed that 1-0 loss to Switzerland.
Germany lost 1-0 to Serbia.
France lost 2-0 to Mexico, a star player has been sent home and the other players are apparently on strike.
Italy were held to a 1-1 draw against New Zealand, and even that was only after being given a slightly dubious penalty. I watched this in a cafe full of Italians, and allowed myself to laugh loudly when the cameras showed utterly stone-faced Italians in the crowd at full time. I wouldn’t have allowed myself to do this in a bar full of England fans in similar circumstances if I had wanted to continue living, but this was fine with the Italians, and probably to their credit. On the other hand, my supporting a New Zealand team at anything – I do not think that has ever happened before.
A case can be made that England’s 1-1 draw with Algeria is the best result out of that lot. And yet, the claim that none of these sides will make the final stages seems absurd. One or two of those sides will miss the second round. Most likely these will be France and/or Italy, both finalists last time, but generally considered the two weakest of those five sides going into this tournament. And there is a fair chance that one of England, Germany, and Spain will miss out. However, at least two and likely all three will make it, and at that point everything starts again.
The best European side outside that group – and the greatest footballing nation to never win the World Cup – is the Netherlands, and they are looking good and appear to be playing well within themselves. The Dutch produce the best managers in the world, but they are a small country and one doubts they have the depth to actually win. I would be happy if they did, but I am dubious about their ability to do so.
So my feeling is that at least one of England, Spain, and Germany will survive a lackluster first round and get close to winning the tournament. Most likely this will be Germany, not so much because they have a better side than because they are more capable of understanding that the lackluster first round does not matter much. The point of the first round is to make the second round. If you have done that, everything is fine. And everything will be fine for England if they beat Slovenia on Wednesday. At least, fine apart for the fact that Wayne Rooney appears to be a stupid idiot, but we suspected that already, and he still scores goals for Manchester United.
Of the two strongest South American sides, Argentina are looking good but are a touch unpredictable and have a history of looking good early and going down later. On the other hand, this is Lionel Messi’s chance to demonstrate he is one of the all time greats. One kind of wonders about the whole Diego Maradona as manager thing, too, although one is also unsure whether he is the person actually running things. Whether or not he is, his presence might be a help if Messi is to do what Maradona did in 1986. Carlos Tevez playing so well is nice, too.
Brazil could only defeat North Korea by one goal, but they are Brazil, they did fine against Ivory Coast, and they look to be cruising at this stage of the tournament. In truth, not much to criticise there. Plus, no European side has ever won the tournament when it was held outside Europe and no Latin American side has ever won it outside Latin America besides Brazil, who have done this three times. Does that matter?
Archbishop Rowen Williams has never heard of me and he never will. However, I now believe I have done him an injustice in various thoughts and comments. I am fully aware that most people on Samizdata are atheists – but you do not claim to be Christians, and I am saying that I have been unjust by assuming a man who said he was a Christian was lying (i.e. was a fraud).
Archbishop Williams is a social gospel man and I have assumed that, like most such folk, he is a disguised atheist – someone who when they use the word “God” really means “society” or “the people” (or whatever code word for the state). However, this was an assumption on my part – I never bothered to do any background research (exactly the sort of failure I attack in others – when they make statements about the “moderate” Barack Obama, or whatever, without spending five minutes doing any research).
Recently I came upon an exchange between Bishop Spong and Archbishop Williams which leads me to the opinion that I have been unjust to Rowen Williams. Although the source is Wikipedia I have spent enough time reading this thing to have a good sense of when articles are false and when they are true. → Continue reading: I have done Archbishop Rowen Williams an injustice
Now that the Falcon 9 has flown, the Falcon 9 Heavy is looking a lot closer.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about the success of SpaceX is that they have designed and orbited multiple clean-sheet design engines; the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launch vehicles; and a test article for a cargo/manned space capsule for about $500M. That’s comparable to the fully burdened (Not the incremental) cost of one shuttle flight. I believe it is less than the escape system development cost on the dead-on-arrival Ares I project.
Oh never talk again to me
Of northern climes and British ladies;
It has not been your lot to see,
Like me, the lovely girl of Cadiz
Although her eye be not of blue,
Nor fair her locks, like English lasses,
How far its own expressive hue
The languid azure eye surpasses !
– George Gordon, Lord Byron
I can think about football, but not for very long. So, when I observed the generally convivial, if noisy, multi-racial crowd in South Africa, it did not take long for me to forget about the ball game and start to think about Boudicca’s massacre of the Romans in Verulamium and of Suetonius’ slaughter of her and her army that followed it. This is known as being cultured.
My line of thought was this: although many whites have left Africa, there are also many who are committed to making a future for themselves and their families there. Presumably they are not troubled by the thought that their descendants will eventually intermarry with the black majority around them. Their not so distant ancestors who settled Africa were so troubled yet went to Africa anyway.
Vast amounts have been written about why it is wrong for people of one race to oppress those of another race. Much has been written about why it is wrong for people of of one race to be prevented from marrying those of another. What has been written about much less is why the whites in Africa thought they could succeed in ruling over the blacks and keeping separate from them forever. Because, simplifying massively, that must have been what those early white settlers thought. Racial mixing was not acceptable to them, being ruled by people of another race was not acceptable to them, yet they took the irrevocable step of taking their families to another continent where their race would be vastly outnumbered.
And they did this with the example of Boudicca and Suetonius known to them. Bloody rebellion followed by equally bloody reconquest, and the empire still goes down in the end. By the time whites were leaving Britain to settle in Africa no one knew which of them had Roman ancestors. Did they not wonder whether their descendants would eventually merge with the natives in the same way? Or if not that historical example for the Dutch, French, Germans, Portuguese or Belgians, any one of a thousand others would teach the same moral: that ruling castes do not stay ruling or castes forever.
On the other hand, that word “castes” reminds me that the caste system in India has lasted thousands of years. And the Jews have been “a race apart” for almost as long.
How did the early white settlers envisage the future of whites in Africa? Did they hope to become the majority as had happened, or looked set to happen, in America? Or is this whole business of imagining the far future a purely modern pastime, given that Christians of olden days thought of the time between creation and Last Judgement as lasting thousands rather than millions of years?
(Please, not too much modern politics in the comments. Isn’t there a football match you could watch instead?)
David Friedman has a thought-provoking item up on whether politicians in the 1850s would have acted differently had they known of the carnage that was to be caused by the US Civil War of the following decade. He runs some interesting scenarios.
Counter-factual history is a genre in fiction, of course. I remember Philip Chaston wrote about this issue some time ago. Sean Gabb, one of the current leaders of the Libertarian Alliance, has thoughts related to this about the Second World War (as readers may recall, I find his revisionist perspective unconvincing, as does Patrick Crozier).
By “ourselves”, of course, I mean supporters of the English football team. Tonight, in the group stages of the World Cup “soccer” tournament, England’s not-entirely-convincing team takes on the might of Algeria. The English team failed to beat the USA a few days ago, conceding a soft goal due to a horrendous mistake by our goalkeeper. But England were not as terrible as some media commentaries suggest: some players such as Glenn Johnson, Aaron Lennon and Stevie Gerrard were good, in my view.
So far, I have quite enjoyed watching the tournament. I don’t get all that bothered by the endless din of the horns that the South African fans insist on blowing. If it drowns our some of the more moronic chants or even the banalities of the commentators, that is no bad thing. The local fans look as if they are having a great time, although as no doubt Samizdata commentators will point out, they are ultimately also paying for a lot of this razzmatazz. I have not checked all the details, but I assume that the government of South Africa, and hence the taxpayers, are funding some of the cost of all this.
So far, my prediction is that the finalists will probably be drawn from the following: Brazil, Argentina, Germany and possibly England (you’re mad, Ed). France lost big last night to Mexico; Spain, which has been considered among the favourites, was stunningly defeated by Switzerland, which brought a gleam to my pro-tax haven eye. Even so, Spain could and should probably progress to later stages.
As for England, all I can hope is that we don’t give away possession easily, give plenty of the ball to Wayne Rooney, and hope the goalkeeper remembers the old adage – keep the body behind the ball.
Here is what Brian Micklethwait wrote about the previous World Cup, back in 2006. I don’t remember a lot about it as I was getting married at the time.
Bob Bigelow, the operator of two inflatable test habitats in orbit, fired one back at the idiots who claim to be all for free-markets, capitalism and liberty… until their own socialist-space ox gets gored:
“… I don’t understand the critics who say ‘commercial’ entities can’t safely build a capsule. Why is it that Boeing, the company that constructed the ISS itself, can’t safely build a capsule that would go to their own space station? These are the sorts of questions and issues that we will be posing in Washington as a member of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation.”
Paul Marks, as regular readers know, regards the Economist as a sort of bellweather of conventional (ie, frequently wrong) wisdom. The magazine recently carried this editorial on the supposed inadequacies of the US political Right.
He sent this letter to the magazine. Somehow, I think they are unlikely to run it, but we can:
Dear Sir,
In your current edition you have as the main cover story an attack upon the “American right”. In reality, of course, it is not the fact that the people you attack are American that causes you to hate them – you hate them (and attack them in the most abusive terms you can) because they commit the dreadful crime of not agreeing with you.
You hate the British “right” just as much as you hate the American “right” – with “right” really being defined as people who do not support endless bailouts, corrupt “stimulus” government spending, and corporate welfare (such as the Central Bank producing more credit money and issuing it in various sweetheart loan forms to politically connected financial sector enterprises).
I am not really interested in the fact that you use abusive language (“mad” and so on) and cartoons against people whose only crime is to have different political opinions to yourselves, after all I have used abusive language (such as “corrupt”) to describe your editor, Mr John Micklethwait, and the only reason I have never drawn an abusive cartoon of him is that I can not draw.
No, what interests me is your claim that America needs a “better opposition” to President Barack Obama – and your implied claim that you should be the guide to such an opposition.
→ Continue reading: An open letter to The Economist
The Times has vanished behind a pay wall and… frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
There is nothing about The Times that cannot be easily replaced with other on-line sources. Move along, nothing to see (literally).
SpaceX has signed a $500M deal to launch the next generation Iridium satellite system.
The mammals are now getting big enough to go for the dinosaurian jugular vein.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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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