Scientists are planning to ignite a tiny Man-made star, according to this Daily Telegraph article. I wonder if the scientists or the journalists writing on their activities have seen the film, Sunshine, about which reviews have been mixed?
|
|||||
|
Darwin gave us hope, not God. We have an inbuilt Pandora’s box that enables us to deceive not only others but ourselves. Deception is clearly linked to neural complexity and a positive perception of our environs is a deep-rooted drive. Without this, we cannot accomplish what we set out to do. Moreover, we have a tendency to deceive ourselves and deny the truth, since the alternative is depression and despair.
The rhetoric of hope adopted by Barack Obama and other politicians becomes more understandable as a strategy that draws upon deep seated biases within human societies. It is noteworthy that hope has formed a strong component of many religious messages: thus rendering the satirical embodiment of the Messiah in the President-elect more accurate in Darwinian terms. Darwinian explanations add to the complex mix of our understanding of human action. They do not replace or simplify this complex cultural mosaic. This small point does give us an insight into power: for those who truly love terror would deny hope to all. The true totalitarian states of the twentieth century tried to deny hope to all of their victims and even then, failed in their torture. Yet, the same horizons are also eroded and extinguished over the longer term by other systems, such as welfare. There is no comparison between the terror of the prison camps and the grey anomie of incapacity benefits. But both, I suspect, through different means, overturn this need for self-deception, acknowledging the primacy of politics and society over the weak orientation of our evolved psychology. December 27th, 2008 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The UK Culture Gauleiter, Andy Burnham, gives an interview in the Telegraph today in which he says:
Actually the people who ‘created’ the internet did it so that parts of the state could stay in touch after a nuclear attack… the idea the net does not need the government was an emergent realisation that came later. And of course there is nothing a government hates more that being thought irrelevent, which is what this is really about. Internet censorship is never ever about ‘protecting’ people, it is about extending and maintaining state power. That is the whole reason why advocates of censorship pretend child pornography is vastly more prevalent than it actually is. And you may be sure kiddie porn will be wheeled out yet again in this latest attempt to expand the power of the state.
Which of course is indeed a naked, direct and unambiguous attack on free speech.
Yes, no doubt Andy Burnham dreams of marching forward with The One across the internet in a sort of virtual Operation Barbarosa, presumably with UKGov in the roll of the Loyal Ally. But then unlike Barbarosa, this attack comes as no surprise to the ‘enemy’ (i.e. folks like us) and there is that pesky ‘First Amendment’ on the other side of the Atlantic sitting like 20,000 T-34 tanks waiting at Kursk. There is a reason Samizdata is hosted in the USA and not on this side of the puddle. This crass power grab needs to be opposed on every level and not just attacked on the sheer technical difficulty of making it happen but also assaulted morally and politically. But I agree when he says “If you look back at the people who created the internet they talked very deliberately about creating a space that Governments couldn’t reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now.” Yes we do need to revisit that and remind everyone that if the history of the previous century teaches us anything, it is that governments cannot be trusted. Free speech cannot be left to the sufferance of political systems and venal politicians like Andrew Burnham. We need to smite any attempt to encroach on the internet at every level and distribute technical ‘solutions’ to every initiative the state comes up as widely as possible regardless of what laws they pass. We simply will not cooperate. December 27th, 2008 | 64 comments - (Comments are closed)
Wired magazine has a neat item about ten species of creature that were discovered in 2008. Alas, as the comments in the article suggest, some people remain far more interested in the species varieties that have gone extinct this year. What perhaps needs to be stated is that in a constantly changing world, species are evolving and others are dying out, even without the allegedly malign influence of Man. What the deep Greens often do not seem ready to concede is that species have been wiped out before without the help of us naughty bipeds. December 26th, 2008 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
The innocent have nothing [left] to lose – The answer to the question “What was the winning tagline in the government’s competition to relaunch the ID card?”, according to The Register’s perhaps slightly satirical Christmas quiz. December 26th, 2008 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Christmas… I am gorged with all the bounty that western civilisation has to offer and rejoicing as I ponder the gifts bestowed by my friends. But I must say my favourite gift today was learning that Harold Pinter, a loathsome apologist for oh so many of the most vile mass murderers of modern times has finally dropped dead. Good riddance and a pox on anyone who mourns his passing. For me Christmas just got even merrier. December 25th, 2008 | 51 comments - (Comments are closed)
Blogger and soldier Andrew Olmsted was mentioned on a Fox News report I listened to on the net tonight. His posthumous last post from January of this year seems worthy of Christmas Eve. If I (and apparently he) are wrong and there is an after… I sincerely hope it is populated by souls such as his. December 24th, 2008 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Here are some superb photos of those symbols of human civilisation, libraries. As ever, the British Library blows me away. (Hat tip: Stephen Hicks). I am spending Christmas in a part of the world boasting some pretty fabulous architecture of its own. In the meantime, I want to wish readers a Happy Christmas and hopefully not too stressful 2009, whatever the economic situation brings. December 24th, 2008 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Evidence is only of use to the mind that is prepared for it. Every time I see the government of Japan (or some other government) spending yet more money, in spite of the failure of all their previous government spending orgies, I am reminded of this. Because, of course, to them there is no such thing as evidence that expanding government spending is not a “good thing”, just as there is no such thing as evidence that trying to finance lending (“investment”) via credit/money expansion, rather than solely by real savings, is not a “good thing”. On the contrary, any economic decline (perhaps even mass starvation) is interpreted as evidence that there should both be more government spending (an “expansionary fiscal policy”) and more credit/money expansion (an “expansionary monetary policy”). This is due to the framework of ideas in the heads of the politicians, administrators, mainstream academics and media people – and, yes, many businessmen… What Perry would call the “metacontext”. Yet in the private sector, this sort of behaviour is called this a ‘pyramid scheme‘ and people get thrown in jail for it. December 23rd, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
So writes Michael Portillo. Well, you can certainly tell that he does not intend to stand for election again. This blog is not generally a fan club for politicians, but even here one must admit that when a former Secretary of State for Defence and Shadow Chancellor writes –
– it carries more weight than the same sentiments coming from most other sources. Is it true? Broadly speaking, of course it is. I agree with those commenters to the Times who placed blame on the “carping, self-loathing left wing commentariat”, or made the parallel with the media in the Vietnam War, or with MGG of Auckland, who wrote
As I wrote in a post about the New Cowardice in the emergency services called ‘Loss of Nerve’, “Poisoned soil does not long give forth good fruit.” That said, I suspect that when viewed from the distance of thirty years, the sharp outline of defeat in Basra (and what is worse, a defeat that followed from a disgraceful accommodation with the enemy on the part of commanders too fond of their own cleverness) will be blurred by other, better parts of the picture. Mr Portillo has shown an admirable willingness to make himself unpopular: he praised George W Bush, rightly, for the latter’s contempt of public and educated opinion. Mr Bush (contrary to popular opinion, which is one reason he has such contempt for it) has studied history and will certainly have paused over this quotation from Lincoln, written in August 1864:
That is why I say that the difference between the United States and Britain in this story is not so large as all that. After all, in this war the Americans voted in the favoured candidate of the Copperheads, a President-elect who did indeed secure his election on such grounds that it would have been impossible for him to win the war after his inauguration, though he will be glad enough to take the victory that was won by other hands before it. December 22nd, 2008 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
The carrier aircraft for SpaceShipTwo took off for its first test flight. This is the first step of what will probably be a year long test program culminating in drop tests and flights of the world’s first tourist spaceship. It is late over here. I am sure there will be a lot of information up about it. If not, talk to me tomorrow! December 22nd, 2008 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
You might find this initial pilot for an animated not so far off future, ‘Tranquility Dome’, a lot of fun. The author, Chip Prosser, asked me to take a look and now I am wondering how soon the next episode will be available! December 21st, 2008 | Comments are closed
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
Recent Comments