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The Balkans have been very quiet for what seems to be the longest time. Or, if not exactly quiet, then so overshadowed by other events that I had almost forgotten about them. Almost. But I have always regarded the region as an occasionally dormant volcano as opposed to a dead one.
In that context, this rather gloomy editorial from the Asia Times is worth reading:
When the outcome of a tragedy is known in advance, it finds ways of occurring earlier than expected. In this case, the fate of 100,000 Serbian Christians who remain in Kosovo may pre-empt the debate over Europe’s eventual absorption into the Muslim world.
The author makes no attempt to disguise his own sympathies so caveat lector.
I sometimes wonder how the last Balkan war would have played out without the NATO (read American) intervention. Very differently I suspect. In the event of another eruption, does the USA have the available resources and sufficient political will to perform an encore?
Really, if The Economist is going to opine on this sort of thing, its writers need to know something on the subject.
– Glenn Reynolds
For finance geeks and stock market punters, here is an article about the growing use of computer programmes to trade the equity, bond and other markets. Even as early as 1987, when equities fell dramatically – was it really nearly 20 year ago? – I vaguely recall reference to ‘programme-trading’, a process whereby orders to buy or sell a bunch of stocks was automated. Banks and hedge funds now use what are called algorithmic trading systems, which, in plain English, make use of recognisable patterns of behaviour that can be expressed mathematically in order to give out ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ signals in a market, spot trends, etc.
The usual worriers, not all of them anti-market people, may fret that all this mathematical wizardry, aided by the powers of modern computing, will make markets dangerously volatile, but as Iain Dey’s Telegraph article suggests, this does not appear to be the case. In recent years, in fact, global equity and bond markets have been pretty calm, although punctuated by the occasional sharp selloff, as happened in late February and early March. The last really big blowup was when Russia defaulted on its sovereign debt in 1998, triggering the meltdown of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund. When last year the fund Amranth nearly collapsed in the natural gas market, it hardly caused a wider ripple.
In fact, contrary to what the Will Huttons of this world might have us believe, the growing use of financial derivatives to offload risks seems to be making markets more, not less, able to deal with risk and ultimately, makes the whole financial system safer. That is not, of course to say that all is well. It is not. In Britain, a profligate government could yet put the market into a spin if the inflation problem gets worse (UK retail price inflation is nearly at 5%). House prices could, if interest rates rise as expected, take a nasty fallback. So there are gremlins in the systems. But the blame, as usual, should be pinned on the real culprits, and not computers or strange-sounding things like collateralised debt obligations.
Of course, this also explains why some of the best science graduates and post-graduates now work in the City, rather than making space rockets. Money talks.
(I have corrected the spelling of Iain Dey).
I still think of myself as an environmentalist. Almost everyone is interested in their living conditions. So I hope in that sense you do, too.
My problem with greenery is that I also think. Something that many greens have given up decades past. It was apparent to me even 20 years ago, that most were adapting their understanding of the problems – and indeed inventing problems – to match their prefabricated concept of a good society. I tried to fix that. I failed.
There are lots of exceptions, and I still have a lot of time for those who hang on to rationality. But unfortunately they tend to feel too much loyalty to the Green brand to distinguish themselves from it. Maybe this is good politics, but I think it is bad policy. Fostering craziness leads to the growth of craziness.
Here is a profession of the true, mad, faith from The Ecologist, a magazine that has otherwise been gently drifting from the hard-core towards the mainstream since Zac Goldsmith took over from his late uncle. ‘Cassandra’ writes:
I listened [to Julian Morris at a Conservative Party climate change seminar] in a sort of daze of disbelief that anyone professing to profess anything at all in matters academic could be so divorced from the realities around him and so blind as to where we are heading.
The rich countries have reached their current unsteady and unsustainable apex of ‘development’ by bankrupting our posterity of basic resources such as oil; by perpetrating crimes against the natural world in terms of species poisoning and elimination, of soil and oceanic degradation that will beggar humanity for generations; by promoting the biological hoodlumism of global warming; and by disintegrating our local community structures, the oldest social unit in all human history, to such a degree that our prisons and hospitals are full to overflowing and figures for such ills as cancer, venereal infections, juvenile behaviour disorders and psychotic forms of family breakdown are climbing to ever higher levels as millions resort increasingly to drugs and opiates to relieve the stresses all this wonderful development is imposing on them.
And so on, in a column so rich in lunacy as to defy fisking. Cancer and sexually transmitted disease are caused by wealth. Burning oil is “biological hoodlumism” but nonetheless it is a basic resource of which we are short. The corollary: “we should be embarking on a massive programme of de-industrialisation”.
My question for such anti-humanist zealots is the same logical positivist one that I have for the religious fundamentalists: is there any conceivable evidence from which you would not derive the same conclusions? The mythic pseudonym should be Procrustes, not Cassandra.
I am sure many of you have heard Carla Howell’s song “How Could I Live Without Filing Taxes”. Well, now she has a music video!
“My word, I’m not even a hundred yet.” The last line of Robert A. Heinlein’s masterpiece – arguably his finest book – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Much has been written about the science fiction maestro. Well, a lot is going to be said and written about the man at the upcoming conference to mark the centenary of his birth. The guest-list is pretty damn impressive, including one of America’s hot science fiction talents, John Scalzi. It seems sadly ironic that Heinlein, a man who wrote memorably about longevity and characters like Lazarus Long, is not still with us.
But his ideas and wonderful stories most decidedly are.
As sporting competitions go, it may not be one of the most visually enthralling, but the America’s Cup yachting race festival – held this year in Valencia in Spain – has to be up there as one of the most prestigious and oldest. Started in Victorian Britain, the prize to win he massive trophy got its name from the fact that, for more than 150 years or so, America managed to win the series of race matches without a break until, in 1983, the Australian-backed team led by skipper John Bertrand beat a yacht helmed by legendary US race maestro Dennis Conner.
I love the shape and design of 12-metre yachts, and the J-class yachts that were raced in the 1920s and 1930s are arguably some of the most beautiful creations to be struck from the hand of man. I often find that people who do not know much about sailing like to put prints of J-Class vessels on their walls. I think there is something about the aesthetic of such a racing boat that appeals to us in much the same way that a sleek aircraft does. In many respects the design of a modern yacht has a lot in common with the design of aircraft, so perhaps it is not surprising that some of the top aircraft designers, such as Thomas Sopwith, were keen sailors too.
Largely due to the lack of time and of course money, I do not do as much sailing as in my younger days but I hope to get in some time afloat later this year, possibly including the race around the Isle of Wight, part of the Cowes Week yatchting series. I always seem to return from a yachting holiday or race feeling absolutely knackered but also refreshed by getting completely away from the office. You love it or you hate it. For me, sailing is as addictive as nicotine or booze. I intend to take the shore-based Yachtmaster navigation course this winter and eventually go for the full ticket.
Anyway, I will be interested to see if the USA can win back the America’s Cup trophy this year. I do not think Britain stands much of a chance, unless some rich-as-Croesus character decides to fund a serious challenge for the trophy.
Nikki Giovanni found one of her Creative Writing students a trial.
“And every class I’m saying, ‘Mr. Cho, take off your (sun)-glasses please, take your hat off please. Mr. Cho, that’s not a poem. Can you work on it please,'” Giovanni recalled. “And then I finally realized that something is not wrong with me, something is wrong with him, and I said to him, ‘I’m not a good teacher for you.'”
One day, she arrived and found her class of about 70 students had dwindled to fewer than 10. When she asked a student after class about it, he confessed that “everybody’s scared of (Cho).” Giovanni later had him removed from her class after she threatened to resign.
Why did it have to come to that? Imagine if every class Cho Seung-hui had attended had taken place at the invitation of the teacher- an invitation that could be rescinded at any time.
In reality his memories of school were of humiliation, but imagine if, from the age of twelve onwards, or from even earlier if your imagination can stretch that far, school had been an option he could choose if he wanted it.
What if Cho’s concepts of “school” and “college” had been formed by classes like the Karate class described by Brian Micklethwait?
What struck me, so to speak, about these “martial arts” classes was that although the children present may have supposed that all there were learning was how to be more violent, what they were really learning was no less than civilisation itself.
The children were all told to get changed into their Karate kit in an orderly fashion, and to put their regular clothes in sensible little heaps. They all lined up the way he said. They all turned up on time. They left the place impeccably clean when they’d finished, all helping to make sure that all was ship-shape and properly closed-up when they left.
Were these children being “coerced”? Certainly not. They didn’t have to be there, any more than The Man had to teach them Karate if he didn’t want to. If they wanted out, then out they could go, with no blots on their copybooks or markings-down on their CVs.
Having reached the age of twenty-three, Cho was no longer forced to be taught – but his teachers were still forced to teach him and his fellow students to associate with him. True, there were a few last ways out from his menacing presence; the students could jeopardise their education by skipping class and the teacher could jeopardise her career by threatening to resign. Unfortunately by the time these sanctions were employed Cho had already got away with too much.
I sometimes think that practically every problem, inefficiency and cruelty of our education system has at its root compulsion. People who are forced into each other’s society tend not to behave well to each other. Wherever the doors are locked, be the locks visible or invisible, those inside seem to revert to the hierarchy of the baboon troop. There is still room for free will: most do no worse than learn a few habits of obsequiousness or sullenness that can be shaken off. Cho was not forced to become a mass-murderer. (In fact I see his own claim to the contrary in his video as a sort of twisted acknowledgement of this fact; the thought that “I don’t have to do this” had to be actively denied.) No, he was not forced to pull the trigger – but force did play too large a part in his life. Imagine if the doors had been open for the bullied Cho Seung-hui to walk away, or if the adult Cho Seung-hui had been shown the door at the first sign of discourtesy. Imagine this was the case not just for Cho Seung-hui on certain pivotal occasions but for everyone on all occasions. Then, I think, he would have learned differently.
As I prepare my itinerary for my next long chain of consultancy visits, my best customer (the one I do webcast editing for) has just purchased my ticket for the transatlantic leg. Now I suspect someone at Continental Airlines has a bit of a Libertarian or small government or at the very least a ‘do not blame us’ bent because the statement actually breaks out how each ‘involved government’ is stealing my money:
Equivalent Airfare:……………………….565.00
U.K. Air Passenger Duty: ……………….79.60
U.K . Passenger Service Charge:……..25.90
U.S. Customs User Fee:…………………..5.50
U.S. Immigration User Fee:………………7.00
U.S. APHIS User Fee:………………………5.00
U.S. Passenger Facility Charge:…………4.50
U.S. Federal Transportation Tax:……..30.20
U.S. Security Service Fee: ……………….2.50
Per Person Total: ……………………….725.20
I must admit it is much worse than I had thought. At times like these I remember the words of a southern gent I once worked with on a project at CSC: “Back where I come from, servicing was what a bull did to a cow.”
After reading the above, I am feeling very well ‘serviced’ by the UK and US governments.
There is an interesting discussion point in the Telegraph called Should we be looking for a new England?.
And my answer would be yes. Ideally I would have liked to preseve much of the old England but I fear that is no longer a realistic option. I used to support the idea of an unwritten constitution because of the importance of unenumerated rights, but the Major and Blair years have shown that Britain’s unwritten constitution was not worth the paper it was not written on. We have been disarmed, we have had our rights to free speech greatly curtailed, our rights to trial by a jury of our peers abridged, our underpinning civil society regulated out of existence in area after area, our right to property vastly infringed upon.
In short, there can be no pretence whatsoever that The System has worked to protect us from our political masters. The British system survived for a long time because enough people wanted it to survive. As most are now willing to allow themselves to be herded and bought off with their own money, the system is now little more than populist authoritarianism.
Yes, we very badly need a new England.
(Kindly spare us any jokes about New England.)
As every right-thinking person instinctively knows, one is not allowed to refer to the British National Party without such reference being accompanied by frenzied denunciations. As if the mere act of acknowledging the existence of that organisation is sufficient to brand the speaker with a mark of depravity that has to be warded off in advance.
I have decided to scratch my name off the cast list of that particular pantomime. The show has been running for far too long, everyone knows the script by heart and it all sounds to terribly, suffocatingly tedious and, if this article in the Times is any indication at all, then I am not the only person to have lost patience with the same old, same old.
What I find so interesting about the article is not so much in what is being said but in the manner in which it is being said. Gone is the fear and loathing, gone is the high moral indictment, gone are the blistering accusations. Instead, the rising popularity of the BNP (and its leader, Nick Griffin) is examined with a tone which is temperate, measured and, in some places, bordering on the sympathetic. That remarkable change of tone is, of itself, significant:
About 70 people are packed into a back room of the Golden Lion pub, with not a skinhead or pair of Doc Martens in sight and more tweeds than T-shirts. They are male and female, young and old, working class and middle class, ex-Labour and ex-Tory, several of them Daily Telegraph readers. They are mostly solid Yorkshire folk who have watched immigrants transform areas in which they grew up and believe – rightly or wrongly – that their way of life is under threat. They are bewildered more than hate-filled. They are fearful more than fear-inspiring, and feel gagged by political correctness. They do not come from sink estates. They are stakeholders, people with something to lose.
Throwing their lot in with the BNP may not be the wisest course of action but it would be a gross mistake to dismiss these people as knuckle-dragging bigots. They are unlikely to think of themselves in those terms. Indeed, they are people whose national character (or a part of it, at least) was forged in the fight against national socialism and while I might question the course of their political migration, I cannot find it in myself to blame them for their clear disenchantment with the status quo. → Continue reading: Weimar Britain
There is a class of drugs called ‘cognitive enhancers’ that could potentially raise the intelligence, skills and productivity of users. Pharmocological enhancement is an anticipated bonus of the information revolution, and has been welcomed by many in the transhumanist community. These issues are now cognitive blips on the unenhanced specialist offices that civil services establish to monitor that horrible outcome of progress known as the Future.
When governments begin to understand that people could use a new set of drugs for improvement, they grasp for an improper P word, Prohibition. Their Puritanical wish to maintain a level playing field between themselves and the Populace demands that these substances be controlled, classified, prescribed, monitored and hopefully banned. Enhancement is a dirty word, but if these drugs have to be accepted, then they will make sure that we will use them on their terms:
Foresight, a Government think-tank, believes that “cognitive enhancers” could be “as common as coffee” within a couple of decades to help a person think faster, relax and sleep more efficiently….
The Department of Health has become so concerned about these drugs that it has asked the Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) to assess the potential impact of the substances, some of which are licensed in Britain to treat narcolepsy or acute tiredness.
They are already being bought illegally over the internet in the US by people who think they will enhance their performance in the classroom and in the office.
Government attention in these drugs is unwelcome, since the report of Foresight or the Academy of Medical Sciences speculate about social problems as an excuse for regulation. One argument raised is that the pharmaceutical industry could abandon research into mental health and switch to ‘cognitive enhancers’ because of greater demand.
All of the evidence indicates that civil servants, politicians, and public sector professionals would not benefit from ‘cognitive enhancers’, since their increased intelligence would be expressed in greater fiscal and regulatory complexity. These classes should be prohibited from employing cognitive enhancement.
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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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