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I was just wondering if the asteroid – currently projected to hit Earth in 2019 and destroy a continent – happened to land on Mecca… Is this thought heresy to to a Moslem? Would scientific efforts by Christians or worse, atheists, to deflect the asteroid be an interference in God’s purpose? I think we should be told. July 25th, 2002 | Comments are closed
 Basking in the anticipated riches from sales of Samizdata consumer durables, Perry e-mails to suggest, “Natalie should consider a shop for her site… a nifty line in ‘Ninja Librarian’ tee-shirts?” Thank you, Perry, but I have already launched my own mug and T-shirt business, and while doing it had the inspiration that will make me the next Bill Gates. As capitalists you might be interested in my business model. Start up costs are zero. Running costs are zero. Depreciation is zero. Losses from theft, breakage and catastrophes of nature are all zero. Profits, it is true, are also currently running at an integer number between one and minus one, but it’s early days yet. The Great Thought came to me while I was thinking of what to give my 48,888th visitor, a chap called Dave. Suddenly it came to me:
“Virtual micromanufacturing,” as I like to call it is the true child of the information age, with all its virtues of instantaneousness, flexibility and asypmptotically trivial transaction costs. You don’t like the Ronald MacDonald logo on your nataliesolent.blogspot.com mug? Just look hard at your much more tasteful 1802 Sèvres card dish and reassign that coveted Natalie identity at the speed of thought. Just In Time manufacturing has nothing on this! It remains only for the delighted customer to send me his money. July 25th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Back in 1991, the English band that rejoiced in the name of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine re-released a song called Sheriff Fatman from the album ‘101 Damnations’, about nasty landlords in London. One verse in that song was:
I assume I am not the only one who rather suspected at the time that ‘Nicholas Van Wotsisface’ was referring to Nicholas Van Hoogstraten and ‘Sheriff Fatman’ was lawyer Michael Harris, who was not only a tad portly but was under-sheriff of London, responsible for serving many of the eviction orders Nicholas Van Hoogstraten used to gain possession of properties. It is just a theory of course July 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
On this day in 1704, British Admiral George Rooke took Gibraltar from Spain by force of arms. British control of the Rock was later permanently granted to Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht on 13th July, 1713. Britain has controlled Gibraltar for almost 300 years, i.e. longer that the United States has even existed, and what is more, unlike the goats and scorpions of Perejil Island off Morocco, the people of Gibraltar refuse to submit to Spanish sovereignty or be bartered away against their will like livestock. July 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Alice Bachini almost manages to scare me silly with talk of nuclear weapons in suitcases (this article must surely be in the NSA ‘Dodgy’ Inbox via the Echelon Internet System, being pored over for hidden significance). However a few clues about the person carrying it: a decent sized nuclear weapon is going to need a twenty five kilogramme lump of Uranium 235, or a smaller piece of plutonium (I don’t know how much smaller). There are assorted devices for triggering the detonator, initiating fission and of course a very strong cradle (and heavy) to hold the whole thing together while the whole thing is carried around. Last weekend I watched an entertaining film called “Bad Company” in which a couple of CIA agents played by Antony Hopkins and Chris Rock threw the briefcase around as if it contained only a couple of sandwiches and a copy of the daily paper. I’m no Arnold Schwarzenegger (I probably weigh more but not for the right reasons) and I’m quite sure that a forty or fifty kilogramme suitcase would be beyond my capacity to carry one-handed for any distance. I would have thought that someone struggling two-handed with an attache case they could barely lift would be a fairly indiscrete sight. It would also be a very naughty gag to pull at a station as a practical joke. Realistically we’re looking at a device in a vehicle. It is a safe bet that no European city is safe but I would be amazed if the US government hadn’t installed radiation detection equipment on all major roads leading into the major cities. The Mayor of London is too busy trying to mess up the traffic to worry about such niceties. Even a heavily shielded lump of radioactive material can be detected fairly easily at a distance. At school we played with tiny pieces of uranium encased in lead which we could detect yards away with Geiger counters. Indeed in the movie, such a device was used to track down the bomb.  July 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
July 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Newly-installed Church of England Archbishop Rowan Williams, about whom I made a brief mention on the blog yesterday seems an opinionated fellow, but I don’t want to discuss his particular insights on the possible invasion of Iraq, the bombing of Afghanistan or other foreign points. What really piqued my interest was his broad condemnation of consumerism, particularly the use by young children of video games, such as those which feature violence. By happy coincidence, I have started to read a fascinating new book Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence by American comic book author and child psychologist Gerard Jones, who has written about how violent video games like Doom or Tomb Raider can in reality help children to master insecurities and fears of all kinds. Jones explores the many fantasy games now on the market, the importance of superheroes in comics and television, ending with the broad conclusion that this stuff is essentially good for children rather than harmful. He points to the fact that during the 1990s, when such games became wildly popular in the United States, teenage violence decreased. Of course, some horrific school shootings prompted commentators to wonder whether video games were making youngsters more violent, but Jones’ book tends to weaken that argument quite strongly. He even shows how comics, action hero films starring the likes of James Bond or Spiderman can in reality help children suffering from low self confidence become stronger, more assertive (in a good way), and better suited to coping with the inevitable difficulties of adulthood. In many ways the book is a re-working of the need for fantasy and make-believe in childhood development. His analysis is light-years away from that of Archbishop Williams, and I would guess, from that of many mainstream commentators for whom video games are just another dread feature of global capitalism. For me, the profusion of amazing games and top-notch films are one its great glories. July 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
This was posted today by Alan Forrester on the Libertarian Alliance Forum, but is perhaps better suited to a blog such as this. It deals with one of the great issues of our time: Which one is better, Salma or Friedrich? I once met Friedrich Hayek. Some time in the early to mid nineteen eighties he tottered into the Alternative Bookshop (where all his books were on sale and were among our least-worst sellers), at the age of about ninety five. I got him a chair. (It was a very wobbly chair, one of our worst, and terrible headlines flashed through my mind: “Free market bookshop kills world’s greatest free market economist.” Luckily the chair did not collapse.) “How are you?” seemed like the proper thing for me to say, so that’s what I did say. Being Friedrich Hayek he took this question very seriously. He apparently took all questions seriously, from everybody, no matter how seemingly insignificant. One of his life principles, deeply embedded both in his personal behaviour and in his theoretical ideas and writings, was that the opinions of non-academics (“tacit economic knowledge” and all that) are just as important as academic opinions like his, and often more so for some important purposes, quite possibly even those of an insignificant assistant bookseller like me. (Leon Louw once told me about a South African expedition with Hayek during which Hayek cross-examined game wardens and park keepers for hours on end about the mysteries of their various trades.) So: here was this young person, perhaps a young person who was deeply knowledgeable in new and surprising ways that he, Hayek, had not yet heard about, asking him, Hayek, how he was. So: how was he? He gave it some thought. Eventually he answered roughly as follows. Well, he said. I get up in the morning, and I do some work on my book, and then I write a letter to The Times and then I write an article and then I have breakfast, and then I work some more on my book and then I go to see some politicians, and then I prepare my talk for the next Mont Pelerin Conference, and then I have lunch and give a talk at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and then I write another letter to the newspapers and talk with some more politicians and do some more work on my book and then I talk to a journalist … It went on like this for several more minutes. What did this have to do with how he was? Eventually this was revealed. After he had finished describing all his activities for one entire day, a look of extreme resentment came over his face. “…and in the evening”, he said plaintively, “I feel tired!” This was evidently a new experience for him and he didn’t like it one bit. I felt tired just listening to him. Moral: great men are not just great for doing great things. They are great because they do a lot of great things. July 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I have read Perry’s link to the checkered history of the UPA with great interest (see previous Samizdata.net article). There is much students of the period miss simply because of the vastness of the Eastern Front and the greater perceived relevance to our own history of the Western. Most striking in the Weisenthal Centre’s brief history of the hatreds, treacheries and double-dealings of the period and area is how well it is brought to life in the guise of real people in Harry Turtledove’s wonderful alternate history series, “World War“. I won’t spoil any of it for those who have not read the books, other than to say he puts human faces and motives to the many players of that vast historical drama of the twentieth century. I highly recommend the books to anyone and particularly to those interested in WWII. Not for the history itself – it is an alternate reality – but to get inside the heads of the people behind the facts. No one is a monster in their own mind – and sometimes not even in their own time. July 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Veterans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) who opposed both the Nazis and the Red Army (whom they regarded as occupying Russians) from 1942 until they were largely crushed by the communists in 1953, are to be accorded the same rights as former Red Army veterans by the Ukrainian government. It is interesting that the Russian government regards this as an affront even after all these years, calling the UPA ‘bandits’ for having the audacity to defend the Ukraine against all comers. However although the UPA opposed both the Soviets and Nazis, they were also implicated in the mass murder of Poles and Jews and do not really fit comfortably into the ‘clearly-the-good-guys’ category, a fact surprisingly absent from several reports on the recent hostile reaction by the Russian government to the Ukrainian decision to grant surviving UPA veterans full military pensions.  July 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Blogosophical Investigations (I preferred “Chris Cooper’s Blog” because that’s what it is) is definitely worth an occasional look. Say, about once a month. A rather good contribution from Chris to the now rather good Libertarian Alliance Forum reminded me of his blogzistence. His bit about Scab Pride is there (July 23), as well as on the LA-F. Some teacher trade unionists in America have been saying that non-unionised teachers should pay the unionised ones Danegeld or teacher-geld or whatever, on account that the unions got them their wages also. Says Chris:
Chris says unionized and I say unionised, but otherwise of course I agree. He also includes a rather good comment from new LA-F regular Anton Sherwood. I also liked this, from July 17th, which I think is further evidence that BI’s original name would have sufficed:
My god. I’ve just realised. I do this. I watch Ally McBeal repeats with the sound off and the Bruckner (or some such preferred alternative to Pink) up, while tapping away at my keyboard. I’m a woman. Oh well. All the libertarians I know agree that we need more of those. July 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Princes and democratic majorities are drunk with power. They must reluctantly admit that they are subject to the laws of nature. But they reject the very notion of economic law. July 24th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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