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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Here are two snippets of news from the BBC today.
Snippet one:
Train drivers’ union Aslef has suspended three of its officials after an alleged brawl at a barbecue at its north London offices.
The alleged incident involved general secretary Shaun Brady, assistant general secretary Mick Blackburn and president Martin Samways.
Snippet two:
A 14-year-old schoolboy has been arrested after a teacher was attacked, police have said.
The youngster was arrested after the incident at a school in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, on Friday 21 May.
He was later released on police bail pending further inquiries, a force spokesman added.
Police said the teacher, a 54-year-old man, was taken to hospital for a check-up after suffering swelling and bruising to his face.
Both of these events occurred in Britain. They prove beyond doubt that Britain is a continuous maelstrom of violence from one end of the country to the other.
We should get out now.
The Department of Homeland Security is on the verge of awarding the biggest contract in its young history for an elaborate system that could cost as much as $15 billion and employ a network of databases to track visitors to the United States long before they arrive.
The program, known as US-Visit and rooted partly in a Pentagon concept developed after the terrorist attacks of 2001, seeks to supplant the nation’s physical borders with what officials call virtual borders. Such borders employ networks of computer databases and biometric sensors for identification at sites abroad where people seek visas to the United States.
With a virtual border in place, the actual border guard will become the last point of defense, rather than the first, because each visitor will have already been screened using a global web of databases.
Visitors arriving at checkpoints, including those at the Mexican and Canadian borders, will face “real-time identification” — instantaneous authentication to confirm that they are who they say they are. American officials will, at least in theory, be able to track them inside the United States and determine if they leave the country on time.
Whoever wins the contract will be asked to develop a standard for identifying visitors using a variety of possible tools — from photographs and fingerprints, already used at some airports on a limited basis since January, to techniques like iris scanning, facial recognition and radio-frequency chips for reading passports or identifying vehicles.
Let’s hope that such a ‘high-concept’ plan will be above the ability of governments to organise such monumental projects. After all they say, hope springs eternal…
As old time readers surely know, I am a long time denizen of the L5 Society of yore and the National Space Society formed from its union with the National Space Institute of Werner von Braun. I chair one of the major committees of the society and so state up front I have a rather serious interest in the upcoming ISDC (International Space Development Conference).
With that out of the way… I’d like to invite anyone in the Oklahoma area (or anywhere in the world for that matter) to come along. Programming runs from Thursday this week until Monday (May 27-31). There are one day registrations for those who are too busy to attend the full event.
Speakers include:
- Oklahoma Lt. Gov. Mary Fallin, Chair of the Aerospace States Assn
- Melchor J. Antunano, M.D., MS, Director FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute
- Charles Chafer, CEO, Team Encounter, Humanity’s First Starship™ Solar Sails
- Fred Haise, Apollo 13 Astronaut, Space Shuttle Commander
- Gen. Ken McGill, Board Chairman, Oklahoma Space Industry Development Authority
- Dr Kenneth Money, Canadian Astronaut
- Courtney Stadd, Former NASA Chief of Staff
- Dr. Donald A. Thomas, Astronaut, ISS Program Scientist
- Rick Tumlinson, Founder, Space Frontier Foundation
- Prof. Robert Winglee, University of Washington, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion
- Dr. Robert Zubrin, President, Mars Society
as well as many others. You will have to skim the program to find them… or else just show up and register at the door. All are welcome.
If you do drop in, look for a harried guy in corporate battle armour (ie. a dark suit) running about the place. It will either be me or someone who will point you to me. You are welcome to say hello… but be prepared to do so on the run!
The UK government’s biometric ID card trial is gathering momentum with Glasgow the latest city to go live with iris, fingerprint and facial recognition testing. The nationwide trial aims to enrol 10,000 volunteers around the UK who will have their biometric details recorded and put on a chip in a mock smart card. Testing started in April in London and will run through until August.
Glasgow now joins London, Leicester and Newcastle in the project and a mobile unit will travel around other parts of the country including Wales and the Home Counties.
The project has been hit by some teething problems in pre-trial tests, which highlighted defects in collecting and reading some of the biometric data. Civil liberties and privacy groups this week also formed an alliance in opposition to the introduction of ID cards to the UK.
For an interesting insight into how the statist meme became so dominant, check out these comments by an Instapundit reader:
Perhaps the most pervasive way in which journalists are different from normal people is that journalists live in a world dominated by government, and they reflexively see government action as the default way to approach any problem.
. . . .
It’s no accident that for the most part, the news is dominated by people whose value is largely driven by how much publicity they receive: politicians, athletes and entertainers. The people who actually make the world work – people in private industry, rank-and-file government employees and conscientious parents – are largely invisible in the news, except when they’re unlucky enough to make one of the rare mistakes that reporters manage to find out about.
My reading of this is that the mainstream/elite media and the state sort of bootstrapped each other to the top of the pile, in classic one-hand-washes-the-other fashion.
The media propagated the statist meme because it was both easy and it elevated them to the degree that centralized media is parasitic (or perhaps symbiotic) with a centralized state.
The comments come just as yet another survey is released demonstrating that the denizens of American newsrooms are significantly more “liberal” (in the newfangled sense of the term, the one where the jackboot is made by Birkenstock) than the general public. Perhaps the best illustration of the whole dynamic is that a survey showing the media is significantly more hostile to President Bush than the general public went out under the title Press Going Too Easy on Bush.
You can’t make this stuff up. Now, I certainly have my beefs with the current President, but the self-appointed Fourth Estate has really gotten up my nose lately. They could play an important role in society, as a necessary feedback mechanism, but they have largely abrogated that role, in my view. Thank goodness that a new, distributed feedback mechanism is emerging in the form of the blogosphere.
You know how people are always saying that complaining about the state of the world (and the world of the state) is all well and good, except that it never achieves anything? The UK’s Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, thinks that the great British public is about to prove those people wrong, as “whingers” put London’s Olympic bid in peril.
BRITAIN’S chance of hosting the 2012 Olympic Games is in peril because of “whingers”, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell sensationally warned last night.
Doom-and-gloom merchants risk wrecking London’s hopes just six days after the capital was shortlisted, she said…
She told The Sun: “Whingeing pessimism and hostility will not stop our campaign but it will hand votes to the cities against which we are competing. It is whingers who will weaken our national will. At this moment, optimism, self-confidence and ambition is what we need. Let that win, not the whingers…”
Ms Jowell urged the nation to get behind the UK’s bid to stop the International Olympic Committee handing the games to Paris.
Nah. For perhaps the first time ever, I and many others are fully backing the French to win. Let’s hope a continued stream of bitching and moaning about this ridiculous misuse of taxpayer money will see them through to victory, and bring about Britain’s glorious defeat.
Speaking as someone who is really far too cynical for his own good, I shall believe this when I see it:
Voters in next month’s European elections could shock the political establishment by giving the United Kingdom Independence Party more seats than the Liberal Democrats, a poll suggests today.
A YouGov survey for The Telegraph indicates that UKIP, which is committed to British withdrawal from the European Union, is ahead of the Lib Dems among those who are “very likely” to vote.
But I really and truly hope that I do see it.
Those are the words of Simon Moores of Zentelligence (Research) writing in Computer Weekly.
In a review of last week’s London public meeting, Moores begins by saying:
Never had I seen a pillar of government policy look so demonstrably fragile and flawed.
He concludes:
Blunkett’s ID card argument is specious and really not worth the plastic it may be printed on.
Cross-posted from the UK ID Cards blog
Sad news: Economist / baseball analyst / blogger Doug Pappas has passed away at age 43, the victim of heat stroke while vacationing in Texas.
Pappas chaired the Business of Baseball committee for the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR), and his work on the history of baseball’s finances was consistently intelligent and provocative. I mention this in Samizdata because Pappas was also one of the foremost opponents of taxpayer funded facilities for professional sports and was thus a friend of liberty as well. Pappas relentlessly criticized commissioner Bud Selig’s claims that Major League Baseball needed corporate welfare to survive.
I am a SABR member, but never got to meet Doug Pappas; for more in-depth tributes from people who knew him, see the excellent baseball / war blog Baseball Crank and David Pinto’s Baseball Musings, another excellent baseball-only blog.
One of the craziest, loudest, most adrenalin-charged race events in the planet is held every year in Reno, in the United States, in the middle of September.
Cars? Nope. Horses? Nope. What you get are hundreds of aircraft, ranging from pre-WW2 biplanes through to modern jets, but for me, the absolute stars of the show are the souped-up Second World War fighters, especially my favourite, the mighty P-51 Mustang. These planes are now owned by mega-rich race enthusiasts who fly around a great circuit in the sky. Well, about 50 feet above terra firma, actually.
I once watched Samizdata television favourite Jeremy Clarkson present an entertaining show about the Reno Air Race, and have wanted to trek up to Lake Tahoe and enjoy the sights of this air race ever since. Well, this year, yours truly and his fair girlfriend will be there. I can hardly wait.
And if anyone reading this is going to be in the vicinity of Reno between September 16 and 19, and would like to meet up, please let me know via the e-mail address in the sidebar.
… and the reason I was listening to Radio 4 (see below) was to hear one of my favourite programmes, which is called Quote Unquote.
Some recycled quotes, then.
Apparently, a newspaper whose name I did not catch had on the front at the top, everyday, the following slogan:
As independent as resources permit.
I requote this in my turn because (a) I like it, and because (b) I think it says a great deal about blogging.
This was supplied by Simon Jenkins, who then went on to say that he “used to be” a pompous reporter, which also made me laugh. He did later somewhat redeem himself in my ears by reporting this motorway sign:
Emergency toilets 25 miles.
I guess emergency toilets, like newspaper independence, occur as often as resources permit.
This on the midday BBC Radio 4 news:
The Government is resisting pressure from the European Union to introduce random breath tests.
Yes, my ears did not deceive me. Here is the story in writing:
Police should carry out random breath tests as a matter of course, according to the European Commission.
Under existing laws, UK police can only carry out a breath test if they believe the driver has been drinking.
But the European Commission wants all member states to allow its police to carry out random tests.
The Home Office said introducing random testing was “inefficient in catching drink-drive offenders.”
Whenever the British Government describes itself as resisting pressure from the European Union, it is a good bet that this pressure will in due course be succumbed to.
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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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