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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It is now 0430 and most of the bodies are stirring from their sleeping bags and airbeds. Bacon is crackling in the hanger as Aleta prepares to feed the multitudes while simultaneously giving radio orders to volunteers around the airport,
The air seems calm, but I have not been outside the hanger yet. This is as I expected or at least hoped. I have done some flying myself and remember the glorious morning calm.
We will be headed for the VIP stands after breakfast and I will not be posting from then until our return.
I have just returned from the National Space Society and Space Frontier Society’s’ outdoor disco’s. They have a light show projected on a hanger wall and a corral of RV’s enclosing and sort of protecting the party area from the wind-blown sand. There is a thumping beat of good loud 21st Century music, food, talk and dancing. I’ll supply photos when I get them developed… assuming my camera managed to take something from which image enhancement can recover something useful.
The party looks like it will go on most of the night, but I am sleeping in the XCOR office, so I thought it best to get back here and get a couple hours of sleep. The wakeup call to travel to the viewing area will come all too soon.
Aleta Jackson is one of the people organizing ‘the show’ and deserves kudos for her awesome job on short notice… although I expect sleep would be more appreciated. It does not look like she will be getting any tonight. She is out in the hanger taking care of people as they wander in from the NSS party or wherever, and has to have breakfast organized for the XCOR guest locusts after the flight.
Earlier there was a barbecue outside the XCOR hanger. It was like a high school reunion party; I saw people I had not seen in years. I also met a few people I have known for years over the internet but never met face to face. I also got to watch and be deafened by the XCOR teacart engine. They ran several shows just outside the hanger door.
Everyone who counts in private space is here or else will be in tomorror… er I mean later this morning. Takeoff if 06:30 PST if the bleeding wind drops off. The current conditions are not what I would call conducive to safe landings in a glider. There are hours to go though, and dawn is usually a period of calm so I am hoping for the best. If worst comes to worst, I have planned my return flights with several day’s of leeway. I have been around the rocket scene for far too long to have done otherwise.
I will post again in the morning, probably after the flight.
Rand and I arrived at the Mojave Civilian Test Flight Facility about an hour ago and I have had time to run about and snap some candid photos of the crowd at the XCOR hanger. Dr. Pournelle is here, Elon Musk is around somewhere as are others in the commercial space flight field.
I got Jeff Greason’s attention just after an interview and have my network connection sorted from inside the office. Now I must go and be sociable… and Rand is pushing for me to unload the airbed and other stuff from his car. I will try to post more later.
Yes, there will be photos, but not until after I get my film developed on return to Redondo Beach.
When I was in my native Australia a couple of months back, I was pleased to discover that it is at last possible to fly around the country on Australia’s airlines for something like the at times very low cost of flying around Europe. Traditionally, domestic air tickets in Australia have been mind blowingly expensive due to truly astonishingly stupid over-regulation of the industry. (Just as an example, for several decades only two airlines were licensed to fly domestically in Australia, one state owned and one privately owned. These two airlines were required to charge identical fares, operate identical aircraft, offer an identical number of seats on each route, honour each other’s tickets, and operate to identical timetables. This meant that if one airline wanted to fly an 9am flight to Sydney, the other airline had to agree to do so before it would be permitted). Getting rid of this asonishingly stupid over-regulation has been a slow and painful 20 year experience. Thankfully, though, it is largely gone. Although there is still far too little competition, the competition is now clearly on its way.
In any event, I was explaining this to Brian Micklethwait last month over a cup of tea, and he suggested I should write it up. I started doing so for this blog, but the story was sufficiently long and esoteric that by the time I had finished I discovered that I had written 6000 words, and it was a little too long and esoteric. Therefore, I have posted it to Transport Blog, where it probably more belongs.
And if you have ever wondered how Australia got from being the richest country in the world at the beginning of the twentieth century to being substantially behind the pack (although still a rich country) in 1980, and how it has managed to catch up substantially again since then, the answer is quite a lot of this sort of regulation and protectionism, followed by a substantial (and it times quite hesitant) about turn in the early 1980s, and this story captures most of the key details.
David Smith, the economics editor for the Sunday Times, has a splendid article on his personal blog, Economics UK, about why the Eurosceptic approach is the economically rational one.
Britain’s unemployment rate, on a comparable basis, is 4.8%, against 9.4% in France and 9.8% in Germany. Unemployment stands at under half the EU average. Per capita gross domestic product in Britain, according to a new report from Capital Economics, is higher at $30,200 (£16,440), than Germany’s $29,200 or France’s $28,500.
The economic momentum is with us. Britain has been growing continuously for 12 years, during which time other EU countries have suffered at least one recession and in some cases two. The sick man of Europe has made a remarkable recovery.
Of course the economic argument for Britain being in the EU (as opposed to some EFTA-like agreement) was always tosh. Switzerland anyone? It is now highly visible tosh.
Here on Samizdata.net we may decry the regulatory idiocy of the Labour government but clearly things are even worse in Euroland, and at least if more sovereignty is maintained at the UK level, more of the damage can be undone at the UK level rather than locked in by remote stasis oriented Europe wide institutions. All the EU has to offer is corruption, stagnation and regulation. No thanks.
For those who insist that the lack of an Al-Qaeda/Iraq link means Saddam should have been left to mass murder his own people unmolested, Melanie Philips has some measured words for you.
The excitement was over a preliminary assessment of evidence about al-Qa’eda by the US commission investigating September 11. The only problem was that the press coverage was untrue. The report does not rule out links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa’eda. On the contrary, as the commission’s chairman, Thomas Kean, confirmed: “There were contacts between Iraq and al-Qa’eda, a number of them, some of them a little shadowy. They were definitely there.” As so often in the coverage of Iraq, those who make the (illogical) claim that there was no such contact and therefore no cause for war saw in this report only what they wanted to see.
[…]
Bill Clinton’s administration was absolutely certain that Saddam was in cahoots with al-Qa’eda. It was a given. That is surely why, after September 11, Pentagon officials were obsessed with Iraq. Whether Saddam was personally involved in 9/11 was irrelevant; if he was aiding al-Qa’eda’s terror, he had to be stopped. But this has been obliterated from the collective memory in order to place the most malign interpretation possible on the motives of the Bush administration.
Nothing new and from my point of view, so what… that Saddam was a tyrant was enough of a reason for me… but seeing as how people keep repeating ‘there was no link’ (I was highly sceptical myself at first), continue to oppose the overthrow of the Ba’athist regime if you like but please find another approach because ‘that dawg don’t hunt no more’.
In common with many classical liberals, I find the case against allowing the physical punishment of children by their parents to be a compelling one. After all, if assaulting an adult is wrong then why is it any less wrong to assault a child? In fact, it is arguably a greater wrong to assault a child since an adult (well, any adult outside of the UK at any rate) can at least make a decent fist out of defending themselves, whereas a five year-old has no such capability.
I am also aware that most parents who resort to physical chastisement do so by means of a light smack on the rump and therein lies a whole world of difference from that tiny number of parents who hospitalise or even kill their children by the application of sustained and quite brutal force.
In other words, the whole issue is messy, complicated and shrouded in grey arears. However, and that said, I do not approve of state intervention:
Ministers are preparing to help outlaw smacking in return for guarantees that parents are not prosecuted for giving children “a playful tap”.
The Government is desperate to avoid defeat at the hands of a powerful cross-party alliance building behind moves for an outright smacking ban.
Without having had an opportunity to peruse the proposes legislation, I am already deeply sceptical about the claim that ‘playful taps’ will not be acted upon. As with most law enforcement, it is rarely the most heinous that are punished but rather the most vulnerable and, therefore, the easiest targets.
The Association of Directors of Social Services recently wrote to its members supporting the proposed change to the law. “We believe children can and should be disciplined and made subject to clear parental controls but that this can be achieved without inflicting violence.”
However, the organisation did admit that the introduction of a smacking ban would have “resource implications”.
Yes, those old “resource implications”. Therein lies the key. For it is all very well to announce that assualts on children will no longer be tolerated but the real questions are, who enforces this measure and how?
The answer is, who else but for Social Services, the Police and the various child-welfare agences? Provided the “resource implications” are addressed to their satisfaction it will be up to these newly-appointed Guardians to investigate claims of child-assault and prosecute the offending parents.
This is a very bad idea. Quite aside from the extra powers that will be granted to these agencies (and they already have a cartload), the implication behind that investment is that thse public servants are wiser, more relaible and and more humane that those dreaful abusing parents. The record does not bear this out.
Because I live in a nation without memory, I very often find myself reminding people of what happended in the late 1980’s when all of the above agencies became convinced that parents all over the country were engaged in serious child abuse as part and parcel of ‘Satan-worship’ rituals. It was a flagrant and rank absurdity but nonetheless this hysterical fabrication shot through the entire public sector and fourth estate like an outbreak of the plague.
Eventually, (and only after these fictions became unsustainable) calmer heads prevailed and ‘Satanic child abuse’ canard was quashed. But nor before several families had been effectively destroyed by what was, to all intents and purposes, a witchhunt.
Far from being infallible, or even reliable, the agences of the state have proved by their track record that they are mendacious, self-serving and pernicious. To hand them even more power over family life than they have now is to invoke a ‘cure’ that will prove far worse than the disease.
‘The Space Show’ will be supplying a live audio show during the SpaceShipOne flight:
The Space Show is pleased to announce that it will carry live (audio only) the Space Ship One historical launch scheduled for 6:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time (weather permitting) on Monday, June 21, 2004 in Mojave, California. Events unfolding at the Mojave Airport up to and including the launch, plus special interviews and much more, will be reported live to listeners of The Space Show by our special reporter on the scene, well-known space advocate and leader, John Carter McKnight Mr. McKnight is a regularly appearing guest on The Space Show and is also a space analyst and commentator whose work has appeared in Space News, SpaceDaily.com, SpaceRef, Space Times and numerous other industry publications.
Further:
The live broadcast can be heard on the internet at [link]. In addition, an additional streaming site has been provided Space Show listeners by Jeff Birk at Pioneer Radio in the UK. The tentative URL for this additional site is http://usa.rolo.net:8008/listen.pls.
It will be the next best thing to being there.
Those who follow its coverage know that BBC “impartiality” usually means not favoring Hamas over Islamic Jihad.
– CAMERA (Committe for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) reporting that the BBC’s correspondent in Gaza reportedly declared at a recent Hamas event that reporters and the media are “waging the campaign [against Israel] shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people.”
via Instapudit and Free Will.
I’ve spent a great deal of 2004 either on the road or preparing to be on the road. That is why my postings have been a bit scarce these last six months. I hope to be a bit more visible the next few days. This trip is not as business intensive as most have been. Yes, I am transacting and meeting with people, but for one day I will be an on the scene reporter for one of the most important historical events since Kittyhawk.
I arrived in Redondo Beach yesterday afternoon after two days of travel. My luggage finally caught up with me this morning: socks will be buried shortly. It was a very, very long journey.
Due to severe financial constraints I cut corners on this trip every which way. I left my flat in Belfast on Thursday afternoon, dragging a luggage trolley behind me. It was great fun getting the luggage onto a bus heading into the City Centre. After a brief stop at the bank where I turned my meager balance into dollars, I pulled the luggage through town and along the Laganside… where I promptly took the wrong side street shortcut to the train station. So… train to Dublin Connolly, and then a Dublin bus with an even narrower aisle.
My overnight stop in Dublin was at the house of a close friend and a meal cooked by her guitarist Graham Dunne. He cooks as well as he plays and that is saying something! Another trad musician was visiting and so we drank wine and talked until at least 1am… and I had to be up at 5am. Niamh Parsons, kind and wonderful soul that she is, got up and drove me to the airport at that ungodly hour.
The next leg was from Dublin to Paris. No, I am not kidding. The cheapest flight I could get on short notice was an Air France flight. I had a very tight window in Charles De Gaulle (CDG) Airport to find my gate for the international flight, but this went smoothly. A literal walk on.
CDG is big. We took so long from landing to parking I thought the pilot was taxiing us directly into the Paris City Centre. The airport is also very unfinished. Airplanes stop at places where there are probably going to be terminals some day. For now, you get a lift on a bus. (Advice: hang on for dear life.)
The food on the Paris to LA flight was good. I expected no less from Air France and they lived up to my expectations in spades. I managed to keep myself busy on this long flight over Greenland, Hudson Bay and down the West Coast. I brought a lot of reading material of the sort you would expect of someone who blogs. A case document on the Kennewick Man case; a Physics Today article on Hafnium explosives; a report to Congress on the state of China’s defense… things like that. It kept me busy except when it helped me to nap…
I was not feeling all that bad when I deplaned in LAX. Good thing too. First came the INS. Not really a problem… but the form for Customs has lines which must be filled in telling them where you are staying. However I did not have Rand Simberg’s street address (I did not think they would accept his URL). Every time I have been to Rand’s house he has picked me up. I never needed to know the address and had not thought of bringing it. The guy at Immigration insisted that something must be written on the still blank line… not because he wanted it but because Customs would send me back to him. Finally, in exasperation (and he didn’t want to wait while I tracked Rand down on mobile) he suggested I was actually staying at a nearby hotel. I filled that in on the offending line and voila, problem solved. He told me he is getting out after many years with INS because he is fed up with the way things are going.
Then the wait for luggage… except mine never arrived. My name was listed along with perhaps a dozen other people on a clipboard held by a very helpful lady agent on duty.
Even the lady in front of the customs desk was nice when I told her why I had no luggage.
An hour later I had as good a picture of the situation as I was likely to get. The connection was so tight they could not get the luggage across in time, so it would come over on the next flight… in late evening. I was given a free courtesy kit with a t-shirt, shampoo, razor and such so I could at least freshen up.
So I only had my carry-on shoulder bag with the laptop, camera and papers. Heavy enough but not like hauling luggage. I lucked out then: Rand was home rather than off at his aerospace customer’s facility. We agreed to meet just outside the airport, so I had one final bus ride to endure. I got packed into the parking lot bus so tightly with a bunch of end of shift TSA employees I had to stand on the steps and hold on for dear life to whatever I could find. I got off at the parking lot, rang Rand to let him know and walked to the street.
It was good to see Rand pull up instants later.
I am glad to see I am not the only one who thinks the frequently reported ‘sharp exchanges’ between Blair and Chirac (or Shröder) are a phoney as a three pound note. Some of the commenters here on Samizdata.net seems to have taken a similar view as has the Daily Telegraph opinion leader article.
At EU summits, there is always a row and always a deal – and the European constitution negotiations did not disappoint. Tony Blair’s spin doctors did not quite say, “Gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here,” but he was, apparently, battling like Henry V against the French and also the Germans. But he signed the constitution anyway, even though last week’s election results clearly show he had no mandate to do so. There was something distinctly phoney about the row.
Indeed. The fact having ‘rows’ with the French and Germans is good for the standing of a British leader hardly needs explaining. Yet the fact is that regardless of the acrimony, the deals still seem to get signed. ‘Red line’ after red line gets laid down, acclaimed by both supporters and people who should know better: “Thus far and no further!” cries our plucky Leader of the Day. Which of course really means “only thus far this time“. Just wait a year or two and the process can be repeated yet again and a little more agreed, once the ‘red lines’ of yesteryear have vanished down the memory hole.
Forget the rhetoric, if you want to know the truth, just look for the signatures on the treaties. The rest is just so much verbal fart gas.
I wonder if the fact France is, get this, cracking down on opponents of the theocratic tyranny in Iran will produce howls of anger from the same people who complain that the US has on many occasions propped up unsavoury regimes for various reasons? I have my doubts as most are convinced that if the US is not involved in something, it does not really happen.
Why is the French state doing this? Well who knows… I am sure that fact lucrative deals have been signed in Iran by French companies over the last few months have nothing to do with it. Nope, that could not possibly be the reason.
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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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