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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Good News. A new study, to be published in Environmental Science and Technology in November, has concluded that the manufacturing of specified nanomaterials such as buckyballs and quantum dots is safer than oil refining or making wine. This was based upon an actuarial model that Zurich based XL insurance have developed to assess risks in existing manufacturing processes. Using the model allowed an assessment of the ‘environmental footprint’ of potential nanomaterial manufacturing.
Using a method for assessing the premiums that companies pay for insurance, a team of scientists and insurance experts have concluded that the manufacturing processes for five, near-market nanomaterials — including quantum dots, carbon nanotubes and buckyballs — present fewer risks to the environment than some common industrial processes like oil refining. For two of the nanomaterials – nanotubes and alumoxane nanoparticles — manufacturing risks were comparable with those of making wine or aspirin.
This study does not provide assurances that there may be unknown risks with these nanomaterials.
In developing their risk assessments, the research team developed a detailed account of the input materials, output materials and waste streams for each process. Risk was qualitatively assessed for each process, based on factors including toxicity, flammability and persistence in the environment…
Mark Weisner, one of the co-authors of the study, concluded that,
“We can’t anticipate all of the details of how nanomaterials fabrication will evolve, but based on what we do know, the fabrication of the nanomaterials we considered appears to present lower risks than current industrial activities like petrochemical refining, polyethylene production and synthetic pharmaceutical production”
Let us remind ourselves of Greenpeace’s objective for nanotechnology – reseach directed towards their own chosen goals through government expenditure and a moratorium until the precautionary principle is satisfied.
Greenpeace believes that there may be some advantages in developments in some nanotechnologies. However, we are concerned that any value could be lost if the development processes governing nanotechnology does not prioritise environmental, public health and social goals, and is not sensitive to the needs and concerns of the public at an early stage. Indeed some nanotechnologies could become a real problem. At this stage it is too early to say what the specific problems or advantages might be – but the way nanotechnology develops will have a huge influence on whether the outcomes are good or bad.
We want to see a moratorium on the release of nanoparticles to the environment until evidence that it is safe (for the environment and human health) is clear. In the longer term nanotechnology could produce self-replicating ‘machines’ whose proliferation could be environmentally problematic.
The moratorium may sound innocuous until one realises that the standard of proof required by Greenpeace is never weighed against the potential benefits or lives saved with the earlier deployment of these technologies. The danger is that the tautology of social goals, governmental ownership and control of these technologies for the public good (as defined by Greenpeace), could hinder real progress such as private sector efforts to build the space elevator.
I must admit that at some stages I thought that Andrew Sullivan had slightly lost the plot in his apparent obsession with the torture issue concerning the treatment of detainees in Iraq and elsewhere. At one stage Sullivan seemed to take upon himself the task of scolding other bloggers (notably Glenn Reynolds) for not buying into his argument. Well, this story today suggests that Sullivan has been right to bang on about the issue and to champion the cause of people in the military looking to clean house. I think this also counts as a genuine victory for a blogger and shows the power of this medium. I don’t doubt, for example, that Senator McCain and his allies read blogs like Sullivan’s.
In case anyone thinks this is some sort of anti-American or anti-Iraq war issue, it is not. I want to finish the job properly in Iraq and let it be done with honour as well as competence. The U.S. Senate just took a step in that direction.
This may not be the most exciting story of the day, but it caught my eye as an example of how, despite its fine words, the present government has allowed our education system to crumble:
Britain will slide rapidly towards Third World status unless the Government reverses the “unsupportable” decline in maths, science, engineering and modern languages in the state sector, head teachers of leading independent schools warned yesterday.
Jonathan Shephard, the general secretary of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, representing leading boys’ and co-educational secondary schools, urged the Government to work more closely with the private sector.
“Despite improvements in state results, the decline in mathematics, engineering and modern languages is unsupportable and has to be reversed,” he said. “Otherwise we are heading rapidly towards Third World status.”
India and China were turning out tens of thousands of engineers, scientists and mathematicians but in Britain the number of first-year graduates studying chemistry had fallen from 4,000 in 1997 to 2,700 in 2005, he said.
Superficially, it may be a smart move to make it easier for parents to send their children to private schools. My only problem is that if the current Labour government were to embark on such a course, it would demand, as part of such a deal, greater control over what is left of the non-state education system. (That remains a key drawback of education vouchers). Do we really want the half-educated dolts and knaves running this government to get their hands on Eton, Harrow or Winchester?
Update: a commenter disputes whether British state schools are so lousy. Perhaps he should study this OECD report, which contains damning data on illiteracy in Britain. I should also remind readers of the terrific work being done by Professor James Tooley to debunk the shibboleths of statist thinking on education.
Update 2: Here is another link to a site about literacy issues in Britain and other countries. If you scroll down there are dozens of stories, from as recently as September 2005, expressing employers’ concerns about the skills of the students they take on. A couple of commenters persist in claiming that our state education system is better than it has ever been. If so, why the company complaints? I presume that CEOs are not making this stuff up.
Yesterday I went up to Blackpool for a couple of off-conference meetings.
In one of these meetings (a joint meeting – debate with John Redwood) Mr Richards of the ‘Independent’ newspaper spoke.
Mr Richards stated that everyone should forget about the EU because the Euro was not going to be introduced into Britain and the Constitution had been voted down.
Various people (such as a member of the European Parliament who was at the meeting) carefully explained to Mr Richards that EU was taking more power (in all area’s of people’s lives) all the time and that even the voted down Constitution was in fact being implemented a bit at a time (for example the EU Defence College is being set up even though its legal basis, the EU Constitution, was not enacted).
Mr Richards simply repeated what he had already said.
So more specific examples of the growth in the activities of the EU, all of which the European Court, committed as it is to “ever closer union”, claims, possibly quite correctly, are allowed by the existing treaties. The growth in power is in all areas of life and is going on all the time, specific example after specific example were all explained to Mr Richards.
And Mr Richards simply repeated what he had already said, plus stating that it was “dangerous” not to vote for someone to be leader of the Conservative party on the grounds that they did not oppose the EU taking these powers unto itself. The Conservatives “would not win the election” if we thought like this (as if winning an election to what was becoming a powerless Parliament would interest anyone apart from the most corrupt).
The only other thing (on this area) that Mr Richards said was to mumble about the needs of “enlargement” of the EU – even though nothing that had been said to him, by anyone, had anything to do with the EU having more members than it used to.
What was depressing was not that (as some might think) that Mr Richards was a dishonest crony working for his master Mr Clarke (who sits on the board of the ‘Independent’). No, I suspect Mr Richards honestly meant every word he said. It was a matter of his being unable to understand what was being said to him.
Now not everyone who spoke to Mr Richards was on top form or used the exact words they should have done (for example, I was not on good form at all) – but most people did well enough. However, it was clear that argument and evidence simply could not reach him.
Now Mr Richards is an intelligent and well educated man, and so if argument and evidence can not reach him, what about the rest of the population? And remember, Mr Richards was exposed to evidence and logical argument for quite some time at the meeting (most people are not exposed to such things, in matters of public affairs, for very long at all).
Reasoning (not just on the EU – on every matter) depends on evidence and logical argument (in some subjects, perhaps, just on logic).
If most people (even the intelligent and well educated) can not be reached by evidence and logic then libertarians (and other people who try and use reasoning in public affairs) are wasting their time.
Perhaps most people really are at the level of being little above dogs or cats – “I like him, he has got a big belly and a nice voice”.
Few here have a deep faith in democracy so they may say “so what, we knew that anyway”, but if most people really are at this mental level it undermines rather more than democracy.
With yet another long international flight stretching ahead of me, I finally have time and boredom enough to write a good deal more on network security issues than I have in the past. I have been at least peripherally involved in the area (self defense of my own and customers business networks) for quite some time.
There has been a sea change in the threat model over the last few years. The underworld of the Gibson novel has come to pass although things are perhaps not so dramatic as in the stories. Reality does not fit neatly between two covers.
I recently wrote about a possible case of industrial scale industrial espionage. There is much evidence in security literature that this is occuring and KGB/FSB bugged Russian hotels are not the only place one need worry. Everyone is getting into the game. For those who might be interested in such things I recommend a Dartmouth paper “CyberWarfare: An Analysis Of The Means And Motivations Of Selected Nation States”, Bilko And Chang, December 2004.
While reading Bilko and Chang a number of other strands of thought came together. It puts a whole new light on the recent move of major internet equipment suppliers into Chinese production facilities. Among these, two are of particular note.
IBM Thinkpads: the laptop of choice of many network professionals.
Cisco Routers: These are ubiquitous in the infrastructure of the Internet from major backbone to small office.
Then there is the Lynn debacle. Michael Lynn gave a presentation at DEFCON this last summer in which he showed beyond a shadow of a doubt Trojans can be inserted into Cisco backbone routers… and by extension most other brands as well. His slide presentation was not of a specific exploit but of a generic method.
Cisco and ISS, the company from which he had just resigned, went totally over the top. They sent a crew to the DEFCON to remove pages from the programs. Afterwards they threatened to sue Michael Lynn unless he agreed to allow their forensics people to cryptographically wipe anything to do with the the research from his disk drives. They sent nasty letters to all and sundry who posted his slide set. They tracked down and took possession of every bit of video of the session they could get their hands on. Despite their best efforts to pull a “1984”, they failed.
It was not just failure, it was total, abyssmal, embarrasing, hang-your-head you idiot failure. Instead of a few interested hackers and security analysts with copies stored in dusty corners of the internet they made it a slashdot affair. Absolutely everyone has the document now. I will not post a link here because if you really are interested you already have a copy and if you do not you can find it easily enough.
Another reason these actions were foolish on the part of Cisco brings me back to the central point of this article. The Cisco heap smash attack described by Michael Lynn was only an improvement on already published literature… and it may have already been implimented… by Chinese hackers.
→ Continue reading: Privacy? What privacy?
It is about three months since the dreadful ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Kelo ruling, authorising public authorities to grab people’s homes and businesses so that corporations – with political favours to grant, no doubt – can build big developments on the land and promise a big tax flow for the public purse. The battle is continuing to rage, even though some individual jurisdictions in the U.S. have passed laws trying to contain this monstrous use of what is called “eminent domain”.
It is well worth keeping a beady eye on this issue from here in Britain because so much of what happens in the legal and economic sphere in the U.S. tends to eventually hit our shores.
In the meantime, I continue to recommend this blog for regular updates on eminent domain, as well as the Institute for Justice, and this excellent book on property rights issues.
Actually it was a much cheerier gathering than I expected: usually the Tories have a leader who embarrasses them, but this year they have no leader and everyone’s full of beans.
– Eamonn Butler at the Conservative Party Conference
I am feeling well disposed towards Mark Holland just now, because he quite often links to and comments at my personal blog (now mercifully back in full picture posting business). So go and have a read of this, featuring a classic collection of fun lines that Mark found here.
Particularly good bit, political and Samizdata friendly:
There was a fire at the main Inland Revenue office in London today, but it was put out before any serious good was done.
That is Ronnie Corbett exchanging scripted banter with long time Two Ronnies partner Ronnie Barker, who died yesterday.
Barker, for benighted foreigners who do not know about him, was for several decades a dominant force in British TV comedy, starring in such classics as Porridge and Open All Hours. He also wrote lots of funny stuff.
I know it is always said that whoever it is will be sadly missed when they die, but he really will be.
One of the things we quite often tell each other here at Samizdata is that if a new government department is created, then whatever it is of, so to speak, is now in much deeper trouble than before. Ministry of Defence. Ministry of Social Security. Department of Trade and Industry. Those all mean that defence, social security, trade, industry, are all going to be in permanently short supply and in a bad way from now on.
So it was with considerable sadness that, in Victoria Street this afternoon, I encountered this:
Constitution look out. And be anxious also about justice, rights and democracy. Click on the above little snippet of the photo I took to get the bigger context. I do not know why exactly, but I particularly dislike the lower case letters for the acronym. How long has this particular acronym been in existence? Since June 12th 2003, apparently. I had never noticed it before. This dca resides in an office block of impeccable tedium called Selborne House, 54 Victoria Street, the boring side and towards the boring end, which is why I had not noticed it before.
As soon as I started snapping, and in fact after I had only taken the one rather blurry photo that I have here displayed, a security guard emerged to remonstrate with me. Do you have permission to take photographs? No, of course not, I said. You need permission, he said, to take photographs of this building. Is it illegal, I asked, to take photos of this building from the street? You need permission to take photographs of this building. Why? You need permission to take photographs of this building. Okay, got you the third time, but it seems very strange. You need permission to take photographs of this building. Yeah got you mate. I’m just telling you that you need permission to take photographs of this building. He was an African with a very African voice and an impressive physique, and frankly you do not want to get into complicated arguments with people who work for the government. One of my rules. So I did not press my case.
But I press it now. Is it actually illegal to take photographs of government buildings from the street? Probably, these days, it is, sort of, depending on which lawyer you talk to. But how, in the age of zoom lenses, do they propose to stop people doing this? And what will they do about photos like mine? Perhaps, if some aspect of the government sees this, we will have to take these pictures down. It is the vagueness and the intimidation of all this, as much as the rule itself, that I object to. There was a sense of lawlessnesss about the whole situation. I did not collide with the will of Parliament, just with some government diktat that went round Whitehall in about 1999.
Surely, before telling someone out in the street that they may not take photos, the security men should have known their legal rights and been able to assert them explicitly, instead of just repeating that you have to “get permission”. If it was fear of terrorism, why could he not have said?
Something about all this makes me think that my suspicions about how little protection the people in this building will actually provide for such things as justice, rights and democracy are all too justified.
I mean, what kind of a building has a sign at the front saying what it is, which it obviously wants you to read and be impressed by, but then says you can’t take photos of it? And in the case of this building, it seems particularly odd.
No, another one quite separate to the festivities in Iraq…
Chief Inspector of HM Prisons Anne Owers has declared that the national symbol of England, the Cross of St. George, is racist and must not be worn by prison guards in case it upsets Muslim prisoners.
And it seems Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, agrees, saying that the Red Cross of St. George was “an insensitive reminder of the Crusades”, adding: “…that it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with.”
Who is “we”? Perhaps Chris Doyle and his Council for Dhimmitude should spend more time getting Arabs to understand the British rather than the other way around.
I wonder how this organisation would react to calls for Muslims to abandon the crescent moon, the green flag and all other overly Muslim symbols as being offensive to some English people who may associate them with slavery? I mean, if it is ok for Muslims to be offended by English people in England wearing English symbols that remind some people of a series of wars that ended in 1300, how can anyone mind if I object to Muslims in England wearing Muslim symbols that I choose to associate with Muslim atrocities against English people which ended practically yesterday… i.e. when Lord Exmouth destroyed Algiers in 1816?
Completely daft of course but if we accept the logic of the likes of Anne Owers and Chris Doyle, it seems inevitable. Are they sure they want to go down that path?
I cannot tell you how happy this makes me:
Ms Spelman, who is shadow local government minister, said the public were increasingly taking their cue from Mr Paxman when dealing with politicians. She said the reception she received from the public while out canvassing in her West Midlands constituency was the most unfriendly she had ever experienced. The public had clearly lost trust in politicians and thought they were only “in it for themselves”, she added.
No, really? I wonder what gave them that impression…
Perhaps you think I am talking about Venezuela under the thuggish Chavez?
Nope. I am talking about Britain.
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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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