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 Badoo Mac… Originally uploaded by ( ¯`’•.ღ!~ღ NauGHtyAh ღ~! ღ.•’´ ¯) There is not much I can say about this, that is how loaded this picture is. Thought I would share… 🙂 August 25th, 2007 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The entire point of having a legal system, rather than vendetta, is to make justice depend on public principle, not on private feelings. Those feelings ought not to influence legal decisions at all. At present, victims and their families are urged to express strong emotions about verdicts and sentences in a way that encourages them to cultivate vindictive malice, since forgiveness is (rather strangely) much less popular. This habit is deeply injurious to them personally, as well as to the legal system, and it ought surely never to be allowed to influence the courts. – Mary Midgley August 25th, 2007 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
Normally I am wary of claims that “trying to please actual or potential readers” is a reason for why newspapers go in for pro ‘liberal’ elite content (I suspect that the desire to seem ‘modern’ and ‘with it’ is far more powerful than the desire for more readers – indeed may even lead people who control publications to drive away actual or potential readers). However, the Iraq war is so unpopular that I am inclined to think that the choice of the Daily Telegraph to rat on its support for the war may indeed have been to try and please actual or potential readers. So the editorial yesterday about how the “American involvement in Iraq limps to its inevitable and ignominious conclusion” was not much of shock to me – although I do find the language disgraceful. I, unlike the Daily Telegraph, did not support the judgement to go to go into Iraq in 2003 – but I would not use sub-Marxist death-to-America language like “inevitable” and “ignominious”. However, there was an excuse for the editorial. The Daily Telegraph reported that a retired American General had suggested that the British army send more troops to Iraq – being either too stupid or too dishonest to understand that the British had no more troops to send. General Keane‘s comments were, according the Daily Telegraph, just an effort to use the British as an excuse for the failure of the Americans. “The trouble with this was….” I heard the retired American General’s comments (on BBC Radio 4’s “Today Programme”) and far from being too stupid or too dishonest to understand the small size of the British army he actually said that the British army should be “grown” – i.e. made bigger, as he also said the American army and Marine Corps should be and he hoped would be. Of course one can argue about whether the British army really does need to be bigger (for example why are there over twenty thousands British troops in mainland Europe?), but the basic point here is clear. The Daily Telegraph misreported the retired American General’s comments – in order to have an excuse for a standard ‘liberal’ elite death-to-America editorial. August 25th, 2007 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is all too easy to imagine a future in which our grandchildren will talk of having had an ancestor who worked for the BBC in the same way as people nowadays mention having had a grandparent or great-grandparent who worked for the Sudanese Political Service, or was a District Officer in Bechuanaland. –Jeremy Paxman, keeping hope alive for millions of Britons August 24th, 2007 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Jim Henley has kicked off a fair old discussion buzz on the blogs in asking the question: do animals have rights? My short answer right away is they do not as the term rights only makes sense applied to humans because humans, being actually or potentially rational creatures, need freedom to exercise that rational faculty, which is not automatic, and hence doctrines of rights have evolved. Humans, by their nature, need liberty to survive and flourish because of how our minds work. Dogs and bunny rabbits do not. Well, that is what I have thought for a long time. But the fuzzy bits that you get with these sort of broad claims have started to bother me. A dog, for example, does not have a ‘volitional consciousness’ in the same way that a human being does, but the dog can respond to signals and its environment; it may not be able to form complex plans, but it can change its behaviour ever so slightly. So a dog needs an element of freedom to survive, too. So if rights are necessary for the furtherance of life, then perhaps they also apply to some other sentient creatures besides we humans. I still think the answer is no, since rights also entail the capacity to respect the rights of others: a vicious dog is not bothered about such things, let alone a white shark or even – may Perry forgive me – a hippo. And then of course, if we start to cut off the application of rights for any creature that does not fully fit the Aristotelian concept of a ‘rational animal’, where does that leave the mentally handicapped, or very young babies that have not yet formed a rational capacity? I think the in the former case, we regard the handicapped as having lost or never acquired something that humans normally would have, but our sheer sense of solidarity and compassion for the frail means we treat the handicapped with respect and care and rightly so. But of course we do not allow severely handicapped people to perform potentially dangerous jobs and in practice, such people tend to be placed under pretty serious constraints about what they can do. The same goes for very young children, or aged people suffering from mental deterioration to do with age. But I must admit that our attitudes towards animals are strange at times. I do not shoot or hunt animals for ‘sport’ – if it was sport, they would be able to shoot back – and I despise factory farming, think people who are cruel to animals deserve to have their gonads removed, and think that cruelty to other species diminishes us as human beings. But the problem is, I really, really feel in the mood for a big cheeseburger. Tibor Machan, the libertarian philosopher – and thoroughly nice chap – gives the standard classical liberal argument for why animal rights do not exist. I strongly urge commenters to take a look at the links on Jim Henley’s post I have linked to above. August 24th, 2007 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)
I love the Chrysler Building in New York, while the magnificent V&A in London, St Paul’s Cathedral, the gorgeous French chateau of Chenonceu come very close in my list. I also have a soft spot for the city centre of Montpellier in France, if that counts. What are your favourites? (One commenter, I see, has chosen Britain’s Sizewell B power station for its uncompromising purpose. I like the sentiment but am not all that wowed by the design. Here is a photograph of it). August 24th, 2007 | 48 comments - (Comments are closed)
Michael Skube is having a fit about the demise of what sounds like beautiful, beeeaaauuudiful journalism in Blogs: All the noise that fits.
Who’d have guessed that he’s describing journalism in the above?! Skube reads like an old journalist pro (and I use that word in the loosest possible sense) who bemoans the fact that his hard-earned ‘right’ to be published is being trampled upon by the barbaric hoards of bloggers. Well, the Big Editor in the Sky is no longer, there is just the internet with the online equivalent of printing press. With distribution bundled in. The bargain of the millennium. But the likes of Skube want to convince the world (or what’s left of those who haven’t taken to blogging) that this is bad for the luxury brands of MSM. We already know that, Michael. The real luxury is not having someone like you misrepresent what people are, do and mean by your selective ‘fact-sifting’, out of context quoting, and sloppy reporting. I am not accusing Michael Skube of such practices here, I’ll leave that to Ed Cone, I am targeting the entire profession here. I am an equal opportunity ranter. It always amuses me – right after it annoys me – how his type (Andrew Keen et al) only trawl through the bad stuff online and construct their argument around the worst they can find. Granted, nowadays they find a parenthesis or two to reluctantly admit that bloggers have some influence.. but no matter, if things continue this way, we are all dooomed. DOOOOMED! Well, yeah, dude. Instead of supporting their arguments about the plebeian nature of the blogosphere and the rubbish we are all inundated with, they merely demonstrate their lack of skill in navigating blogs and finding the daily gems. So Jay Rosen of PressThink put together a blowback that’s worth bookmarking – a collective effort of many to list examples of a blogger doing a journalist’s job. It has also been published in LA Times. For the record. cross-posted from Media Influencer August 23rd, 2007 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Bourne Ultimatum is a crackerjack of a high-adrenalin, fast-paced film. I must admit that I am slightly allergic to Matt Damon but he delivers the goods in this third instalment of the Jason Bourne series. James Bond he ain’t: no tuxedos, no rapier one-line putdowns, no Russian Smersh agents called Tanya and definitely no Aston Martins with ejector seats but for excitement, it ranks highly. I was slightly irritated by the constantly jerky film shifts – the director is obviously trying to show how realistic and gritty the whole thing is, and I am not entirely convinced that the CIA’s technology is as snazzy as in the film. But these are quibbles. I expected to see a few cliches in this film, and we were not entirely disappointed. Yes, the CIA is portrayed as riddled with mad, bad people, but on the other hand, justice is done, the bad folk get brought to book eventually, and the film does not imply, as far as I can tell, that the threats to the US are somehow made up or are the figments of imagination. If anything, the message is that overzealous security agencies can easily convince themselves that it is okay to violate the boundaries of the law to do what is necessary. No one is above the law. I also smiled wryly at the way the film showed how many CCTV cameras there are in Britain. The scene at Waterloo Station, for example, was excellently done, and horribly believable. August 23rd, 2007 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
A rant warning! Last night Hugh and I were talking, amongst other things, about hierarchies and their impact on individual’s autonomy, or sovereignty as he calls it. And, predictably, how the internet has changed what has been long accepted as the balance of power between the individual and institutions. These things never far from my mind, a few thoughts struck me as I watched a couple of episodes of the series Rome.
 These are examples of how power, rules and resulting hierarchies create environments where individuals have no real autonomy by default. In the first one, Vorenus has his ability to make moral decisions (i.e. based on what he considers right and wrong) denied to him. In the second, Caesar’s outrage at the death of his enemy is not about Pompey but about the disrespect to the office that lent this particular wretch significance above other human beings. The third is about duty. Duty is important, often deeply embedded in people to follow a particular rule that usually makes sense on some level – either evolutionary or social. It is however designed to protect the system, rarely the individual. I am not attacking the sense of duty that comes from individuals themselves but the kind of duty often invoked to subdue them, namely duty to follow orders. Without autonomy, that kind of ‘virtue’ is just another tool in the tyrant’s toolbox. It took a collectivist horror for the European societies to realise that it is morally inadmissible even for the armed forces to follow orders, abrogating humanity. Hierarchical systems and institutions take over people and hollow out anything that is individual to replace it with their own trinkets – position, status, power, money, influence, resources. People are defined by what position they hold, by the family they are born into, by people with greater power than them and finally, if they are lucky, by their decisions. Such systems with centralised or unchecked power attract people who wield it enthusiastically and ruthlessly. Using that power, in exchange for perpetuating the system, they shape others to its rules. Nasty things become possible in the name of the system… It’s one of the ways power corrupts. → Continue reading: What is Rome for? August 22nd, 2007 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
The news media are still buzzing about the resumption of Cold War era style patrols by their ancient bucket-of-bolts bombers (not that I have anything against old-but-good combat aircraft) right up to the edge of NATO airspace. But for me the most interesting news to come out of Russia these days is that far from being the Neanderthal thug he is often portrayed as being, Vlad had decided it is time to reach out to that segment of the Russian electorate he has always stayed away from… 
“See my studdliness, Tovarich!” … he is now actively courting the Russian Gay Vote. Bless. August 22nd, 2007 | 53 comments - (Comments are closed)
Let’s see if we can spot the flaky reasoning in this letter to The Times (of London), as prompted by a good(ish) article by Daniel Finkelstein today:
First, the writer assumes as a matter of course that “inter-generational inequality” – however defined – is of itself a bad thing, a thing to be prevented by limits on any wealth bequeathed above a certain level. For this writer, he/she assumes that no person should have, in this case, an amount higher than say, £500,000. But why on earth should the state rule that people should be banned from receiving, as a gift, more than whatever some egalitarian thinks is the “right” amount? So the inheritor may not “deserve” it in some sense but so what? If a person does not deserve to inherit £1m, neither do his fellow citizens deserve to have that wealth evenly divided up among themselves, either. I think it was FA Hayek who pointed out that in talking of deserve, we talk of deserve in the eyes of someone else, like a father, boss or God who decides that Johnathan Pearce or AN Other “deserve” to receive X or Y out of the multitudes. But dumb luck in inheriting money or good looks or a high IQ is just that: luck. Luck is neither undeserved or deserved. Through aeons of time, we have evolved into human beings with things like opposable thumbs and relatively large brains. We did not “deserve” those, either, so does this mean we should hold ourselves back to benefit our less fortunate creatures? August 22nd, 2007 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
People worried that Britain’s supposedly overcrowded, damp island will soon burst at the seams from rising population levels should always remember that although immigration has been high lately, so has the exodus of many people. Of course, if you are bothered about underlying trend, it is not exactly cause for celebration that so many Britons, especially if they are young and talented, want to get out of here as quickly as possible. To say that this thought has not occured to the Samizdata crew would be an understatement. (Although one might debate whether yours truly is young or even talented). In the 1960s, there was talk about a “brain drain” from high-tax Britain. The situation is a little different now: I think the reason(s) for leaving are as much about the regulatory climate, the bloody awful weather, crime, the general ugliness and boorishness of Britain, and the better perceived better chances of raising a family. I am not saying that all these reasons are valid: countries like Australia or the US have their own problems and having been to the States regularly, I find it bizarre that that country is held up as a beacon of freedom sometimes, if only because some states like California seem hellbent on copying the worst regulatory excesses of Europe. But such caveats aside, this exodus ought to be an issue for Gordon Brown and the opposition to think about. If such large numbers of people want to leave, it is sending out a message. August 22nd, 2007 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
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