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Andrew Keen: Are you comparing the Instapundit, the idiotic crazy libertarian ex-law professor, to Polly Toynbee and Robert Fisk? They are my heroes! Adriana Lukas: No, I am not comparing Instapundit to Polly Toynbee or Robert Fisk. That would be unfair to Instapundit. – Adriana Lukas, speaking at a debate at the Front Line Club. September 6th, 2007 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The next time the Russian airforce tries to test the UK air defences (which seem to be working fine), perhaps the boys in grey-blue should paint a big sign on the side of the Typhoon fighters saying this: “The way to Harvey Nichols’ jewellery department and Chelsea FC is that way, chaps”. Seriously, what the expletives deleted does Putin think he is trying to prove, exactly? It is not as if one of those “Bear” aircraft are state-of-the-art. Ironically, there has been a lot of criticism about the expense of the Eurofighter project – justifiably – but at least the RAF have a superb fighter. Let us hope they do not have to remind the Russians of what an outstanding force the RAF still is. September 6th, 2007 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
I am not a great opera buff but I am very saddened to read about this news this morning. The man’s voice was simply amazing. Rest in peace. September 6th, 2007 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
They keep on coming on, like a sort of rank of killer insects in one of those terrible B-movies. Here is the latest shaft of wisdom from the judiciary:
Marvellous. None of that “presumed innocent” namby-pamby nonsense.
Fairness? What about the state and its officials leaving the innocent alone and not demanding every greater controls over our lives? Has this judge read his Blackstone lately?
I agree. It is indefensible that such a person holds such office. Cleaning toilets might be more his line:
“For no other purpose”. Why, are there other purposes that the judge knows about? September 5th, 2007 | 78 comments - (Comments are closed)
Another load of tourists arrived last night (we run UTC here) so I am just getting up and having my morning coffee, or what passes for coffee here in Heinleintown, the main residential tube of Luna City. You see, I work at the Bigelow, and new arrivals are so biologically confused and excited to be here after the two day cruise on the big Virgin cycler that we just keep the bar open until they finally fade off to their rooms. Depending on the age group, that sometimes takes awhile, but they tip well so I can not complain. Actually I have very little to complain about. I am here, and I am alive, and neither of those would have seemed very probable to someone 50 years ago. I sometimes remember a friend of mine, Gary Barnhard, writing an article for Ad Astra about what it might be like now. No idea where he is off to these days. Last I heard he was off in the asteroid belt on a project to convert an asteroid into a commercial simputer, a gadget to model pretty much anything you could ever want to model. An entire asteroid as a computer. The mind boggles… but then the nanotechnology which allows that is the reason I am here at all. One hundred and seven. Imagine that. I sometimes repeat it and shake my head in disbelief that we actually have managed to create most of Dr Leary’s “SMI^2LE” [Space Migration, Intelligence Increase and Life Extension]. Perhaps even more amazing was that we actually survived the nanotechnology transition. I guess it helped that the superpower competition between the USA, India and China was ‘mostly peaceful’, to paraphrase a long forgotten humorist. It did help being in the center of it back in the ‘oughties’ and early ‘teens’ when things really started cracking open. I was there watching it happen. Hell, I was there helping to make it happen. I can still remember the sight of those early contraptions lifting off from our spaceport in the Western US. Rocketplane Kistler, Virgin Galactic, Masten, Armadillo, SpaceX, BlueOrigin, XCOR and the Yep, I just might be getting ready to move out again. The moon is still empty but it is too close to Earth and I always did say “Happiness is the Earth in your Rear View Mirror”. A couple days ago I was talking to some of the guys from the Interstellar Consortium. Yeah, a bit early by a few centuries, but I like their style. A bunch of the guys from the early days, John, Elon, Jeff, Jim, Dave… people who know how to make things happen. Hell, they even got George Whitesides to front for them and help raise the capital. Got a big chunk from the National Space Society Exploration Fund, so we would be carrying their flag to the edge of the solar system. The idea is to prove that Kuiper Belt Objects could provide the fuel and structures for a ‘slow boat’ to the nearest stars. As I said, I think they are a bit premature, but hell, how could I pass up a trip to the edge of the solar system? Even if we just stick the NSS flag on a few iceballs, it is a pretty cool thing to do. And why bother living a few centuries if you do not have a dangerous adventure or two? I never was the stay at home type so at a hundred and seven this old space dog is not about to learn to stay in the doghouse. Besides which, I always did tell friends I intended to go downhill skiing on Europa at a hundred and twenty. I just might manage to do that thing. September 5th, 2007 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Michael Gove, the Conservative MP for Surrey Heath, has written an interesting and very ‘bloggy’ article in The Times with a subsection that was right on the money called Left-wing cant and the indefensible:
Quite, although I am not so forgiving as the Honourable Member for Surrey Heath. It is intolerable that the Guardianistas get a free ride on these sort of issues. Now if only the leader of Gove’s hilariously misnamed party would call a spade a spade like that. September 4th, 2007 | 51 comments - (Comments are closed)
(Alert: if you are bored by sport or just want to read about politics and supposedly more serious stuff, scroll down). The England football team need to win their match this week’s match against Israel – yes – to qualify for the European Championship tournament next year. I guess it says something about the state of what is often regarded as the country’s national game that England are in this situation. But this week, I have tried to freeze out the dire state of our national game and have been reading a bit about a man from England’s glorious football past, both in terms of how he played the game, and the sort of person he was and still is. Bobby Charlton. It is a tired cliche, but they just don’t make em like that any more. His thoughts in his new autobiography about colleagues Denis Law and the late George Best are wonderful and in the case of Best, who was without doubt a sporting genius, very moving. September 4th, 2007 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is the paragraph from the Times (of London) today about Gordon Brown’s plan to ‘shake up’ (whatever that means) UK politics:
The idea of co-opting opposition MPs – in order to neuter them and implicate them in government decisions – is the classic move of undermining the sharp and necessary disagreements that are a healthy part of parliamentary democracy. As for the citizens’ juries bit, I doubt Gordo has in mind the canton system of local referenda that the Swiss use (if only). After all, Brown is not keen on a “citizen’s jury” when it comes to the recent EU constitution, sorry, I meant treaty, is he? And it is only Monday. September 3rd, 2007 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the next few days Pope Benedict plans to issue his second encyclical – the most authoritative statement a pope can issue – which apparently will focus on social and economic inequity in a globalized economy. In the statement, he is expected to denounce the use of tax havens as socially-unjust and immoral in cheating the greater well-being of society. According to the Times (UK) newspaper, the statement may have been inspired by a recent request to the Vatican by Romano Prodi, the Italian prime minister, who urged church leaders to speak out on tax evasion. – The delightful Corporate Accountability and Workplace website. Quite right, too. What higher moral authority could there possibly be than a Prime Minister of Italy? September 3rd, 2007 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
Now it might seem odd that someone on record as being as hostile to the EU as me might hope that Gordon Brown gets his way and just bounces Britain into adopting the resurrected EU treaty against what is quite obviously the wishes of the majority of politically active people in Britain. But that is what I want. I want the EU to get its way and for there to be a dramatic shift in power from London to Brussels, with commensurate huge diminution in democratic control of the political process in this country. I regard the fact Gordan Brown can look the nation in the eye and utter such a naked lie that the current offering is not, to quote the Chancellor of Germany, “the new constitutional document is the same as the old constitutional document: the only difference is that it doesn’t have European Constitution as its title”, with pure delight. In short I want Gordon Brown to strip away the myth of the democratic accountability. I want the system that has been so seriously damaged over the last ten years to be broken in such a visible way that even the most purblind self-deluding fool can see just what sort of country they really live in. Let all sixty million people on this island hear the stream of pork pies issuing from the gob of the man in 10 Downing Street, with the entire apparatus of power standing behind him nodding. Although very worthy folks like the UKIP will argue passionately for a referendum, knowing that their position will almost certain win (which is of course why it will not be allowed to happen), in truth the long term position of a fringe party like UKIP will be vastly improved if the ‘nightmare scenario’ does indeed come to pass. To actually break the current political monoculture will require far more really pissed off people than currently exist in Big Bruvvah anaesthetised Britain. The system needs to break and millions of people need to be confronted with their political irrelevance before anything really… interesting… can happen. So good luck Gordan, I wish you great success in screwing over your subject people and locking in the centrist regulatory Big State at the more remote European level. More and faster in fact. September 2nd, 2007 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
I believe taxes – of all kinds – should be kept as low as possible and that the pressure to get them down should be relentless… Taxes on income are taxes on effort, work and entrepreneurship. Taxes on capital are taxes on investment and risk taking. But it is effort, work, entrepreneurship, investment and risk taking that we need to continue to grow our economic base. – Charlie McCreevy, European Commissioner. September 2nd, 2007 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
The film Death Sentence is worth seeing. As the saying goes “Warning! spoilers below”… → Continue reading: ‘Death Sentence’ – a film worth seeing September 1st, 2007 | 64 comments - (Comments are closed)
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