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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Do you ever find the structure of a situation in the news fascinating in its own right, as you would the plot of a novel, almost irrespective of how it pans out in the real world?
Some documents were tricked or leaked out of an anti global warming thinktank, the Heartland Institute. Most of these documents have been admitted to be genuine, and while opinions differ as to how shocking they are, they were certainly not stuff that the Heartland Institute had wished to share with the world. So far the tables are turned on the the Climategate affair.
Only…
The juiciest document, the one that had the really damning quotes (it spoke of “dissuading teachers from teaching science”) is different from all the others. Megan McArdle, not herself in the sceptic camp, says it is looking faker by the minute.
If it does turn out that it is a fake, then the tables are turned on the table turners. But… but… why would anyone be so daft? Having pulled off the trick, got the goods, why put your gains at risk for such a trivial advantage as that of providing a quotable summary?
One of the reasons for the veracity of this particular document being in doubt is that it is sloppy. It contains errors of fact and is written in an unprofessional style. Still, that happens sometimes. “Organisation Contains Sloppy Writer” is not exactly a headline to make them hold the front page. Maybe the sloppiness is a reason to suppose it genuine. But let us run with it being fake for a while – was the faker in a hurry for some reason? It reminds me (and a lot of people) of the Rathergate memos. What a daft error it was to publish them in the default Microsoft Word font of 2004 when they were meant to have originated in the 1970s. I thought then and still think now that they were a first draft released too soon. Could something similar have happened here?
The Guardian pulls in its horns a little. Its story now carries a rather grudging little update saying that the Heartland Institute now claims one document is a fake. The Guardian does not make it as clear as it ought in my opinion that the doubtful document is the very one that had all the good quotes.
At this point, like all good detective stories, a whole new sub plot bubbles up. The climate sceptic blogs have a suspect and name him with what seems to me ridiculous confidence given that the stated evidence against him is vague; mostly a matter of similarities of style. Now who’s risking all they have gained for a trivial advantage? If their suspect turns out to be wrongly accused, the story, which they had snatched back and made into one about fakers rather than leakers, will be forfeit again.
And so it goes – and so it stalls, last time I looked. The person named has not responded to emails; he appears to be offline. But why shouldn’t he be offline? Do you spend your Saturdays checking your email to see if you have been accused of any career-ending shenanigans in the last few hours? Meanwhile other strange portents are seen; open letters are published then retracted and both sides go about with an air of knowing more than they are letting on.
Agatha Christie would put in the second murder about now.
UPDATE, 21 FEBRUARY:
The second body duly falls.
That “person named” to whom I alluded so delicately was Peter Gleick. He has now admitted obtaining the documents by deception. I note that the very thing that led to his name being mentioned as a suspect were similarities of writing style between Gleick’s published writing and the “different” email. Nonetheless he claims that he did not alter any of the emails he obtained. As to that, here is a page listing 100 interjections of the sort that express emotion without actually pinning one down to having said anything. Choose as appropriate. I quite like “hmm” and “ahem” myself, but my favourite must be “uh-huh” (affirmation) differing by only a breath from “uh-uh” (negation).
Hat tip to Douglas2 in the comments.
We already have a ‘Samizdata quote of the day’ for today, but, yes, here are seven more. I wrote them down over last Christmas, and then forgot about them. Ant then today, I encountered them again. They still make me smile, so here they all are for you good people.
First, a couple of things said by Patsy Stone, the amazing fashion monstress played by Joanna Lumley in Absolutely Fabulous. Over Christmas there were two new episodes. So much for my “complete” box set that I found in a charity shop last year.
On the terribleness of the recent riots in London:
Oh I don’t know. Nothing wrong with a bit of extreme shopping.
On the drugs issue:
Have you seen the price of methadone? It’s cheaper to buy crack.
Also on a fashion theme, from one of those Father Christmas in a New York Shopping Store movies, said by the Lady Boss:
I don’t know if large women care what they look like, but if they do, let’s exploit them.
That’s the spirit. And depending on how the project turns out:
This is either the smartest decision I’ve ever made or the stupidest decision you’ve ever made.
Which has to be a very old joke, but like I say, it made me smile.
Next, this from the Headmistress of St Trinian’s (played by Rupert Everett), about her (I think) brother (also Rupert Everett), to her brother’s daughter:
Your father has a short memory masquerading as a clear conscience.
Finally a couple of overhearings from BBC Radio 3. Here’s something from the recently deceased Gustav Leonhardt, about and with whom they did a commemorative Music Matters show, featuring a recorded interview with him. Leonhardt is explaining why the biographical details of the lives of the great composers don’t interest him that much, only their music.
When you meet a genius, you don’t know he is one. He is only a genius when he is at work.
Finally, here is Professor Robert Winston, ruminating on science, in between introducing some of his classical favourites with Rob Cowan:
Uncertainty is a good place to be. It worries me when governments take a very assertive position on the basis of very weak evidence and then stick to it.
The phrase “climate science” was never uttered, but you got the distinct feeling that this particular Public Voice is thinking that CAGW is a band-waggon that it now makes more sense to get off rather than to shout from. I must remember to email the Bishop about that.
Something tells me that the CAGW-ists will, any year now, start having short memories masquerading as clear consciences.
As already mentioned here from time to time in recent weeks, I have been doing some tidying up. My place was a mess. More politely, it was suffering from severe infrastructure overload, which is that terrible condition that sets in when each new thing that comes in or gets done causes a wave of knock-on chaos out of all proportion to what ought to be its impact. To put this down, I make some space for it by moving this important item, on top of that important item, and then forget where it all is … you get the picture.
If you have never in your life suffered thus, that can only be because you have never done anything. Places where real stuff gets done frequently teeter on the edge of chaos. This is another Parkinson’s Law. I recall, in one of his books, contrasting pictures: of the Officers Mess (not a mess at all), and the Orderly Room (not orderly at all). The point being that it was in the latter place that all the work got done.
But there comes a time when consoling yourself with the thought of all those chaos-inducing accomplishments just doesn’t do it for you any more. You just have to stop – at the very least interrupt – everything else and turn back the tide, which is what I have forced myself recently to do. This has already the most serious tide resistance I have done since moving in here over two decades ago.
My problem was that although this task had become slowly more important, it had at no point become overwhemlingly urgent. So, how was I to motivate myself to get stuck into it? No externally imposed deadline loomed. No angry associates would punish me if I delayed. It was merely that if I delayed it yet longer, my life would work gradually less and less well.
If you are the sort of person who needs only to know that some task is important in order to start attacking it with enthusiasm, confident that you will conquer it, then this posting is probably not for you. If on the other hand you are like me, easily daunted and tempted hideously to postpone tasks which combine non-urgency, great importance (but only to you) and demoralising hugeness, then maybe skipping this might be an omission of significance. If the question “where do I start?” regularly recurs in your life, then read on. You might discover things of value. → Continue reading: Urgent and Important versus Easy – on tidying up my home – and on how to do libertarianism
“The late Douglas Adams once said that any technology that exists when you are born is a normal part of the world; anything invented before you turn 35 is exciting and creative; and anything invented after you turn 35 is against the natural order of things . It’s not a new development: Socrates warned against learning to write, saying it would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories”.
– Tom Chivers, knocking down some lazy assumptions about video games, an issue that sometimes comes up as a target by today’s puritans.
The subject gives me an excuse to re-recommend this book by Gerard Jones, now a few years’ old, that argues that a lot of video games, including violent ones, are a healthy thing for children to play.
As this is the anniversary of the day that the Blaine Act ended prohibition in the US, I feel that we are morally obliged to have a beer to commemorate.
– my colleague, in response to an email I sent around at work asking whether we should make the customary Friday lunchtime trip to the pub.
Via Bryan Caplan at EconLog:
“It’s only human,” you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept “human” mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure–as if “to feel” were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not–as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not.”
He’s quoting the John Galt speech out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I agree with Caplan that that is a great quote. And she was right: if we say “it’s only human” when we refer to someone being an asshole, or forgetful, or inconsiderate, or loses their temper, or some such, shouldn’t we also say “it’s only human” when a person is thoughtful, considerate, productive, courageous and adventurous”?
On a slightly different tack, though, I think people often use the “I am only human” when, as the use of the word “only” implies, we are talking about the limits, and inevitable fallibility of we creatures. But then again, it is precisely because of our limits and partial knowledge, that it is all the more admirable, and worthy of note, when we imperfect creatures do the right thing, do things well, and show excellent character.
Madsen Pirie’s new book, Think Tank: The Story of the Adam Smith Institute was launched earlier this evening in the crypt of St John’s, Smith Square. Here is what it says in the book’s first chapter, entitled “Shaping an institute” (pp. 3-4):
There was an institute in London which drew heavily on Smith’s ideas, and those of the free-market economists who had followed in his wake. This was the Institute of Economic Affairs (lEA), founded by Sir Antony Fisher twenty years earlier, and which had published a steady stream of monographs analyzing the deficiencies of central direction, state planning and economic intervention. They were intellectually rigorous, and had made their way into the literature of economics libraries, albeit in a separate corner, almost fenced off from the mainstream.
But we wanted something more. It was all very well to win theoretical arguments, but nothing seemed to happen afterwards. Governments continued on their unruly ways, while academics devised new follies to set up on the wreckage of the old ones. We wanted to change reality; to have an impact on what actually happened. We wanted to make policy.
Adam Smith might have been one strong influence on our thinking, but there were others. One was James Buchanan, the Nobel Laureate who, with Gordon Tullock, James Niskanen and others, developed what came to be known as Public Choice Theory. In essence ‘it took the ideas of economics into the domain of politics and administration. Instead of ‘treating politicians and civil servants as selfless seekers after public good, the theory treated them as if they were ordinary economic participants, out to maximize their own advantage, just like other people. it proved a very fertile theory tor explaining what would otherwise have been incomprehensible outcomes. It also fitted in with the rather less than respectful way that we ourselves regarded politicians.
Public Choice told us how minority interest groups could hijack the political agenda to have advantages created for themselves. It explained how politicians respond to pressure from vociferous and self-interested groups, but not from a public at large which might be largely unconscious of the effect policy made upon it. Public Choice Theory was basically a critique, but we began to wonder if there could be a creative counterpart to it. Just as Public Choice Theory told us why certain policies were doomed to political failure, however economically sound they might be, could it not be used to create policies that would not be subject to these limitations? Could new free-market strategies be crafted that flowed with political reality by building in the support of the interest groups which might otherwise derail them?
This was powerful stuff. …
Indeed it was. As soon as I’ve read the rest of this book, I’ll tell you what I think of it.
Meanwhile, here is a picture I took at the launch, of the author hard at work signing copies.
Not surprisingly, the ASI blog already has a posting up on the subject.
Last night I went to the cinema, which I rarely do nowadays, and judging by the size of the audience for the movie that I and my friend saw, not many other people go to the cinema these days either. The place, in the heart of the London West End, was damn near deserted, apart from us and about three other people. Actually, though, the problem was probably the movie we were seeing, as I will now explain.
The movie we saw was Margin Call. Here is a short Rolling Stone review of it, which strikes me as pretty much on the money.
Okay: SPOILER ALERT. Stop reading this very soon if you don’t want the broad outlines of the plot handed to you on a plate.
When I started watching it, I knew nothing about Margin Call other than that a friend of the friend I was with had said it was the best current financial crisis movie he knew of. This makes sense. Margin Call is very much a trader’s eye view of the moment when the first of the waste matter started to move seriously towards the fan, around 2008. And, remarkable to relate, it actually shows “capitalism” (the quotes being because we all here know how government-intervened-in all these sorts of market have been) in a by no means wholly bad light. I am not a bit surprised now to have learned, the morning after, that this movie was written and directed by an ex-trader, a certain J. C. Chandor.
Plot approaching. Final warning. → Continue reading: What capitalism does when the music stops
Whatever the tax rate, there will be some businesses that will fail, but that would survive if the tax rate was slightly lower. Football clubs are no exception. Rangers has gone into administration because it can not pay its tax bill.
Mr Clark said: “HMRC have been working closely with the club in recent months to achieve a solution to the club’s difficulties. However, this has not been possible due to ongoing losses and increased tax liabilities that cannot be sustained.”
On the radio I heard all this explained, and the member of the public interviewed for opinion blamed it on the high wages of the footballers. Sometimes people can not see what is right in front of their faces. I imagine this will be blamed on everything but excessive taxation. In any case, Tim Worstall explains that footballers’ wages are high because clubs can charge high admissions prices, not the other way around.
What is the difference between a landed family’s trust fund and a dole recipient’s benefits? I’ll tell you:
One of them is an income derived from a piece of territorial property, assigned by accident of birth, originally acquired by forcefully expropriating the previous owners but now generally regarded as legitimate and which is only paid by people who choose to occupy the estate in question instead of living somewhere else…
…and the other one is a landed family’s trust fund.
– Typographically challenged commenter ‘fjfjfj’
Let me see
An officer has been scheduled to visit to find out if TV is being watched or recorded illegally. The Officer may visit your property at any day of the week, morning or evening
And he may stand outside and knock at your door like any other member of the public. You are perfectly free to then let him in, not let him in, stand there and stare at him oddly for a time whilst making clucking noises, or suggest he undertake in biologically impossible sexual acts. Entirely your call.
We can apply to court for a search warrant to gain access to your property
Yes, you can, just as you can jump off a cliff, flap your arms, and see if you can fly. The fact that (after I have lived at this address for two and a half years) you are still addressing me as “Legal Occupier” does tend to suggest to me that I should perhaps not quake in my boots too much. Magistrates are not, as I understand it, generally terribly impressed when people apply for warrants to enter the premises of unknown people who are not known to be breaking the law in any way. Or even known people who are not known to be breaking the law in any way, for that matter. Oddly enough, I get letters from Sky from time to time suggesting that I might want to pay them money in return for television services, also. Since soon after I arrived here, they have been addressed to “Dr Michael Jennings”, suggesting that it is not actually very hard to find out who lives here. Although they have not actually been any more successful in getting me to pay them money then the TV licensing people have, they have at least been polite, and haven’t threatened me with anything. It is almost as if they think I have a choice.
An officer can take your statement under caution, in compliance with the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 or Scottish Criminal Law
Anything you say to the Officer may be used as evidence in court
Best not to say anything then, hey?
You risk a fine of up to £1,000, in addition to legal costs
This is why, if they do actually obtain evidence that you are watching television without a licence, possibly because your naive flatmate or one of your children let the nice man into your flat when you were not there, you should offer to pay for a television licence at once. The TV licence men get paid a commission when you do this, so it is usually not too much trouble to get them to agree to it. (Agreeing to pay it retrospectively is much better than being taken to court. This is another reason why the only people actually taken to court tend to be penniless single mothers). However, it’s generally better to teach your flatmates and children to never let vampires, politicians, people from television licensing, or census enumerators into your home under any circumstances, and make it understood that they will be punished harshly if they do.
A reminder of the law
Oooh. Bold writing.
It is illegal to watch or record television programmes as they are being shown on TV without a TV Licence – no matter what device you do.
Let us know if you don’t need one at www.tvlicensing.co.uk/noTV or by calling 0300 7906097. We
may visit to confirm this.
And if they do, you are once again free to let them in, not let them in, stand there and stare oddly for a time while making clucking noises, or suggest they undertake in biologically impossible sexual acts. Once again, I wish them well in obtaining a warrant to enter your premises to verify that you are not doing anything illegal, given that there is no evidence that you are other than your claim that you aren’t. TV licensing are actually well known for paying no attention to people who tell them they do not have a TV – everyone does, after all. Let’s see if we can instead persuade your children to let us into your home so that we can prove that you are lying.
Slightly more seriously, the rhythm of these missives from TV licensing can be predicted. They start out polite, and they gradually gain more red highlighting, and become steadily more threatening. Then, after a cycle of about six, they go back to polite, and work their way up again. Only once did a man from TV licensing actually make a visit. On this occasion, there was a knock on the door of my flat at about 9am one morning. A stern voice asked “Can I have a word with you?” in a semi-threatening tone. I asked who he was. He answered “TV licensing”. I explained politely that while the stairway and corridors of the block of flats in which I live are shared by the various tenants of the building, they are not a public place, and that he was therefore trespassing, and that if he wished to talk to me he should go downstairs, shut the door to the building behind him, ring my bell, and talk to me on the intercom. I don’t know how he had got in – perhaps he had rung the bell of one of the other tenants and claimed to be the postman. Or perhaps he had been let in by the naive flatmate or one of the small children of one of the other tenants.
In any event, I spoke no more and returned to my kitchen to finish preparing my breakfast. He spoke no more to me, either. Several minutes later, a piece of paper quite similar to the one scanned above came through the mail slot in the door of my flat, explaining that someone from television licensing had called but that I had been out, that if I was watching television without a licence I was BREAKING THE LAW, and that another visit would be scheduled soon.
That was about two years ago.
“Each example of information technology starts out with early-adoption versions that do not work very well and that are unaffordable except by the elite. Subsequently the technology works a bit better and becomes merely expensive. Then it works quite well and becomes inexpensive. Finally it works extremely well and is almost free. The cell phone, for example, is somewhere between the last two stages. Consider that a decade ago if a character in a movie took out a portable telephone, this was an indication that this person must be very wealthy, powerful, or both. Yet there are societies around the world in which the majority of the population were farming with their hands two decades ago and now have thriving information-based economies with widespread use of cell phones (for example, Asian societies, including rural areas of China).”
Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near, page 469.
I like this point about agriculture at the end. A few years ago, my father, a retired farmer, showed me a satellite photograph that had been taken of our family farm, and provided by his agronomist consultant, showing which parts of a field needed more fertiliser, had better soil conditions and drainage, and so on. In two generations, the Suffolk farm had gone from a process where it took the whole of late July to late September, with 20 people, to get in the harvest, to just two guys using a massive John Deere combine harvester, some big trucks to carry the grain, and a state-of-the-art grain store with drying, filtering and cleaning equipment. And we just take it for granted that this level of technological change has happened, and is possible. So we should perhaps not be so despondent about the future.
There are all kinds of useful links on the Web to such satellite links of farmland, as well as other categories for business and scientific use. Here is the ResMap site, for instance. The Economist has a short item on the agricultural uses of space technology.
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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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