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Call me a traditionalist if you wish, but I can muster very little enthusiasm for Halloween, particularly the current neutered Americanised version of it. For me, it does not hold a candle to Guy Fawkes Night on the 5th of November or Krampusnacht on the 5th of December. 
October 31st, 2015 | 55 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Police have arrested a UK teen following the leak of ISP-U-Like’s browsing history database. The news follows revelations of a hack of the internal systems of the nation’s most popular ISP that left 60% of the country’s browsing history accessible from a public web site based in Sweden. British ISPs are required to retain records of the last 12 months of users’ browsing history under the so-called “snooper’s charter” introduced in 2016. Previously only police could access the information. Now visitors to ismyneighbourapervert.com can simply type in an email address and view anyone’s browsing history. Since then, there have been calls for a senior officer at Gloucestershire Police to resign after it emerged that he once visited a pro-GamerGate website. And the Daily Mail has defended criticisms of its “20 Celebrity Health Searches That Will Shock You” article, stating that the boil on the home secretary’s groin is “in the public interest”. Meanwhile, the CEO of ISP-U-Like issued the following statement: “In the unlikely event that your mother-in-law finds out about your membership of gaymidgetsgonewild.com, then as a gesture of goodwill, on a case by case basis, we will waive termination fees.” The investigation is ongoing. October 30th, 2015 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
October 29th, 2015 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
The whole system is clearly a tax-collection scheme masked as justice. In the end, what this court wanted was money, and the people it squeezed were the least able to pay. What I saw rivaled the worst forms of petty tyrannies I’ve read about in history books: how tyrannical kings would use every trick to pillage the population of their meager resources. I very much doubt that there is anything unusual about what I saw. It probably goes on every day in your town, too. October 28th, 2015 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Liberal economics, wanton consumerism, or an overregulated and brain-dead citizenry — zombies can epitomize whatever alleged mindlessness the critic most strongly objects to October 27th, 2015 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
For just over a year now, the younger of my two Goddaughters has been a student at the Royal College of Music, learning to be a mezzo-soprano. The two of us just shared supper in Chelsea, and while we consumed it she told me something very bizarre and rather sinister, about the chaos that was apparently inflicted, earlier this evening, upon her and her colleagues at the RCM by the latest James Bond film London premiere. This jamboree took place just across the road from the RCM, at the Royal Albert Hall, and it seems that the RCM was commanded to evacuate all its practice rooms that overlooked this premiere activity (quite a lot of which was outside the Royal Albert Hall on those big steps at the back), to stop anyone seeing it, and in particular, presumably, to stop them filming it or photographing it. These RCM practice rooms are in constant use, and alternatives are very hard to come by. Neither the students nor the teachers of the RCM were at all amused by this intrusion into their already stressful and hardworking lives. How the hell can a mere bunch of movie people insist on barging into other people’s buildings and ordering them around like this? I thought James Bond was all about defending the liberties of British citizens, not violating them. According to GD2, the Royal College of Music did not agree to this arrangement. It was merely informed of it, by Westminster City Council. If the College did consent voluntarily to this arrangement, in exchange for a cash payment, for instance, rather than simply being forced to submit to it, they didn’t tell any of their inmates about that fact. You can see what the people who inflicted all this upon the RCM were thinking. It was their event. They owned it. Nobody whom they did not invite or control should be allowed to film it. But, I say that if you want total control of the filming or photographing of an event, don’t hold your event in a public place, out in the open air, and then impose your control on places that merely overlook this public place. If you do bizarre things in public, you are fair photographic game, to anyone in the vicinity who chooses to snap you or video you. GD2 is my only source for this story, and maybe she, or I in reporting what she said to me, have it wrong. I’d welcome comments about this or similar events, corrective if necessary. (I could find nothing about this event, other than about it simply happening, on the www.) But if what GD2 told me is right, and if my recollection of what she told me about it is also right, well, I am not impressed. This circumstance reminded me of the crap inflicted on London when the Olympic Games came to town. October 26th, 2015 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
The United Nations is truly an amazing organization. Dictators and authoritarians from around the world can work together to solve their common problems, like how to keep their own citizens under control. A solution to this serious problem has been found, Cyberviolence against women is the new justification for the police state. Terrorism just isn’t cutting it anymore. October 26th, 2015 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
October 25th, 2015 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
None of the real difficulties are to be discussed. And yet it is just now, in Islam’s encounter with Western democracy, that discussion is most needed. Muslims must adapt, just as we all must adapt, to the changed circumstances in which we live. And we adapt by putting things in question, by asking whether this or that belief is true or binding, and in general by opening our hearts to other people’s arguments and attempting to meet them with arguments of our own. Free speech is not the cause of the tensions that are growing around us, but the only possible solution to them. If the government is to succeed in its new measures to eradicate Islamic extremism, therefore, it should be encouraging people to discuss the matter openly, regardless of who might take offence. October 25th, 2015 | 42 comments - (Comments are closed)
Brussels is effectively offering landowners money to advertise the EU. Then again, that’s the reason that a lot of people in Britain agree to support the EU: NGOs, charities, big corporations and universities. October 24th, 2015 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Post inspired by reading the story of how Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake, Texas, and discovered that perhaps socialism wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. October 23rd, 2015 | 53 comments - (Comments are closed)
Monopolies are only sustained by force. Sometimes examples are useful. In his book The No Breakfast Fallacy, Tim Worstall relates how in 2010 China limited the supply of rare-earth minerals to force the price up. The only problem was that rare-earth minerals are not rare at all, and the increased prices meant that Lynas Corporation and Molycorp were able to raise finances to re-open some mines that had been previously closed due to the previous low prices from China. Today, Imprimis Pharmaceuticals announced that they are making for $1 an alternative to the drug Daraprim, in direct response to Turing Pharmaceuticals increasing its price from $13 to $750. Update: Tim Worstall wrote about the Daraprim and rare-earths in Forbes. I hadn’t seen it when I wrote this, honest! October 23rd, 2015 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
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