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.
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Fresh from his humbling at the hands of Hillary Clinton and following on from a statement indicating his willingness to invade Pakistan, Barack Obama ladles on credence to the increasingly ubiquitous assertion that he’s inexperienced:
I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance…involving civilians. Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.
Desperately wrong answer to (what should be) a deal-breaking question, Mr Obama. Sure, waving the threat of one’s nuclear weapons capacity around like a pair of chopsticks in a cheap Chinese restaurant is not sensible, because it ultimately reduces that capacity’s deterrent value – which is the only practical reason why a sane nation would field a nuclear arsenal in this world of other nations who also possess The Bomb. A wise leader does not even refer to his country’s nuclear weapons capacity, because the widespread knowledge of that capacity speaks for itself more effectively than any politician could ever hope to.
Conversely, it is sheer lunacy for a US President (or hopeful) to declare that he will never press the button, because such statements completely undermine the deterrent value of these weapons. Mr Obama, if you are not running on a platform of nuclear disarmament, you never take the nuclear option off the table. Ever. You made a most elementary strategic blunder – you are not a suitable candidate for the role of U.S. Commander-in-Chief.
I am currently in Beijing, which is up there amongst the most polluted cities in the world. Beijing’s summer days are characterised by heavy cloud cover, which traps the unsightly gaseous consequences of China’s lightning-fast growth. The sun usually becomes discernable at around 4pm, when a golden-brown orb peers timidly through the haze. Being more acquainted with the brilliant Australian sun, for a split-second I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking at when I first saw its rather diminished Chinese incarnation.
In such circumstances, I have been thinking a lot about the “carbon footprint” of countries in the economic vanguard of the developing world – countries like China and India. Like most who contribute and comment here, l classify myself as a “global warming skeptic”, due to the evangelical, anti-science and frequently absurd rhetoric that typifies global warming activists of all stripes. I am not a complete denialist – I have not written off the theory of anthropogenic global warming entirely. I simply believe there is an awful lot we do not yet know, and it is rash to be making grand predictions about impending weather-related catastrophes, and demanding action based on such flawed predictions. If, however, I was to reconsider my position and embrace the concept of AGW, I would still not champion the Kyoto Protocol or any other effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The fact is that if AGW is a genuine phenomenon, it is inevitable. There is absolutely no point in the rich world winding back its CO2 output, because China, India and the rest of the developing world will replace any first world CO2 reductions several times over. Despite the occasionally placatory noises about limiting CO2 emissions heard from the likes of the Chinese central government, the fact is that the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, the Brazilians, nor anyone else from the developing world will ever stymy their nations’ opportunity to develop by hobbling their industrial output via significant CO2 emissions controls. Nor are the leaders of these countries likely to do anything to incur the wrath of their citizens by curtailing their perfectly reasonable aspirations to own motorcars, motorcycles, air conditioners and enjoy the convenience of air travel – all enormous direct or indirect sources of CO2 emissions. If significant CO2 reduction could be achieved with minimal economic and social cost, then perhaps the developing world would cooperate. However, large-scale CO2 reduction is an extremely expensive and socially disruptive exercise, and this reality will persist for several decades.
And it is too late to roll back the clock – too many people in the developing world have tasted the fruits of development, and quite legitimately demand more. Those governing the aspirational billions are far more likely to be influenced by them than An Inconvenient Truth. Global CO2 emissions are going to continue to grow for many years, there is no doubt about it. The “global warmenists”, as the mighty Tim Blair calls them, need to re-evaluate their positions, because what they propose at present is simply an exercise in developed-world wealth destruction on an epic scale. Those insisting on such a state of affairs appear little short of anti-human luddites, as detractors of the green movement have long asserted. Bjørn Lomborg is spot on – any resources allocated towards the AGW issue should be directed towards researching crisis management and developing an appropriate disaster-relief capacity under the circumstances of rapid climate change, even if only as an insurance policy. And the absolute last thing we in the developed world should be doing is hampering the wealth-creating organs of our societies in a futile effort to cut CO2 emissions. If AGW is truly the looming catastrophe that many predict, we need to be as wealthy as possible to plan and make provisions for its impending consequences, and thus deal with them when they start to unfold.
Whilst it is fun to laugh at the French, in the interest of fair and balanced commentary I should add that this civil servant would find numerous employment opportunities in any of the world’s government sectors.
It was deplorable that the woman hostage should be shown smoking. This sends completely the wrong message to our young people.
– Patricia Hewitt denounces Iranian treatment of a member of the fifteen captured British navy personnel. Is there a more perfect illustration of the misplaced priorities of Blair’s Britain?
(Via Tim Blair, who notes “as always with such a blindingly stupid quote, be alert to the possibility it’s too stupid to be true.” Perhaps regular Hewitt-watchers would not see the need for such caution.)
Scott Wickstein notes a priceless piece of bureaucratic imbecility in New Zealand:
A New Zealand council has taken itself to court and successfully been fined $4,800 […] it will pay itself the fine, minus the court’s 10 per cent cut. It has already stumped up $3,000 for pre-trial “outside legal opinion”.
I also enjoyed an anonymous comment left on the post at Scott’s:
I wouldn’t be surprised if they lodge an appeal
As an addendum to Brian’s post on the Channel 4 documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, I thought I would inform anyone unaware that the programme can be viewed in full at Google videos. Brilliant – I am downloading it as I type.
(picked up from LGF)
The president of our National Welfare Rights Network is a man named Michael Raper.
Surely an excellent name for someone who constantly thinks about how best to take advantage of taxpayers.
I will be going to live in China shortly, however I intend to backpack around South East Asia for a few months before settling in Beijing. I do not really wish to lug my two hundred and fifty or so CDs around Asia. I am not a masochist. Also, I would hate to lose them. Yet I would also hate to be without my music – so I plan to buy a portable MP3 player and copy all of my CDs on to that. However, I do not know which model to buy, so perhaps a knowledgeable reader could help me out.
Firstly, I should mention that I do not want an iPod. I do not like having to use iTunes to plonk songs and data on the device, and I have heard a lot of stories about reliability problems – units dying just after the warranty has run out, unprovoked formatting of memory and that kind of thing.
I want a player that is compatible with Windows and has a relatively simple procedure for the addition of files – as I may be doing a fair bit of that at internet cafes and places where the software available is limited. Ideally, I would like to be able to rip a CD straight to the player without having to store the music files on a computer in the process. I am not awfully concerned about a video playing ability or an especially fancy display for viewing photos, as I will primarily be using the unit to listen to music. I would like the unit to have at least 30 gigabytes of memory, and I do not want to spend much more than 200 pounds or US$400.
A tech-savvy friend told me to check out the Creative Zen Vision M and the Toshiba X-series. Does anyone have any comment on these units, or any other recommendations?
Today I visited the consulate of an Asian nation to apply for a tourist visa. When observing the visa application fee, I noticed that those travelling on a U.S. passport must pay almost three times more for a visa to enter this particular country. I believe many other countries impose an extraordinary surcharge for visa applicants travelling as U.S. citizens, too. Talk about American exceptionalism.
Still, I expect Americans are used to this sort of arrangement. When it comes to a whole suite of multilateral projects, the rest of the world expects the American taxpayer to cough up a hugely disproportionate share. When the American taxpayer wants to travel to the rest of the world, they find themselves paying considerably more for an entry visa to many countries as punishment for their poor choice of nationality.
Being a U.S. citizen must rankle at times.
It must be a good show when a sociologist (who does not seem to think his discipline is a by-word for socialism) says:
A lot of progressives have stopped believing in progress… and have begun to look nostalgically to the past and have come to reject modern life in many respects and, in a very kind of desperate way, believe that in the good old days when things were small and tangible and when people lived in small villages, everything was all right.
Yah. When asked if those making charitable donations to certain green organisations campaigning to halt industrial-scale development in the third world realise the consequences of their support, this same individual says
Absolutely not, people do this for the best possible motives, but the kids don’t realise that by going there and telling them ‘this is the way you must live your life’, you’re actually being fairly coercive; you’re imposing upon people a lifestyle that is quite ill-suited to their circumstances, and you end up becoming complicit in an authoritarian world order where one group of people’s world-view becomes the dominant one and everyone else’s becomes quite secondary.
[my emphasis – JW]
Who is this erudite chap? Why, it is Professor Frank Furedi, interviewed on the excellent Mine Your Own Business documentary. This movie has been billed by some as a ‘right-wing’ counterpart to a Michael Moore production, but it comes across as considerably less polemical – and enormously more believable – than the average output from the portly and infamous self-declared son of Flint.
This is a useful film for the liberal cause. I am twenty six, and I have a lot of friends who I would describe as instinctively left-leaning. I have shown the film to some of them. I would like to describe a ‘road to Damascus’ scene, but there were no Pauls in my audience. Still, several seeds of doubt were planted, and that is a great start – I too was a socialist, but for that seed of doubt planted several years ago. Consequently, I talk to a lot of young people about extending the principle of personal responsibility. I have often thought that the young are natural libertarians – yet, because they are frequently reliant upon the patronage of others for their livelihoods, matters of economics concern them not. Socialism appears affordable and desirable when one pays less than 10% of their income to the tax man. Regardless, I have discovered that it is not so hard to convince a young person of the merits of what is dismissively described as “rugged individualism” by statists – until the environmental question is raised. This is much harder to overcome, because the underlying science is arcane, mastered by few and is thus vulnerable to manipulation. I firmly believe that green politics represents the ultimate bulwark against the adoption of liberal ideals. Therefore I recommend this film. It graphically displays the victims of international green politics – the world’s poorest – those that the green movement purports to champion. For this alone, Mine Your Own Business is a useful production. Young people who are socialists are generally well-meaning. They want to help the poorest. Fine – help the poorest the liberal way. Help them via voluntary charity. Decouple the link between the Greens and the poor, because the poor confused Greens are inherently antipathetic towards the plight of the poor, whilst championing them. They are no good to anyone – in fact, they can be positively deadly.
Thus, it is essential that the Greens are denied the ability to become a large ‘catch-all’ political movement by encroaching meaningfully into the economic arena. Scarily, they have come thus far and we must aim to roll their influence back to saving sequoias and killer whales, because when it comes to economics – that is, the realm of human welfare – Greens are instinctively genocidal. Of course, they will deny this, but ask them about the earth’s grave overpopulation problem. Most will concur but not extend this rationale to its logical conclusion because they are good (and misguided) people who would never associate themselves with a cause that overtly demands the slaying of billions. Deduction, fools! Admittedly, the Greens have their consistent advocates. And you thought the Final Solution was a pretty fucking awful idea.
The point is that the Green movement has crept into the mainstream. It urgently needs to be repulsed to the ideological fringes, because it is inherently anti-human. Mine Your Own Business contributes to this process, so it should be supported.
One thing that is really bugs me about the guy or at least the Obama phenomenon is that he and his supporters (definitely his supporters) like to make a big deal about every possible racist interpretation that can be put into what his opponents say about him. Yet it is obvious to Blind Freddy that he would not be in the limelight in the first place were it not for the whole race issue. If Obama were white would anyone really give a damned what he said? He’s milking this mixed heritage business for all it’s worth. How much of his book is about his philosophy and how much of it is about converting his personal life story into a heap of ‘we are the world’ cliches?The hype that has been placed on the guy speaks volumes for the ridiculousness of the media’s patronising attitudes on race.
Is there any evidence that he is any much smarter than the average politician? Any wiser or more intellectual? Does anyone know what he stands for besides banal platitudes and a trendy populism?
– Jason Soon of Catallaxy enunciates what I suspect a number of Samizdata readers and contributors are thinking about Barack Obama.
I was swapping recipe tips on a comments thread recently, and the recipe in question involved soy sauce. I am a big fan of this particular seasoning, and I launched into a lengthy discussion of it. When I had finished regurgitating, I got to thinking – hey! This is good stuff! Why am I wasting this on a comments thread? It could be a discrete blog post! So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado I present to you Everything You Needed To Know About Soy Sauce (But Were Afraid To Ask):
There are two – and only two – important points that need to be considered if you are to get the most out of your soy sauce investment. The first is in the buying. Look at the ingredients list of the soy sauce you are interested in. It should consist of soy beans, water, wheat flour and salt. That is it. If it has some kind of hydrolyzed protein shit in it or any other weirdness, recall that that is the mark of an inferior sauce. Desist.
The second is in the storing. Soy sauce goes stale. Remember this when considering storage options. Once opened, most leave their soy sauce on the shelf at room temperature. This is not optimal. Storing it in the fridge will keep it fresher (much) longer. Unfortunately, the majority of non-Asians require a couple of years to work their way through a bottle of soy sauce. No wonder; it will start to taste pretty ordinary if opened and subjected to a few months at room temperature. When soy sauce goes stale, it tastes like salty brown water. It loses complexity. Who would want to cook with that? You will see what I mean if you compare the taste of fresh sauce to that of the stuff sitting in your cupboard for the past half-decade. Look, just keep your soy sauce in the fridge and stop quibbling. And if you have not used the bottle after – say – no more than a year, replace it.
Of course, soy sauce is not soy sauce. There are many breeds of this beast, from the light soy poured over cheong fun (the so-called Cantonese cannelloni) at a dim sum banquet, to kecap manis, the viscous, sweet soy sauce common in Indonesian cuisine. The recipe mentioned at the start of this post benefits from a light soy sauce.
And what is this recipe? Perhaps you have had Hainanese chicken – this dish is very similar and very easy to prepare. You need a whole chicken, some roughly chopped shallots (spring onions), a handful of roughly chopped ginger and eight to ten star anise cloves. Put the shallots, star anise cloves and ginger into a large pot and place the chicken on top of it. Fill the pot with cold water – enough so that the chicken is comfortably submerged. Heat until boiling, then allow to boil for a further thirty minutes. Turn off heat and allow to cool for several hours; overnight is ideal. Remove chicken and place on a platter – it should fall apart with little effort and be very tender. Sprinkle flesh with light soy sauce immediately before eating – “immediately” as in when the chicken is on your plate and you are about to stuff it in your mouth.
Some asides – a whole chicken works best with this dish, but you can use whatever chicken you have, as long as it is on the bone. DO NOT use breast fillets – they will become unacceptably tough. Breast meat is over-rated, anyway. It may well be the leanest part of the bird, but it is also the chewiest and least succulent. Why would you pay more for it? It is crap. Thigh meat is by far superior.
Strain the ginger, star anise and shallots out of the remaining water, skim any fat off the surface and add some salt – you now have a pot full of proper, home-made, not-bought-from-the-supermarket, gourmet-approved chicken stock!
This recipe may not sound so tasty – cold, boiled chicken – but trust me, it works. It is ideal picnic food and goes brilliantly with a salad. Perhaps this salad. Enjoy.
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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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