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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I made a very brief trip to Belgium at the end of a trip to Amsterdam last year. On that occasion I spent a day in Brussels and a day in Bruges. My great discovery on that trip was the extraordinary quality of Belgian beer. I spent a tremendous evening in ‘t Brugs Beertje in Bruges, sometimes referred to as “the best bar in Belgium”, which on that occasion was filled with English beer buffs. (The best kind, quite possibly). On that trip, I passed Antwerp in a train, and from my guide book and what people told me, I got the impression I had missed somewhere good.
And, as it happens, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link from London to Ashford opened recently, giving me the chance to travel through Kent at over 200 km/h. I was able to both try this out and see Antwerp last weekend. I had an evening in Bruges and then a day and a half in Antwerp. The drinking in Bruges section of the trip I have documented already.
But the next day I did get to Antwerp.
 → Continue reading: Thoughts on a trip to Antwerp, and legacies of the villainy of King Leopold II
As to the “Left” I’ll say briefly why [September 11, 2001] was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our “national security” calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of “Left” intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush’s legitimacy. So I don’t even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.
— Christopher Hitchens, interviewed in FrontPage Magazine.
(Link via NZ Pundit).
I am in Antwerp. As well as being a city of great economic importance as one of Europe’s largest ports, and also one of those great Dutch trading cities in which modern capitalism was invented in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Antwerp is today a very cool city: full of great bars, interesting shops, jazz clubs, assorted types of cafe, you name it. This afternoon, after drinking two or three glasses of fine Belgian beer while listening to a piano and bass jazz duo, I got on the metro to go back to my hotel. (The Belgians are the first people I have encountered who have managed to make a single line metro system confusing to use, but I digress). I found myself sitting in a seat on the metro platform, waiting for a train.
Suddenly, quite softly, I heard a familiar song being sung. It was one of the songs from the famous musical epsiode of Buffy, The Vampire Slayer. As I do happen to count knowing the lyrics (and far too much dialogue) of Buffy amongst my many skills, I paused for a moment or two and (perhaps it was the beer) joined in. After a few seconds, the girl noticed that there was somebody else singing and stopped, and seemed slightly embarrassed to be caught doing this. However, I mentioned that as someone who personally owned six seasons of Buffy on DVD, I was unlikely to think less of her for singing songs from Buffy. (There is also the minor matter that she was quite beautiful, and few guys mind it if a beautiful girl is a little embarassed).
She said that she was still waiting for the DVDs of season 5, as she is buying the US versions. (It is a point of dispute amongst Buffy fans as to whether the US or European DVDs are better. The European ones have been released first and are in widescreen, but the US ones are cheaper and have more special features, including a particularly hilarious commentary track on one episode from Seth Green. So we discussed this briefly. But once again I digress).
She expressed her surprise about the whole thing: she said that she sings that song when walking the dog, but that nobody had ever recognised it before. She said this in an accent I couldn’t quite place: it sounded sort of posh English, but it wasn’t quite that. So I asked her. She said that she was Argentine, but that she had lived in England for a time, and also had spent a while in Germany. I could sense that there was more to the story than this, But that was as much as I got.
If I was writing this in a film script, this would have been a wonderful example of what Roger Ebert calls a “meet cute”, and I would have no doubt used the whole episode as an excuse to invite her back to the jazz club, and it would have ended up being a wonderfully amusing story to tell our grandchildren.
But, sadly, there is something that I have left out of this story, which is that the girl in question was not alone. She was with a young Belgian man, obviously a boyfriend. So, I chatted with them a little until my train came, wished them goodbye and boarded my train.
I am not sure that there is a point to this story, other than that a globalised world in which I, an Australian who lives in London, can spontaneously start singing a song from a musical episode of a television series of light gothic horror set in a Californian high school with a beautiful somewhat anglicised Argentine woman in an underground train station in Antwerp is something I like immensely. And also, Joss Whedon is a genius.
A question. What exactly is the function of the shop in this photograph?
I will get to this in good time, but first, a little travelogue.
A couple of weeks ago, I spent the weekend in Tokyo. I did this because Tokyo is one of my very favourite cities, and because the 23 hour plane journey from Sydney to London is much more pleasant if you take a break in the middle. On Sunday morning, I went for a walk around Akihabara, famously the section of Tokyo where you go to buy the latest electronic products. This area consists mainly of a group of buildings filled with small shops and market like stalls selling components and generic products near the railway station, and a long wide street. Down both sides of this street are a large number of seven or eight floor shops that sell nothing but electronic equipment, in this case mainly consumer equipment. And, mixed in with the electronics shops, are manga shops. These are seven or eight floor shops selling nothing but comics. The comics sold on the lower floors are fairly innocuous, but get steadily more pornographic as you ascend the building, and those sold on the top level are quite hard core.
As I walked down the street, I was repeatedly approached by young Japanese women in short skirts who would hand me flyers about electronic products, or (usually in broken English) attempt to ask me if I already had DSL. (My answer, which was “Yes”, and “Anyway, I live in London” was not what they were looking for, although one of them thought it would be cool to live in London).
Not too different from what I might find in certain places in the west. But things would get stranger. → Continue reading: Bureaucracy and Political Incorrectness in Tokyo
Well, as Samizdata’s token Australian, I guess it is my job to do a little bit of cheering from the point of view of England’s opponents in the final of the Rugby World Cup on Saturday. Like Brian, I have also been writing about the tournament on ubersportingpundit, but if he is going to bring it here and the commenters are all then going to complain about Australians I might as well use my God like Samizdatista powers too.
For in the other semi-final on the weekend, Australia versus New Zealand, the Australian side that have looked second rate all year suddenly came good, and played superbly to beat New Zealand. Sydney is getting excited. The final is Australia v England, a great grudge match.
Which leaves me with two things to discuss. The grudge, and the match. First, the match. → Continue reading: Australia in the Rugby World Cup Final – and New Zealand hung out to dry
Yesterday, a group of Australian (and other) bloggers and readers got together in the Three Wise Monkeys pub in central Sydney. Beer was consumed, impassioned conversation was had, a little rugby was watched, and although Tim Blair was not present due to being on his annual drive across America, a good time was had by all.
Jason Soon, Sasha Castel, and Craig Gaynor appear to be curiously inattentive to the Samizdatista present
Tim Lambert begs Scott Wickstein to let him know where he got the shirt
Scott and Tex get into the sort of bonding that was unfashionable amongst Australians until quite recently
→ Continue reading: Australians do what Australians do
In the Australian state of New South Wales, which includes the city of Sydney, the number of pub licences is finite, and by all reasonable measures too few. Pub licences in Sydney trade like New York taxi plates, and sell for hundreds of thousands of Australian dollars. Because existing licences are so valuable, pub owners are extremely hostile to any competition that would reduce the value of their licences. Therefore, there is very strong resistance to increasing the number of licences and hence the number of pubs. Also, restaurant liquor licences are highly restrictive. Diners may not buy alcoholic drinks in a restaurant unless they “intend to dine”, and they may not drink alcoholic drinks in a restaurant while standing up. If these restrictions were relaxed, there would be little difference between restaurants and bars and pub licences would lose some of their value. The pub lobby therefore opposes any change, and a succession of state governments have given in and have not changed the law.
Of course, if a pub licence costs several hundred thousand dollars, it is necessary for pubs to make a decent return on this investment, and therefore in Sydney there are essentially no small pubs. Pubs are mostly large and fairly soulless. The sort of small, cosy pubs with character that are everywhere in England are mostly absent. And this is a shame.
As it happens, I was today in Canberra, Australia’s capital city. Although the city is entirely surrounded by the state of New South Wales, it has a similar status to Washington D.C. The city sits in a jurisdiction called the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which is not part of any state but which constitutionally speaking is entirely the responsibility of the federal government. (An ACT government does exist, with powers somewhere in between those of a city government and a state government, but it does so entirely at the pleasure of the federal government).
One thankful consequence of this is that the liquor and pub licensing laws of the state of New South Wales do not apply in Canberra. In Canberra it is not necessary to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a pub licence, and small pubs are possible. As it happened, I met up with a friend. Knowing my fondness for good beer, the friend took me to a nice cozy little brew pub, that served seven or eight different beers brewed on the premises. There was a hefe-weizenbier (not as good as what I would drink in Germany, but still quite good), a Kölsch style lager, three or four English style cask conditioned ales, and more. It was possible to brew all these beers and sell them on cozy little premises that catered to a clientele that liked that sort of thing. It was nice.
But in Sydney such a thing cannot easily exist. And it is all to protect rent seeking vested interests. Sydney has a huge number of restaurants serving excellent food of every kind imaginable, and is one of the finest cities in the world in which to eat. But as a place to go out for a drink, it leaves something to be desired. Canberra does not have this problem. (To be fair, Melbourne does not have this problem either). And this is entirely due to the difference in regulation.
As some of you may be aware, I am presently in Australia. A get together is being held in Sydney this Saturday evening to commemorate the fact, and to allow a whole lot of people who know each other electronically to actually meet one another. A wide assortment of Australian (and other) bloggers will be present. Any additional bloggers and/or readers who will be in the area and would like to come are more than welcome.
When: Saturday November 8 at 6:30 pm until probably quite late.
Where: The Three Wise Monkeys Hotel at 555 George St, Sydney.
Who: Everybody is welcome.
Any questions: Please contact me here
I am right now in the “Yahoo Cafe” airside in Terminal 2 at Tokyo Narita international airport, in transit on my way from London to Sydney. This internet cafe is absolutely free, and I have been using it for 45 minutes or so and nobody has asked me to stop. (There is a sign up saying that the cafe is there to advertise Yahoo and Toshiba – the computers are Toshiba laptops). This is great, partly because I always enjoy getting things for free without having to pay for them, and secondly because I do not have any Japanese money, and there are no cash machines airside. (Given the lack of enthusiasm that the Japanese have for credit cards, getting a beer is going to be harder).
However, there is a sign up outside the cafe stating that people who wish to use the cafe must provide their passports (or some equivalent form of ID) to be scanned or copied, so that use can be monitored. It is stated that “This request is in compliance with various Japanese laws”. As to whether this means that the laws require this, or whether they merely allow this, I do not know. It also says that people who do not wish to have their use monitored in this way should not use the cafe. (I will take a picture of the sign, and I will post it when I am in Australia. I could try to do it now, but the machine has no free USB ports. For reasons I will get to).
When I asked to use one of the computers, I handed over my (machine readable) passport, and my passport was actually scanned by a machine, which presumably read my passport number and other details electronically. I was then given an electronic key device, which I was required to plug into the USB port of the computer I want to use. Therefore, my internet use is being connected with my passport number.
I do not know if the “government regulations” require lead to things like happening at all internet cafes in Japan, or just those at the airport. However, I cannot imagine that this sort of system is very hard to subvert with the internet in present form. I am sure that actual criminals have no trouble using the internet anonymously, and that it is only normally law abiding people like me who get their use monitored. (I am almost tempted to go to a porn site to see if I am instantly thrown in a Japanese prison, but I rather doubt that would happen. For one thing, this is the land where people quite openly read pornographic comic books on the subway. They are rather more relaxed about this kind of thing than the Americans).
However, there are lots of proposals in place (justified in a lot of cases by fears of copyright violation) to build computer hardware in such a way that monitoring of this kind is ubiquitous and automatic for everyone everywhere.
However, it’s interesting and a little troubling to see that one government of a democratic and in some ways quite liberal country is trying to do it now.
Update: It is perhaps less sinister than that. I went to the bar for a little while, and I came back to the internet cafe. I was recognised and handed another USB key thingy without checking my ID again. As I doubt they remembered my name, it seems they are not matching internet use to actual people, but are merely checking ID. They could switch to matching very easily and without anyone noticing, of course.
A friend of Alice Bachini’s has been buying a fridge. The two most interesting obvservations are that an aesthetically different but otherwise identical fridge cost 50% more than the one that was purchased, and that it was possible to obtain a substantial discount by finding an internet retailer that offered the same fridge for substantially less than the high street retailer, and taking up the high street retailer’s offer to match any competitor’s price.
As for the first issue, I am presently reading Virginia Postrel’s The Substance of Style which is to a large extent about the first question (ie about why people care about fridges with different aesthetics, and why they are willing to pay a lot more for the right aesthetics). I will review the book when I finish reading it.
As for the second issue, well it brings up a big annoyance of mine about this country (which is a country that in most ways I rather like), which is that in some ways it isn’t that sophisticated as a retail market. In a lot of areas the high street is just horribly uncompetitive and anticompetitive. → Continue reading: Britain’s woefully uncompetitive high street
Every now and then somebody writes a piece (such as the one Brian referred to the other day) which talks about “Some pestilential scientist has invented a device that allows parents to trace their child’s location via his mobile telephone” or similar.
Now it actually isn’t actually scientific or technical issues that are the issue here, for mobile phones are tracking devices by their very nature, and have been since their invention. You see, if you call a mobile phone, then the phone has to be made to ring. In order to be able to make it ring, the network as to know where it is. And in order that this be so, your mobile phone network is tracking you at all times. It isn’t tracking you that precisely, but with sharing of information between networks (which they do, in order to track down mobile phones and sometimes to cooperate with the police) it is possible to track the location of anyone with a mobile phone to within a couple of street blocks. In terms of tracking the person with the phone, although the technology can be improved to track movements more accurately – particularly by putting GPS devices or similar into phones, in some sense it is good enough already. In this case the issues are not so much technological – the technology is already there – but regulatory and legal. Just how much of this information will be logged and stored. Having a database recording everywhere I have been in the last five years is different from being able to record where I am now on demand. How much of this information may or must be shared with government and law enforcement. And how much of this information may be used commercially and in what ways. Is it appropriate to provide a service to parents that allows them to track the movements of their children? (Certainly if I was a teenager, I would find it pretty rough if my mother was tracking me at all times).
But, of course, technology is advancing. Reading this article suggests that things are going to get far worse. Before too long we may have so called “passive radar”. Essentially the point of this is that our mobile phones are throwing lots and lots of radio signals around all the time. These signals are bouncing off things, being partially absorbed by other objects, and similar. If our phones and base-stations record signal strength, signal direction, gaps in the signal, doppler effects, and other such pieces of information, it may be possible to essentially construct an electronic map of the terrain that the signals are travelling through. Essentially if you are walking down the street not carrying a mobile phone or any form of electronic tag, it may be possible to track you using the mobile phones of other people in the street. Unlike conventional radar systems, this type of tracking cannot easily be detected, as it uses radio signals that have other purposes and are there already. The privacy implications of this are, of course, worrying.
Even if this particular means of ubiquitous tracking does not come into being, or at least not quickly, some technology that achieves essentially the same thing is going to come into being at some point, like it or not. If we want to attempt to establish rights to not be tracked, or clear laws as to how such information can and cannot be used, we need to do so now, when tracking is possible but not ubiquitous. Trying to do so so after it becomes ubiquitous is going to be too late.
This minute is my contribution but I should re-emphasise that I remain unconvinced by the overall policy. I believe the proposed plan is flawed, and that no tinkering with particular issues will be able to resolve what is a fundamental political matter. We remain as far apart as ever on the acceptability of charging. How will we get people to accept a fee when asylum seekers get the card free? What about the practicality of ensuring every citizen provides a biometric sample while no effective procedures are in place for those who refuse? The potential for a large-scale debacle which harms the Government is great, and any further decisions on the next steps must be made collectively. I will continue to urge strongly that this issue be shelved.
–Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, asking David Blunkett some very good questions in a leaked Cabinet document, as revealed in the Sunday Times.
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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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