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If, like me, you were vaguely annoyed that Livingstone acquired the Olympics, then you must hope that you are either away during the hell that will be the summer of 2012 (my holidays are accumulating now!), or you must campaign for new sports to appear in the Olympiad. The more violent, the faster, the more dangerous, the better. And free drugtaking, of course. Why not allow genetic modification for athletes. “It’s at their own risk”.
One candidate is the decidedly cool Rocket Racing League. This flying Formula One has not acquired lift as yet, but races are looked for in a year’s time. The origins of this competition lie in the Ansari X Prize, with a nod to their barnstorming ancestors back in the early days of aircraft.
A debut exhibition race is planned for the X Prize Cup in September 2006. In the six months after that, the league expects to see races at an additional two air shows and two car racing events, with a championship event in New Mexico at the 2007 edition of the X Prize Cup.
The events will take a leaf from motor racing’s book.
Rocket planes called X-Racers will compete on a sky ‘track’ in the design of a Grand Prix race, with long straights and the added dimenson of vertical ascents and deep banks. The race will run perpendicular to spectators and be about two miles long, one mile wide and 1,500m in the air. The X-Racers will be staggered upon take-off and fly their own ‘tunnel’ of space, each separated by a hundred metres or so.
Pilots will be guided by differential GPS (Global Positioning System) technology to help them avoid collisions.
Necessity may be the mother but thrillseeking is the father of invention: on second thoughts, the Olympics would ruin it. But I would still welcome a ‘skytrack’ in London, and you can submit your own idea for a rocker racer name on the website…
Captain America is probably remembered as one of the worst films spun off the Marvel franchise. Whilst the film wrought untold damage to the origins of Steve Roger’s alter ego, it did strike one historical chord. In the comic book, Steve Rogers is a sickly individual, denied the chance to demonstrate his patriotism, until he takes the serum that transforms him into a super soldier. In the film, Steve Rogers is a polio victim, perhaps the only plot device that provides some insight into the historical context of Captain America and the rise of the superhero.
The definition and origins of the superhero are traced back to the nineteen-thirties even though there are a number of forerunners in the pulps. The genre coalesced around costumed heroes with a variety of powers, often enhanced beyond human norms, who had strong moral codes, a secret identity and fought off evil in a variety of guises, usually the enemies of World War 2. The cultures that informed the origins of superheroes came from both contemporary sources and Judaeo-Christian narratives.
Superman’s backstory was Biblical in tone. Richard Donner, director of Superman, recognised the parallels between the Man of Steel and Christ, as referenced by Anton Karl Kozlovic, in his paper, “Superman as Christ-Figure: The American Pop Culture Movie Messiah”, published in the Journal of Religion and Film.
However, many years later, Donner gladly admitted to the Christic subtext: “It’s a motif I had done at the beginning when Brando sent Chris [Reeve] to Earth and said, ‘I send them my only son.’ It was God sending Christ to Earth.” It was a dramaturgical decision that made good sense, for just as Superman was literally a super-man, Jesus was “the ultimate Super Jew of his day,” the “Christian super-hero,” the pop culture “God with us” (Matt. 1:23). Indeed, many Jesus-Superman parallels exist within S1 and S2 because both films were planned, scripted and partially shot back-to-back.
Whilst Superman bundled biblical myth into a new package, Steve Rogers as Captain America transformed another demographic. We forget the large numbers of the debilitated and disabled who suffered from a young age with consumption or polio during the interwar period. The sickly Steve Rogers is a recognisable figure from the Depression, and his transformation acts as the inclusion of suffering invalids into the superhero myth and the war effort. Superman is an alien but Captain America is drawn as an everyman, and a patriot.
It is possible that superheroes would never have acquired their longlasting popularity without the war. The diverse backdrops that authors used to appeal to as many readers as possible proved an important innovation. Yet, just as the new pulp genre of science fiction showed that the horizons of plausibility were widening, the Macguffins deployed by the creators of superheroes hinted that such transformations were not too far away for humanity itself.
As befits his role as grand pyjama person of external trade, Peter Mandelson has paid great attention to his image and position. There are a whole series of photographs of Peter meeting other responsible dignitaries as he promotes the European interest throughout the world. The jolly capers with the Chinese Minister of Commerce, Bo Xilai, are especially heartwarming.
Peter makes great play of his distinguished career at Westminster, detailing the achievements of his tenure at Trade and Industry and Northern Ireland. A mere snippet suffices…
In 1999 Peter Mandelson was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Between 1999 and 2001 he negotiated the creation of Northern Ireland’s power sharing government and the IRA’s announcement that they planned to put their arms beyond use. He also introduced the radical overhaul of the police service in Northern Ireland.
A mere bagatelle of an omission and I am sure that it is unintentionally overlooked. But didn’t he resign a couple of times?
John Hutton, Work and Pensions Minister, runs a department that has not improved either. Watching Andrew Marr’s impartial televisual feast this morning, Hutton sat down following Fiona Millar’s defence of comprehensive schools and Chris Huhne transferring his skillset from journalism to tax increases. A green paper on welfare will be published this week as a preparation for a new bill on the benefits system. Finding a gap between the latest revolution on criminal justice and educational appeasement, Hutton proposes radical measurements. Doctors will have to monitor and report on how many sicknotes they issue.
Doctors could be offered bonuses for cutting the numbers of long-term sick notes they issue as part of a radical plan to slash incapacity benefit claims,.
Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton said that the proposal was under consideration as part of the Government’s package of welfare reforms.
“It has been mooted and I think, again, this is something we would like to talk to the GPs about,” he told the BBC1 Sunday AM programme.
No doubt league tables and auditing will follow; a harsh judgement but the micromanagement of benefit and dependency that is proposed will not work. Yet again, the response of the government to a perceived problem is measurement and management, in a centralised reporting structure. The policy is reported to have some teeth:
Ministers want to drastically cut the 2.7 million people claiming incapacity benefit (IB) at an annual cost of £12.5 billion, by getting those who are able to do some form of work back into jobs.
It is expected that the green paper will include proposals to cut IB payments by up to £10.93 a week for claimants who refuse to attend a job interview, rising to £21.86 for a second refusal.
The Government is also planning to install employment advisers in GPs surgeries – with claimants being assessed to see what work they are capable of doing before they can qualify for IB.
Even the name of the benefit is to change in order to underline the new approach.
“Incapacity benefit implies that you are incapable of doing anything, it is completely hopeless. I think we shouldn’t take that view,” Mr Hutton said.
Such teeth may be drawn in the face of Labour rebels, since many backbenchers will oppose taking money from those identified as incapacitated by the benefits system. Lo and behold! what remains: some spin as ‘incapacity benefit’ is rebranded, perhaps as ‘Brown’s munificence’ or ‘for the trouble you took to vote Labour’; and lots of shiny new part-time public sector positions to reduce the headline figures.
The real solution is more straightforward: privatise provision with incentives to reduce the figures and get those drawing benefits back to work. If you are filmed playing squash on a ‘bad back’, there may be some bad news: London Transport probably will not employ you but you can still join the RMT.
The drive to revive the European Union’s Constitution, after the period of reflection, is proving rather fruitless. Since full ratification will not be forthcoming, the only outcome currently in prospect is a fudged showdown. A combination of vindaloo and Armitage Shanks. Either the Nos will be finessed with opt-outs so that the structural changes will be implemented without too much distress, or the EU will fracture with a move by an avant-garde towards a more deeply integrated European state, a la Chirac.
To avoid their nightmare of fractured EU, the Euro-MPs, Andrew Duff and Johannes Voggenhuber are preparing to fill the breach, parliamentarians riding to the rescue of the forlorn constitution. The two pour scorn on the European Council, as a tool divided and unable to provide leadership. Please note that whilst their quotes may verge on satire, they are authentic and provide a sad testament to the delusional meta-context of Brussels.
“From Europe’s leaders we have had a display of a wide range of simplistic solutions to the crisis,” Duff said on Friday.
“From President Chirac we have had a proposal for a piecemeal approach to the constitution and from Nicolas Sarkozy we have had a proposal for a restructured version.”
From [the Dutch and UK foreign ministers] Bernard Bot and Jack Straw we have confirmation that the present treaty is finished; from Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel we have him disagreeing with all of these people and then we have the president of Finland disagreeing with Schuessel.”
“All their proposals are constitutionally improper or politically quite unrealistic. Some of them are both.”
This institutional paralysis amongst the Member States provides an opportunity. The European Parliament can provide leadership and attain its place in the sun:
Both MEPs want parliament to show a clear way forward on reviving the constitution debate in Strasbourg next Wednesday and Thursday.
“We have to decide as a parliament if we are to fill the political space or to be satisfied with being supine parrots of fashion; commentators of the paralysed and confused European council,” said Duff.
Voggenhuber argued that there didn’t appear to be any serious EU leadership on the constitution.
“The crisis seems to be getting worse,” he said adding, “The question now is who is going to be able to lead us out of this crisis.”
“Someone has to take responsibility, someone has to take initiatives. If it’s not the parliament, then who is going to take the lead and stand up for the constitutional process?”
It is kind of Duff and Voggenhuber to selflessly burden themselves with this responsibility. But why not leave it to the French and Dutch people? They stood up to the constitutional process, didn’t they?
Blair’s speech echoed Hayek’s warnings that managerialism bypasses the checks and balances designed to prevent the erosion of liberty and miscarriages of justice. Like any good communitarian, the Prime Minister defined liberty as the balance between freedom and security, a political equation that is often on the lips of our tyrannous leaders. The fragile institutions of criminal justice and the common law were dismissed with disdain:
The theory is basically treating Britain as if it were in the 19th or early 20th centuries. The practice however takes place in a post-war, modern, culturally and socially diverse, globalised society and economy at the beginning of the 21st century. The old civic and family bonds have been loosened. The scale, organisation, nature of modern crime makes the traditional processes simply too cumbersome, too remote from reality to be effective…
Yes, in theory, that is what is supposed to happen through the traditional court processes. In practice it doesn’t. We are fighting 21st crime with 19th century methods.
Blair criticises the traditional court system for protecting the accused and takes great pride in “reversing the burden of proof”. To deal with the communally defined ‘anti-social behaviour’, the tool of social engineering is summary justice with a right of appeal, presumably to the same inefficient, cumbersome courts that, according to our Prime Minister, do not work in the first place.
Blair and New Labour take pride in smashing the checks and balances which protect civil liberties in this country. If you have misunderstood the man and still believe that he is located in the liberal tradition as some of the comrades do, think again. His first instinct is order, social and authoritarian, covenanted by the community and upheld through the state, in a mantra of rights and responsibilities, derived from Hobbes and cemented by Blair’s favourite socialist, R H Tawney.
Respect is a way of describing the very possibility of life in a community. It is about the consideration that others are due. It is about the duty I have to respect the rights that you hold dear. And vice-versa. It is about our reciprocal belonging to a society, the covenant that we have with one another.
More grandly, it is the answer to the most fundamental question of all in politics which is: how do we live together? From the theorists of the Roman state to its fullest expression in Hobbes’s Leviathan, the central question of political theory was just this: how do we ensure order? And what are the respective roles of individuals, communities and the state?
Legal stricture will never be enough. Respect cannot, in the end, be conjured through legislation. Government can provide resources and powers. It can do its best to ensure that wrong-doing is detected, that its powers against offenders are suitable, that its systems are expeditious and its enforcement strong. And the British system, like others, in the modern world, has not been good enough against these standards.
Despite the loathsome outcome of this campaign and the manifold injustices that will result, one can pity Blair as an agent who follows the path laid out before him. The transition from a high-trust society to a low-trust society is a consequence of the welfare state and the expansion of moral dependency on the part of many individuals. The state lacks the tools to remedy and offset the pernicious consequences of its systems. It returns to the mindset that has served it so well: controls, shortcuts and arbitrary regulations designed to solve the defined problems. If existing systems like the courts are outside the executive control, they are bypassed for more malleable solutions.
Blair treads the path that has been written for him.
On the anniversary of last year’s tsunami, is it time to revisit the damage that this natural disaster may have caused in Myanmar? The secretive and totalitarian government is not known for providing welfare to its citizens. The official death toll was finalised at 86, although sources from within the country placed the number of deaths in the hundreds.
The official death toll was established by the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) in co-operation with the Myanmar Red Cross. The Myanmar Red Cross (pdf file) works closely with the Myanmar state and 23 members of the 37 member governing council are appointed by the government or act as representatives of its ministries. The IFRC, the Myanmar Red Cross, the United Nations Development Programme, UNICEF and World Vision were already working within the country and inspected the affected islands in January 2005. Their conclusions were in line with the government’s assessment:
The group concluded that Myanmar has been largely spared from the destructive forces of the earthquake and subsequent Tsunami, and that the initial emergency needs have been met by the Government and by the aid community. The group’s assessment of the scale of impact is in line with the Government’s own findings. The group confirms a death toll of 60-80, and estimates the longer-term affected population at 10-15,000, of whom 5-7,000 are directly affected……
Over the course of the last 10 days a series of assessment and verification missions were undertaken by one or more of the partners already working in Myanmar – to the Rakhine Coast, the Ayeyarwady Delta and the southern coast including the most populated islands of the Myeik archipelago and the islands off Kawthaung around Lampi Island.
Moreover, Kerry Howley, assistant editor at Reason, questioned these statistics on January 7th 2005. All of the organisations that carried out the assessments were unlikely to disagree with the government’s figures since they wished to continue their own work.
I spent last year working with a weekly newspaper in Myanmar, where I attempted to cover some of the worst floods to hit the country in 30 years. Getting people to talk about the flooding, which left thousands homeless last August, was tantamount to asking them to denounce the dictatorship. Government officials hung up when my translator asked for specifics (except for one who helpfully explained, “it’s not our culture to talk to the public.”) The government’s Department of Meteorology and Hydrology would not reveal the water levels or would simply lie. The local Red Cross representatives claimed they couldn’t tell me about the floods because the branch office in that area was, in fact, flooded. Major International NGOs like WorldVision were afraid their operations would be halted if they so much as revealed how many blankets they were distributing. After much hand-wringing, WorldVision representatives gave me the story, at which point a government censor perused the piece and expunged all reference to death and destruction.
One Year on: when will we know how many died in Myanmar? A United Nations report that ‘agrees’ with the Myanmar government’s own figures should be treated with grave suspicion. The final damage and death toll remains hostage to the murderers of Yangon.
The Christmas season often brings forth stories that act as an ‘Indian summer’ for the silly season, reminding us of warm August evenings, listening to the closing overs of a test (rain permitting), and a time when you can sit outside a pub drinking Ordinary in any London green. Summer nostalgia aside, this year’s theme revolves around name changes.
In Manhattan, Jorge Luis Espinal sent a reporter to new heights of expression with his legal petition for the Second Coming:
A Manhattan man’s holiday spirits soared to celestial heights today when a judge gave him permission to change his name to Jesus Christ.
Jose Luis Espinal, 42, said he was “happy” and “grateful” that the judge approved the change, effective immediately.
Espinal said he was moved to seek the name change about a year ago when it dawned on him: “I am the person that is that name.”
The article provides some further information on the legal framework governing legal name changes. You can be a name but not a number in South Dakota. You can be Jesus Christ so long as your intention is not to defraud others by your actions or avoid an obligation. Jose has more chance of changing his name than a convicted conman, or possibly, a politician such as Tony Blair, if the latter wished to change his name to that of the Christian Messiah.
The judge said she held a hearing in which Espinal, who also uses the last name Tejeda, testified. She said he was aware of the “common law right to assume another name without legal proceedings so long as the change is not made to deceive or perpetrate a fraud or to avoid an obligation” but wanted to go the formal route anyway.
The judge said Espinal’s “reasons were primarily those applicable to his own private religious beliefs and he stated no desire to use his proposed name to secure publicity, to proselytise, to fund-raise or advise others that he had been cloaked by the courts or government with a religious authority”.
Jose’s example has been followed by that closet nominalist Prince Charles who is reported to be seeking coronation as King George VII. Changing the name of the Prince or Princess on accession to the throne is quite common and the Royal Family supposedly views the name Charles as jinxed, due to associations with decapitating Puritans and rebellious Jacobite pretenders.
Patrick Cracroft-Brennan, a genealogist from Cracroft’s Peerage, said: “There has been a tradition over the last century for the regnal title to be different to the christian name. The change would make sense.
“Monarchs called Charles have not had much luck. One was beheaded, one was in exile, and one was a pretender to the throne.
While the Prince of Wales is known throughout the world as Charles, there is enormous goodwill to the name George. George VI was an outstanding and popular king who took over in the aftermath of the abdication crisis and rallied his people during World War II, Mr Cracroft-Brennan said.
“King George and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother were wonderful. I think George VII and Queen Camilla sound wonderful, too.”
A swift name-change to airbrush the excesses and eccentricities of unfortunate heirs seems all too common with the Hanoverians. If our heir to the throne will adopt a name off Rainbow, surely Zippy or the more accurate Bungle would prove just as gracious and popular.
That was the question sung by Dr. Alban, the one hit wunderkind, who, if my poor memory serves me, washed up on the shores of Sweden in the mid-1990s. However, a more interesting answer to this conundrum has been posed by Dr. Paul Davies, an Australian astrobiologist. Davies argues that the primary quality of life is the ability to replicate information, and that this process can be viewed as a quantum phenomenon.
Viewed this way, the problem of life’s origin is switched from hardware to software. The game of life is about replicating information. Throw in variation and selection, and the great Darwinian experiment can begin. The bits of information have to be physically embodied in matter somehow, but the actual stuff of life is of secondary importance. There is no reason to suppose the original information was attached to anything like the highly customised and evolved molecules found in today’s living cells.
Therefore, the origins of life are no longer reserved for chemical structures or the complexities of single-celled organisms. Life is defined as a process for the replication of information and is not limited to one particular source.
All it takes to get life started is a quantum replicator – a process that clones bits of information attached to quantum systems by allowing them to interact with other quantum systems in a specific way. The actual system could be anything at all – the spin of an electron, a meta-stable atomic state, or a molecule that can flip between two conformations. The uncertainty inherent in quantum mechanics provides an in-built mechanism for generating variations.
The leading question from this speculation is why did replication shift towards larger and more complex structures. We are a sturdier and more stable foundation for data storage! No wonder many think that our mind children, with better memory capacity, will replace us.
If you are free tomorrow evening and wish to sing carols in aid of Iraqi children and enjoy a spontaneous demonstration of faith, hope, joy and/or religious tolerance in defiance of Section 132 of the Serious and Organised Crimes and Police Act 2005, please check out Bloggerheads.
Perhaps this category should be referred to as prehistorical views. Usually, when we hear that palaeontologists and archaeologists have extended the prehistory of the human species, we think of the Leakeys, Africa, Lucy and the Olduvai Gorge.
For once, such an announcement comes from closer to home. The Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project has discovered a site near Lowestoft dating human habitation in Britain to seven hundred thousand years ago. This date is based upon the vole teeth discovered on the site, compared with later discoveries at Boxgrove and Westbury sub Mendip in Somerset.
The dates involved are much too early for carbon dating – effective only to about 40,OOOBC – but scientists have been able to calculate good approximate ages from the known ages of animal fossils found at the sites.
In particular, the research centres on teeth belonging to a genus of prehistoric watervole, known as mimomys. About 700,000 years ago these voles had rooted molars, similar to those of human beings, which grow once then get worn down through adult life. But by 500,000 years ago, the animals had evolved rootless molars that continue to grow – an advantage to creatures that eat tough vegetation.
The voles found at Boxgrove are from the later era, but the East Anglian ones have primitive molars, dating the site definitively to at least 700,000 years ago. Those at Westbury are of an intermediate form. “The dating still involves some guesswork, but the best estimate is about 600,000 years ago,” Professor Stringer said. Simon Parfitt, a fossil mammal specialist at the museum and at University College, London, who analysed the vole fossils, said; “We can put everything in a relative order, and Westbury could be 100,000 years earlier than Boxgrove. The Best Anglian finds go as far back as 700,000 years.”
Early Man’s reach extended further and earlier than we have anticipated. Who knows what else prehistory will throw at us.
It is rare for the Prime Minister to provide an insight into his intellectual worldview. Writing in the Observer today, Blair details his views on civil liberties and his differences with the liberal tradition.
These [summary] powers have a strong philosophical justification, from within the Labour tradition. Social democratic thought was always the application of morality to political philosophy. One of the basic insights of the left, one of its distinguishing features, is to caution against too excessive an individualism. People must live together and one of the basic tasks of government is to facilitate this living together, to ensure that the many can live without fear of the few.
That was why it was important that rights were coupled once again with responsibilities. As Tawney once put it: ‘what we have been witnessing … is the breakdown of society on the basis of rights divorced from obligations’.
Blair argues that the tradition of social democracy applies “morality to political philosophy”, with the unspoken implication that other traditions are unable to do so. This is accompanied by an attack on individualism with a phrase of much potential: that government ensures “the many can live without the fear of the few”.
Recent history has appeared to demonstrate that it is the few who should live in fear of the many. It is not surprising that the Left views the majority as a moral virtue.
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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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