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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Until recently, there was a shop named popXpress in Piccadilly near the Ritz hotel in London. This was a little store devoted entirely to selling Apple iPods and iPod accessories. When it was opened, people who analyse this sort of thing found it an interesting experiment, but were not terribly optimistic about its success, at least partly because it was situated only a short walk from the London flagship Apple Store in Regent Street. Higher hopes were held for the other popXpress store near Liverpool Street in the City of London, which was close to many cashed up City workers and far from an Apple Store. Thus it was not a terribly great surprise when parent company Computer Warehouse announced in March that the Piccadilly store was to close (the store in Liverpool Street remains open and quite possibly profitable). Upon learning this, most of us would have said “Oh”, and then gone back to sleep. However, the explanation, when it came, was stunning.
Next to the popXpress store in Piccadilly was and is a sushi bar, a branch of a chain named Itsu. This is what is known as a “fast casual” restaurant: a bit more expensive and with food a bit tastier than McDonald’s, but designed for people in a hurry or on their lunch breaks who want a quick meal and do not want to spend too much money. Itsu belongs to Pret a Manger, probably the king of London fast casual dining (and, incidentally, 30% owned by McDonald’s) . There are a couple of Itsu outlets near where I work in Canary Wharf, and from time to time I eat lunch in those outlets myself. The food is not bad, but it is not exactly worth writing home to Mum about either. I have never eaten at the branch in Piccadilly, and I suspect that few people who know the area do, because the (possibly Japanese government subsidised) Japan Centre at Piccadilly Circus is just down the road, and this manages to both be inexpensive and to serve some of the best Japanese food in London.
However, the Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly gained notoriety last November as the place where Alexander Litvinenko had lunch with his Italian acquaintance Mario Scaramella, where it was for a time believed he was poisoned and where traces of Polonium 210 were later discovered, leading to many radioactive sushi jokes.
As I mentioned, a couple of months after this, the popXpress store next door announced it was closing. Few would have thought there was a connection, but when asked, management explained that that had received “an offer they couldn’t refuse” from Itsu, who wanted to expand their store. Apparently, business had been absolutely booming since the Polonium 210 incident, and they wanted to expand the restaurant (no, I will not speculate as to why this offer could not be refused, and which if any isotopes were involved). Apparently Itsu also brought forward plans to open their first store in New York, as the publicity was apparently a godsend. It would seem that all publicity is good publicity, even when you are a change of restaurants and the publicity was that your food might be radioactive.
Actually, that may not be entirely true. Or at least it can be further tested. For come to think of it, another chain restaurant in London was in the news recently. At the Strand branch of pizza chain Zizzi, a man recently entered the restaurant at dinner time, obtained a knife from the kitchen, and used it to sever his own penis in front of diners.
Upon walking past that particular restaurant a couple of days later, I will confess that I was struck by a strong urge to walk in the opposite direction. Really, though, I should go in and ask management what the publicity has done for business. For I may want to take an interest in the business next door.
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
– Karl Marx
It must be plain to the historicist that Tinky Winky is such a personage. First, as supporting character in the American tragedy of Jerry Fallwell; now as a causus belli in the farcical end of Polish ultra-Catholicism. The trouble is, Marx – or at least that Marx) had it wrong, as usual. It is always farce and tragedy at the same time.
This is not me. Save as a result of incompetent shaving, or depressed non-shaving, I have never had a beard. And not more than a couple of millimetres long, in any case. My verse output is formal exercises and satyrical squibs. One directory thinks there are eight Guy Herberts in Britain. More than one of those are, or were, me. I do not know whether any are him.
I met Stephen Pollard in the queue at Heathrow yesterday. This was not my first encounter with Spectator’s own as we had exchanged a few pleasantries at one of the Adam Smith Institute’s forums on blogging a long time ago. One would not expect face recognition from a brief conversation, but one wished to exchange pleasantries.
My brief and polite inquiry was transformed by the Spectator’s star blogger:
I have a good memory for faces and names and was certain I had never set eyes on him before. It turns out that he has read articles by me, and recognised me.
‘What are you doing here?’, he asked. Hmmm. Bag drop queue. Heathrow. It’s a tough one to work out.
Now the question, “What are you doing here” would usually be interpreted as a general inquiry on whether you are going on holiday, visiting relatives, or undertaking one the many activities that channel cattle into Heathrow for flights. Why would anyone take such a question literally?
On the same day that the news widely features the very boring (if believable and justified) complaint from British shopkeepers that fixed-penalty notices are not sufficient to deter common shoplifting, comes this illustration that stealing from shops need not be mundane, but that it does not pay to be different:
A lab technician who dressed as a female elf to steal lingerie at knifepoint was jailed for two years today.
Robert Boyd, 45, donned a blonde Harpo Marx wig, glasses and a beanie hat to hold up a female staff member at a lingerie store in Belfast.
He claimed to have been involved in a futuristic fantasy role-playing game at the time of the robbery in December 2005.
As some people involved in Samizdata know, I have promised not to write posts attacking the local election campaign of a certain political party – at least until the election is over.
As I have promised this I feel uncomfortable in writing anything that could be seen as an attack on any other political party. So in the following both the name of the candidate and the party that candidate represents will not be stated.
On Sunday I came upon a political leaflet. Along with the normal fluff about loving Association Football (candidates, of all parties, really do write stuff like that – some of them even list the pubs they go to) I read the following:
“I have been involved in campaigning for the … party since the age of 6, leafleting and canvassing…”
Now I hope that that “6” was a misprint for “16” – but, such are the times we live in, I can not be sure.
I was looking at the Telegraph and saw a very odd story titled Cameroon threatens to jail urine drinkers… my immediate reaction was “ok, now that is moderately revolting, but why the hell does David Cameron feel the need to pronounce on what is hopefully a fairly uncommon activity in the UK? Is there nothing this busybody does not want to regulate?”
And then I read it more closely…
What to wear or not to wear when taking a mathematics test.
Amazing what academics spend their time researching these days. Or perhaps not. An old girlfriend of mine said she thought maths, like chess, was very sexy. Er, yesss.
I usually make the point of only ever smoking a cigarette or cigar on No Smoking Day. It is the principle at stake, dear reader. For the remaining 364 days of the year, however, I avoid the weed. But for those who are less bothered about the state of their lungs or just love to smoke, here is a must-have gadget.
I think if Ian Fleming were alive today, he would make sure 007 had such a case for his Q-branch gadgets and Turkish ciggies (via the always-diverting Boing Boing website).
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
I am watching a F1 motor-racing guy drive a racing car with a map of the Earth on it. It is a Honda and apparently the idea is to break with the usual sponsorship of tobacco firms etc and instead “raise awareness about ecological issues”, according to the television commentator. So let me get this right: a F1 car that does more than 200mph and uses a fair amount of petrol – that evil greenhouse effect stuff – is attempting to “raise awareness of ecologicial issues”. Think of how much Co2 is pumped out by all these F1 racing teams from Ferrari, Benetton, McLaren, etc. Think of how much of the stuff is pumped out transporting the drivers, mechanics, press flacks and of course the crowds to places like Melbourne or Monaco. The idea that motorsport has anything to do with saving the planet from doom is preposterous. Has this most red-blooded of sports, once famed for dudes like Ascari, James Hunt or Fangio, become as pussified and guilt-ridden as everything else? F1 cars are supposed to be in bright colours, with emblems of cigarettes and naked women on them, like old WW2 American military aircraft. It is all part of the essential naughtiness involved in driving a car very fast round a track, which if you think about it, is one of the more pointless ways to spend an afternoon, and all the more wonderful for it.
You have to hand it to these guys in the Honda racing team. The Japanese are unfairly accused of not having much sense of humour, but this is one of the best jokes I have seen for a while. Keep it going guys.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The world is full of belligerent numbskulls; frequently, the more ignorant, the more belligerent.
It is a soppy, and dangerous, progressive cliché that lack of self-esteem among the indigent and the criminal is a cause of poor social integration. There’s actually no evidence that the indigent and the criminal do have low self-esteem. On the contrary in fact, they tend to have rather too much of it.
Yeats got that. Polly Toynbee gets it too. Charles Darwin wrote, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”
While this is distressing for the world’s more sentimental do-gooders, and seems to have had no impact at all on the growing self-esteem industry, it is an important observation, having great explanatory power, and not just for the history of idea. It is, I submit, at the core of such diverse social phenomena as gangstas, bling, Islamism, dangerous driving, the bullying petty official, the modern media health scare, the conspiracy theorist, and large chunks of the content of the web. Combined with the tendency for the assertive and persistent to get their own way, because others can’t bear endless futile arguments, it is much more than a marginal nastiness. Which is distressing even to the unsentimental.
What is more, there is a rational explanation. Dunning and Kruger, the Cornell psychologists who often get the credit for establishing that the least competent are most likely to overestimate their own competence – and hence (I paraphrase broadly) that idiots contribute most to the fundamental fuckedupness of the world – note that “the skills that engender competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain—one’s own or anyone else’s.” (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1999, Vol. 77, No. 6 – no link because the copy I read online was probably infringing.) They assert that the syndrome can be cured by education. But I suspect that’s just liberal optimism speaking. Those convinced of their own superiority are the least likely to accept tutoring. (My esteemed co-professional “Dr Hibbert” has it right, for all practical purposes, below.)
Which is all by way of introduction to one of the most farcical correspondences of my professional lives. The writer proclaimed he was going to expose it to the tabloids, so can hardly object to its reproduction here. Enjoy.
From: “kyriacos kyprou”
To: [many of the world’s better known literary agents]
Subject: Kyriacos Kyprou – Greatest Mind Ever
Date: Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:31:06 +0000
…below is the email I sent out to the recipients that this email also went out to.
…and there is nothing, at all, delusional with the claims I make, in that email, which implies those claims can well, be supported. And the points I make are totally valid points.
…following my email below are some of the replies I received, in this high democracy you all preach.
…two points – firstly the ruthless attack on my sanity and intelligence by an idiot calling himself julius.hibbert@hotmail.com (an pseudo email account, using a psychologist cartoon character from ‘The Simpsons’) are totally unfounded, but more notably, completely unprovoked.
…secondly they are replies that completely intrude my democratic rights – which implies are the claims I make exempt from the freedom of expression that democracy preaches? But more notably I do not take too well to the ruthless comments made about my intelligence and sanity. I am more than likely the greatest mind ever on this planet and I will make that claim if I choose to make it (especially when it is a claim that I can well support). And you can all stick your modesty. As if you all have something to teach about modesty. What you all refer to as the third world will tell you all about it. And if there is a third world then what does that make all of you – first, second or premier league? There is no third world – there is only the neglect billions endure.
…I also make the point that the house policy rules of the publishing world cannot also apply for a book like mine, because this is a book that needs to published. But the publishing world wants to play ‘we rule’ and ‘untouchable’ games with me.
…but also wants to throw a few humiliating tactics and insults my way – and it seems they are at total liberty to let themselves go, with any form of expression, it takes their fancy.
…and it seems I am supposed to accept that attitude, insults and humiliation.
…maybe I don’t want to accept it.
→ Continue reading: Doctor Bickle, I presume
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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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