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]
|
When I arrived home from work yesterday I discovered a package had arrived for me. I suspected that it was a Christmas present from my sister, and this was later confirmed. I opened it, and found this.
Yes, that’s right. It’s a clock that tells the time in binary, using flashing blue LEDs. To tell the truth, it has a nice “dawn of computing” feel about it, harkening back to the days when input devices were more primitive. Of course, they didn’t have blue LEDs back in the dawn of computing (or even in 1990 for that matter) but I will forgive that.
Alas, I can only conclude that my sister knows me too well.
(Actually, it only sort of tells the time in binary. Each vertical row of LEDs gives the binary for one decimal digit of the time. So the time as shown in the photograph is 21:26:25).
This sounds like a fairly explosive sort of party!
Yes, it had to happen: a man has named a police dog in a lawsuit.
Woof!
(Thanks to the marvellous Overlawyered blog for the story).
Home Secretary Charles Clarke has announced that there will be no public inquiry into the London bombings of July 7th; instead the Home Office will publish what was described on the BBC 10 o’clock news as a “narrative of events”.
Will this be formally known as the “official story”, I wonder?
Granted his early appearances with Take That were aimed squarely at the pink pound, but that is a historic video persona. Robbie Williams himself is virtually a by-word for, how should I put it… cocky, pop-star heterosexuality. So much so, it seems pretty darn odd that even gossipy, downmarket, national newspapers should choose to print flimsy stories attributing to him a history of casual gay sex. The sequel, however is odder.
British libel law being what it is, the already wealthy Mr Williams has just received a large financial settlement and an apology. Good for him! Silly newspapers who should know better made untrue statements, and he took full advantage of the law to get compensation.
But there is something weird going on, nonetheless. Leave aside the peculiar way defamation puts the burden of proof on the defence. Here we have an example of the inflexibility of the common law. Why in early 21st century Britain it prima facie defamatory to impute homosexuality to a man (or, for that matter, un-chastity of any kind to a woman)?
This same week the British state directly affirmed (or seized control over, depending on your point of view) same-sex partnerships for the first time. And it is not just official recognition. Openly gay individuals are accepted and successful public figures. The most popular BBC drama series last year was the revival of Dr Who, mainstream family programming with a recurring supporting character who is a polymorphously perverse time-travelling conman, now liberated into his own series. The most imitated comedy turn in the nation’s playgrounds is Little Britain‘s Daffydd*, soi-disant “only gay in the village”, the joke of whom is his determination to be oppressed despite all the evidence around him that plenty of neighbours are un-dramatic queens, and nobody gives a toss anyway.
Likewise, who would give a toss if Robbie Williams had had homosexual dalliances? It wouldn’t make him a less entertaining performer or his music less catchy. It would not make him a less engaging personality. Arguably more complexity is more interesting in a public figure. So it is hard to see how the libellous story, however wrong or personally hurtful, could either lower him in the estimation of his peers or significantly damage his commercial prospects, which is the theoretical justification for libel damages.
On the other hand, I can be disparaging about the content of his musical work, or his stage act, and if I am widely published, then I might do real injury to his sale prospects, as well as emotional hurt to the creative person and performer. That’s not actionable, though. I am not saying it should be, but the comparison illuminates how archaic is libel.
[* I’m grateful for a commentator’s correction.]
Switzerland is a bastion of efficiency and rationality surrounded by the boiling maelstrom of stupidity that is Europe… and yet even they are falling foul of idiotic political correctness and absurd defensive ‘sensitivity’.
Swiss Santa Clauses have been banned from sitting children on their laps because of the risk that they might be accused of paedophilia […] Large groups of St Nicholases parade through the streets that day before visiting children. They traditionally sit them on their laps before asking if they have been well-behaved. “We want to counteract any possible accusations of paedophilia involving our members,” the Society of St Nicholas said in a statement. “We regret having to do this, but the public has become very sensitive about child abuse.”
Hardly the end of the world but it is not a good sign that even the dependibly sensible Swiss have this crap to deal with.
“On sighting an elephant Selous would instantly remove his trousers as he found it easier to pursue them in his underpants.”
As one does.
The quote is from Tom Quinn, Shooting’s Strangest Days.
From a literal reading of this, one would think that the Citibank 24 hour banking centre is only open for six hours a day. However, I suppose the distinction between am and pm is subtle for people who are not used to the English language. In truth the Citibank 24 hour banking centre is open for a full 18 hours a day, which makes perfect sense.
(These photographs are of the Citibank branch just across the square from Brussels Central railway station in Belgium. They have read exactly this way for years, as I first discovered when trying to withdraw money at 1am in 2002).
Reading Perry’s story below reminded me of the word ‘canard’. In English, canard is a word often used to describe a hoax, or tall tale.
It comes from France, where the word also means duck. Now, it was a legend in my family that the reason this word came to mean a hoax was that there was a 19th century French farmer, who had twenty ducks. He killed one, and fed it to the other nineteen ducks, and then he killed another, and fed it to the surviving eighteen, and so on, until there was only one duck left, which had therefore eaten nineteen ducks. And that apparently, this tale was widely reported in the newspapers of the time, until it was revealed to be nonsense.
Hence, ‘canard’ entered the English language as a word meaning a hoax. Or so my grandfather told me.
Despite my best efforts, I have found no evidence of this story online. Perry’s jog of my memory causes me to ask the wide knowledge of the Samizdata readership this question- was my Grandfather telling me a ‘canard’ about the origin of the word?
The EU Referendum blog links to this fascinating article about the engineering history, so to speak, of New Orleans, referring in particular to this paragraph:
The lower Mississippi is in no way a natural river anymore. A law instituted in 1724 by a French colonial governor, whose name was Perrier, of all things, demanded that early homeowners in New Orleans raise the low natural levees upon which they all built. Three year later, Perrier declared the little city floodproof.
So there you have it. Do not blame Bush. Blame France.
Not really. The situation is a deal more complex than that. But it does seem to be true that once they decided on living lower than the Mississippi River, they found that the methods they chose to protect themselves from it only served to make it rise ever higher into the air, and themselves to sink lower and lower.
On Saturday evening I checked into a hotel in Odense in Denmark. The Danes are fairly relaxed, and I was not asked to produce my passport as I might be in some European countries. They did ask me for “something with my name on it”. I handed them my “Barclaycard Premiership Mastercard” (ie a credit card with English soccer logos on it) and my English driver’s licence. I did not show them my passport (it was in the car) and I did not mention my nationality.
However, the next day I got my receipt and it had “Michael John Jennings. Australia”. written on the top.
I am intrigued as to how they figured this out. It is true that my licence does have the endorsement “70AUS” amongst the fine print on the back, indicating that I did not ever have an English driving test, but was issued an English licence on the basis of having an Australian one already. However, I did not see the hotel clerk study the fine print on the back of my licence, and I would have been impressed had he known what that endorsement means.
Perhaps it was my accent? However, I have lived in England for nine of the last thirteen years, and English and Australians often cannot figure out my accent. (Often they can, too, but mistakes are often made). The Danes are excellent linguists, but I didn’t realise they were that good.
Or perhaps Australians just give off some vibe. Perhaps it is one that annoys British immigration officials, makes the French like us, and is instantly visible to Danish hotel clerks. Who knows?
|
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.
|
