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]
|
Go here for video of Boris Johnson‘s amazing football tackle (actually more like an American football block), in that bizarre pro-celeb England Germany match about a month ago. Apologies if this has already been alluded to here, but a search through the archives suggests not. “Finest hour” is, however, an odd way to describe it. More like finest five seconds.
Talking of great sporting moments, ideal for the delectation of internetters, can anyone direct me to any video of Kevin Pietersen‘s equally amazing (and equally subversive of established order and decency) reverse sweep of Muttiah Muralitharan, last Friday? There are plenty of photos of this extraordinary stroke, but you need video to get the full flavour of what Pietersen did.
Immediately after this, Pietersen got out. But nobody cared, because that shot was one of those “worth the price of admission alone” moments. Not that I was there, or paid this price. I just heard about it on the radio, and then saw it on the TV highlights, which I sadly do not yet have the ability to process and pass on.
More ruminations from me about the wondrous enrichment of cricket fan memories offered by the internet here.
The First Test between Bangladesh and Australia is going right down to the wire, and the final day’s play tomorrow will see a very tight finish. There is a good chance that Bangladesh might pull off one of the biggest upsets in Test cricket history. Australia need 95 runs to win, with only two established batsmen left, and six wickets in hand.
In truth, Australia are fortunate to even be in the game at all, because they were comprehensively outplayed in the first two days of this Test match. Needless to say, this state of affairs has caused plenty of amusement for English cricket fans and other wicked folk.
But regardless of the result, this match has been, to use a cliche, good for the game. It comes as the editor of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack has released his latest offering in which he takes a small minded view of the game and denounces the ‘globalisation’ of cricket. The way in which Bangladesh were rushed into playing Test cricket was misguided and done for the wrong reasons, but the game is slowly but surely taking a foothold in the country, in terms of playing success.
That is good for cricket. It is even more good for Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world. Bangladesh is famous for being poor, having lots of disasters, and not much else. When the Champions Trophy one-day International cricket tournament was held in Dacca in 1998, one observer said to a shocked editor of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack that the event was the most positive event in the country’s history since Independence.
With the football World Cup two months away, there may well be quite a bit of tut-tutting in the media about how sport and nationalism are a dreadful combination. And there is something to that. However, I think that sport and national pride, which is something else entirely, is a positive thing. No matter what actually happens tomorrow, the future of Bangladesh cricket looks bright, and I think that is a wonderful thing.
For the last ten days or so, and for about another week, I have been and will continue to be semi-unplugged. Unplugged because my pay-by-the-month internet connection was disconnected a while ago, by some insonsiderate person pushing the wrong button at my internet service provider, but only semi-unplugged, because I have at least been able, thank goodness, to revert to the previous pay-by-the-minute arrengement which preceded my current although currently interrupted arrangement.
I am, therefore, able to link to particular places on the internet that I already know how to get to quickly, such as to this blog posting which I did for the Adam Smith Institute, in which I explain the effect of my present internet miseries, but I am not, as I explained at greater length in that posting, comfortable about just going a-wandering. I can switch on, go somewhere, download it, switch off, and read it. But, I deeply fear switching on, going somewhere, reading it, going somewhere else, reading that, looking something else up, deciding to write something, looking up other stuff, deciding to write something else and making a start with that, . . . you get the picture. It might not cost all that much, especially at the weekend, but in sad old Britain where local phone calls still cost, it could cost me a whole lot too much for comfort. If I did the sums, I might well decide that my state of only semi-linked-ness is a false economy, and that I should just plug myself in regardless and do whatever I feel like doing. But I do not want to have to be worrying.
So, this has been what Americans call a “learning experience”, or what we know on this side of the pond as a considerable nuisance or words to that effect.
However, the particular combination of circumstances – not being permanently connected, but still being able to connect temporarily – has provided me with something you seldom experience in life, namely the contrast between two important stages in my life, with the full knowledge of what both states were like. It really has been a learning experience. → Continue reading: Semi-unplugged
Like my co-Samizdatista Jonathan Pearce, and like Mark Holland of Blognor Regis, I have also been watching the Winter Olympics. In truth I find the winter Olympics to rather more fun than the summer Olympics, partly because it is genuinely a more lighthearted event with more of a party atmosphere than the summer games, and partly because power in the world is rather turned upside down. (Here is a competitor from Norway – he must be good. Here is someone from the United States of America – he will be mediocre). Mostly though, I think it is the simple insanity of many of the events that I find most enjoyable. Winter sports lead to extremes of human achievement that (a) one is amazed that they are possible, but not so much as (b) one wonders why anyone would actually do this, and how the sport was invented in the first place, for surely the first twelve people to try it must have ended up killing themselves.
Mark wonders just how Britain has a luge team, or as he puts it…
Anyway, I get to wondering how on earth a chap from Pinner decides to take up the sport. I mean, say for instance I’d been so inspired by the top luging at the Calgary Olympics that I’d immediately thought, “That’s the event for me!” where am I supposed to go from there? If I’d have gone to my games teacher, Mr “Manly” Stanley, and said, “you know how this football and rugby doesn’t interest me at all, well instead I fancy taking up sliding down an icy tube at 130 km/h whilst lying on a glorified tea tray”. What’s he supposed to do? Phone up the local British Luge Federation affiliated club? That’s not going to happen is it.
Of course, in Australia, the answer as to how and why people take these things up, is that there is an official taxpayer funded organisation that encourages them to do it. At the winter olympics, Australia tends to specialise in something called the “Womens aerials”. For those who have not watched aerials (one of the events in a wider school of insanity called “freestyle skiing”), it involves skiing down a slope, up a ramp, doing three backwards somersaults and a double twist, and then landing on the snow on your head and breaking your neck.
Actually you are not supposed to land on your head and break your neck. You are supposed to land upright on skis and continue down the mountain. Landing on your head and breaking your neck does appear to happen relatively frequently, however. Again, the question of why anyone would do this does come to mind, and the question of why the Australian taxpayer pays for it comes to mind even more. → Continue reading: This is insane
Thanks to modern safety improvements, motor racing is not quite as dangerous as it used to be – although it probably still takes nerves of steel to hurtle around a circuit in a modern F1 car – but if there is a sport that for me demonstrates sporting bravery at its most extreme, it has to be the downhill skiing and bob-sleigh events I am currently watching at the Winter Olympics near Turin.
Being only a moderately competent skier myself, I bow in awe when I see the pros hurtle down icy slopes at speeds touching 100 mph. Wow.
One of my very favourite blogger quotes of 2005 was this, just after the July 7th London bombings:
A friend of mine visits a strip pub, once a week, down by the Gray’s Inn Road. Despite the bombs, he went along this afternoon, as usual, and was the only guy with four strippers. But, he told me, he had to go – ‘otherwise the terrorists would have won’.
In that spirit, I will tell you, not about how I feel about Those Cartoons – no need for any link, see just about everything else here at the moment – but about the Six Nations. Rugby. American Football without the poofy protective clothing. Or: “All those men’s bottoms”, as my now very elderly but still just about functioning mother put it to me yesterday, explaining why she prefers regular football to rugby football. → Continue reading: The first weekend of the Six Nations and the first upset
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…
The question has recently arisen as to whether it is ever right for a journalist to hoax a person into divulging certain facts or opinions that said person might not otherwise divulge. This week, the English Football Association told England soccer coach Sven Goran Eriksson that his contract would end immediately after the World Cup tournament in July, following comments Eriksson made to a News of the World journalist posing as someone else, the “fake Sheikh”.
Now, in the increasingly trivial world of British public life, all this might be of interest only to those who follow team sports. I know that a good many readers of this site probably do not give a damn about sporting contests but who might be troubled about the News of the World’s antics in this case. That newspaper conned a man into giving an interview. It deliberately misled Eriksson, who divulged some not-terribly-interesting facts about members of the England team and about his ambitions in the future. (Try to suppress your yawns, Ed).
Even so, some might argue that if the News of the World was trying to nail a terrorist suspect, say, that such subterfuge might be okay. Well, maybe. But what this latest episode has done is to further reduce the already-low reputation of the press, sow further paranoia about the media’s activities and hence give further ammunition to those in power who want to shackle the media. And all for a pathetic story about a venal Swede with an eye for the main chance and the ladies. How terribly British.
This writer seems to agree that there has not been nearly enough anger about what the NotW did. I hope that newspaper is made to suffer for its actions, although I suspect nothing much will be done. Had that paper been a business conning trade secrets from a rival, criminal charges might now be on the cards.
The recent death of the footballer George Best has seen an outpouring of sentimental remembrance about the skill and talent of one of Britain’s greatest ever footballers. It has also seen a sober reflection of the darker side of Best’s life. As Sue Mott pointed out:
As a sportsman, he was ruinously worshipped as a god. As society’s golden boy, gloriously handsome, funny and highly intelligent, he enjoyed all life’s little luxuries in conveyor-belt quantities. He was a Hollywood film star from Belfast and while we may now lament the wine, women and song, if you had been there at the time, could you have been the one to say: ‘Shall we put the cork back in the champagne, George, I think we’ve had enough?”
It is a common theme of society that those who are blessed with extraordinary talents at one discipline are allowed special leeway in manners, morals and behaviour that are not bestowed upon lesser mortals. Had Best not been such a great footballer he would undoubtedly have been shunned by society as a drunk and a lecher. But because he was once a truly great footballer, he was treated as something different. People tolerated his drunkenness and women gave themselves to him sexually because he was genuinely seen as being cut from a higher cloth then other men. This may seem unfair, and in a way it is, but it was also the root of his downfall.
George Best, and footballers in general, though, are hardly the only sort of celebrity to take advantage of the special rules of society that are afforded to those touched by genius. And it has been going on for a long time.
Nearly 200 years ago, the poet Lord Byron made use of his fame as a poet to indulge himself in all manner of peccadillos, most of them sexual. That was perhaps not so uncommon for a Peer of the Realm back then, but it was mirrored by the behaviour of Percy Bysshe Shelley. A more dramatic example is in the personal life of Ludwig van Beethoven. Poor health, deafness, depression, loneliness and financial troubles made him a very difficult man to deal with, but he was indulged by many people precisely because he was obviously the greatest musical talent of his day.
Poets and classical composers do not have the influence on society in this day and age as they used to. The place of Byron and Beethoven has been taken by sports stars and actors and television celebrities. Some of these people, like Shane Warne are as gifted in his field as Byron was as a poet; and Warne has been noted for womanising on a considerable scale as well. Some are, in sober fact, non-entities, but we live in a vacuous time where everyone gets their ‘fifteen minutes of fame’.
Many not so talented people have also exploited their celebrity to get away with actions that would not be tolerated in others; Hollywood is of course notorious for this sort of thing, where actors and actresses have their notions of their own worth and talent over-inflated by agents, publicists, and the media. A similar fate has befallen many popular musicians over the last forty years. This sort of bad behaviour takes many forms, not just in terms of sexual self-indulgence, but substance abuse, or simply by being a difficult and unpleasant person to be around. The life and times of John Lennon reflect this- he confused his musical talent with wisdom, and spent his latter years pontificating about a society of which his understanding of seems have been very limited indeed. However, because he was such a fine musical talent, no one was willing to stand up to Lennon and tell him that he was talking nonsense.
Why? Why do we allow this select group of people, not all of whom are that talented, to get away with this sort of thing. Why can’t we “put the cork back in the champagne” as it were? There seems to be something innate to many people who must feel that they can reflect the glory of the star’s achievements by indulging them in their foibles. This can not be healthy for us any more then it is healthy for the stars. Just look at George Best now.
Those smart fellows at the Marginal Revolution economics blog like to track all manner of strange and innovative ways in which Man engages in the age-old routine of truck and barter. Sport has spawned all manner of new business enterprises in recent years and now it is possible for investors to build assets by investing in the future market value of footballers.
Makes sense, really. These days football players, even quite mediocre ones – never mind great talents like Pele or George Best (RIP) – are paid enormous amounts of money in their careers. Rather like the bloodstock trade, I think. The idea of getting a financial stake in a player is also likely to bring investor pressure on players to be monitored off the field as well as on it (do we really want a potentially lucrative asset to be carousing down the pub?)
Personally, I am sticking to equities, bonds, cash and a bit of brick and mortar.
How quickly this (click on this picture to make the triumph even bigger!) . . .
. . . has turned into this:
After England sneaked the Ashes 2-1, they have now been soundly beaten 2-0 by Pakistan. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. If Warne don’t get you then Shoaib Akhtar and Danish Kaneria must. I wonder what Al Qaeda will make of that.
All very catastrophic. Until you turn your mind to a real catastrophe. To put all of the above in perspective, spare a thought for cricket in Zimbabwe, a grain of sand through which to see the chaos of the world out there. → Continue reading: Cricket and not cricket
It has been a sad few days in British sport, which has lost arguably the most talented football player these islands have produced in George Best. He died, as many people will know, a few years after having a liver transplant necessitated by a long history of alcohol abuse. For those unfamiliar with his story, he was born in Belfast and played at Manchester United in one of its most successful periods in the mid- to late 60s but left top-class football aged only 27.
I am glad that in most of the coverage about him, the focus has been on the football rather than the messy personal life. And what a fantastic player he was! If even Brazilian maestro Pele called him the greatest player in the world, then who are we to demur? I was born in the year – 1966 – that Best gave what aficionados and team-mates reckon was Best’s finest display, demolishing Portugese side Benfica with two goals, the second involving a mazy run past several defenders before sticking the ball into the back of the net.
Best was an alcoholic, which some people regard as a disease that one is born with rather than a condition over which people, possessed of free will, have control. Interestingly, I get the impression, by reading some of Best’s own remarks, that he was a man in control of his own destiny and did not, as far as I am aware, choose to play the victim card. There is no doubt, though, that some people have found it hard to conquer the bottle, although others, such as Tottenham soccer ace Jimmy Greaves, managed to give up on booze and preserve their health and live into a ripe old age.
Anyway, I expect DVDs of Best’s football brilliance to be hot sellers this Christmas. May he rest in peace.
|
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.
|
