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Bobby Fischer, chess genius and generally unpleasant wacko, has died in Iceland. Perhaps he will play Beelzebub for his soul? Update: noted by commenter Walter Boswell: “I just realised he died at the age of 64. The same number of squares on the chess board. Bobby, spooky moves right up until the end.” January 18th, 2008 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
January 3rd, 2008 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Hundreds hacked or burned to death in Kenya, in response to and election that may well have been rigged. Shootings and suicide bombing by Islamic radicals in many parts of the world. And news of record prison suicides and savage violence here in Britain. And, of course, the centralization and growth of government. Less wildly violent than the preceding, but hardly welcome and based on the same principle – the threat of violence. Yesterday Cyprus and Malta became part of the Euro Zone. Thus further centralizing power in the hands of the EU and the magic circle of politically connected banks and other business enterprises that depend on the credit money which, in the end, comes from the European Union Central Bank. In this way competition between government currencies, and the possibility, that some might expand the credit/supply less than others, is reduced. The smoking ban in France is also coming into force, although I hope the French resist. Although other Europeans seem in a passive mood – in “Belgium” the Flemish Liberal party leader is back as Prime Minister although he lost the General Election way back in June – but there is no resistance. And in Switzerland the Swiss People’;s Party got the highest vote of any party for many decades yet its leader is out of office and the Social Democrats, who got only 20% of the vote, remain in office – but there is not resistance. In both cases “Parliament had a vote” is the defence, and it is true it did. And, of course, it is yet another year of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Things have come to a strange pass when President George Walker Bush is what pro-freedom people have to rely on – the wild spender facing even wilder spenders, the regulator facing more fanatical regulators. In Britain also we have regulations being presented as freedom. Prime Minister Brown promises more regulations and calls them a “Constitution for the National Health Service” and there are yet more bans and regulations in other areas. One can only hope that 2008 does not carry on as it has started. January 2nd, 2008 | 48 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Bebe is now three, and has taken to the proper feline adult life of sitting in chairs, demanding to be fed at four in the morning, catching lizards, and occasionally waving her claws at people. December 28th, 2007 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
I remember having a discussion some years back about what was the oldest pub in the world. I still do not have the answer to that, but I recently came across the list of contenders in Britain. The oldest ones in Belfast are from the 1640 era, White’s Tavern and Kelly’s, the latter of which actually looks the part as the floor is enough below street level now that there are small ramps at the entryways. Are there older pub’s in Europe, perhaps in Rome? Some little wine establishment tucked away near the ruins of the forum? Or perhaps in China. where one could imagine some spice road inn from Biblical times. Could there perhaps be some ancient establishment in India with a sign saying: “Buddha Got Pissed Here?” December 26th, 2007 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Will Smith has expressed his view that people are essentially good, they just do bad things as a consequence of following the logical train of thought from faulty premises.
And this remark has sent the Jewish Defence League into a hissyfit of rage.
Now that is a very dubious interpretation of Smith’s remarks, to put it mildly. I am not sure I agree with Smith that all people are essentially good, although I do think most people are capable of good. I think that absent a biological defect, we develop towards goodness or evil or, more usually, somewhere in the middle, through the exercise of our free will in accord or in conflict with our genetic predispositions, but all people are capable of both good and evil. Some are more predisposed to good, others to evil (and a disproportionate number of evil people are drawn to politics as a career as it offers such rich possibilities for doing just that), but I do not think we are inexorably forced down either path… and thus find it hard to entirely disagree with Smith. However the theory that Will Smith is presenting is an entirely reasonable one to argue and using the example of a man not unjustly held to be the very epitome of evil seems a fair and relevant way to express his view of human nature. Without a doubt Smith is in excellent philosophical company on the issue of innate goodness and his position is a deeply Christian one. When Hitler looked in the mirror, I am sure he did not see an evil man gazing back at him. Of course he did what he thought was ‘right’ within his world view, his meta-context, which was framed by the axioms of a collectivist racist drawing on a long history of collectivist and racist thought. To Hitler ‘right’ was whatever was good for the ‘herrenvolk’ which he perceived as being in perpetual conflict with other racial groups. As a consequence his concept of ‘right’ was always going to be monstrous (i.e. the “twisted, backwards logic” of which Smith speaks). What Smith seems to be saying is that if someone had the chance to sit Hitler down and ‘unpick’ his ‘twisted, backwards logic’, then perhaps they might have been able to ‘reach’ his deeply buried innate goodness. Although I have serious doubts on that score, it is a far from unsupportable argument and in no way speaks to Hitler’s actual manifested goodness but rather the notion of an innate goodness being intrinsic in us all as a species. If you take that charitable view of humanity then of course Hitler (and Pol Pot, Stalin, Genghis Khan and Caligula) had an innate goodness buried somewhere in the deepest basement of their dark souls. That the JDL feels that is an intolerable position to take rather than just an incorrect one, makes me deduce they are probably not worth the effort of debating, particularly given their preposterous characterisation of Smith’s remarks. And although as I have said, I do not entirely agree with Smith’s theory of innate goodness, if I was him my response to the JDL would be something along the lines of “Screw you, buddy” whilst proffering the Mighty Forks in their direction. I do not know a great deal about the JDL but a brief trawl of the internet suggests to me that anyone not following certain ritual forms of abomination when discussing anything whatsoever relating to Hitler, is immediately branded as The Enemy Beyond The Pale. What an excellent way to make yourself look like a complete prat, not to mention wrapping yourself in the same psychological cloth as certain Islamofascist crazies who become unhinged at the sight of irreverent cartoons. December 25th, 2007 | 60 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is half two in the AM as I write this Christmas greeting, warm in my well worn Aran jumper and to a soundtrack of carols playing on a 1990’s left over computer to which I have delegated such things. It struck me some of you might be interested in Christmas elsewhere, so I have selected a small number of photos to try to give you some of the atmosphere of a Northern Ireland Christmas.  The centerpiece to celebrations is City Hall. It has recently been attacked by a giant alien space station. Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved  The grounds are turned into a Christmas village with shops selling Christmas goods and foods from all over Europe. Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved  Like any village in Ireland…. it has a pub! Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved  We also have the typical modern mega-mall. It was filled with Saturday afternoon Christmas shoppers as I went in search of an ATM that could take my Chase Visa… and which had not been emptied by voracious shoppers. I finally found one, almost hidden behind Santa’s grotto, where the queue was only about eight shoppers in length. Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved  Unlike this somewhat longer ATM queue. Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved  A few hours later I was ensconced at the bar in my local listening to friends play a merry jig or three. Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved  But of course the most important part of Christmas anywhere is the company of old friends to share it with. Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved  And here is my Belfast Christmas Card to all of our loyal readers. Have a good one and feel free to eat and drink too much and in general overindulge in happiness and joy. Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved December 25th, 2007 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Simon Heffer has written a very sensible (damn, I hate that word) article about why atheists rooted in our culture should have no problem at all enjoying Christmas. I agree whole heartedly with that view but…
Oh Simon, Simon, Simon…really. You are talking about the head of the Church of England…of course he is more of an atheist than you are! Folks like you and I simply decline to believe on the whole beardy-guy-in-the-sky thing and that is good enough for us, no need to bang on any drums about it and generally be a tiresome crypto-fascist prat like Dawkins. Dr. Rowan Williams on the other hand drives more people into our way of thinking every time he opens his yap. Clearly he and Dawkin are batting for the same side no matter how much they pretend to not like each other. So try to have a Merry Christmas one and all, even you Dr. Williams and Prof. Dawkins. December 22nd, 2007 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
Rupert Everett is a serviceable actor but he does seem a little confused:
Silly man! Because Hollywood is like Al Qaeda, you keep losing out on jobs not because you are a poofter of moderate talent but because you do not have a beard! Given how Hollywood is famous for stoning adulterers and gays to death, making snuff porn videos of Muslims cutting off the heads of western journalists, forcing women to hide their bodies from view (something Hollywood is particular well known for), prohibiting secular movies (another one of Hollywood’s strong points) and making men wear beards, clearly poor old Rupert is lucky to still be alive. December 20th, 2007 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
Alec Muffet, redoubtable trencherman that he is despite his dainty frame, pointed me at this splendiferous expression of the manifest superiority of western civilisation:
Magnificent! However after reading the comments attached to this Daily Mail article decrying the practice, I could see my enthusiasm was not shared by all. The best comment and a real contender for the Samizdata Pig’s Head on a Spike Award for Thigh Slapping Hilarity was:
The man is either a sage-like wag of the very highest order or a deranged Imam in need of an extended holiday in a certain part of Cuba… and an honourable mention also goes out for:
Naturally I felt the need to leave one of my own, as indeed you might:
Yummy! Nom nom nom! December 16th, 2007 | 57 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just a thought for the day: A world in which all personal success depended on virtue would be insufferable. December 13th, 2007 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
It always amazes me the number of businesses who use the Internet without really understanding how it has changed everything in business, not just the bits they find useful. The entire balance of power has been shifting towards information rich customers for years now and one of the things about this shift is that people’s tolerance for a company’s behaviour when things go wrong has also changed dramatically. It has always been the case that when things go wrong, the single worst thing any company can do is to make a customer feel he is being ignored. In many ways, even a half-arsed press release is (just) better than none at all, but frankly the days when a press release drafted by a PR professional whose job it is to pretend everything is all right are long gone. That approach never worked, only now the fact the PR Emperor has no clothes (and in truth never did) is impossible to hide. Customers are going to tell each other just how much they hate you, if indeed they do, regardless of whether or not you participate in the discussion because companies can no longer frame the terms of the debate. This article is an example of that, in fact. And so I was amused by a fairly trivial incident: a purchased a copy of the Epic/Microsoft games studio shooter Gears of War for the PC. Cool game. How do I know? Because I have repeatedly played the first two to ten minutes of the game before getting a wargame-g4wlive.exe crash to desktop. And judging from the number of screaming customers on the Epic forums, I am far from alone in experiencing this. Now the truth is, games these days are bloody complex things and it is rare to get a major game released without some significant kinks, so far be it for me to criticise Epic for releasing a bugged game… it happens and is probably an inevitable fact of life. Also I have no doubt that Epic has an army of coders working to fix the (many) issues that people have reported and most likely they will solve them all soon. Looking at their forums, both Epic and Microsoft developers posted early comments and that is exactly the correct approach. If people know for sure that someone is on the problem, it is amazing how much slack they will cut a company and in many cases, dealing frankly with the issue and frequently acknowledging there is a problem makes people empathise rather than criticise. But after the initial surge of developer input, the forum started filling up with often highly irate and typically semi-literate gamers cursing and howling because they had become convinced that as the first attempts to patch the game had not helped a great many people, the companies had just banked their money and written the game off. In truth I think that is highly unlikely at this stage and it is an avoidable self-inflicted wound to have well paid programmers working to fix what may be a difficult problem but because your inept PR department does not make that clear on a daily basis, customers whose game is about as useful as a prismatic beermat are left incandescent with rage at being ignored (as they see it). Crazy corporate behaviour. Interestingly, posts to the forum filled with F words and imprecations about the marital status of the developer’s mothers when they were born, seem to be generally left on the forum. I posted an invective-free article urging Epic to get themselves a new PR director and the post was taken down, which I must confess I find vastly amusing. So no prize for guessing which department is responsible for the Epic forums then. November 30th, 2007 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
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