Natalie Solent |
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Politics, news, libertarianism, Science Fiction, religion, sewing.
You got a problem, bud? I like sewing.
E-mail: nataliesolent-at-aol-dot-com (I assume it's OK to quote senders by name.) Back to main blog RSS thingy 
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Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Monday, December 25, 2006
And it came to pass in those days, there went forth a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world be enrolled -- this enrollment first came to pass when Cyrenius was governor of Syria -- and all were going to be enrolled, each to his proper city, and Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, that is called Bethlehem, because of his being of the house and family of David, to enroll himself with Mary his betrothed wife, being with child. And it came to pass, in their being there, the days were fulfilled for her bringing forth, and she brought forth her son -- the first-born, and wrapped him up, and laid him down in the manger, because there was not for them a place in the guest-chamber. -Luke Chapter 2 verses 1 -7, Young's literal translation. (Via Bible Gateway.) Happy Christmas! Saturday, December 23, 2006
Just get those ambulances covered and Lucy Lawless will be there. Alex Bensky writes, First, of course, Happy Christmas, Natalie. (You note my cultural awareness--I wish you a happy rather than a merry Christmas.) As David Steinberg used to say, "This year let's put the 'Christ' back in 'Christmas' and the 'Ch' back in 'Chanukah.'" Crime and safety. The comments, including mine, to this Samizdata post, move into a discussion of crime trends. I said, Nick M writes: "I don't believe this utopia ever existed." This is one of those arguments in which, like a well-known chess opening, the first ten moves are already well known.(In the original I accidentally wrote "Did this or any other utopia already exist?" UPDATE: Either Old Father Samizdata or one of his gun-toting elves has silently corrected it there.) Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Remember Habits of Highly Effective Countries? Freedom and Whisky takes a look at how Scotland measures up. A Palestinian doctor and five Bulgarian nurses have been sentenced to death in Libya. This is their second death sentence, after an earlier one was struck down. As I said elsewhere, When plague struck medieval Europe, an uneducated and fearful populace, unable to believe that the catastrophe could have a natural origin, would frequently blame the plague on the deliberate action of foreigners or infidels and launch a pogrom against the Jews. This pattern of behaviour has been followed in many other times and places. A modern example occured in Libya in 1999. In this case the victims were five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor. They were accused of deliberately infecting 400 Libyan children with AIDS and, after confessions were extorted by torture, condemned to death in 2004.Until yesterday I had been reasonably confident that the whole second trial was face-saving window dressing to allow Colonel Gadaffi, who must have some inkling of how barbaric this whole affair makes his country look, to release them with a minimum of embarrassment. It seems I was wrong, and that "makes his country look" is fast changing to "reveals his country to be." I still hold out some hope this is merely extortion. Black Triangle has more, including an address for the Libyan embassy. Al Qaeda in Ireland. Tom Carew of No surrender - ne pasaran has blogged about the programme shown on Ireland's RTE 1 channel last night on the subject of Al Qaeda activity and sympathisers in the Republic. This is what Mr Carew has to say about one equivocator: ... this Centre's Dawa [faith propoaganda] is directed by the very fluent Ali Selim, who, on-air, said he "did not know OBL", and so could neither respect nor disrespect him. And I also never met the late Herr Hitler, or the late Comrade Marshal Stalin, or the late Chairman Mao, or OBL, or Pol Pot, but I have no problem in reaching, and stating, a clear answer to the direct question of whether I respect such mass, serial murderers. You mean there are people who'd do that? The words of a member of Hamas, quoted in a Times article about the violence between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza: “We were taken by surprise this morning. They came in an ambulance, which we didn’t expect. We lost heavily. We’re more prepared now for the tricks they might use.”I'm not surprised he was surprised. What unprecedented depravity. Cue ominous background music. David Gillies, foreign desk editor here, saw one of my comments to Worstall's blog, and emailed: So far in my life, my total time spent on all computer games taken together is about twenty minutes. And a quarter-hour of that was Space Invaders in a chip shop* of my youth. But my husband used to love Elite and, funnily enough, we were talking just last night about the randomly-generated descriptions of the races one came across. He said they were of the type "friendly fat felines", "hostile small lapines", and so on. Elite ... rabbits ... elite rabbits ... What can it all mean? Am I but a computer game being played by some strange lapine überbeing? *Sadly, this shop was invaded by aliens shortly after my visit. Tuesday, December 19, 2006
What works. What doesn't. Continuing on the theme of development, and of how delusions such as those propagated by Christian Aid ultimately cost lives, here is something I meant to post earlier. Habits of Highly Effective Countries: Lessons for South Africa by Leon Louw. What came across most strongly was Leon’s absolute, fist clenched determination to distinguish between, on the one hand, what he would merely like to be true about what happens in well (and badly) governed countries, and, on the other hand, what he is actually able to report to be true about these places. As he said right at the start, what he is trying to do is to amass facts that are simply impossible to argue against. This is what successful countries do. This is what failed countries do. And so on. Plug endorsed by me. Minor in comparison with all these virtues, but a useful piece of information in the paper that is nonetheless worth noting: Starting at the end of page 24 of Mr Louw's paper and going on to page 25 there is a nice, clear explanation of why all increases in general prosperity also increase the "income gap" between rich and poor, this being a result of the greed and malice of the laws of mathematics. Monday, December 18, 2006
Good tidings we bring to you and your kin. Especially if you and your kin are poor citizens of a poor country who would like to try some other, less picturesque style of life. The good tidings consist of the fact that Claire Melamed, the woman responsible for much of Christian Aid's protectionist message has hopped it from that organisation. Jumped or pushed? Don't ask me. Don't ask at the Christian Aid website either, 'cos I just did and they aren't telling. Despite this welcome news - OK, OK, I'm sure she only wants to help and loves her cats "Lolly" and "Pop" - despite this welcome news, the Christian Aid Trade Justice Q&A page doesn't seem to have changed. Since 1970. Will Natalie now be returning to her hereditary office of Christian Aid donor, collector and all-round warming presence? Not just yet. Even if - big if - Christian Aid have partially reformed on the economic front, there are still other issues. I get the impression that the author of the Christian Hate? website is a bit of a softie, politically. But he gets a little cranky at the sight of anti-semitism. Read this summary. Robbing Peter to pay Paul only really works when Peter is unaware of the process. Gareth at Albion's Seedlings writes: Labour seem to have got themselves into a right pickle. Up in Scotland they must convince the Scots that they do well out of the Union; that money flows into Scottish coffers from English tax-receipts, in order to fend off the electoral threat of the Scottish nationalists that carries with it the threat of Scottish independence. Down in England they must explain themselves.The comment by Ed brings historical perspective: ... it has been going on since time immemorial – the Whig ascendancy in the 18th Century was institutionally Scottophobic since they feared that the smaller, poorer electoral constituencies in North Britain were soft targets for royal patronage ... For the record, I am one of those who - possibly from "aesthetic and romantic reasons", as Ed calls them - would like to see the Union preserved. Time for Plan B. "What is this cricket of which you speak, Australian fellow?" Strategy suggested by Patrick Crozier. This post orginally contained an email from the Editor -in- Chief of The Gambia Echo and my response to it. I've since learned that his original email was not intended for publication, so I have taken the post down. Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Another one for my list of self-antonyms. (More here.) "Dyke" can be either a ditch or a rampart. Offa's is both. And yes, I am aware of a third meaning. On this blog we prefer hot water bottles. Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Beautiful and good is the Coyote Blog for giving us this example of The Broken Windows Fallacy. (Via the Adam Smith Institute. Also beautiful and good for quoting me.) The tribe least changed by horses and guns. Peculiar of Odious and Peculiar writes about the Sheepeater Shoshone of central Idaho. The few ethnographers who were aware of them at all long assumed that the Sheepeaters were degenerate hillbilly Shoshones, living a benighted existence in the mountains and evidently unable to find anything better to do. In fact, the Sheepeaters were known for excellent quality hides; they tanned one sheep's hide with two sheeps' brains, producing a valuable item that was traded for foreign commodities (notably obsidian; stone from both Yellowstone and the Cascades has been found in the area), and not a mark of abject poverty. Furthermore, there is no record of the Sheepeters eating grasshoppers, common practice among the Plains Shoshone and Bannock. Eating salmon instead of bugs is usually a sign that one is fairly well-off.True - although some peoples regard insects as a delicacy even now. This put me in mind (as we bloggers like to say when trying to make a near-random firing of adjacent neurons look like a respectable link) of the debate as to the purpose of Offa's Dyke. Was it a fortification, telling of a time when "it was customary for the English to cut off the ears of every Welshman who was found to the east of the dyke, and for the Welsh to hang every Englishman whom they found to the west of it" and when war might break out at any time? Others have said that the dyke was too low and discontinuous to ever have been meant as a serious barrier; that a society in which a symbolic boundary is worth raising, because it is expected to be obeyed, must have been peaceful and orderly. I sometimes wonder what the future will make of us. US bugged Diana's phone on night of death crash, reports the Guardian. Just the "US". Shocking. Let me tell you, that sort of thing wouldn't have happened when that nice Mr Clinton was president. UPDATE: Jim Miller has an interesting thought: ...I will note this point: The British papers are saying that the US "secret service" acted on its own, but the two countries have many times cooperated in spying on each other's nationals. It is by no means impossible that we did a favor for the British government in this case, just as they have done favors for us. Monday, December 11, 2006
Pinochet. Daniel Finkelstein says, "Right-wing apologists for Pinochet should be ashamed of themselves." One of the justifications he sarcastically imagines a right-winger offering is, "What's a little murdering when he introduced a funded pension scheme?" I don't think Pinochet's free-market reforms excuse his crimes. I do think that their success is yet another argument for capitalism. Why was Pinochet a capitalist? Not out of a deeply felt love for liberty, that's for sure. Yet capitalism is so much superior to socialism that even when administered by dictators and torturers, capitalist countries do better than socialist ones. What does "the rule of law" really mean? Lawrence Solum of Legal Theory Blog writes: Sooner or later most law students run into a reference to "the rule of law," but in my experience, this idea is rarely explained when its introduced. This entry in the legal theory lexicon is designed to give you a fairly solid foundation with respect to the content of the rule of law and to get you thinking about what functions the rule of law serves. And Mr Solum's explanation does exactly that. (Via Instapundit.) What does "the rule of law" not mean? This. Sunday, December 10, 2006
Britblog roundup once again. Try out this post about a four hundred year old poem about death and time. No, you need not back away nervously muttering about all this culture not being your cup of tea. It's a bit of a laff. Saturday, December 09, 2006
Plotting. Regarding this post, Alex Bensky writes: Robert Heinlein once said there were just three basic plots: boy meets girl; Jack the giant killer; and the man who learns better. No surrender - ne pasaran is a new blog by Tom Carew. As he sought to put down his thoughts as to why he wanted to blog, the ghosts crowded in. Read it here. Some excerpts: I used a traditional Hebrew phrase in my URl - "safra ve'saifa", which means " a man of the book and a man of the sword". I spotted it in a comment by veteran Israeli political leader, Simon Peres about the Dublin-reared 6th President of Medinat Israel, Maj-Gen Chaim Herzog ...I'm going to stop there, but Tom Carew goes on to meditate on many different men and women who have borne the name "Collins", and on the Irish Diaspora and finally on jihad. The author has mostly concentrated on You Tube clips. And well chosen ones - this told me something about how Osama Bin Laden's character might have been formed - but I would welcome more of his writing. A fine broad stairway. The United Nations is free of that irritating man, Bolton. Photon Courier quotes Churchill. Without his unhelpful carping about getting Kofi Annan to declare his wealth, perhaps now at last they can get down to work. A 14-year-old described her abduction and rape inside a UN naval base in the country two years ago. In other UN news, the discredited Human Rights Commission was replaced by the new Human Rights Council. The accursed power which stands on PrivilegeEven Mary Robinson was disappointed with the way that the much-hailed Council has turned out. UPDATE: I'm &@!%$#-ed off with the UN. Can you tell? I'm reading Markings, a book of poems, prayers and thoughts by Dag Hammarskjöld. What a come-down it is to his successor, Kofi Abu Kojo. Friday, December 08, 2006
Reading Recovery is a programme designed to help children who are failing to learn to read. In this post for Biased BBC I argue that it is not as universally admired as an article on the BBC website suggests. Spot where I veered off into General Rant Mode. UPDATE: On second thoughts, since it was about more than just the BBC article, I've decided to cross-post it here. *** Curb your enthusiasm. This article by the BBC's education correspondent, Mike Baker, was published in November: "A way all children can be readers." The article is one long exhalation of praise for a reading scheme called Reading Recovery aimed at children who are failing to learn to read. Mr Baker writes: Is this the biggest missed opportunity in education?The article talks as if all that stopped heaven on earth being established in 1995 was John Major's Conservative government pulling the plug on funding. Later, confounding hopes placed in it by supporters of the scheme, Tony Blair's Labour government did much the same. Not everyone thinks Reading Recovery is wonderful. Most of the critics don't think the programme is bad in itself. They just think it costs a fortune for the effect it has, and the money could be better spent. Here are a few links pro and con. An oft-quoted paper attacking it is Reading Recovery: An evaluation of Benefits and Costs by Grossen, Coulter and Ruggles. Here is a response from Gay Su Pinnell supporting Reading Recovery. Reading Recovery: distinguishing Myth from Reality by Tunmer and Chapman. Critical. Reading Recovery: Anatomy of Folly by Martin Kozloff. Very critical. Evaluation of Reading Recovery in London Schools by Sue Burroughs-Lange. Supportive. Every child a reader: Results of the first year. This report is not pretending to be anything other than advocacy in favour of Reading Recovery. That does not make it wrong, of course, and there is plenty of information there. I think this is the document upon which Mr Baker's article was based. Although there is evidence that Reading Recovery is helpful it does not justify Mr Baker's uncritical enthusiasm. For instance, the paper by Sue Burroughs-Lange compares the results for 234 of the lowest achieving children at several primary schools. It says the group getting RR did better than the control group "who received a range of other interventions." So the control group was really several very different groups with small numbers of children in each. Furthermore, so far as I could see from the information on page 21 onwards none of the alternatives were anything like as intense as Reading Recovery, so it is hardly surprising that they were less effective. A similar criticism was made on page 7 of this paper by Jonathan Solity of the control groups for Slyva and Hurry's 1995 favourable evaluation of Reading Recovery. Although Mr Baker writes, It [Reading Recovery] is not an alternative to the general teaching methods for whole classes but is, instead, a highly structured intervention strategy for rescuing children who are struggling to take even the first steps towards reading.True, but in the real world any one use of money excludes other uses of the same money. The strategy of taking children out of class for one-to-one instruction by people specifically trained in Reading Recovery is very expensive. It also (and in the context of teachers' interests the expense may not be a bug, but a feature) can be used as an alternative to having general teaching methods for whole classes that might gain better results with the use of fewer trained personnel. (My personal opinion is that the history of the teaching of reading over the last century could be described as one long epic struggle by educators of every clime and tongue to avoid admitting that progressive methods don't work. A century of toil has almost sufficed to bring us back to the standard reached by the Victorians.) In the US, Reading Recovery is more politicised than in the UK, there having been a big bust-up over its inclusion or exclusion from a government programme called Reading First. It is seen there as being on the anti-phonics side of the Reading Wars. This is not quite fair. The founder, Marie Clay, sought to mimimize the explicit teaching of phonics, but the phonics component has been increased since. One wouldn't necessarily expect all that detail to be discussed in this one BBC article, and one certainly wouldn't expect the state broadcaster to rant away like a common blogger. But the BBC could have done better than just "For the last 10 years there has been no shortage of research evidence showing its effectiveness." Monday, December 04, 2006
(N.B. An update was added to this post on Tuesday.) Nikkogen, a company claiming to have a global license to manufacture/market zero-emission Prime Mover Systems that are designed to drive large electrical alternators to generate clean carbon-free electricity.are making legal noises at bloggers who linked to Tim Worstall's discussion of the subject. The Nikkogen FAQ page is informative on points that do not matter, vague on points that do. Q: WHERE IS NIKKOGEN LOCATED?"South Wales, United Kingdom, Earth" might do for a company address come the Galactic Empire - but here and now it would be reassuring to see a street and town. Or a patent application number that referred to something to do with energy rather than an "INSITU CONCRETE SAFETY FEATURE WITH REFLECTOR FOR A KERB", which is what the application number quoted to Tim Worstall refers to. Looking at its website, Nikkogen could well be called a company of the future. At some time in the future it promises to announce to the public its recruitment plans, its public investment listing, the names of its partner companies in other industries, the events it will be attending, the cost of the power stations it will provide and a little more information - such as any at all - on how its revolutionary power plants, desalinisation systems or marine propulsion systems work. At present none of this information is available. I would also like to see the name of a single customer and to know what body issued that "global license." UPDATE: Tim Worstall has now been told a new patent application number. This one comes up "FLUID WHEEL DRIVE SYSTEM" - that does sound more relevant to power generation. Nonetheless, I am amazed that Nikkogen is blithely talking about setting up both 40 megawatt and 240 megawatt power stations. In fact it gives the impression that you can buy one now. ("To purchase a 40-Megawatt or 240-Megawatt Zero-Emission Power Station, please contact us by telephone, fax or email for further information via the contact page.") Setting up a power station is a big undertaking. Like this fact or hate it, the state is involved at every stage. Generating stations of over 50MW are subject to consent from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Even for smaller stations you'd expect planning applications and environmental assessments and all that sort of stuff to be in the public domain years in advance. Development of a new technology is also a big undertaking. You'd expect to see it tested in the laboratory, then at gradually increasing scales, with peer-reviewed scientific papers and press conferences and patents galore. Again, like it or not, for something promising to revolutionise energy supply you'd expect the state to have its paws in every stage of the process - and to be supplying large chunks of the money. Here's a comparison. Between 2001 and 2004 there was a project, partly funded by the DTI, to build a "demonstration plant at utility scale" at Little Barford power station for the Regenesys energy storage system. (The parent company later pulled out and the technology has been sold to a Canadian company.) A Google search for websites mentioning both "Little Barford" and "Regenesys" gets 326 hits. Technical journals, DTI reports, detailed press releases, the lot. And all that was for a much smaller project than what Nikkogen is proposing. "Unity" of the blog Ministry of Truth, one of the bloggers threatened with legal action by Nikkogen, has a post about the physics of all this. And a song or two. Considering how Nikkogen's Mr Jenkins behaved to him, Unity is pretty charitable. I Want My Mummy! or Why Understanding Economics is Hard. You've heard of the seven basic plots. Now learn about the four basic ways of living with other humans. The research of Alan Fiske is summarized in this column for the Philadelphia Inquirer by Andrew Cassel. Alan Fiske (or Alan Page Fiske as seems to be his own preferred form of his name, judging from the cover of his book) claims that human beings tend to follow four relational models in their ways of interacting. The reader with ten minutes to spare is promised or warned that this essay, Fiske's own "overview" of the four models, will start trains of thought that may take years to complete. For the two-minute reader, here is how the four models are described in Cassel's column.
Here's another, more biographical article about Fiske and his ideas. He first thought of this twenty years ago. Since then he's been dreading the moment when someone in the audience would say, hey you idiot - what about this fifth /sixth / seventh model? But no one ever has. When models collide, trouble follows. Cassel writes: For example, you might see housework as a communal-sharing function, while your spouse approaches it as equality-matching. Neither is wrong, yet you still end up angry or guilty when the laundry isn't done.Note that market pricing came last to human history and is the last one individuals learn to use - if they ever do. It needs an understanding of ratios. That does not make it the good model and all the other models bad. Not unless you want to invoice your children for services rendered, anyway. But it is a reasonable analogy to call the market pricing model the most evolved, or least primitive model. Cassel's column, with its provocative mention of Marxism as an example of the "communal sharing" model, was published on November 24th. Although going on what I have read so far Fiske himself does not seem to have drawn any strong political conclusions - in fact he cites the work of Marx as one of the minor influences that helped him to build his theory - one or two bloggers have picked up on Cassel's equation of Marxism with the communal sharing model. Classical Values asks, "I wonder whether the emotional appeal of Communism might have represented an evolutionary step backwards, repackaged rhetorically so that its proponents could pat themselves on the back and maintain they were moving forward." One Cosmos writes: "Economic conflicts arise when one group or person is operating under a different type of interaction than another. For example, if you are a primitive progressive operating under the aegis of small group “communal sharing,” you may well believe that higher education, healthcare, housing, tattoos, tattoo removal, and gender reassignment surgery should all be granted to you by the government free of charge." I agree with these two bloggers that the relative lack of appeal of market pricing, despite its superior record in creating wealthy and peaceful societies, is something to do with it being the most difficult model. But I'm not sure that the appeal of Marxism wholly rests on it being communal sharing. I came across this comment on Laban Tall's blog this morning: They [progressives who ally with Islamists] can't imagine western civilization collapsing any more than a five-year old can imagine his parents' marriage breaking up. Unlike the five-year-old, they're in a position to help it along, but of course they can't comprehend that.Yes, I cried, and that immediately helped me to understand ... Whoa, now. Perhaps before I start to apply Fiske's models to this, that and the other, I should do more than ten minutes' reading on what they actually are. Then I can tell you how this all links in to the Anglosphere somehow, and with Fukuyama's concepts of high and low-trust societies. Let me finish for now with another quote from Fiske's overview: But the diversity of culturally organized, complex social relationships presents a seemingly impossible learning problem: how can a child, an immigrant, or a visitor possibly discover the principles that underlie relationships in a strange culture (such as the one into which you are born)? The coordination of interaction is all the more challenging because of the variety of domains that must be coordinated: work, exchange, distribution and consumption, moral judgments, sanctions and forms of redressing wrongs, aggression, sexuality, social identity, the meaning of objects, places, and time. If people use different models to coordinate each domain, how can they deal with the resulting cognitive complexity of social life, let alone integrate several domains to form a personal relationship or an institution? Sunday, December 03, 2006
Oil on troubled waters. Over at Biased BBC I ended up delivering a little lecture about the way the oil market works. Never let it be said that I allow near-complete ignorance about a subject to cramp my expository style. If I've got it wrong, tell me and gloat. Competitors are limited to one use per household of the word "fungibility." Brotblig rundoup. The words "Britblog roundup" exert an irresistible compulsion to spoonerize, or whatever the equivalent process for vowels is called. This week's choice was easy, given the subject of some of my recent posts. Read An Englishman's Castle on another way that Britain was involved in slavery - as a source of slaves. The comment by "Umbongo" is funny. Thursday, November 30, 2006
The rescue of two British subjects, 1840. I found this while Sir Richard Doherty, the Governor of Sierra Leone discovered that Prince Mauna, the son of the King of the Gallinas, Seacca, was holding two British subjects: the black woman Fry Norman and her child. Denman was ordered to rescue them. Thanks to his close blockade, the eight Spanish-owned barracoons (slave factories) were all full when, in the boats of Wanderer, Rolla and Saracen, he crossed the river bar, and initially freed 90 slaves who the owners were trying to evacuate to the mainland. Denman set a guard over the barracoons, and demanded that the King not only freed Fry Norman and her child, but also sign a treaty abolishing the slave trade throughout his dominions. After some prevarication, and helped by Denman's threats of violence, he freed the Normans and agreed to the treaty, allowing the destruction of the barracoons, the liberation of the slaves, and the expulsion of all the slave traders in his dominions.How usual would it have been to go to such efforts to rescue a black British subject? Not very, I suspect. After initially supporting Denman's robust action, the authorities seem to have got cold feet. But it happened on this occasion. This extract came from admirable website centred on the life of a Victorian naval surgeon, William Loney R.N., an ancestor of the stepfather of the compiler. Two other pages that caught my eye: I realised I'd been seeing quotes from this post in various blogs for several days. Some of the language "Freeborn John" uses is not pretty - but nor is the phenomenon he describes. Not just [Polly] Toynbee, of course, but she has made a particular fetish of "social exclusion". And she claims that Tuesday, November 28, 2006
WH Auden was not quite as concise as Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, a correspondent called PGA tells me, but even such a lefty as he once advised: "Guard, Civility, with guns, your modes and your declensions.I am doubly grateful to PGA in that the only other mention of these lines I can find on the net is in the title block of this entertaining blog. Usually I can google up fifteen versions of a poem in an instant. What apology, if any, should Mr Blair make for Britain's role in the slave trade? There are several ways of assessing whether one should be ashamed of the acts of a group to which one belongs.
To illustrate point (1), my pride in the role of Britain in putting down slavery must be accompanied by shame for the role of Britain in the slave trade. A pride that cannot encompass shame is a dead thing. To illustrate point (2), I feel neither pride nor shame for the acts of whites or women. I had no choice about being born white or female and the utility of undergoing surgical procedures to demonstrate lack of solidarity with either condition is not obvious. In contrast, a member of a political party who resigns on a point of principle is acting meaningfully. Midway between the two extremes just mentioned comes the nation. Changing nationality on a point of principle is a major disruption but it can be done, at least for some of us. To illustrate point (3) it would be crazy to re-spray your blue car because a serial killer was found to have a blue car; but if blue cars became known as a symbol denoting membership in some vicious gang it would not be crazy. (Added later: I was thinking of a gang in your area, one to which you could reasonably be supposed to belong.) Point (4) refers to continuity of identity over time. Britain 2006 does have some continuity of identity with the Britain that carried out the slave trade. Although I would argue (and have argued, possibly at tedious length) that slavery is inefficient and does not enrich the societies that practice it, there seems little doubt that Africa is poorer because of slavery, even if Britain is not richer. Of course Britain in 2006 has more continuity with the Britain that abolished slavery and flung its ships and men to Zanzibar, West Africa and Brazil in order to stop the slave trade. Nonetheless, all my four points seem to apply. It is certainly right for Tony Blair (and not only him) to feel patriotic regret for Britain's role in the slave trade. For Tony Blair as Prime Minister to make an official statement of regret about the slave trade is not an outrage to common sense. (Even though it is mostly an opportunity to display virtue, and to make party political points about lottery funds and immunisation programmes.) Who knows, perhaps his action will serve as a model for the coming statements of deep personal sorrow about the slave trade from various Arab and African rulers? At any rate it may make some people, black and white, feel more at peace with their history, and there are many worse uses of his time. But among all this acknowledgement let us acknowledge one more thing. The slaves are all dead, the masters are all dead, and pride, shame and a sense of injury are all among the things that the living sometimes steal from the dead.(An earlier post about apologies for the slave trade is here, and one about a proposed C of E apology for the Iraq War, that touched on point (4), is here.) "Pacifism causes wars." JEM writes: Natalie, Monday, November 27, 2006
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Imagine if more of the extremely rich songsters in this world put in just a little more effort not to talk. Then there would be less need for articles like this one by Mike Rosen. He takes a swipe at Sir Elton John's call to ban organised religion. Less a call, more a burble really, with a hiccup at the end. Sir Elton's burblution to world problems is to hold a conclave of all the leaders of the world's religions, having presumably let them out of jail for the day. And if the religious leaders don't cut the mustard? He has a truly blood-chilling burble in reserve: "it's left to musicians or to someone else to deal with it." Having dealt with Sir Elton rather charitably ("He's just venting"), Mr Rosen moves on to that mighty burbler of the previous generation, John Lennon. Now I was very upset when John Lennon was murdered. So this might as well be the point where I say that his music has given me even more pleasure than Elton John's, and that has given me plenty. And though obviously I disagree with it, there is nothing intrinsically silly about the atheism Lennon expresses in Imagine. The intrinsically silly bit is the naive burblo-communism at the end: Imagine no possessions Pope John Paul II visited Britain in 1982. He spoke in Wembley stadium and I was there. (Got a commemorative coin to prove it.) During the wait for him to appear the crowd was led in community singing. Astoundingly, Imagine with its "Imagine there's no religion" was one of the songs on the songsheet. Imagine there's no HeavenThe fact that eighty thousand British Catholics could sing those lyrics and remain unstruck by lightning must have been enough to covert some of the weaker brethren to atheism on the spot. Mind you, British Catholic singing of any lyrics at all often has that effect. While the massed voices of Catholic Britain were sending their orison to Lennon's unheeding sky, the fleet was on the way to retake the Falklands, so maybe whichever earnest young guitar-playing nun was in charge of selecting the songs hoped to send a karmic boost to the forces of peace. (And if you think that there is something unlikely about a Catholic nun hoping for a karmic boost, then you have not seen what awful things can happen when a nun picks up a guitar.) Whatever her intentions, it could have only one result. When people sing of peace it is never long before war, bloody war, is loosed upon the world. That's always the way. Pacifism causes wars. London 2006: Lord of the flies Jackie Danicki was assaulted on the tube yesterday. Fifteen minutes before anyone spoke up to help her. Two hours before a policeman arrived to interview her. She took a picture of the person who assaulted her and it's on her blog. Friday, November 24, 2006
Essex 1944: Lord of the Flies. A fascinating article by Jolyon Jenkins, the producer of a BBC radio documentary on a wartime camp for delinquent boys run on ideals of radical democracy and unconditional love by conscientious objectors. This Utopian project ended up with the boys living in squalor and split into two groups labelled "masters" and "slaves". But in its determination to move away from the authoritarian model of the approved schools, it anticipated many of the ideas on residential childcare that became common in later decades.You don't say. This would be a better blog post if I just stopped there. The funny thing is, though, that I can see something in the idea of leaving the smashed windows unfixed because "it was better to leave the jobs until the boys responsible agreed to do them." But how did that square with buying the horse-thief his own horse? AFTERTHOUGHT: one of the comments to the BBC article asks, "Was William Golding ever there?" The literal answer is no - far from being a conscientious objector, he took part in the sinking of the Bismark and was at D-Day. However I shared the first thought of "Mike from East Lothian" that he might have heard of it. I also wonder whether C.S. Lewis knew of the place. Quest Camp becomes Experiment House? AFTER-AFTERTHOUGHT: Andrew Rilestone has some reasonable arguments against trying to read incidents in the Narnia books as a considered statement of Lewis's views on progressive education. Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Oliver Kamm vs Neil Clark. Ever wonder how that was going? Now you know. It was nice of Oliver Kamm to take pity on the lad. Monday, November 20, 2006
Milking allergy for all its worth. I accidentally posted a Biased BBC post over here. You can still read it over there. Sunday, November 19, 2006
Ed Thomas on recent US politics: It's been one long fillibuster, and its effectiveness in lulling the Right has been taken as evidence of political know-how. In the sense that the political vacuum has made idle hands of Republicans, the Devil has made use of them. Owe my soul to the company store... Hugo Chavez wants to force people to use local scrip in Venezuela. Not only would these tokens only be valid in one valley, they would lose their value over time. (Via No Pasaran's Joe Noory, who describes the proposal as, "making currency into a kind of neighborhood food-stamp that expire, and useless outside of your own ghetto. What this accomplishes is to make financial self-improvement impossible through savings [or] anything.") AFTERTHOUGHT: "Owe my soul to the company store" comes from this miners' song.. The third link gives you audio: a tune so catchy that even I can carry it. Britblog roundup - here within about a minute of it being posted. Had time to read a few now. Try Stroppyblog for a telling criticism of the much-quoted Matthew Taylor that does not even mention the famous line about the citizenry being "not yet ready for self-government" that so riled everyone else. Saturday, November 18, 2006
Burqa bans. If you want my take, it's here on the comments to this Samizdata post. The burqa is obviously bad. Where it is not oppressive it is arrogant. The situation ought to beEr, when I said "I very much agree", I trust the bit about the buckshot was rhetorical. Friday, November 17, 2006
The guilty man. JEM writes, regarding Milton Friedman: Natalie,Whenever I get back from holiday and discover that a war, disaster or atrocious crime has stained the earth while I was not paying attention to the news I know in my heart that if I had been looking after things properly it would never have happened. Odd creatures, humans. But most of them are quite nice once one gets to know them. Thursday, November 16, 2006
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
EU Warning: this barometer is not to be eaten. Cleanthes of Select Society fisks an MEP called Linda McCavan. Little Linda does not appear to have paid attention in her physics lessons. Or her counting lessons. This page from her website, "What Does an MEP Do?", tells us: Labour's European Members of Parliament ensure that Brtian's voice is heard at the heart of the European Union.Brtians never never will be slaves... You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Brussels. Cold war winners. Dunno why something this intriguing was buried in the Times business section: Spy who soaked up London life with his KGB mates So long as we tick the box marked input who cares about the output? Alex Singleton of the Globalisation Institute criticises the Millenium Goals view of foreign aid. Tuesday, November 14, 2006
The divine right to free speech. JEM writes: I hold the BNP in contempt.I wrote in this Samizdata post: The conclusion that free speech promotes racial harmony is not obvious at first sight. Words lead to deeds, one might think, and so, obviously, harsh words will lead to harsh deeds. Nonetheless you may make some headway among sceptics if you ask them whether in their own lives they think it better to bottle up resentments or to voice them before they become explosive. "Kind of a weird combination." Mark Steyn has said some nice things about this blog in the past, but that won't stop me saying that the most piercing quote in his interview with John Hawkins was from John Hawkins: Europeans, from what I've seen, have a generally more dim view of the Middle East than Americans - like they think it's futile to try to build democracy in Iraq. You know, everywhere that you talk about -- well, democracy in the Muslim world just won't work. Yet, they're bringing in all the Muslims you could possibly imagine into their own home countries, and they're building them up to such a percentage that....if you get up to where 20%, 30%, 40% of your population is Muslim and you don't think Islam is compatible with democracy, that's kind of a weird combination. How's that happening? Ask the experts. I don't know who wrote this piece appearing on "Sokwanele", a Zimbabwean opposition website. If the author still lives in Zimbabwe he or she is probably happier to forgo the pleasure of a byline. The seventeen months that have gone by since it was written have not, unfortunately, made it any less relevant. I don't necessarily think Chinese economic influence in Zimbabwe or Africa generally is a bad thing. Perhaps - never thought I'd write this - the voice of the People's Republic of China speaks with the nearest approach to economic wisdom that the government of Zimbabwe is willing to hear. But if you'd ever wondered why Mugabe should seek advice from the nominal Marxists who rule China, wonder no longer: On becoming a Chinese colonyAnd They will assist ZANU PF to gain total control of all information that circulates in the country so that people may remain in ignorance. They even know how to depopulate cities and send "unwanted elements" to the countryside for hard labour.Yes, the Chinese would know about that. Coming soon: Tesco Value bustles. The November/December edition of Tesco magazine contains an article by Dr Miriam Stoppard called "12 health-hazards of Christmas." The advice for the Ninth Hazard begins ... If the sheer stress of Christmas causes someone to faint:I don't think Tesco has sold smelling salts since Jack Cohen "decided to invest his service man's gratuity of L30 in NAAFI surplus groceries to sell from a stall in the East End of London." (My browser is seeing it as "L30" anyway. Given that the business has grown a little since then, I think the Tesco website could afford proper pound signs.) Mind you, I'm sure someone still makes 'em. Yes, they do. Perhaps they've come back in since I last had cause to swoon. In a world where there is, they tell me, a good remake of Battlestar Galactica no reinvention is too strange to be possible. Monday, November 13, 2006
But only right wingers could sink so low as to share a talking point with the BNP, as my correspondent does below and my Biased BBC colleague Laban Tall does here? Not so. Lib Dems & extremists: an on / on relationship. (Via Drinking From Home and Fib Dems) Horrified because not horrified. ARC writes: ...waiting in a Heathrow flight gate late on Friday I could not avoid catching a long session of BBC news that was showing on a huge screen. But (while their coverage balance could have been better) this is not material for a biased BBC post (their coverage balance could also have been worse).UPDATE: After I posted this, my correspondent contacted me to say that he had misremembered the name of the BNP leader. I didn't spot that at the time but I have now corrected the post. Mythbusting all round. Whittle on the right, Wardytron of Harry's Place on the left. (Scroll down to "we armed him".) Someone in the comments nails another one. This was started by "resistor", who says: For those who still deny that the Americans supplied SaddamResistor quotes more of the article - including the bit where Senator Robert Byrd, whose opinions have moved on since he was in the Klan without ever stopping anywhere near sense, questions Rumsfeld on the matter. Stonking good reply from "DocMartyn": No [I think this is a typo for "Not"-NS] the "American Type Culture Collection" again. Look, the American Type Culture Collection, is a not-for-profit organisation that holds and supplies micro-organisms to researchers all over the world. In the early mid-80's when I started my M. Sc. in biochemistry/microbiology I used to flick through their catalogue and lokk [look] at all the nasties you could order. It would supply pathogens to ANY RESEARCHER in any INSTITUTION in ANY NATION. Crib sheet for the argumentative warmonger, courtesy of Bill Whittle, who argues against some of the commoner bumber-sticker slogans. Here's one of his replies: There are millions of people – actually, probably billions now – who genuinely believe that the wealth of the US was stolen from third world countries. This is one of the great perks of living a life free of the ability to think critically and do a little research. I have heard this slander repeated so many times I decided to look into some actual numbers to see if there is anything to this charge. This is a perfect example of how critical thinking allows you to see the unseen. That attitude, Google and ten minutes is all you need to shoot lies like this down in flames. Saturday, November 11, 2006
If you kill, tell me. Casting around on Google News I have just doubled what I know about the Gambia. It seems the country's president, Yahya Jammeh, was recently reelected. And this was a speech he made to his assembled ministers, chiefs of the civil service and members of the press: This one thing that I cannot forgive is hypocrisy and pretending. If you are sincere and honest I will be a friend to you. Even if you kill a person, tell me that you have killed a person, I will understand. I am a human being.An editorial in The Gambia Echo says, In sum, sitting Cabinet Ministers and their hirelings are at liberty to kill innocent citizens as long as they inform President Jammeh later.It could be that Yahya Jammeh's enemies are worse than he is. The sort of points that one could make in his favour are that the Gambian press seems uncowed enough to dare call him a murderer, and journalists are killed in mysterious circumstances so rarely that the casual Googler soon learns one name, Deyda Hydara. It could be that his "kill but tell me" is a metaphor (for the President, as for the leader-writer of the Gambia Echo, English is obviously not a first language) or a rhetorical exaggeration, and that his political enemies are affecting to take it literally in order to slander him. Or it could be that he is as flagrantly ruthless as his words suggest. I was struck by how small is the fraction of the events in the world that any one person can ever understand. "By democratic decision, thank goodness!" Tim Blair quotes joyful advocate of democratic values Simon Jenkins of the Guardian rejoicing that - At this point the insurgency knows it has won, however long it takes the occupying power to go. Retreat in good order is the best hope. An era of ill-conceived, belligerent interventionism has come to an end - by democratic decision, thank goodness. The guardian of our liberties. Our next Prime Minister speaks. In the wake of the BNP pair's acquittals, Chancellor Mr Brown said: "Any preaching of religious or racial hatred will offend mainstream opinion in this country.(Cross-posted at Samizdata.) But what about the trains? "For all his faults Saddam Hussein’s Iraq imposed order. The water, the electricity, the oil wells faltered but largely kept going. The roads and streets were safe."- Kevin Toolis writing in The Times. Friday, November 10, 2006
The stuff you really need to know. If you search for "the" on Google you get five billion three hundred million results and the top result is The Onion. That's because it's The Onion. Thursday, November 09, 2006
Washed in the blood of the Lamb. The BBC reports: A Christian lobby group says the wearing of red poppies is "politically correct" and stifles debate."Not a value-free position." When I heard that the director of a Christian lobby group had said that, I was taken aback. "Take up thy cross and follow me" is not an invitation to take up a value-free position. Having read Ekklesia's statement it now seems to me that the value-free bit was stunningly inept phrasing rather than what it first sounded like. I can go with "If you believe that those who serve in the armed forces are defending freedom, then freedom to consider alternative perspectives is surely part of what you stand for". Fine, sure, apple pie. I can also go with a consistent opposition to having any specific political position smuggled into Christianity. Or vice versa. Such consistent opposition is not what Ekklesia offers. If you had signed up for the Ekklesia news feed for the 8th November the three stories you would have got are "New style Sandinistas regain power in hopeful Nicaragua", "Bush panics as US religious right fails to stem Democrat tide" and "Church support for report condemning Government policy in Nicaragua." The Ekklesia website is full of deeply political statements such as "the language and imagery about ‘fighting for freedom’ and ‘the glorious dead’ which often accompanies war remembrance reinforces a belief that violence is redemptive." The red poppy has never claimed to be a Christian symbol. Many Christians wear it proudly, but it is also worn by people of all faiths and none to honour the dead of all faiths and none. The facts that we have Remembrance Day services in Britain that are primarily Christian (other faiths do also hold them) and that our prime means of commemorating the dead is a Christian service is in a sense accidental; a result of our history and culture. No one thinks for a moment that all those laying wreaths or observing the silence are necessarily Christian. What they overwhelmingly do believe is the part Ekklesia don't like: that the glorious dead died for freedom. Tired of talking about American stuff. Yet reluctant to talk about anything else. I'll put off posting your emails about the history of the dollar until I'm in a better mood. So much for my prediction that there would be scarcely any change in the US Senate! I gave too much weight to all those claims that it was getting harder and harder to unseat an incumbent. Pollster Jay Cost, in an article engagingly entitled "Why I jumped the shark" says, Theoretically, the mistake I made here was to presume that the incumbency advantage that obviously exists (this year's incumbency reelection rate is still about 95.2%) is automatic. Incumbents are in a good position to insulate themselves. But they are not automatically insulated. They must actually do the insulating.For America, that's cool. While the specific policies the Democrats will now foster over there are mostly bad, incumbents ought to run scared. For the rest of the world, Iraq in particular... pity. Pity is both a noun and a verb in the imperative mood. Via Clive Davies, I found this depressing prediction from Frederick Kagan of the likely results of a withdrawal from Iraq. Snappier version by Daryl Herbert in the Volokh comments: The disaster that would follow an American pullout--collaborators would be tortured/murdered on a massive scale and no one would ever cooperate with Americans again--would be a tremendous benefit to al-Qaeda. America would never again be taken seriously in the Middle East or elsewhere as more than a tornado: we can temporarily pass through and smash anything that's out in the open, but in short order we're gone.I don't despair. Perhaps the horse will learn to sing. But I can't help remembering that the irrepressible thief who said that was under a suspended sentence of death. Wednesday, November 08, 2006
I got troubles. Too much work, too little time to blog, VRWC Central won't answer the phone for some reason and a mysterious and lrming stickiness on my keyboard's letter "A". But here is a fine new blog: This blog's title needs some explaining: I am a British expat living in the Netherlands, and all things considered, I rather prefer it to the land of my birth. I try very hard to integrate, speak the language, and not be identified as an expat: as such, I consider myself a "nep Nederlander", a "fake Dutchman". Aside from when it is being congratulated in the press for being trendy and right-on in a way that it just isn't, Holland is largely ignored. Since I am now able to follow Dutch language news to a good degree, I intend to discuss it on here in English, in amongst other topics of interest. Also via Nep Nederland, I came across a headline on The People's Cube (look on the top right of the screen): Dems take house. Also car, salary, portfolio, and whatever else you got they can tax. Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Busy day today. Thanks to all those who sent replies to my question about the dollar. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. Don't even think about trying to escape. Monday, November 06, 2006
Tomorrow's headlines today. If the Democrats win: Bush pays the price for the Iraq War. If the Democrats lose: America has a long tradition of local issues dominating mid-term elections. A pictoral reminder. Saddam Hussein did not order 9/11 - true. Saddam Hussein had no links with Al Qaeda - untrue. Saddam Hussein was very happy that 9/11 occurred - true. This mural glorifying 9/11 was found by invading US marines in an Iraqi army headquarters in Nasiriya. I think it's safe to say that an army headquarters was not a place where you would find art displeasing to the leader. The caption does not say where soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division found this mural of a smiling Saddam next to a picture of the plane hitting the twin towers, but I think it's safe to say that anywhere in Saddam's Iraq was not a place where you would find art displeasing to the leader. Delayed dollars. Following this post in which I asked, "Wasn't it the case that it took decades for the same dollar to be in use all over the US?" I had an email from JEM on the subject of the dollar, which after touching on its European origins as the joachimsthaler said, In the form of the Spanish colonial 8 real coin it was once also known as the 'piece of eight'--a lovely detail, don't you think?His main point was, "Pounds, euros, dollars, pieces of eight... they are all just units of account. Tools." I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but in fact the point I wanted to make was more relevant to the troubles of the euro, although I concede I did not make myself clear. Second go: I think I read somewhere that for decades different US states had different dollars, presumably issued by local mints, and the exchange rate between these different dollars was not 1:1. Anyone know if I am right? Take a break, catch a spy According to the Korea Times, A yearly event for school children in the 1970s was learning how to distinguish North Korean spies from ordinary people and memorizing the phone number they had to dial when they found people behaving suspiciously.The Korea Times article talks as if all this were long-gone Cold War arcana, but this article about the Korean subway system says that similar posters are still up on the trains. Future Perfect has a picture. The number to ring is 111, in case you ever need to know. How quaint - er, wait a minute. North Korea really was inserting spies and assassins into the South. It really was kidnapping both Japanese and South Korean citizens to train their spies. There are times when one must reassert that "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you" is an impeccably logical statement. I meant to post something worthy about how South Korea, in a less well-publicised way than China, is increasing its economic links with Africa. But I was distracted by the the thought that those vending machine cups ought to be collectable. Laughter is not a panacea. In 2003 I laughed at the way that the Charity Commissioners were trying to "modernise" the Panacea Society. The Society believe that if a box allegedly left in their keeping by seventeenth century prophetess Joanna Southcott is opened in the presence of 24 bishops of the Church of England the apocalypse will arrive (in a good way), remaking all of Earth except Bedford, that being the site of the Garden of Eden. I thought it terribly amusing that "Commission staff had been concerned for some time that this unusual religious charity was not putting its assets to effective use." I laughed too soon. It seems that the Charities Commission is no longer content to just be "concerned" when a charity is not putting its assets to what the Commissioners think is effective use. Read Tim Worstall about the Charities Bill. We've really come to this? That a bureaucracy can confiscate the assets of a charity? Think of this for a moment. There are those who think that SPUC (or whatever it is called now) is actively evil because it campaigns for what some think of as a restriction of women's rights. There are other charities (Marie Stopes for example?) who actively campaign on the other side of the same question, insisting that, as some would have it, children are being killed to maintain those same women's rights. |