May 24, 2003
Talking of Arab traders in ninth-century Stavanger
, as one so often does, I have two questions. The first is rhetorical: how come one was more likely to see an Arab trader in ninth century Stavanger than in twenty-first century Stavanger? My second is more academic. How come these intrepid Arabs or anyone else ever dared go to the Viking lands at all, let alone go loaded down with nickable trade goods? Given that Viking practice was to attack, kidnap and enslave foreigners, why did the Arabs reckon on enough security of their persons and property to venture to the country of the Vikings, as they clearly did. I suppose someone will write in saying it was different in their own country: there the Norsemen had Things and things and an admirable system of anarchist law. Well, how did they feel about that? How did they cope with the gap between going to Britain and seeing the people there as prey and yet seeing visiting Arabs as people?
I 'd like to teach the world to sing.
I just watched the closing minutes of the European Song Contest. Honest guv, it was only because I wanted to see the proto-libertarian Austrian entry I read about in Michael Jennings. I didn't see him, but I did observe that the feelings of our European friends and partners towards us remain - how shall I put this? - un peu grincheux. That's right. No points at all, null points, Keine Punkte!At least the future fame of our brave duo Jemma Abbey and Chris Crosbey of "Jemini" is assured. Just think, at any time as the voting continued some spoilsport might have awarded them a 2, dooming them to oblivion. Fortunately they came through this ordeal unsullied and their song joins the immortal 'Mile after Mile' by Jan Teigen of Norway (It's Norwegian theme day today) as the only the second song in Eurovision history to get no points.
UPDATE: You must forgive me. It seems that I am out of touch with Eurovision affairs. This stinging rebuke to the British warmongers was not delivered by various national juries as of yore but by the people of Europe themselves. Oh goody. Now we won't have to have the Euro after all.
UPDATE SUNDAY MORNING: It is impossible to discuss the Eurovision Song Contest without dropping into irony, but my admiration for Ms Abbey's cheerful attitude is real, not ironic.
'Afterwards Ms Abbey, 21, said she had expected to win, but joked: "Nul points - there you go, maybe that's what we should change our name to."'And:
"And when we came last tonight it was like I'd rather have come first or last and not in the middle."No doubt she had in mind the splendid if deplorable words that Milton put into the mouth of Satan:
Here we may reign secure; and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell:
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
Not yet, you fool!
Of course it's not just computers who are stupidly and prematurely obedient when carrying out instructions. The last words of many a sergeant instructor were the following:"Now, Private, when I say 'pull out the pin,' I want you to-"
An observation.
I don't really think that there have been any Arabs or Ashanti for many decades who wouldn't recognise a pair of trousers. Who is there left? A few tribes in Papua New Guinea, perhaps. About ten to fifteen years ago I saw a film of such a tribe being contacted for the first time, but I haven't heard of any such event since then. In our lifetimes the world finally did or will become one. Future historians will be able to state the exact day it happened.
Why dø they hæt us?
The Norwegians are understandably confused as to why they have been added to the list of Crusader nations that Al-Qaeda supporters are urged to attack. Did an Arab trader get mugged by a Viking in ninth century Stavanger and add the entire Norwegian nation to the Bin Laden family's extensive list of grudges? Could it be that Muslim militants are not so starry-eyed about the Oslo accords as was once thought? Perhaps this harsh reward for Norway's traditionally high-minded foreign policy reflects some version of Bin Laden's well-known (and often correct) opinion that given a choice between a weak horse and a strong horse, men naturally prefer the strong one.Bjørn Stærk speculates here and here that it might concern an exiled Muslim militant, Mullah Krekar, resident in Norway, who used to be seen as the cuddly side of Muslim militancy but is now in the process of being expelled for kidnapping and other crimes. I bet they wish they'd never taken him in in the first place. Bjørn adds, ominously, "I still haven't discounted the theory that we've been selected simply because we're a good target."
Quite possibly. That's why the Vikings attacked monasteries: they were full of treasure and the people living there were reluctant to fight back. It would be interesting to know if the Norsemen felt any obligation to work up a fury against the monks for failing to worship Odin and Thor.
(Incidentally, here's a little digression about distinguishing HTML signal from noise. Eons ago in blog terms I lamented the fact that I could only write Bjorn Staerk not Bjørn Stærk. Bjørn himself sent me an email giving the characters you should actually type to make the special characters appear:
& oslash ;His educational effort failed because I thought it was a piece of gobbledegook generated as a computer error and was too embarrassed to pursue the matter. He might well have thought that adding, THIS IS WHAT YOU ACTUALLY TYPE was about on a level with attaching a label saying PUT BOTH LEGS INTO THE WIDE BIT THEN PUSH ONE DOWN EACH TUBULAR BIT to every pair of trousers Marks & Spencer sell - but as a customer, I was in the position of an Arab or an Ashanti from a remote village who had never seen a pair of trousers.& aelig ;
There's another little educational lesson here as well. It's very difficult to tell people how to use HTML within a HTML document because whenever you write out a command to show how to write it, the wretched machine insists on doing whatever it is. (Does anyone know of a tag that tells the computer "ignore any instructions within this closing and opening tag"?) Perry de Havilland and I once had an absurd exchange of emails where he thought he was telling me how to do links in that special Samizdata way but all I saw was a link to whatever irrelevant website he had picked as an illustrative example.
So, when writing out "& aelig ;" I had to add some useless spaces. YOU DON'T TYPE THE SPACES, OK? The more general educational point is that when teaching people things they are often more confused by the method of delivery than the material to be taught. And, of course, that you shouldn't wear your trousers on your head.)
May 23, 2003
Got that?
"Annoying Old Guy" sent me a page called 'Nother Solent showing how my blog would look off-Blogger. Whether he did this out of the goodness of his heart, or to illustrate the goodness of his web design company, should he possess one, I don't know. It looks very nice. However I have already embarked on another plan of campaign. So, you ask, why am I still here?
I don't know, why are you?
Oh. I see. Why am I as in me still here? Me glad you asked me that. No doubt you've heard of the law of Conservation of Inertia: you see, all the inertia that didn't go into producing quagmires and swamps when they put into practice the plan to topple Saddam went in to my plan to move off Blogspot. Be grateful for the laws of physics.
Apologies
to anyone who sent me mail expecting a prompt reply*. I'm behindhand with a lot of things today. In fact it's so bad that I'm behindfoot.*If you seriously expected a prompt reply from me, I'm surprised they let you play with electrical devices.
Tim Collins
was the Lieutenant-Colonel in the Irish Guards who gave that great Old Testamentish speech before the war, which among other things, reminded his men that the blood of any Iraqis killed unjustly would be on their heads. It is not, alas, unknown in history for men who make great speeches to fall from the path of virtue, and Col. Collins stands accused of brutality. But The Telegraph hints furiously that the case against Collins rests upon a tainted source.
More miracles of nature
: An unborn baby can develop normally inside the mother's liver. The miracle of science was delivering Nhala - which means "luck" in Zulu - alive.
Earth seen from just off Mars.
I was surprised to learn that this is the first picture of our planet seen from another. What, did no one think to install a rear-view mirror on a space probe before now? Never mind. Click on the bottom thumbnail and you can just see America.(Via The Corner.)
May 22, 2003
Labour MP Tom Watson
would not agree with me about guns; the poor sap probably wants tough new regulations against paper darts. But I'll forgive him much for giving us this.Mind you, how many of us wouldn't look silly in like circumstances? I bet Bill Cash would sell his House of Commons car pass for something equally embarrassing about Watson. If I were Watson I'd find it prudent to spend the next few nights sitting on my porch with my trusty paper dart over my knees.
(Via Au currant.)
In Ghana
village blacksmiths make guns. I'd be interested to see one. My husband would be fascinated: he once showed me a magazine article about some village on the Afghan-Pakistan border where they'll run you up an AK-47. This AllAfrica report starts off by reporting this as a shocking state of affairs but a note of local pride sneaks in later. It wants them all licensed, of course, but I rather think the customers very much think that the point of buying Ghanaian is that the products come without a customer registration card.It's a pity that the sociology of this sort of thing is necessarily hidden. What percentage of the customers are criminals and what percentage peaceable citizens? Is this industry a cause of rising disorder, a symptom of it, or a solution to it? British experience suggests the latter. In 1914 the government had sufficient trust in its citizens to institute a patriotic scheme whereby lathe hobbyists would make fully functioning artillery shells in their garages. Whatever carnage their may have been in France and Belgium, the murder rate at home was at that time astonishingly low.
This link
shows some very upsetting pictures of the recent bus bombing in Israel. If you are reading this, most probably you will be saddened but not shocked. Those who most need to be shocked (because still capable of being saddened) will either have these images filtered out by their news sources or will filter them out themselves.
The Meme That Would Not Die.
Naomi Klein thinks the rescue of Jessica Lynch was staged because "witnesses" told the BBC that the Americans knew there were no Iraqi combatants in the building. Never mind that the guy who made the BBC documentary she's directly or indirectly getting it from has delicately backed down from this claim. To be fair, though, how would she know? The BBC has not mentioned it.
Any answers?
Brian Micklethwait asks, seriously, if anyone has any better solutions to a difficult childcare situation than chaining the kids to the bed.He has a wider point. In human affairs it's always 1939, never 1933. You'd have stomped on Hitler earlier had you known, but you didn't. Now he's invaded Poland: what are you going to do?
Hmm. Thinking about it, maybe it's always 1938 and Czechoslovakia. You still have some options, but none of them are that good.
It could be you next time.
On a more serious note, because no one was killed or even hurt the Yale law school bombing has not had much coverage here, but it has certainly hit home among the blogosphere. Disturbing. It could have been much worse; there was a childcare centre in the building where the suspected bomb was left. Shades of the Alfred Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma.UPDATE. Sigh. The second (Oxblog) link goes to the wrong place. Try here and scroll down.
Cockroaches to be cremated
, reports The Australian."WHISKERS"
Suddenly, on May 20 2002. Much loved brother of Red, Jumper, Hoppy, Roachie, Roachette, Bouncer, Biter, Scuttles, Springer, Cocky, and Jumping Jack Flash (all also deceased). A very special son to the late "Typhoid" Mary and her beloved husband Splat.Your parting was so sudden,
My heart it felt like stopping.
Now in Giant Cockroach Heaven
Another angel's hopping.
Floral tributes or donations to be distributed among cockroach charities may be sent to Charal Trinvuthipong, Director General, Bangkok Disease Control Department.
May 21, 2003
Les neiges d'antan.
In this strangely hypnotic blog, William Flesch gives us a series of shimmering autobiographical moments.
Mind you,
schools are banned from teaching creationism over at Samizdata. Perry always tells them to get their own blogs.
Digging up Mill's dead body.
I've said my piece about the gall of Roy Hattersley in claiming J S Mill would have joined him in wanting schools to be banned from teaching creationism over at Samizdata.
May 20, 2003
Got that?
My own efforts to flee the People's Republic of Blogger have stalled for the moment, but I'm still scheming.
"This is one of those red meat issues that resonates well doesn't it?,"
writes a reader called Garrison regarding the Doha briefing room. He continues:"I designed a media room for the Boeing company here in Seattle and by the time the construction was done and the electronic equipment was installed we had spent well over $200,000. We also built a nice video taping room so our commercial aircraft CEO could tape messages for the troops. Mind you the corporate headquarters had already fled to Chicago, so this was for only a part of the hierarchy. Remodels of an area can easily cost $100 a square foot not including the electronics. Boeing spent 10s of millions last year alone to upgrade their video conference rooms. Ironically virtual reality isn't all that cheap."
Winner does take all.
A reader disagrees somewhat with my anti airport expansion article below.... it could be that, so long as air-transport in its widest sense is growing that, indeed, choking the growth of an airport (or seaport or...) is potentially very bad.I do take my reader's point. But I don't think it changes mine: the core of my argument is, basically, that compulsory purchase is wrong. My secondary argument was that there is nothing impossible about choosing not to take up every opportunity for economic growth, in this case building a hub airport. He argues well that the benefits to be gained by it, and the losses from not having it, are both more than I would have thought - but it's still wrong. And I'd add that we don't know what structures might evolve if airport builders just did not have the option of bulldozing the homes of a bunch of people living near me.Size matters. There is a certain "je-ne sais quoi" to a transportation hub being the central hub, or at least a main hub. There are still a lot of physical benefits for concentration for logisitics, e.g. one warehouse outside Heathrow covers the world in 24 hours. The same warehouse in, oh, Dublin or Edinburgh doesn;t even do it in 48 hours.
My point, such as it is, is that being a main hub is a not a linear thing. It is unlikely you can be 75% of a main hub, or 80% of a main hub, or 35%, the choice is either you are "it", or you are (at best) a "regional feeder hub" and that that change can be horridly sudden, and cost you massive amounts of money.
It happened in Montreal. Rather than expand an existing airport on the island of Montreal by making preemptive and somewhat expensive land purchases, the diktat came down to build a new improved model airport from zero in a greenfield site 1.25 hours car ride away. There was to be a fast train shuttle to downtown. Continental airtravel was to continue through the old airport. Net result: The train was never built, the new place was FAR from hotels, from contractors, from EVERYTHING, people hated it because transfering was a pain, operations people loathed it. The international airlines moved operations to Toronto.
Currently, the fancy airport in the north is now relegated to aircargo and occasional charter flights ( a huge waste of resources and investment), Montreal downtown is a nice regional airport of no particular international consequence. Toronto grabbed the traffic and ran, and has all the ancilliary economic benefits.
Seaports show the same deal, if your port isn;t deep enough, or you don't have the investments to have the cranes, the efficient container handling, good rail links to the hinterland, suddenly your port is history. It's cheaper to ship to a port 1000 miles away, and have them re-distribute. All the ancilliary industries shift to support, the tugs, the workshsops, the break-bulk specialists, the brokers...
I'm returning to a subject I covered earlier on this blog in posts dating from 7th - 31st August 2002, if anyone wants to surf the archives. Comments from Jim Bennett, Iain Murray, Patrick Crozier on everything from Japan to BANANAS. And though I says it myself as shouldn't, lots of good stuff by me.
US Army: spinmeisters yes, frausters no.
As the post below records I'd be the last to deny that the US military spins like a megawatt turbine. But a BBC documentary called "War Spin" went a whole load further, suggesting that the rescue of Private Jessica Lynch was faked. As usual the BBC displayed a total lack of scepticism towards every source other than the British or US authorities. Read about the whole developing saga on Biased BBC. The interesting thing is that the documentary maker, John Kampfner, has stated today that he now believes that the rescue was not faked. Don't expect the (qualified) retraction to ever catch up with the original story though. Ten years from now, trust me, a drunk woman at a party will solemnly tell you how the whole thing was another fabrication by the George W Bush junta.
They also serve who only sit and design the set.
So that's what "shock and awe" feels like. I was shocked and awed by this line in a New York Times article:Mr. Sforza created the White House "message of the day" backdrops and helped design the $250,000 set at the United States Central Command forward headquarters in Doha, Qatar, during the Iraq war.They had a set designer for a war? It left me stammering, "But I thought - I mean, you know - military efficiency - no-nonsense utilitarianism - ruthless subordination of form to function... "
Check that last. The US military still subordinates form to function: my only mistake was to be stuck in the belief that their only function was devising and carrying out war plans. They spent quarter of a million bucks on the function of looking right to the public.
There's nothing new under the sun. Indeed the Sun King himself would have understood all this well. I just can't bring myself to like it. What a commentary on the crowd-pleasing vapidity of our civilisation - and what a comment on its prodigious riches, alertness to opportunity, and creative power.
(Via Brian's Culture Blog.)
May 19, 2003
Britain must trade internationally to prosper and, in the winner-takes-all world of modern trade, you either do well or you don't do at all. Success tends to reinforce itself, just as it does in the Premiership.Yes, international trade is just like the Premiership. We've all observed how there can only be one prosperous country in the world at any one time. All other countries except this year's cup winners are obviously doomed to have a GNP equal to Liberia's.
The option of giving up a little economic growth for a little less effort or sacrifice doesn't exist.That's why it is a known physical impossibility for any woman to ever turn down a higher paid job because she'd rather spend time with her family. That is why it defies natural law to ever find a successful professional man on the golf-course. That's why everybody works overtime every night. No other options exist.
And while I'm on the subject, why is it that everyone assumes that if budget air travel pushes up demand the only possible answer to that demand is "yes."
The tone I take here may superficially resemble anti-capitalism. Don't be fooled. I love capitalism, but I love it because when freedom is the root, capitalism is the flower. Forcing people to sell their homes when they don't want to isn't freedom and isn't capitalism. The fact that the end result of this process is more trade is irrelevant. The end result of a burglary may well also be more trade, much of it honest, but we don't encourage burglaries on that account.
A mysteriously un-named primary school
will be holding a non-competitive sports day out of sight of the parents in order to "spare the feelings of the losers." But is that really secure from prying eyes? Might not some obsessively competitive parents peek through the railings to watch little Aaron participate in a Class Sharing Event under the great big nylon parachute? To be really sensitive to children's needs, wouldn't it be better to hold Sports Day in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'?Tough on the kids for whom Sports Day was their one big chance to show that they were not losers.
Richard Heddleson
writes:You write:"Everyone thought they [the Germans] were cuties circa 1795."
/humor/ Except perhaps for the Americans to whom they were best remembered as the mercenaries from Hesse hired by the evil Geroge III, King of Great Britain and Ireland, to tyrannize the innocent colonists. (Just a little more beam exposure.) /end humor/
Unfortunately, I am moving or I could find my copy of Albion's Seed that has a wonderful quote about the filthy, unshod, babeling Germans disembarking in Philadelphia to make their way west to what became the Pennsylvania Dutch country.
Now, more Americans (40%) have German blood flowing through their veins than any other nationality
Aaagh! No! Not the Hessians again! No! I can't stand any more!
(Hey, after all that, won't it be a laff if the Blogger archive bug strikes.)
Last to the party.
I was going to weigh in with some criticism of this essay in Right Wing News. However Instapundit and others have been there before me. Germany and other European countries have indeed let the city walls decay, allowing some infiltration of their culture by barbarous elements against whom a previous generation kept better guard. I don't dispute that Mr Grimm saw what he says he did. I don't dispute that it's scary. However I don't like the sound of this:"The Eternal Nazi, I'm afraid, will be with us as long as there is a German nation."Replace "the eternal Nazi" with the Nazi phrase it (ironically? unconsciously?) echoes, "The eternal Jew" and see how it reads. The idea that the Germans are eternally evil is nonsense. Everyone thought they were cuties circa 1795, what with the little toytown states and all. Numerous other groups and nationalities once had completely different reputations than their present ones - somewhere I once read a charming quote about how the Japanese were really too happy and indolent to ever make much of a mark in the coming (twentieth) century.
It says in the Bible, "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye?" One of my regular themes in this blog is that refusing to see the beam in thy brother's eye because of the mote in thine own is also a sin: it denies the differing relative importance of beams and motes. But the beam isn't part of you, traumatic though it may be to remove. Not for the Germans, the Jews, the blacks, the whites, the Palestinians. Not for anyone.