third section, 90 Marc third section, 90 Marc

Will you search through the loamy earth for me?

A real-life story straight out of Detectorists: a gold coin discovered in a field just sold for £648,000 at auction, changing the life of the family involved.

“Describing the moment he found the treasure, Leigh-Mallory said: ‘My trowel exposed the coin. The sun was shining over my shoulder and it glistened. My heart jumped; I thought: ‘This is gold.’ As I picked it up, the sun glinted on the king and my heart seemed to stop.’”

Any excuse to remind people just how wonderful Mackenzie Crook’s three-series (or will that be four?) masterpiece really is.

I’m writing this in the Suffolk countryside, not far from the locations where the show was filmed (I’ll be in the DMDC’s local on Friday), so perhaps I’m biased. But this unassuming, half-hour show about love has a way of quietly entering people’s hearts and staying there. Even hard-bitten critics think it’s one of the best TV series of the century.

Another viewing? Go on then.

Or just listen to the wonderful theme song.

A real-life story straight out of Detectorists: a gold coin discovered in a field just sold for £648,000 at auction, changing the life of the family involved.

“Describing the moment he found the treasure, Leigh-Mallory said: ‘My trowel exposed the coin. The sun was shining over my shoulder and it glistened. My heart jumped; I thought: ‘This is gold.’ As I picked it up, the sun glinted on the king and my heart seemed to stop.’”

Any excuse to remind people just how wonderful Mackenzie Crook’s three-series (or will that be four?) masterpiece really is.

I’m writing this in the Suffolk countryside, not far from the locations where the show was filmed (I’ll be in the DMDC’s local on Friday), so perhaps I’m biased. But this unassuming, half-hour show about love has a way of quietly entering people’s hearts and staying there. Even hard-bitten critics think it’s one of the best TV series of the century.

Another viewing? Go on then.

Or just listen to the wonderful theme song.

Read More
third section, 89 Marc third section, 89 Marc

Save the Blob

“If it had a mind, you could reason with it. If it had a body, you could shoot it. If it had a heart, you could kill it.” (Poster tag-line for The Blob, 1988)

There were some nonsensical anti-Whitehall headlines over the weekend about Boris v. the Blob, presumably all part of Operation Dogmeat or whatever they’re calling the campaign to save the PM’s skin this week. Nakedly self-serving attempts to whip up outrage seem to be par for the political course, but do they have to be crimes against language as well?

The Blob is a useful and important concept, for anyone interested in the culture war. It’s a sign of how unserious Boris Johnson is that his supporters garbled it so badly. “Boris v. the Blob” was used as shorthand for encouraging civil servants back to the office. But the Blob loses all meaning if made synonymous with Whitehall alone.

I traced the Blob to its origins, which lie in the battle for American educational reform, for my book The Long March. The Blob’s meaning later expanded, via Chris Woodhead and Michael Gove, to cover UK education and then other policy areas. But it has always referred to many different but likeminded groups with the power to influence policy coming together in an informal coalition that stymies needed reform. That is the very nature of the Blob. Whitehall can be part of the problem, but it isn’t the Blob all on its own.

Whatever happens to Boris, we must save the real meaning of the Blob. It’s an essential tool to think clearly about the problems we face.

You can read the whole story in my book. Or this article and this one are two recent contributions that understand what’s really going on.

“If it had a mind, you could reason with it. If it had a body, you could shoot it. If it had a heart, you could kill it.” (Poster tag-line for The Blob, 1988)

There were some nonsensical anti-Whitehall headlines over the weekend about Boris v. the Blob, presumably all part of Operation Dogmeat or whatever they’re calling the campaign to save the PM’s skin this week. Nakedly self-serving attempts to whip up outrage seem to be par for the political course, but do they have to be crimes against language as well?

The Blob is a useful and important concept, for anyone interested in the culture war. It’s a sign of how unserious Boris Johnson is that his supporters garbled it so badly. “Boris v. the Blob” was used as shorthand for encouraging civil servants back to the office. But the Blob loses all meaning if made synonymous with Whitehall alone.

I traced the Blob to its origins, which lie in the battle for American educational reform, for my book The Long March. The Blob’s meaning later expanded, via Chris Woodhead and Michael Gove, to cover UK education and then other policy areas. But it has always referred to many different but likeminded groups with the power to influence policy coming together in an informal coalition that stymies needed reform. That is the very nature of the Blob. Whitehall can be part of the problem, but it isn’t the Blob all on its own.

Whatever happens to Boris, we must save the real meaning of the Blob. It’s an essential tool to think clearly about the problems we face.

You can read the whole story in my book. Or this article and this one are two recent contributions that understand what’s really going on.

Read More
third section, 88 Marc third section, 88 Marc

The London Undergound made interesting

If this blog is committed to anything it’s a belief in the sheer interestingness of the world. Here, then, is a guide to the London Underground offering an interesting fact about every station.

Did you know that Barking station has a direct freight service running 7,500 miles direct to & from the city of Yiwu, on China’s east coast? It’s true.

Go look up your local stop.

If this blog is committed to anything it’s a belief in the sheer interestingness of the world. Here, then, is a guide to the London Underground offering an interesting fact about every station.

Did you know that Barking station has a direct freight service running 7,500 miles direct to & from the city of Yiwu, on China’s east coast? It’s true.

Go look up your local stop.

Read More
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Friday Cocktail: Blasphemy, Tom Baker, spaceplanes & more

Sip: on a Cosmonaut

Weekend browsing:

Listen: to Blasphemy, Coldxman

I feel with my heart, but think with my head,

Mix up the parts and we’ll all end up dead…

Have a great weekend.

Sip: on a Cosmonaut

Weekend browsing:

Listen: to Blasphemy, Coldxman

I feel with my heart, but think with my head,

Mix up the parts and we’ll all end up dead…

Have a great weekend.

Read More
third section, 86 Marc third section, 86 Marc

Time for abundant ambition

As Britain shakes off its Covid restrictions, it’s time to think big and act accordingly. Yet here we are, arguing about parties.

Britain has plenty of problems more pressing than Boris Johnson’s lack of moral character. For a sketch of a more fruitful agenda, Derek Thompson’s recent Atlantic essay on an American abundance agenda is well worth a read.

In the past few months, I’ve become obsessed with a policy agenda that is focused on solving our national problem of scarcity. This agenda would try to take the best from several ideologies. It would harness the left’s emphasis on human welfare, but it would encourage the progressive movement to “take innovation as seriously as it takes affordability,” as Ezra Klein wrote. It would tap into libertarians’ obsession with regulation to identify places where bad rules are getting in the way of the common good. It would channel the right’s fixation with national greatness to grow the things that actually make a nation great—such as clean and safe spaces, excellent government services, fantastic living conditions, and broadly shared wealth.

This is the abundance agenda.

This is the cutting-edge political thought we need in the UK too. An agenda that embraces the great realignment and rides roughshod across the turf of both right and left. See also: Alex Tabarrok’s Launching the Innovation Renaissance.

Read the whole thing.

As Britain shakes off its Covid restrictions, it’s time to think big and act accordingly. Yet here we are, arguing about parties.

Britain has plenty of problems more pressing than Boris Johnson’s lack of moral character. For a sketch of a more fruitful agenda, Derek Thompson’s recent Atlantic essay on an American abundance agenda is well worth a read.

In the past few months, I’ve become obsessed with a policy agenda that is focused on solving our national problem of scarcity. This agenda would try to take the best from several ideologies. It would harness the left’s emphasis on human welfare, but it would encourage the progressive movement to “take innovation as seriously as it takes affordability,” as Ezra Klein wrote. It would tap into libertarians’ obsession with regulation to identify places where bad rules are getting in the way of the common good. It would channel the right’s fixation with national greatness to grow the things that actually make a nation great—such as clean and safe spaces, excellent government services, fantastic living conditions, and broadly shared wealth.

This is the abundance agenda.

This is the cutting-edge political thought we need in the UK too. An agenda that embraces the great realignment and rides roughshod across the turf of both right and left. See also: Alex Tabarrok’s Launching the Innovation Renaissance.

Read the whole thing.

Read More
third section, 85 Marc third section, 85 Marc

Making the BBC worse

The BBC licence fee may be on its way out. Amid the partisan takes, Ed West offers a sobering assessment for conservatives of how a commercial BBC could be even more political and still dominate the market.

It could well be that a privatised BBC is even worse. We wouldn’t get a more impartial broadcaster aiming to steer a middle course, we’d get something like CNN, liberal-leaning but with far fewer constraints. The BBC would be far more biased as a private enterprise, and with its huge archives and cultural capital, it would still be a powerful force.

Without a state broadcaster, we’d end up with the American problem of having a “‘neutral’” (heavily ironic double scare-quotes) and a conservative media. Because of Britain’s size and its heavily urban population, the dominant broadcaster would still steer to the Left, but would try to maximise its revenue by flattering the metropolitan prejudices of its audiences. As in the US, conservatives would be the punchline, and now there would be no redress because, unlike the old BBC, it wouldn’t be burdened with the responsibility of caring what you think.

As I’ve written elsewhere, when you lose a culture war, even the blessings of private enterprise won’t save you from the consequences.

Read the whole thing, before Ed follows the trend and restricts his Substack to paying subscribers only.

The BBC licence fee may be on its way out. Amid the partisan takes, Ed West offers a sobering assessment for conservatives of how a commercial BBC could be even more political and still dominate the market.

It could well be that a privatised BBC is even worse. We wouldn’t get a more impartial broadcaster aiming to steer a middle course, we’d get something like CNN, liberal-leaning but with far fewer constraints. The BBC would be far more biased as a private enterprise, and with its huge archives and cultural capital, it would still be a powerful force.

Without a state broadcaster, we’d end up with the American problem of having a “‘neutral’” (heavily ironic double scare-quotes) and a conservative media. Because of Britain’s size and its heavily urban population, the dominant broadcaster would still steer to the Left, but would try to maximise its revenue by flattering the metropolitan prejudices of its audiences. As in the US, conservatives would be the punchline, and now there would be no redress because, unlike the old BBC, it wouldn’t be burdened with the responsibility of caring what you think.

As I’ve written elsewhere, when you lose a culture war, even the blessings of private enterprise won’t save you from the consequences.

Read the whole thing, before Ed follows the trend and restricts his Substack to paying subscribers only.

Read More
third section, 84 Marc third section, 84 Marc

Fighting Words

As the situation in the Ukraine continues to deteriorate towards full-scale conflict, a strikingly robust and well-informed piece by the UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is worth a read.

The British Government is not in dispute with Russia and the Russian people – far from it – but it does take issue with the malign activity of the Kremlin.

So, if one cold January or February night Russian Military forces once more cross into sovereign Ukraine, ignore the ‘straw man’ narratives and ‘false flag’ stories of NATO aggression and remember the President of Russia’s own words in that essay from last summer. Remember it and ask yourself what it means, not just for Ukraine, but for all of us in Europe. What it means the next time…

This piece is striking not just for its clarity and bluntness, but also for being a detailed essay responding, as the quote above shows, to an essay published on the official Russian government website by President Putin last year. Indeed, it echoes that essay explicitly by also being published directly on the UK government site.

It’s fascinating, in passing, to see rival governments conducting one thread of a key geopolitical dispute by publishing directly on their own official websites, rather than by placing their commentary in friendly media as has been traditional. Tech’s publishing revolution continues, also visible in how Bradley’s piece has been shared on Twitter by allies, like the former president of Estonia Toomas Ilves.

But of course, the main concern right now is the threat of a real war breaking out. Britain seems in no mood to look weak. Here’s one summary of the stark choice we seem to have finally reached.

It’s time to put up or shut up. Either we back Kyiv — by giving it full military support and smashing Russia with sanctions, or we have the guts to tell the Ukrainians that we are abandoning the non-Nato east to Russia and start to draw real red lines that we will actually enforce. It’s time to back Ukraine — or, once and for all, just tell these people, who have suffered so much to defend our interests, that they are on their own for good.

As the situation in the Ukraine continues to deteriorate towards full-scale conflict, a strikingly robust and well-informed piece by the UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is worth a read.

The British Government is not in dispute with Russia and the Russian people – far from it – but it does take issue with the malign activity of the Kremlin.

So, if one cold January or February night Russian Military forces once more cross into sovereign Ukraine, ignore the ‘straw man’ narratives and ‘false flag’ stories of NATO aggression and remember the President of Russia’s own words in that essay from last summer. Remember it and ask yourself what it means, not just for Ukraine, but for all of us in Europe. What it means the next time…

This piece is striking not just for its clarity and bluntness, but also for being a detailed essay responding, as the quote above shows, to an essay published on the official Russian government website by President Putin last year. Indeed, it echoes that essay explicitly by also being published directly on the UK government site.

It’s fascinating, in passing, to see rival governments conducting one thread of a key geopolitical dispute by publishing directly on their own official websites, rather than by placing their commentary in friendly media as has been traditional. Tech’s publishing revolution continues, also visible in how Bradley’s piece has been shared on Twitter by allies, like the former president of Estonia Toomas Ilves.

But of course, the main concern right now is the threat of a real war breaking out. Britain seems in no mood to look weak. Here’s one summary of the stark choice we seem to have finally reached.

It’s time to put up or shut up. Either we back Kyiv — by giving it full military support and smashing Russia with sanctions, or we have the guts to tell the Ukrainians that we are abandoning the non-Nato east to Russia and start to draw real red lines that we will actually enforce. It’s time to back Ukraine — or, once and for all, just tell these people, who have suffered so much to defend our interests, that they are on their own for good.

Read More
third section, 83 Marc third section, 83 Marc

Hollywood’s new silent era

Via Bari Weiss, an insight into the American film industry’s new culture of self-censorship:

“Everyone has gone so underground with their true feelings about things,” said Mike White, the writer and director behind the hit HBO comedy-drama “The White Lotus.” “If you voice things in a certain way it can really have negative repercussions for you…

Timur Kuran’s classic on preference falsification Private Truths, Public Lies remains the most important unread book of our times.

Read the whole thing.

Via Bari Weiss, an insight into the American film industry’s new culture of self-censorship:

“Everyone has gone so underground with their true feelings about things,” said Mike White, the writer and director behind the hit HBO comedy-drama “The White Lotus.” “If you voice things in a certain way it can really have negative repercussions for you…

Timur Kuran’s classic on preference falsification Private Truths, Public Lies remains the most important unread book of our times.

Read the whole thing.

Read More
third section, 82 Marc third section, 82 Marc

Friday Cocktail: Nova Scotia

Sip: on a Nova Scotia

Weekend browsing:

Listen: Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, 662

“There’s a sound in the ground, and it cuts right through –

well, you can only find it right here in the 662.”

Have a great weekend.

Sip: on a Nova Scotia

Weekend browsing:

Listen: Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, 662

“There’s a sound in the ground, and it cuts right through –

well, you can only find it right here in the 662.”

Have a great weekend.

Read More
third section, 81 Marc third section, 81 Marc

For the love of God, look up

In less than a week, a giant space rock bigger than the Empire State Building will zoom past Earth. I don’t know, maybe someone important should look up and wonder if we are taking big risks seriously enough.

In a good piece by Matt Yglesias, he argues that the disaster-movie-satire Don’t Look Up, which has been a recent sensation on Netflix, works better if you extend the metaphor beyond climate change – to, say, comet strikes or even supervolcano eruptions.

I don’t want to tell you that there has never been a story in the mainstream press about supervolcanoes, but there really aren’t very many. There’s no mainstream constituency at all to fund a larger scientific effort to understand supervolcano risk and how to mitigate it. And a candidate for office who goes on “Meet The Press” to say one of his top priorities in Congress is improving U.S. efforts to tackle supervolcanoes would be roundly mocked.

There are some catastrophes that we know have a real change of happening (including pandemics and, yes, even supervolcanoes), that we don’t prepare for properly. What if we get another Carrington event – only worse. Do you know just how big solar storms can get?

Of course, the idea of total control is a delusion. Some things can’t be stopped. Maybe Elon Musk is right that we need a second planet as a backup, stat. But meanwhile here on Earth we barely try. Even in the middle of a devastating pandemic, we somehow can’t summon the attention to pre-empt the next outbreak.

Here’s Dominic Cummings in his email newsletter January 7:

As many have pointed out, despite the enormity of the covid disaster, we are still allowing extremely dangerous research to continue in labs without adequate safety regimes! And of course there is practically no mainstream media coverage, just like in 2019 when I blogged on it!

And we are failing to build many things we should be building, here and across the world, to help detect future natural or manmade pandemic threats and ensure they are suppressed one way or another. Follow @kesvelt and @geochurch for details.

And here’s Matt Yglesias again, saying something very similar:

What’s particularly frustrating about this is that we have a clear success story in Operation Warp Speed. Instead of treating that as a one-off, it should be a foundation for continued, ongoing research into super vaccines targeting whole virus families, new generations of antiviral drugs, a better understanding of air filters, designing new iterations of masks, the whole deal. If you went on TV to talk about comets, people would laugh at you. But people on TV are talking about the pandemic all the time. So why can’t we talk about forward-looking pandemic policy?

Read the whole thing.

In less than a week, a giant space rock bigger than the Empire State Building will zoom past Earth. I don’t know, maybe someone important should look up and wonder if we are taking big risks seriously enough.

In a good piece by Matt Yglesias, he argues that the disaster-movie-satire Don’t Look Up, which has been a recent sensation on Netflix, works better if you extend the metaphor beyond climate change – to, say, comet strikes or even supervolcano eruptions.

I don’t want to tell you that there has never been a story in the mainstream press about supervolcanoes, but there really aren’t very many. There’s no mainstream constituency at all to fund a larger scientific effort to understand supervolcano risk and how to mitigate it. And a candidate for office who goes on “Meet The Press” to say one of his top priorities in Congress is improving U.S. efforts to tackle supervolcanoes would be roundly mocked.

There are some catastrophes that we know have a real change of happening (including pandemics and, yes, even supervolcanoes), that we don’t prepare for properly. What if we get another Carrington event – only worse. Do you know just how big solar storms can get?

Of course, the idea of total control is a delusion. Some things can’t be stopped. Maybe Elon Musk is right that we need a second planet as a backup, stat. But meanwhile here on Earth we barely try. Even in the middle of a devastating pandemic, we somehow can’t summon the attention to pre-empt the next outbreak.

Here’s Dominic Cummings in his email newsletter January 7:

As many have pointed out, despite the enormity of the covid disaster, we are still allowing extremely dangerous research to continue in labs without adequate safety regimes! And of course there is practically no mainstream media coverage, just like in 2019 when I blogged on it!

And we are failing to build many things we should be building, here and across the world, to help detect future natural or manmade pandemic threats and ensure they are suppressed one way or another. Follow @kesvelt and @geochurch for details.

And here’s Matt Yglesias again, saying something very similar:

What’s particularly frustrating about this is that we have a clear success story in Operation Warp Speed. Instead of treating that as a one-off, it should be a foundation for continued, ongoing research into super vaccines targeting whole virus families, new generations of antiviral drugs, a better understanding of air filters, designing new iterations of masks, the whole deal. If you went on TV to talk about comets, people would laugh at you. But people on TV are talking about the pandemic all the time. So why can’t we talk about forward-looking pandemic policy?

Read the whole thing.

Read More
third section, 80 Marc third section, 80 Marc

Meritocrats v the people

An important essay by Adrian Wooldridge on how meritocracy has created one of the most important divisions in modern life.

The biggest division in modern society is not between the owners of the means of production and the workers, as Karl Marx posited. It is not between the patriarchy and women or the white races and non-white races, as the post-modernists posit. It is between the meritocracy and the people, the cognitive elite and the masses, the exam-passers and the exam-flunkers. The winners are becoming intolerably smug. The losers are turning in on themselves, with an epidemic of suicides and drug addiction reducing the life-expectancy of working-class Americans for the first time in a century. And the tumbrils are beginning to operate.

The global establishment is, above all, a meritocratic establishment: it consists of people who have done well at school and university and who have gravitated to jobs that require both intellectual skills and evidence of those intellectual skills in the form of credentials. There are various sub-divisions within this elite: people who work for universities and NGOs like to snipe at people who work for business and banks, but in fact all members of the global elite have more in common than they like to think.

They routinely marry other members of the meritocratic elite: the marriage announcements in the New York Times read rather like marriage announcements between blue-blooded families in the high Victorian age, with the lists of university degrees (Harvard and Yale marries Brown and Columbia!) replacing lists of family pedigrees. Only two out of every thousand marriages are between a partner with a university degree and a partner with primary qualifications only. They usually share a common outlook. They pride themselves on their cosmopolitan values partly because they live in a borderless world – they are forever hopping over borders, in their business trips and foreign holidays – and partly because liberal immigration policies provide them with all the accoutrements of a cash-rich and time-starved lifestyle, cleaners, baby-sitters and exotic restaurants. They like to demonstrate their sympathy with racial and sexual minorities: businesses are now busily importing affirmative action schemes and gay-friendly policies from universities. But they don’t give much of a damn for the old-fashioned working class: whether they will admit it or not, many exam-passers think that those left behind deserve their dismal fate not just because they are less intelligent than the exam-passers but because they are less enlightened as well.

The populist movement that is sweeping the world is, more than anything else, a revolt against meritocracy. The groups that are driving the rise of populism have disparate material interests: they consist of traditional working-class people, Main Street business people such as real-estate agents and old-line manufacturers, and older voters who came of age before the great university expansion of the 1960s. But they are united by their common opposition to the meritocratic elite with their cosmopolitan values and habit of valuing intellectual achievement over physical skills.

Read the whole thing.

An important essay by Adrian Wooldridge on how meritocracy has created one of the most important divisions in modern life.

The biggest division in modern society is not between the owners of the means of production and the workers, as Karl Marx posited. It is not between the patriarchy and women or the white races and non-white races, as the post-modernists posit. It is between the meritocracy and the people, the cognitive elite and the masses, the exam-passers and the exam-flunkers. The winners are becoming intolerably smug. The losers are turning in on themselves, with an epidemic of suicides and drug addiction reducing the life-expectancy of working-class Americans for the first time in a century. And the tumbrils are beginning to operate.

The global establishment is, above all, a meritocratic establishment: it consists of people who have done well at school and university and who have gravitated to jobs that require both intellectual skills and evidence of those intellectual skills in the form of credentials. There are various sub-divisions within this elite: people who work for universities and NGOs like to snipe at people who work for business and banks, but in fact all members of the global elite have more in common than they like to think.

They routinely marry other members of the meritocratic elite: the marriage announcements in the New York Times read rather like marriage announcements between blue-blooded families in the high Victorian age, with the lists of university degrees (Harvard and Yale marries Brown and Columbia!) replacing lists of family pedigrees. Only two out of every thousand marriages are between a partner with a university degree and a partner with primary qualifications only. They usually share a common outlook. They pride themselves on their cosmopolitan values partly because they live in a borderless world – they are forever hopping over borders, in their business trips and foreign holidays – and partly because liberal immigration policies provide them with all the accoutrements of a cash-rich and time-starved lifestyle, cleaners, baby-sitters and exotic restaurants. They like to demonstrate their sympathy with racial and sexual minorities: businesses are now busily importing affirmative action schemes and gay-friendly policies from universities. But they don’t give much of a damn for the old-fashioned working class: whether they will admit it or not, many exam-passers think that those left behind deserve their dismal fate not just because they are less intelligent than the exam-passers but because they are less enlightened as well.

The populist movement that is sweeping the world is, more than anything else, a revolt against meritocracy. The groups that are driving the rise of populism have disparate material interests: they consist of traditional working-class people, Main Street business people such as real-estate agents and old-line manufacturers, and older voters who came of age before the great university expansion of the 1960s. But they are united by their common opposition to the meritocratic elite with their cosmopolitan values and habit of valuing intellectual achievement over physical skills.

Read the whole thing.

Read More
third section, 79 Marc third section, 79 Marc

A reason to be cheerful

For all the political chaos and the ongoing misery of the pandemic, important human progress is still being made. The New York Times reports that a heart from a gene-edited pig has been successfully transplanted into a human patient.

“This is a watershed event,” said Dr. David Klassen, the chief medical officer of the United Network for Organ Sharing and a transplant physician. “Doors are starting to open that will lead, I believe, to major changes in how we treat organ failure.”

The internet wants you to be angry. Don’t give in without remembering all the reasons to be optimistic. Here’s a whole bunch more.

For all the political chaos and the ongoing misery of the pandemic, important human progress is still being made. The New York Times reports that a heart from a gene-edited pig has been successfully transplanted into a human patient.

“This is a watershed event,” said Dr. David Klassen, the chief medical officer of the United Network for Organ Sharing and a transplant physician. “Doors are starting to open that will lead, I believe, to major changes in how we treat organ failure.”

The internet wants you to be angry. Don’t give in without remembering all the reasons to be optimistic. Here’s a whole bunch more.

Read More
third section, 78 Marc third section, 78 Marc

Remembering Roger Scruton

Happy new year. I kicked off 2022 by reviewing a collection of the late Roger Scruton’s journalism for the Sunday Telegraph. It was a pleasure, not least because it reminded me just what a good writer he was.

Here are three sample paragraphs that caught my eye:

Nevertheless the victims of Communism tried to hold on to the things that were sacred to them, and which spoke to them of the free and responsible life. The family was sacred; so too was religion, whether Christian or Jewish. So too was the underground store of knowledge – the forbidden knowledge of the nation's history and its claims to their loyalty. Those were the things that people would not exchange or relinquish even when required by the party to betray them. They were the consecrated treasures, hidden below the desecrated cities, where they glowed more brightly in the dark. Thus there grew an underground world of freedom and truth, where it was no longer necessary, as Havel put it, 'to live within the lie'.

(Spectator, 2014)

Left to his own in a godless universe, modern man sees no reason to deny himself and desires only the excuses that will justify him in the eyes of creatures like himself. And since he recognizes no authority higher than science, it is to science that he turns for his exculpation. The sciences that are chosen as his idols are those which are most prodigal of excuses, which rain down upon him a stream of whitewashing explanations and which tell him in one and the same breath that he deserves our sympathy and that he cannot be blamed.

(Times, 1986)

I first encountered hunting in my early 40s. It was quite by chance that I should be trotting down a Cotswold lane on a friend's old pony when the uniformed centaurs came galloping past. One minute I was lost in solitary thoughts, the next I was in a world transfigured by collective energy. Imagine opening your front door one morning to put out the milk and finding yourself in a vast cathedral in ancient Byzantium, the voices of the choir resounding in the dome above you and the congregation gorgeous in their holiday robes. My experience was comparable. The energy that swept me away was neither human nor canine nor equine but a peculiar synthesis of the three: a tribute to centuries of mutual dependence, revived for this moment in ritual form.

(Telegraph, 2012)

The book will be out later this month but you can pre-order it here.

Happy new year. I kicked off 2022 by reviewing a collection of the late Roger Scruton’s journalism for the Sunday Telegraph. It was a pleasure, not least because it reminded me just what a good writer he was.

Here are three sample paragraphs that caught my eye:

Nevertheless the victims of Communism tried to hold on to the things that were sacred to them, and which spoke to them of the free and responsible life. The family was sacred; so too was religion, whether Christian or Jewish. So too was the underground store of knowledge – the forbidden knowledge of the nation's history and its claims to their loyalty. Those were the things that people would not exchange or relinquish even when required by the party to betray them. They were the consecrated treasures, hidden below the desecrated cities, where they glowed more brightly in the dark. Thus there grew an underground world of freedom and truth, where it was no longer necessary, as Havel put it, 'to live within the lie'.

(Spectator, 2014)

Left to his own in a godless universe, modern man sees no reason to deny himself and desires only the excuses that will justify him in the eyes of creatures like himself. And since he recognizes no authority higher than science, it is to science that he turns for his exculpation. The sciences that are chosen as his idols are those which are most prodigal of excuses, which rain down upon him a stream of whitewashing explanations and which tell him in one and the same breath that he deserves our sympathy and that he cannot be blamed.

(Times, 1986)

I first encountered hunting in my early 40s. It was quite by chance that I should be trotting down a Cotswold lane on a friend's old pony when the uniformed centaurs came galloping past. One minute I was lost in solitary thoughts, the next I was in a world transfigured by collective energy. Imagine opening your front door one morning to put out the milk and finding yourself in a vast cathedral in ancient Byzantium, the voices of the choir resounding in the dome above you and the congregation gorgeous in their holiday robes. My experience was comparable. The energy that swept me away was neither human nor canine nor equine but a peculiar synthesis of the three: a tribute to centuries of mutual dependence, revived for this moment in ritual form.

(Telegraph, 2012)

The book will be out later this month but you can pre-order it here.

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Christmas Cocktail: Smoking Bishop

Sip: on a Smoking Bishop – as featured in the final heartwarming scene of A Christmas Carol

Christmas Holiday Browsing:

Listen: Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home), Lady A

To the lights on the tree

I’m watching them shine

You should be here with me

Baby please come home…

Have a wonderful Christmas. Regular posts will return in the new year.

Sip: on a Smoking Bishop – as featured in the final heartwarming scene of A Christmas Carol

Christmas Holiday Browsing:

Listen: Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home), Lady A

To the lights on the tree

I’m watching them shine

You should be here with me

Baby please come home…

Have a wonderful Christmas. Regular posts will return in the new year.

Read More
third section, 77 Marc third section, 77 Marc

A Fourth Revolution: will China win?

China is close to achieving a critical mass of skills, technology, and supply-chain depth that will leave the United States behind—just as the United States left Britain behind during the twentieth century.

That’s from a sobering essay by David Goldman, arguing that China has developed a significant lead in the core technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, primarily AI and 5G. And, Goldman argues, “Digital technology is a winner-take-all world“.

If China creates the dominant firms with AI/big data applications, trillions of dollars of wealth will migrate to China from the United States. The capacity of American firms to maintain high levels of R&D and preserve America’s technological edge will erode rapidly.

You can see where this is going…

The United States can still lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But we do not have a lot of time to lose. China is close to attaining a critical mass of talent, skills, technological capacity, and logistical depth with a population nearly five times that of the United States. At some point in the foreseeable future, the United States will not be able to catch up.

Goldman favours a smarter, old-style industrial policy to carry the day. Is that really a magic bullet? Food for thought, anyway.

Read the whole thing.

China is close to achieving a critical mass of skills, technology, and supply-chain depth that will leave the United States behind—just as the United States left Britain behind during the twentieth century.

That’s from a sobering essay by David Goldman, arguing that China has developed a significant lead in the core technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, primarily AI and 5G. And, Goldman argues, “Digital technology is a winner-take-all world“.

If China creates the dominant firms with AI/big data applications, trillions of dollars of wealth will migrate to China from the United States. The capacity of American firms to maintain high levels of R&D and preserve America’s technological edge will erode rapidly.

You can see where this is going…

The United States can still lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution. But we do not have a lot of time to lose. China is close to attaining a critical mass of talent, skills, technological capacity, and logistical depth with a population nearly five times that of the United States. At some point in the foreseeable future, the United States will not be able to catch up.

Goldman favours a smarter, old-style industrial policy to carry the day. Is that really a magic bullet? Food for thought, anyway.

Read the whole thing.

Read More
third section, 76 Marc third section, 76 Marc

Towards an un-social society?

South Korea, a country at the forefront of technological innovation, appears to be using the pandemic to build back lonelier, if this report of its plans for an “untact” society (one that minimises face-to-face human contact, especially with strangers) are right. You may think that sounds like a nightmare, but there will be contact-free solutions to help you with that too.

Loneliness among elderly people – an existing problem in South Korea only exacerbated by the pandemic – is also receiving the untact treatment.

SK Telecom’s AI Care service is among several being deployed across the country that allows seniors living alone to interact with an AI speaker by asking it to play music, have a simple conversation, perform quizzes, or even call for help in an emergency. The system has reportedly reduced loneliness among users, and even been credited with saving lives by the country’s president.

Using innovation to streamline the routines of everyday life makes sense, but quite a lot of the point of everyday life is to spend it in human company. Let’s hope it doesn’t give Number Ten any ideas.

South Korea, a country at the forefront of technological innovation, appears to be using the pandemic to build back lonelier, if this report of its plans for an “untact” society (one that minimises face-to-face human contact, especially with strangers) are right. You may think that sounds like a nightmare, but there will be contact-free solutions to help you with that too.

Loneliness among elderly people – an existing problem in South Korea only exacerbated by the pandemic – is also receiving the untact treatment.

SK Telecom’s AI Care service is among several being deployed across the country that allows seniors living alone to interact with an AI speaker by asking it to play music, have a simple conversation, perform quizzes, or even call for help in an emergency. The system has reportedly reduced loneliness among users, and even been credited with saving lives by the country’s president.

Using innovation to streamline the routines of everyday life makes sense, but quite a lot of the point of everyday life is to spend it in human company. Let’s hope it doesn’t give Number Ten any ideas.

Read More
third section, 75 Marc third section, 75 Marc

A Christmas ghost story

With Omicron on the prowl and the nights drawing in, why not take a break from it all with a tall tale of imaginary horrors?

Stigma is an excellent half-hour chiller from the BBC archives that’s just landed on iPlayer. Part of the old series A Ghost Story for Christmas, this compressed drama isn’t especially seasonal but it is genuinely creepy. Unlike the older, familiar ghostly masterpieces of M.R. James, Stigma is made (and set) in 1977, and features a modern, middle-class family – mother, father (Peter Bowles), and teenage daughter Verity – who live in an old country cottage. They decide to dig up an ancient menhir in the back garden… It doesn’t go well.

If this whets your appetite, another minor classic in the same vein is Robin Redbreast from 1970, which is itself a precursor to The Wicker Man, made just three years later. What made the Seventies a golden decade for this kind of horror? Discuss. But first, draw the curtains, turn down the lights and enjoy…

With Omicron on the prowl and the nights drawing in, why not take a break from it all with a tall tale of imaginary horrors?

Stigma is an excellent half-hour chiller from the BBC archives that’s just landed on iPlayer. Part of the old series A Ghost Story for Christmas, this compressed drama isn’t especially seasonal but it is genuinely creepy. Unlike the older, familiar ghostly masterpieces of M.R. James, Stigma is made (and set) in 1977, and features a modern, middle-class family – mother, father (Peter Bowles), and teenage daughter Verity – who live in an old country cottage. They decide to dig up an ancient menhir in the back garden… It doesn’t go well.

If this whets your appetite, another minor classic in the same vein is Robin Redbreast from 1970, which is itself a precursor to The Wicker Man, made just three years later. What made the Seventies a golden decade for this kind of horror? Discuss. But first, draw the curtains, turn down the lights and enjoy…

Read More
third section, 74 Marc third section, 74 Marc

Prepare for the century of the internet (maybe)

A bullish essay in Foreign Policy from the always-interesting Balaji Srinivasan, co-authored by Parag Khanna, makes the case that neither China nor America can win the twenty-first century, because it already belongs to the rapidly-developing, decentralised technology of Web3.

[R]ather than a unipolar Pax Americana or a bipolar “New Cold War,” the future will be a decentralized race to the top as countries, cities, companies, and communities—physical and virtual—compete to attract talent and capital. We do not argue that states are irrelevant; rather, they will be more relevant if they embrace the arrow of history and work with the network and less relevant if they attempt rearguard actions against it.”

Given how badly some older utopian predictions about the internet’s power to limit central power have fared, all this should be taken with a heavy pinch of salt. Talk of inevitability is always questionable. But it’s a clear statement of the optimists’ position, and a useful corrective to other narratives of inevitability, especially about the rise of China.

Read the whole thing.

A bullish essay in Foreign Policy from the always-interesting Balaji Srinivasan, co-authored by Parag Khanna, makes the case that neither China nor America can win the twenty-first century, because it already belongs to the rapidly-developing, decentralised technology of Web3.

[R]ather than a unipolar Pax Americana or a bipolar “New Cold War,” the future will be a decentralized race to the top as countries, cities, companies, and communities—physical and virtual—compete to attract talent and capital. We do not argue that states are irrelevant; rather, they will be more relevant if they embrace the arrow of history and work with the network and less relevant if they attempt rearguard actions against it.”

Given how badly some older utopian predictions about the internet’s power to limit central power have fared, all this should be taken with a heavy pinch of salt. Talk of inevitability is always questionable. But it’s a clear statement of the optimists’ position, and a useful corrective to other narratives of inevitability, especially about the rise of China.

Read the whole thing.

Read More
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Friday Cocktail: Egg Nog

Sip: on some seasonal Egg Nog, with this simple, shaker-based recipe

Weekend browsing:

Listen: John Prine, Christmas in Prison

“She reminds me of a chess game

With someone I admire

Or a picnic in the rain

After a prairie fire…“

Sip: on some seasonal Egg Nog, with this simple, shaker-based recipe

Weekend browsing:

Listen: John Prine, Christmas in Prison

“She reminds me of a chess game

With someone I admire

Or a picnic in the rain

After a prairie fire…“

Read More
third section, 72 Marc third section, 72 Marc

Never mind the news, get boosted

While Westminster, as usual, tears itself apart over petty infighting, the only news that really matters is that an Omicron wave looks very likely to be heading our way, and fast. It could peak as early as the start of January.

The wisdom or not of the government’s Plan B isn’t important. Get your booster jab now, get some decent masks and take sensible precautions. With luck, the UK’s vaccine wall should limit severe symptoms and death, but it’s too early to know. A huge wave of infections could still cause real problems, and there are some worrying signs that younger patients are ending up in South African ICUs.

You can read one of the best summaries so far here. (He may update with a new post later today). A few key points:

Omicron re-infects those who have already been sick, or breaks through to those who have been vaccinated, much more than Delta.

…we don’t know if it causes less severe disease yet, our evidence is ambiguous.

Omicron cases on average are much more mild because there will be a much higher percentage of re-infections and breakthrough cases, which are highly protected against severe disease.

There is going to be a period early in 2022 when there are quite a lot of Omicron cases, such that it will be difficult to remain uninfected and it will likely be difficult to get any kind of medical treatment at a hospital. Be ready.

Also be ready in case of lockdowns and other government restrictions, especially if you live in Europe where they’ve shown a willingness to use them. And if you’re immunocompromised or otherwise at high enough risk you need to be sure to not get Omicron, then the price of success is getting super paranoid soon and lock down hard, for at least several months.

Read the whole thing.

While Westminster, as usual, tears itself apart over petty infighting, the only news that really matters is that an Omicron wave looks very likely to be heading our way, and fast. It could peak as early as the start of January.

The wisdom or not of the government’s Plan B isn’t important. Get your booster jab now, get some decent masks and take sensible precautions. With luck, the UK’s vaccine wall should limit severe symptoms and death, but it’s too early to know. A huge wave of infections could still cause real problems, and there are some worrying signs that younger patients are ending up in South African ICUs.

You can read one of the best summaries so far here. (He may update with a new post later today). A few key points:

Omicron re-infects those who have already been sick, or breaks through to those who have been vaccinated, much more than Delta.

…we don’t know if it causes less severe disease yet, our evidence is ambiguous.

Omicron cases on average are much more mild because there will be a much higher percentage of re-infections and breakthrough cases, which are highly protected against severe disease.

There is going to be a period early in 2022 when there are quite a lot of Omicron cases, such that it will be difficult to remain uninfected and it will likely be difficult to get any kind of medical treatment at a hospital. Be ready.

Also be ready in case of lockdowns and other government restrictions, especially if you live in Europe where they’ve shown a willingness to use them. And if you’re immunocompromised or otherwise at high enough risk you need to be sure to not get Omicron, then the price of success is getting super paranoid soon and lock down hard, for at least several months.

Read the whole thing.

Read More