Recently readAl Gore writing a book called An Assault on Reason is like Paris Hilton writing a book called An Assault on Modesty. Is that his mission statement? Give me strength.
That said, I hope he does run: The war between his supporters, Hillary’s, and Obama’s would probably do a lot of damage to the Democratic Party, […]
Filed under: Life, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend | 4 Comments »
Live it, learn it, love it:
Individuals often have more control over the online environment than off-line. Paradoxically, many commentators bemoan the fact that people online are self-obsessed, they talk about the echo chamber. At the same time, they also complain about the lack of awareness, sophistication and professionalism of online interactions. Both may be (and […]
Filed under: Individuality vs Collectivism, Life, The State Is Not Your Friend | 4 Comments »
Guido’s got the number of the anti-human environmentalists.
[T]he essential problem with Greens [is] they want things that no sensible person would not want, such as clean air and water, a safe and sustainable environment - but the priority is “Earth First“, humans second. With new eco-technologies we don’t need to go back to living in […]
Filed under: Law, Life, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend | 2 Comments »
So Gordon Brown is proposing - with not many details forthcoming yet - a ratings system for the internet. This is to “protect childhood,” of course. Yeah, good luck with that one, smartypants. I wonder if he, like Tony Blair, thinks it’s cute that he is utterly clueless when it comes to the web.
I know […]
Filed under: Law, Life, Politics, Technology, The State Is Not Your Friend | 21 Comments »
First, the studies that the government uses to support its innovation spending decisions are almost all flawed (surprise, surprise). Those in favor of the funding (i.e., those with the most to gain from it) present clearly biased and problematic studies supporting the funding, and the government still hasn’t learned to be skeptical of such reports. […]
Filed under: Life, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend | No Comments »
Patrick Crozier did a podcast of Antoine’s talk last night to the 6/20 gathering. He covered cheque book politics in the US and UK, how the Democrats’ fan base (but not the Democratic party itself) is doing the best job of any political group of making good use of emergent technologies, the illegitimacy of democracy, […]
Filed under: Family, Friends, Law, Life, Podcasts, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend | No Comments »
You know, I absolutely love France. Its perpetually assholish governments…not so much. Here’s the latest dangerous, stupid thing they’ve come up with: Making it against the law for anyone but ‘professional journalists’ to report on acts of violence.
The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence […]
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Last night, Antoine and I were working side by side on our laptops when he noticed I was reading this. He asked me if I’d add it to my Furl feed so he could pick it up in his RSS reader later. And then Adriana picked up on it from my feed, to my delight:
What […]
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These quotations, from the comments on this post, pretty well encapsulate my worldview:
Either people own themselves, their labor, and their fruits, to do with and dispose of as they will, or they don’t. If the community owns what I make and what I do, then I don’t own my own actions.
It’s that simple: do you […]
Filed under: Law, Life, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend | 2 Comments »
Or: Another reason to wish Prince Charles would go away. So we should ban McDonald’s out of existence, but it’s fine to eat crisps, chocolate, biscuits, cakes, pasties, steak and ale pie….as long as they’re Charles’s own brand of calorific, fatty goodness, right? We just need our friends in Parliament to look out for the […]
Filed under: Food, Life, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend | 1 Comment »
Brian’s photo and brief quotation on Tony Blair’s “strategy” to combat gun crime pretty much says it all - apart from that it is truly astonishing how many people are truly astonished that, when only criminals and the police have guns, you get gun crime. Fancy that!
I just accidentally heard some of Radio Four’s […]
Filed under: Law, Life, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend | 8 Comments »
This, via Perry, is bang on:
What scofflaws need now, and what the majority of our population will wish for in the future, probably at the point where the government finally does try to seize every handgun or require every citizen be fingerprinted and have his or her DNA sequenced and recorded in a permanent database, […]
Filed under: Happiness, Individuality vs Collectivism, Law, Life, Politics, The State Is Not Your Friend | 5 Comments »
Has there ever been a better example of why regulation sucks?
Last year, more than 350 companies went public in Europe, selling $86 billion of stock, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In the U.S., 235 companies raised $48 billion in IPOs. In 1999, 507 companies went public in the U.S., selling a combined $63.93 billion […]
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Michael Jennings explains why the formerly nationalised British Telecom is such a pain in the backside here:
Yes, well, BT should have been broken up into a number of pieces prior to privatisation and then the pieces should have been allowed to compete with each other. However like with most British privatisations, the Treasury figured out […]
Filed under: Business, Life, Technology, The State Is Not Your Friend, Treating Customers Well | No Comments »