Recently in Blogosphere Category

L. Neil Smith finally does a real blog, "L. Neil Smith at Random", with comments enabled. I've long thought that Neil's writing would fit the format, and now I'm sure of it.

The Dissident Frogman has incorporated my Japanese translations of his popular "Support Denmark" banners into his multilingual contributions archive page.

My thanks to knowledgeable friends Mariko and Garth for their thorough critiques of my pre-final draft. Thanks also for feedback on the issue of translating the original phrase "the legacy of the West", which was problematic, by these people on the honyaku mailing list: Richard Thieme, Peter Durfee, Benjamin Barrett, J.C. Helary, and James Sparks.

Charles Hudson has written an interesting opinion piece on the potential of Yelp (which I mentioned recently.) Thanks to Matthew P. for the pointer. Excerpt:

Yelp is collecting a ton of data from those who take the time to rate and review restaurants, hotels, etc. In the same way that Junglee/Amazon revolutionized how people find books and other goods by using collaborative filtering, I can see Yelp (at scale) achieving a similar aim. Right now, the "missing lens" is the ability to filter reviews and ratings based on similar interests. I would love the ability to use Yelp to filter reviews and ratings based on how similar other reviewers' scores are to ones that I have entered. This is something that nobody seems to be doing today. Ultimately, this collaborative filtering might prove even more useful than reviews provided by my friends.

Some friends of a friend started a geographically-oriented business review site, Yelp.com, with an apparent emphasis on restaurant reviews (but an ontology supporting very many more categories.)

I've joined on her recommendation, and have been surprised to discover just how useful it's been already: I've found some nearby places I'd never considered before, and am now using to drive some of my purchases at local specialty shops.

Now, whether Yelp is another Next Big Thing remains to be seen. It's a closed system, with no apparent provision for RSS syndication of the content we the users add to the review base, and relatedly, no leveraging of microformat standards such as hReview, a serious issue (thanks to Mike Linksvayer for pointing me to this recently.)

Yelp seems to have purchased a GIS-oriented business database, and coded some Google Maps integration into their interface. Rather nice, but entirely US-oriented, with no indication they're ready to scale into the English-speaking markets of Tokyo (big expat and traveller population) and other locales.

Speaking of which, I just tried inviting a good friend, an American living in Panama who could be a productive member of the Yelp community, and he sent me back this, reprinted with his permission:

'Hi Russell,

These morons ask for a zip code and won't accept my sign-up without one. I see this sort of shit all the time. When are US geeks going to get a clue the the US is not the world and that not everyone who has internet also has a "zip" code? So Thanks, but no thanks. I won't sign up with jingoistic idiots. Please feel free to pass along my exact words, if it pleases you.

Regards,
Sandy'

Wow. Well, he does have a point. I see this as one of those "We weren't planning to be so successful" scaling issues. Can't count the number of times I've seen this. I think the Yelpers really should have generalized their GIS integration to allow world-wide registration, from the very beginning. I have lots of friends in Europe, Asia, and South America who won't be able to join due to this and related issues. Maybe agitating in the Yelp forums about this might help; I've noticed they do tend to pay attention to issues of interface (e.g. marking businesses as closed or moved) so they may listen. Of course, they may be planning some kind of world-market rollout, but it would help if they advertised that somewhere prominent.

In the meantime, I'm going to use the hell out of it until and unless it ceases to be interesting. It's a much more convenient place for me to bulk-load all those pictures of food and storefronts I take in my travels, more so than the Movable Type blogging interface I'm using here, and since most of my reviews are locale-specific, it's probably a better place for my rants and raves about local businesses (and ones I visit in other cities.)

Just minutes after I'd complained in my latest blog posting about the lack of taxonomies for doing business reviews, Mike Linksvayer leaves a comment to the contrary:

In-blog reviews, no hacking required beyond copy and paste.

In the fullness of time these will be aggregated by someone for viewing in the context of similar reviews. On the other hand, reviews posted at review sites may be similarly aggregated.

I've caught the "Billion Monkeys" meme from my English blogger friend Brian Micklethwait (whom I met during my London sojourn in the early 1990's), who coined the term to describe those who take digital photographs of, well, others of those who take digital photographs of others. Here's one from my trip last spring to Beijing, a tour guide in the Forbidden City:

I occasionally attend some rather memorable lectures on topics of extropian interest, such as Aubrey de Grey's lectures at Stanford last summer. I've gotten permission to post some of the recordings I've taken with my iPod/iTalk combination, but have not yet aggregated those recordings for public consumption. With yesterday's announcement by audioblog.com concerning their "unmetered bandwidth" plan, I just may have found my venue. Stay tuned.

A year and a half ago, I posted "'None of Your Business!': the American Community Survey" in which I reported on Ron Paul's opinions on an illegal expansion of the U.S. Census. In the time since, by what admittedly are very modest standards compared to much more popular poltically-oriented blogs, the post has generated a consistent level of interest, not so much from what little I said, but from a snowball effect brought on by the increasingly large number of comments from people who've been harassed by minions of the American Community Survey.

Makes me glad that I didn't shut down my blog some months ago, as I'd considered doing.

A Livejournal blogger, harmlessinc, has linked to my article as a repository for real-life harassment stories.

The Dissident Frogman is actively maintaining and updating a blog entry with "Support Denmark" graphics in multiple languages. Translations in additional languages are forthcoming (Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Farsi, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Korean, to the best of my knowledge.)

Oh, yeah: go out and stock up on Havarti cheese... it's not only a show of support contra the recent Islamist boycotts and violence against the Danes (and random others in their neighborhood) but it's also damned fine cheese.

...the digital (PDF) version I'm reading now, but Charlie Stross tells his readers not to do so. I will, however, be buying several copies from Amazon as gifts to friends. Damn it's good!

This got slashdotted yesterday: Darth Vader's blog (or one of them.) My ribs hurt.

Alan Weiss now has a blog.

Anton Sherwood has moved his musings to a blogging system with a commenting facility and much friendlier navigation. No trivial feat, given that he's been blogging (in one place) since February 2002... this meant converting over 1400 postings! Take a look.

I'm seeing the "Ads by Google" sidebar on an increasing number of blogs and social networking sites. Should I add one myself? I could certainly use the money... speaking of which, do any of my readers actually make money with it?

The same piece of software can be both an application and infrastructure. Apache is an excellent example of this. Apache is really Linux’s “killer app.” It runs on Windows and BSD, but the main point is that it doesn’t require Windows, and many machines are built for the sole purpose of running Apache. Apache is an application when I am setting up a web server, but it’s infrastructure for you when you’re looking at my blog.

Sean Lynch

Last weekend, walking the very walkable streets of San Francisco with Peggy, I couldn't resist this shot of One Maritime Plaza (formerly known the Alcoa Building):

Yet another reason I keep a very small digital camera in my pocket whenever I leave the house. Hmm... I'm wondering if my good friend and New Yorker Perry Metzger does the same? I'd certainly love to see the occasional building or street shot from New York City on his blog.

I've started tonight on the job of cleaning up the over-long blogroll on the right side of this blog's main page. I'm taking the example of Monica White and moving toward a shorter, annotated blogroll. If you're a friend of mine, and your name has disappeared from the main page, it's only because I'm now choosing to include links to friends a.) with blogs that are b.) actively maintained. More pruning later, along with some annotation.

My old friend Perry Metzger gave in today and finally started a blog. Now to convince him to add a comment mechanism...

I'm amazed at the number of Brazilians coming on line in forums I frequent who think that Portuguese is the lingua franca of the Internet.

My friend Anton complains about the lack of comments on his blog:

In two months and a bit since opening comments, this blog received just eight, of which half were mere applause; and Blogger makes handling comments a bit of a nuisance. So I've turned commenting back off; and incorporated the four substantive comments as addenda to the original posts, which is what I do anyway when someone bothers to write to me.

It's because Blogger makes handling comments a pain in the ass that most of us don't bother, Anton, and nobody I know will submit comments by a separate channel (email in another software client) for possible posting at your convenience later. That's not how users expect the mechanism of a blog to work. You can continue to bitch about what other people will or won't do, complaining publicly about it, or you can take the actions necessary to actually induce people to leave comments: set yourself up using a genuine blogging system.

Recommended by Monica White: the blog "Bizarre Science."

Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik has a blog.

Anton Sherwood just changed his portrait on his blog.

The success of a party can be determined by the number of gatecrashers. And we do have friends who've been knocking away on the virtual doors of the cartel. MadMan is devising a logical test of libertarianism. Get ready to jump through the hoop and clear the hurdles!

Any more wanting to join us in the battle against the evil forces of socialism, illogic, and unfreedom? Drop me a line.

Yazad Jal

One of the benefits of being myself - being open about my passions and not worrying overmuch about getting along with everyone - is that occasionally, someone I've never heard from introduces himself or herself and extends a hand in friendship, knowing who I am and what I stand for.

This happened again today, this time from somewhere I'd least expected: India, in the form of an articulate fellow named Yazad Jal, a thoroughgoing and studious anarchocapitalist, who'd taken note of me from a couple of running battles I'd been having with a few people on the Atheists community on Orkut.

After taking a quick look at Yazad's Orkut profile, and seeing immediately that he didn't seem like a flake (believe me, I've met a couple of crazies in the last year), I checked out Yazad's blog. I'm impressed: he's a very solid, intelligent, articulate and funny individual who's been writing fairly regularly for a couple of years, and has some interesting things to say about the political and economic problems of India. Visit his blog and make friends. If you're a fellow Orkuteer, introduce yourself to him and make friends there.

The lovely Monica White informs me a few minutes ago that she has a blog, Th'inkwell. I'm really happy to see it! Welcome to the blogosphere, Monica!

I've archived a couple of old blog posts here which seem to be ongoing magnets for morons; one of those is "Two-Buck Chuck: Tough times mean cheap wines". Apparently, I'm not the only one to be hit with with comments from people who don't get it, as someone from another blog, who has witnessed my frustration, can attest.

Apologies for Bob Tipton for not having gotten back to him in email, but I'd like to take the time to announce here that he's launched an interesting new blog, "Serenity: A diary of our family's experience in moving to the country." Included is a review of handgun training at Storm Mountain and other interesting material. Oh, and he does post photos; I'm a sucker for eyecandy, so I like that.

Time to upgrade Movable Type on both this blog and on my other (dormant) Asian languages blog: the penis pill comment spammers have gotten much, much more aggressive lately.

...Samizdata.net took on a cool new look over the weekend.

Bill St. Clair announces:

I got to playing with wiki [while] playing with one set up for collecting legal information for Hunter [Jeffrey Jordan]. I set up my own, initially to provide space to mirror that info, but then decided to call it "AnCap Wiki" and devote it to creating, in our lifetimes, anarcho-capitalist societies around the world. Check it out. Contribute if you're motivated to do so. Links to instructions near the top of the page.

I have a bit of the matchmaker in my blood. Some months ago I mentioned FuturePundit; recently I mentioned SciScoop. Those blogs really should get together for drinks and dinner sometime soon, maybe catch a movie afterwards.

I mentioned earlier today that I check my web stats often. Whenever the number of hits from a obviously personal web site exceeds a certain threshold, I check into the referring URL. Here's an excerpt from another, Dave Polaschek's "Dave's Picks":

Here’s a cool this phone is tapped sticker (with instructions) that you may want to download. More about them over at survival arts which might make it onto my daily reading list.

Checking yesterday's hit stats to see who's Googling for what and finding me, I see not one but two Google referrals from hit results for the phrase "protect yourself from bastards." Hey, I'm here to help!

Off to the gym now.

I mentioned a few days ago that Sciscoop's Ricky Roberson had written on interesting piece reflecting on my earlier report of a day at the range with an Armalite AR-50. He asked some very general, open-ended questions about the motivational psychology of shooters. I just now noticed that a couple of days ago, someone named Dirk Koenig posted a long and spot-on followup comment, "An interest in Long-Range Shooting", with which I completely agree. An excerpt:

Ultimately, you're attempting to apply scientific repeatability to an endeavor which relies on human sensory input (or a small weather station) to determine nearly all of the factors, none of which are necessarily constant from shot to shot. (or from muzzle to target, for that matter) This is to say nothing of the skill of the shooter, which has to improve alongside the equipment which can get the bullet to a target farther and farther away and where being half a millimeter off in aim will cause a miss at 400 meters, provided all your estimates about wind direction and speed were right in the first place.

In reviewing all this, it doesn't sound like a lot of fun. But, like the sound of a golf ball draining into the hole after travelling 20 feet on the green, there are few sounds that warm a long-range shooters heart more than the muted CLANK of a round hitting a steel target that's a long way off...

A fellow named John Venlet has been giving me good cigar recommendations the last couple of days on this blog. I've checked out his blog, found it interesting, and have added it to my blogroll.

A little over a week ago I was sitting in a hotel room in Portland, Oregon, checking my email, when I discovered that Ricky Roberson (whom I'd misattributed earlier as "Ricky James") of SciScoop had written a rather lengthy post on his site entitled "The Toy That's Not For Christmas" expressing his fascination with my ownership of an Armalite AR-50 single-shot .50BMG. I'd mentioned my discovery of his blog a few days before, and he was apparently returning the favor, in spades.

Ricky expresses his apparently sincere and heartfelt belief that if guns are going to exist, then he'd rather be in the group who has access to guns:

...I do unfortunately see the need to kill humans upon occasion - preferably a selected few key enemies instead of massive indiscriminate "shock and awe." An Armalite AR-50 is the best tool out there as far as I'm concerned for accomplishing this grisly task, and if this fearsome rifle is going to exist, I want to be in the group of people who have access to this technology instead of belonging to the group that doesn't.

While I essentially agree with this sentiment, I should point out a few things. First, I don't think the AR-50 is the best tool for that "grisly task". There are better tools for sniper and countersniper work nowadays, e.g. the 300 Winchester Magnum, or the 300 Lapua. Both these and related types are in increasingly common use nowadays by people whose paid jobs require their use as tools. A 700 grain .50 caliber bullet, for long range antipersonnel work, is fast becoming an outmoded approach. The guns are heavy, the ammo bulky, and the ballistics, while impressive, aren't nearly as optimal as the new breed of .30 caliber wonderguns (two of which I just mentioned).

...would consider moving to a real hosted blogging solution like Typepad so that I might be enabled to actually comment on things he says in his blog?

I'd promised Michael Reed I'd send him and/or post for him the additional photos from our meeting, taken by our (rather cute) waitress at Sungari. There were two photos. I'm posting the least worst. Michael looks presentable in both, but in this, the least worst, she pushed the button on my Sony CybershotU and, thinking the shot had been taken, moved the camera as the CCD activated:

The other photo, while slightly more clear, caught me in the middle of an utterance instructing the waitress in the use of the camera... so I look like I'm sucking on a lemon. That photo I'm sending privately to Michael, since I'm pretty sure he's an archival completist like myself.

...although I can only speculate as I do not know the young woman who caught my eye, it is not hard to see the 'domestic compromise' at work here... her family insisting she wear the hijab whilst she insisted on dressing to kill in the manner of her adopted western culture and friends.

This little drama must get played out a million times a year across Europe and North America amongst the Muslim diaspora and in the long run, it is not hard to see which cultural force is going to win. I suspect that one of the reasons that small pockets of western Muslims have become radicalized is that it is they who are most starkly confronted with what happens in the majority of cases when the old ways are confronted by western secular individualism. No civilization based on submission to arbitrary edicts from the Dark Ages can survive contact with a civilization that essentially encourages you to find your own way and do what you will.

Perry de Havilland

A few days ago, I mentioned that I was visiting Portland, Oregon, and was updating my blog from my hotel room. One of my readers, Michael Reed, offered to buy me lunch in downtown Portland. Right before I left, we did meet up, and spent over two hours exchanging interesting bits of information, ranging from restaurants to books to DVDs - he'd bought Firefly based on my blog entry earlier, which was gratifying - to insights on concealed carry in Oregon and other states. Michael gave me a great deal follow up on, and I'll be posting some of his recommendations soon.

Speaking of recommendations, I would be remiss not to mention that the place we had lunch was Sungari, a Szechwan restaurant in Portland's Yamhill district. I had the Rainbow Scallops, which were huge, succulent, and wonderfully spicy. Thanks for lunch, Michael!

It's great to get feedback on one's blog postings, especially when it results in the personal discovery of a great resource. Blog commenter Ricky James runs the compendious and incredibly interesting SciScoop: Exploring Tomorrow, which I strongly recommend telling all your friends about. So much to explore!

I'd not heard of this guy before today, but a number of friends whom I deeply respect are throwing their support for Michael Badnarik, who is working to become the Libertarian Party's 2004 candidate for the U.S. presidency. See his blog too, in order to make up your own mind.

Not receiving enough email? Looking for yet another mailing list to consume? If you're a libertarian, and aren't familiar with the incredibly prolific pamphleteering of the UK Libertarian Alliance, I recommend joining the Yahoo mailing list libertarian-alliance-forum, if for no other reason than to witness the astounding post rate of my longtime good friend Dr. Chris R. Tame.

The local Libertarian Party's listserv is misconfigured in respect of its outgoing timestamps, so I only last night saw this:

Subject: libertarian talk show host update
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2003 08:46:26 -0700

The San Francisco Bay area just lost another libertarian radio talk show host.

LP of Maryland member Brian Wilson no longer does lost the 7pm to 9pm weekday time slot on KSFO in San Francisco.

However, we do have a consolation prize.

KSFO (560 khz AM)

Larry Elder (on tape delay)
Sat 10pm- Sun 1am
Sun 10pm- Mon 1am

I had written here about Brian Wilson about 10 months ago, when I started this blog. I'll miss him. Now there's practically no reason to listen to KSFO 560 AM anymore, as most of the remaining crew are blithering neocons. There are no libertarians left there, with the exception of Larry Elder on the weekends... which is ironic considering that Larry Elder and Neil Boortz - both libertarians - had a great start on newly re-launched competitor KNEW 910 AM with their own shows in the afternoon... and both were booted, leaving neocons in their places too.

As long as I'm in the process of bringing this blog back online, I might as well bring my other blog back online, this time with a slightly changed name: Asia Pacific: Notes of an Asian Culture Afficionado. I'm a longtime student of Asian languages and culture, and that's where I put most of my writings which have more to do with those subjects, except in those cases such as today's Quote of the Day which entail elements relating to human freedom.

I expect a transient jump in my website stats after a friend in London surprises me with a big welcome back to the blogosphere.

New visitors: feed me! Buy those Amazon books I link to on this site. Pays the bills. Oh, yeah: welcome! Join in, comment, have fun, the usual stuff.

Sean Gabb announces today the publication of "All the Way Down the Slippery Slope: Gun Prohibition in England and Some Lessons for Civil Liberties in America" by Professors Joseph E. Olson and David B. Kopel; an excerpt from this long and well footnoted article:

Is it possible for a nation to go from wide-open freedom for a civil liberty, to near-total destruction of that liberty, in just a few decades? "Yes," warn many American civil libertarians, arguing that allegedly "reasonable" restrictions on civil liberty today will start the nation down "the slippery slope" to severe repression in the future.[3] In response, proponents of today's reasonable restrictions argue that the jeremiads about slippery slopes are unrealistic or even paranoid.[4]

This Essay aims to refine the understanding of slippery slopes by examining a particular nation that did slide all the way down the slippery slope.(p.400) When the twentieth century began, the right to arms in Great Britain was robust, and subject to virtually no restrictions. As the century closes, the right has been almost obliterated. In studying the destruction of the British right to arms, this Essay draws conclusions about how slippery slopes operate in real life, and about what kinds of conditions increase or decrease the risk that the first steps down a hill will turn into a slide down a slippery slope.

Sean Gabb, of the UK's Libertarian Alliance, has himself written a number of superb essays on the RKBA over the years. After reading the piece above, visit the LA's site and look for his work.

Proof that some of us pay very close attention to our server logs: howdy, Australian Survivalist readers! A special hello to "Warrigal".

Toren Smith bows out after a year of blogging... for the time being. He'll be missed.

A fellow traveller discovered while analyzing my server logs: "Anorakish". The guy has Hunter S. Thompson listed under "Sports" and Kim Jong Il listed under "Humor". Hey dude, any chance you could enabling commenting on your site?

His site has an interesting link to the CENTCOM Leaflet Gallery. For those of you reading it: bear in mind when reading the translated plates that Arabic reads right-to-left; the translated versions read in the same direction.

A big welcome to Claire Wolfe! Took her long enough.

Someone's finally done it: a site dedicated to watchdogging that noxious pile of festering Oscar-nominee-waste-of-protoplasm, "documentarian" Michael Moore:

MOOREWATCH is dedicated to unearthing the truth behind the doublespeak and falsehood that spews from the mouth (and keyboard) of Michael Moore on a regular basis. Moore is a disingenuous danger to this country, and his assumptions and assertions should not go unchallenged. The collective expertise and research abilities of the entire Internet are more than enough to debunk most of the nonsense Moore regularly puts forth as fact, and we at MOOREWATCH hope to be the clearinghouse for this information.

One to watch; thanks to Ian Hamet.

This is a great resource: "FuturePundit: future technological trends and their likely effects on human society, politics and evolution". This is one of the incredibly productive Randall Parker's 4 well-separated specialist blogs, and I plan to refer to it often.

David Carr of Samizdata directs us to a "fair dinkum" blog for the Australian Libertarian Society.

Jack W. Boone has started his first blog: The Creative Foot Dragger: strategies for restless slaves. Besides being an apparently good guy who understands the real deal behind the Boot On Your Neck (BOYN) party, he's also the father of Daniel J. Boone, the outlawyer blogmeister of Nolo Consentire. Welcome to the blogosphere!

I'd opined a few days ago that Bill Whittle, author of the essay Courage, should publish a book of his writings (an opinion neither original or unique to me). Looks like he'll be doing exactly that, soon.

I have to agree with Russell's earlier posting about the Koman book cover and the lackluster marketing of the book itself. I tried to get the book on Amazon.co.uk, and it wasn't even listed. So I ended up going to a Barnes and Noble site instead, and to be fair they shipped it over pretty fast.

Book covers do make a big difference, to state the obvious. I quite like the cover on Kings of the High Frontier but I agree that the cover could be a lot better. The covers on books by folk like Vernor Vinge, Peter Hamilton or David Brin are in a different class, and draw the readers in. Also, SF art is still a much under-appreciated art form in its own right.

Perhaps, in the light of the current flurry of interest in what we do next about space travel and commercial development up there, there may be more interest in Koman getting a decent publisher with more flair and drive. It bugs me that his magnificent book was so hard to find while there is so much garbage on our bookshelves here in Britain and elsewhere.

I once went into a huge Waterstones bookshop here in Chelsea and there was not a single work by Heinlein, Anderson (Poul) or Larry Niven on the shelves. It's a bit like going to a classics section and seeing nothing by Hugo or Tolstoy. How the hell are young people going to get inspired by science and technology if there isn't the fiction out there to whet their appetites? After all, I am pretty sure many of the astronauts in the 1960s and subsequent decades first got their taste for their activities by reading a book by Heinlein or a Buck Rogers comic strip.

However, we Londoners can seek solace in The Forbidden Planet bookstore in New Oxford Street and Babylon 5!

Continuing to check today's site referrer logs, I see this Cyrillic-only posting strangely referencing a blog post I made some weeks back apropos the banning of gun shows at a venue in San Mateo County, California. I get along well in several Asian and western European languages, but not Russian. Anyone care to clue me on on this?

Following Brian Micklethwait's suggestions on the issue of keeping focus on a blog's material - people don't frequent "all the stuff I'm interested in" blogs much - I've started another blog on an entirely separate set of passions, Asian language learning and related software engineering issues: Asia Pacific Information Systems.

Both blogs will continue to be updated regularly. I even have contributors - people who aren't me - for both blogs, such as Dr. Ken Lunde, who contributes to both.

A reader, David A. Yeagley, left a comment on my piece on homeschooled Ye Bin Mok. I've been checking out his site, and see a large number of very interesting articles on a surprising variety of topics (aren't people fascinating?), including one on warriors & weapons and one with related points in the context of Yeagley's meeting with Chief Russell Means.

I've long respected Wendy McElroy, and have found her blog. She makes the uncommon distinction of labling herself "an individualist feminist, not a gender feminist", and is a well-respected independent scholar.

I've just recently discovered yet another useful blog, Chicago Boyz. Think Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, and Thomas Sowell.

I remember as a teenager having been deeply affected by journalist-adventurer Rose Wilder Lane's account of the Saracen markets of learning in her classic The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority.

Few modern readers are familar with the 700-year flowering of knowledge and culture in the "Saracen" lands of north Africa, during the era most school-goers are taught were the "Dark Ages" of Europe. The Dark Ages did indeed occur - though most of what's popularly taught about the subject is pure bunk - but no mention is ever made of the flowering of civilization in the lands south of Europe.

"The refugee scientists in Persia were popular now - respected, admired, listened to. No Authority suppressed them; no police kicked them around. They opened their schools; from Baghdad to Granada, their schools were crowded with students. In two centuries, they were great universities, the world's first universities...

...These universities had no organization whatsoever... A Saracen university had no program, no curriculum, no departments, no rules, no examinations; it gave no degrees nor diplomas. It was simply an institution of learning. Not of teaching, but of learning. A man, young or old, went to a university to learn what he wanted to know, just as an American goes to a grocery to get the food he wants.

Men who knew (or thought they knew) something, and wanted to teach it, opened a school to sell their knowledge. Sucess depended upon the demand for the knowledge they had. If they prospered, other teachers joined them..."
[pp89-90]

There are still a few people around who "get it" when it comes to thinking clearly about education and learning; Brian Micklethwait is one of them. In his post today, "Why is the Sky Dark at Night?", he recalls the experience of a presentation given by guest lecturer scientist Herman Bondi at his school in the '70's:

Bondi's talk didn't turn me into a scientist, but it did turn me into a lifelong science fan. It taught me that one of the great things about scientists is, not just their enthusiasm to discover obscure things, but their ability also to register amazement at the commonplace. Commonplace facts like the fact of gravity. We all know that "gravity" – or something like it – is a fact. But what is it? What, deep down, does "gravity" – this bizarre tendency of things to fall to the ground for no apparent reason – actually consist of? It takes an Isaac Newton to think like that, at a time when people as a whole tended not to and even to forbid themselves from such thoughts, and to carry on thinking like that until he had an answer that satisfied him.

Brian's commentary is particularly interesting not only in respect of the "love of learning" angle, but from what it says about the natural human tendancy to novelty-seeking - which I consider a defining survival trait of our species - and the psychological value of seeking learning dynamically, supplementing your regular studies with people you'd not otherwise consider:

As I say, the same bloke droning on yet again can sometimes work, but there's nothing quite like a visiting shooting star for lighting up the world. Failing that, if you are that same bloke droning on, at least try to talk sometimes about different stuff from your usual stuff.

Col. Jeff Cooper has said, "The goals of life are three: To understand, to accomplish, to appreciate." It's in this spirit, I think, that Brian says:

Bondi may have inspired some in his audience that day to become practising scientists, but not me. What he did for me was not to tell me anything about how to make money or be more "successful". What he did for me was make the times I already found myself living in more interesting and entertaining and profound and enjoyable

I share these feelings myself, which is a major reason I seek learning with known teachers - continuing with them over committed periods of time - and supplement with the different, the novel, the additionally challenging. All learning is done at the margins of our existing learning - that's how our brains are wired - but the committed dynamist extends that learning by making that extra stretch with the occasional new teacher. By such means do the important parts of ourselves remain young.

I'm discovering as time goes by that very old acquaintances of mine have blogs (big revelation that), and I'm continually checking them out. Here's another one for you: Transterrestrial Musings. Rand Simberg is someone whose postings on CryoNet I started reading many (pre-Web) years back. He's best known now as a spacer writer, and has even become a regular Fox News contributor on the subject!

Thanks to Toren Smith for bringing to my attention, through a post of his today, the existence of Abode of Amritas. I have a long-standing interest in the study of Asian languages; Marc Miyake's site is a phenomenally interesting resource... oh, and he's an anti-idiotarian too.

Goddamn this is one hell of a small world: I've met one of my pop culture heroes, Toren Smith, who turns out to share values with me in a big way. He says "hi" to Survival Arts in his post "Blogging from the shadow of Mt. Doom".

This is yet another reason I wear my mind on my sleeve. You never meet the really interesting people unless you lay yourself bare to the world.

I'm one of those who knee-jerkingly assumed "Daniel J. Boone" was the nom-de-plume of the proprietor of Nolo Consentire, but nope, it's indeed his real name. Sorry about that, Daniel. Would have added the apology on your blog, but no commenting facility seems to have been implemented there yet. Daniel: try migrating to Moveable Type. I'd be glad to help: really.

Daniel's an "outlawyer", like comrades Duncan Frissell and Sandy Sandfort. He explains to those of you who might be wordering what this means:

You are wondering "How, in the name of Thor's middle chariot goat, can this joker be an anarchist and a lawyer at the same time?"

He quotes Duncan's "How to Break the Law" by way of succinct explanation:

There are even anarchist lawyers. As an anarchist law student once said when asked by his friends how an he could be a lawyer, "My father is a physician, but that doesn't mean that he believes in disease."

This article reminds me of a piece by Duncan I read sometime around 1990 or 1992, with a name that went something like "How to Make Yourself Judgement Proof". I couldn't find an archived copy of that article as I remember it, but I did find a piece quoting some material a guy culled from Duncan's Usenet posts on the subject, I'm assuming from old cypherpunks and/or sci.crypt posts.

By the way, in case there was further misunderstanding (which would be my fault, of course): I have nothing against writing in any name a person wishes. As a matter of fact, it's a great idea: Boston T. Party is a good non-de-plume, and Max More (hi old friend) is the result of a legal name change from a meaningless one given at birth to one reflecting Max's core extropian values.

This blog's been running only a couple of months. In the meantime, I've been learning a lot about the blogosphere and its evolving culture which I'd not known before... I was introduced to the concept of "blog" only a couple of months before by visiting friend Tom Burroughes, so I'm still a relative newbie. This is more than slightly embarrassing for me, given that one of my trusted friends, Dave Krieger, co-authored an O'Reilly book on the subject a year ago, Running Weblogs with Slash. Doh!

In the course of my travels, I've started to pick up bits 'n pieces of practices from others, and may in a few months launch a "One from the vaults" category, inspired by Toren Smith's "IDIOTS PUBLISH NEWSPAPER...Film at 11":

"One from the vaults" digs out decent old posts from back when my traffic was a fraction of what it is now and reposts them, for those who may have missed them when they first ran. And because my site traffic is way down on Sundays.

Sunday is a slow traffic day for me too, but still dramatically busier than any day of the week a mere 8 weeks ago.

We'll see in a year. In the meantime, I may go ahead and add a "Bizarre search hits of the week"; this is actually a very common practice on personal blogs nowadays, but thanks to Toren Smith's employment of the practice in a side-splitting context, I'm motivated to consider actually doing it. My good friend Anton Sherwood gave me the original idea a while back, of course.

By the way, Anton and Toren: looks like you both share an interest in Old English.

There: got all the attributions out of the way so that next year or later, none of you guys will think I'm using good ideas without proper attribution.

Friend and stalwart UK libertarian Brian Micklethwait points to the possible start of an interesting trend: UK homeschoolers fed up with victim disarmament laws. Keep an eye on this one.

I know many of you already know of this resource, but I'm new to it myself: Gratuitous Gun Pics. Quite a nice little resource, with individual commentaries, even if I disagree with some of his opinions (e.g. the one on the Steyr Scout).

I'd mentioned my discovery of "Nolo Consentire" earlier. I checked out a couple of other blogs to which "Daniel J. Boone" links, and discovered to my surprise that The Techoptimist is none other than my old friend Duncan Frissell, whom I last saw 9 years at a conference I co-chaired in London. He's even kept the same email address!

Hi Duncan!

One of the benefits of having a good web stats package is being able to see some of who's linking to your site, in something close to realtime. I checked out one such link with an interesting URL, and found a blog just launched today that links to this blog, "Nolo Consentire": A Market Anarchist's Dissent From Coercive Politics, run by "Daniel J. Boone".

It looks promising, so I'll link back to it myself. I do have an immediate suggestion, assuming his blogging software can be configured to allow this: turn on commenting so that we, his fellow travellers (and others) can interact with his content.

I'd also like to suggest that he link to the excellent Libertarian Samizdata blog run by Perry DeHavilland and the other excellent and prolific libertarians of the UK's Libertarian Alliance.

Welcome to the Blogosphere!

Thanks to Samizdata's Brian Micklethwait for pointing out an excellent new blog by Bill Whittle, Eject! Eject! Eject!, in particular his excellent essay Freedom, which I highly recommend reading.

Perry de Havilland reports that Reason magazine now has its own blog, "Hit & Run".

"The Light of Reason", Arthur Silber's excellent objectivist blog, moves away from Blogspot and, therefore, up in the world. Congratulations, Arthur!

A decade ago, I spent about 3 years living, working, and studying in London. I had the great pleasure to make the friendships of good comrades Chris R. Tame, Tom Burroughes, Sean Gabb, and Brian Micklethwait of the Libertarian Alliance, among others. I'm not sure I had the opportunity to meet Patrick Crozier, but in the process of commenting recently on a posting in Brian's Education Blog (look soon for his Culture Blog), I found out about Patrick's superbly informative UK Transport, which I feel compelled to plug here.

UK Transport covers all aspects of transport in the UK. It is written from a libertarian perspective, in other words, that the less the State involves itself in the running, regulation or funding of roads, railways or anything else - the better.

I've always been impressed at the thoroughness and perseverance of the people of the Libertarian Alliance. Patrick's work is reflective of these traits, as well as the sheer productivity of The Movement across The Pond.

The links section on this UK Transport Extra posting alone are worth the trip. It's the most comprehensive collection of resources arguing for total defascistization* of transport I've ever seen.

* - Yes, I made that up, remembering the popular myth that Mussolini made the trains run on time.

I've had my blog up in production for less than a week, and am still working out kinks. I figured a couple of days ago, however, that it was time to start asking like minds to exchange sidebar links. So, I started today by asking Arthur Silber, proprietor of the fine Objectivist blog The Light of Reason, for such a reciprocal favor.

He contacted me a short while ago and let me know that not only had he done that, he had also written a note about it on his blog:

So I'm more than happy to tell you now about a brand new blog that I just found out about today. Survival Arts just began this week, and it looks to be a very fine blog. And this isn't just blogcest, and I'm not saying this because they included us in their links under "Live Free or Die!" They truly do look very promising, and Russell Whitaker, who writes most of the entries (at least so far) already has several very interesting posts up. (By the way: one of Russell's posts is about John Ross's book Unintended Consequences. Does anybody else know about this book? And how good is it? I keep hearing about it, and it sounds awfully interesting.) So go visit Survival Arts -- especially you Second Amendment folks -- and give them a hearty welcome to the blogosphere.

I'm floored by this incredibly gracious endorsement... thank you, Arthur. Oh, and thanks to Tom Burroughes for having pointed me to your blog. As you say above, this isn't just blogcest, it's genuine regard.

As for the fact that I write most of the posts at present, you're correct in your suspicion that this is a temporary matter. I've a number of fine contributors ramping up over the next days and weeks. We're working out the details of workflow entailed in (what I hope is) a serious publication.

Welcome, Light of Reason readers!