Brian Micklethwait

Adriana Lukas tells Libertarian Home about the experience of communism

Earlier this evening at the Two Chairmen, Westminster, Adriana Lukas, who grew up in the old Czechoslovakia as was, gave a most eloquent talk about this experience. She didn’t bang on at length about the usual horrors – prison camps, executions, purges, and so on – although of course these were mentioned. Rather did she focus on the minutiae of life for the rather less unlucky victims of communism, the ones who got to stay alive. People adjusted, basically. Or if, like Adriana’s family, they were dissidents, they learned to be extremely distrustful of almost everyone but their closest and most trusted loved ones. Being a dissident wasn’t about overthrowing the regime; it was merely about staying sane.

Here are four photos, that I picked out from the dozen or more that I took, and that I just sent to meetings organiser Simon Gibbs, who is to be seen in the first one, introducing Adriana. The photos I sent to Simon were rectangles, but I actually prefer these square cropped versions.

As you can see, this excellent talk was videoed. Videos are far harder to edit than merely to … video. So you may have to wait a bit before seeing this one. But, for those who did not attend this talk and for many who did, it will be worth the wait.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

How computer dating erodes racism and strengthens marriage (and rearranges tribes)

This article (which is based on and which links to this article) has been an open window on my computer for over a month now, because it struck me as being so very interesting.

These reports concern recent research into the impact upon the world of online dating. Mostly good impacts. Two impacts in particular are pointed to.

First, online dating seems to facilitate more interracial relationships and interracial marriages. There is definitely a correlation between online dating and interracial relationships. This research strongly suggests that the link is causal. Online dating gets people past racial barriers.

Second, the relationships it facilitates tend to last longer and be more solid.

If I believe both of the above effects to be not only very important, but also to be true, this is because both effects make so much sense to me.

The first effect concerns taste in mere appearances. Suppose you inhabit a world where a relationship between you and someone ethnically different is somewhat taboo, the chances are you won’t be sufficiently acquainted with many fanciable people of a different ethnic group to be able to do anything about it. But if a dating app asks, bluntly: Do you like the look of this person, or of this person, or of this person? – then your answers will crash right through such racial boundaries, provided only that you personally would like them to. Relationships across racial boundaries become a simple matter of individual taste. Your “friends” can just stay right out of it.

But then, once strong relationships across racial boundaries stop being the stuff of movies, because they are so rare, and become quite common, all those “friends” are just going to have to live with it, or stop being your friends. Chances are, they’ll be fine with it.

I do not believe it to be coincidence that the one marriage in my circle of friends which I know for certain to have started on the internet is also one that crosses what would, when I was a lot younger, have been a racial barrier.

The second effect bears strongly on the kinds of fundamentals that can ruin a marriage in the longer run, and also get you through a racial barrier in the short run. These fundamentals are, well: fundamentals. Fundamentals like beliefs about what life is about and for, what marriage means and how sex should and should not be done, what is right and wrong politically or ideologically or spiritually, and so on. These are the kinds of things that also, along with superficial racial preferences, get declared that little bit earlier, when you do computer dating, rather than turning around to bite you, two years into that relationship with a more local bod who merely looked great and had a nice sounding voice and wore nice clothes. And you get a bigger choice, which enables you to pick dating partners with more similar beliefs about those fundamentals. Even if such fundamentals aren’t stated in full up front, they are often at least referred to early on, and form the basis of early conversations, rather than just erupting later, in the heat of some perhaps seemingly trivial drama.

That interracial marriage I referred to above also anecdotally confirms everything in the above paragraph, about those fundamentals. How they both looked to each other was a nice bonus, but it was fundamentals that really brought them together for the long run.

The one big negative I can see happening here is that if all of the above is right, then the tendency will be reinforced for society to divide up into groups who all agree with each other about fundamentals. The much discussed “bubble” effect of the internet will be greatly reinforced. Regular touch with people who hold to other beliefs will become rather rarer, because marriages used to be more common across such fundamental belief boundaries but are now becoming less so. And that could be a big negative in a lot of ways.

A way to sum up what is happening here is that society is continuing to be tribal, but that the tribes will now be based more on beliefs and less on biological and genetic similarities and connections.

I should say that I have not myself ever done computer dating. I would welcome comments on the above from people who have.

I note with a small spasm of pleasure that one of the researchers who did the research alluded to, Josue Ortega, is based at Essex University, of which I am a graduate and of which I have fond memories.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Two more leaning tower cranes

I knew this would happen. Ever since I noticed those leaning tower cranes of London, which looked like they might be about to collapse through the unbalanced weight at the top of them, I knew that as I wandered through my photo-archives I’d find more such pairs of leaning tower cranes, leaning in opposite directions to each other, and looking like they should have collapsed and caused a flurry of shocked news reports, but which never actually did that.

And I just did:

Taken from the top of the Monument, on the same day as the photo below of the Walkie-Talkie.

At the time, all I thought I was photoing was a nice sunset and some nice cranes, posing nicely in front of The Wheel. But those two cranes on the right there seem to be in that same state of strong disagreement about what exactly vertical is, and for the same reason.

Yet, if either of those cranes had collapsed, late on in the year 2012, I am sure that we would have heard about it, and that I would have remembered it. Clearly, they did not collapse. They were just leaning over a bit.

All those cranes that we see were working on, among other buildings, two rather striking buildings that are now finished. I’m talking about the two stumps now blocking the view of the Shell Building. There is, on the right, in between the two leaning cranes discussed above, 240 Blackfriars. And to the left of 240 Blackfriars, as we look, the innards of the Tate Modern Extension, from which further lovely views out over lovely London were to materialise.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Monument dwarfed by Walkie-Talkie

Indeed. I was going through the I Just Like It file, and came across two, independently selected, which make a nice pair.

First, taken in November 2012, the Walkie-Talkie while still under construction, viewed from the top of the Monument:

And second, taken in January 2016, the Monument now just about visible in the scrimmage of smaller London

The Walkie-Talkie looks very big from the top of the Monument.

The Monument looks very small from the top of the Walkie-Talkie.

And while we’re about it, here is another photo that links these two buildings. Taken on that same day in November 2012, back on the ground, with a little sign on the right there, saying “Pudding Lane”.

The Monument remembers those who died in the Great Fire of London of 1666. Pudding Lane, or so I was always told, was where that fire started.

Also, three days after taking that photo of the Monument from above, above, I took this photo of the Monument from below, along with another sign, this time a temporary sign telling me how to get to the Monument:

The way to get to the Monument was not, it would seem, the obvious way to get to the Monument.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The RSC’s Antony and Cleopatra at the Barbican

GodDaughter One’s Mum and Dad are members of a theatre-going gang, who take it in turns to organise for them all to go to the theatrical performance, about every month or so. Tonight it was Antony and Cleopatra by the RSC, at the Barbican. But GodDaughter One’s Mum was otherwise engaged, helping out with a jewellery show done by GodDaughter One’s Sister, so I went to the Barbican instead.

As so often, when I really pay attention to a Shakespeare play (and if you are seeing it in a theatre there is not a lot else to be doing), I learned a great deal about it.

I did not catch every word. Much of the support acting, especially by the young men playing various Roman soldiers and messengers, was decidedly school-play-ish, to my old eyes and old ears. These brand-X guys simply did not fill the auditorium properly. Since we were at the back, we suffered. Nor did it help that I for one could not see their faces properly, from that far away. But Antony and Cleopatra were both pretty good, as was Enobarbus. But honestly, only the music came over loud and clear.

I will be investigating this play further on the screen. YouTube offers this, which looks like it could be pretty good. I quite like north American accents in Shakespeare, given that it probably sounded more like this originally than it sounded like modern Posh English.

As for DVDs, this and this both look promising. Also: cheap.

Back in the Barbican, Josette Simon as Cleopatra yanked the verse around a lot, but that all added to the impression of her being a force of nature. Antony, played by Peter Byrne, was a very prosaic figure by comparison. I especially like the line in this Guardian review about how “Simon is excellent in the closing passages suggesting that Cleopatra is living out a fantasy of an idealised Antony”. Yes. So, best of all might well be a DVD of this RSC production.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A clean dirty joke

Earlier today I was at a party, and sitting in on the party was Alexa, the cylindrical robot from Amazon. So, one of us asked Alexa to tell us a Dirty Joke. Alexa replied: “Why do you call a chicken covered in dirt crossing the road?” Answer, although I didn’t hear if Alexa actually said this or merely assumed that we’d get it: a dirty joke.

Not bad. And funny because, although a joke involving dirt, it is not a dirty joke in the sense of there being any sexual innuendo involved.

But, was Alexa trying to tell a joke? Or merely trying to do as she was told, without in any way understanding what the thing she was being told to do actually meant? I know, Alexa never “understands” anything. She’s a machine, with no consciousness. But, you surely know what I mean.

Another rather perfunctory posting. But, I spent quite a lot of my day going to a party, partying, and getting back from the party. I may, although I promise nothing, do better tomorrow.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Christmas is coming

Indeed:

Photoed by me in Oxford Street this afternoon,

Like I said: perfunctory.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Busy

Yes it’s a busy time here at Chateau BMdotcom. I have a meeting here this evening, for which I must now prepare, but, preparations are not helped by the fact that the two biggest supermarkets in my vicinity, Tescos Warwick Way, and Sainsburys Wilton Road, are both now shut, so that they can rearrange themselves, refurbish themselves, in time for Christmas presumably. (And in order to take our minds off the fact that the prices of everything are now shooting upwards.)

This is bizarre. Couldn’t they collude to take it in turns to shut, rather than colluding (I assume) both to be shutting at the same time? I am too busy, doing such things as trying to think where I will be going instead to buy food for this evening, to be able to expand here upon this peculiar matter. Let’s just say it’s lucky for capitalism that I really like it. If I didn’t, this might have tipped me over the edge into full-on Bolshevism, at which point I might have become the straw that broke the camel of capitalism’s back.

After tonight’s meeting, I then have a succession of pre-Christmas socialisings fixed, for over the coming weekend and into next week. All very nice and everything, but a struggle to keep track of, and to fit other necessary things around. Which is why postings here have been a bit perfunctory of late, and why that may continue for a few more days.

Or, it may not. Because actually, the urge to blog is, for me, hard to estimate the strength of beforehand. Often, I think, the feeling I feel when busy that there are Things I Must Do, causes me then to avoid doing these Things by instead … blogging.

Right now, for instance, I am supposed to be preparing for this evening. But instead …

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Leadenhall Market

Yesterday I showed a photo that I actually took yesterday, rather than last year or last decade. And today I’m doing the same. I’m showing you another photo that I took yesterday:

That’s the inside of the domed roof in the middle of Leadenhall Market in the City of London. This is another of those photos which is a lot easier to take if you have a twiddly screen, such as I always now have.

Here is the next photo I took, to show you which place I mean:

To me, one of the odder things about Leadenhall Market is that all the enterprises plying their trade in it would seem to be obliged by the house rules to proclaim their names in the exact same style and size of lettering. This is not what you get in most shopping centres, which is what this place basically is. But, fair enough: their gaff, their rules. And although in one sense this is uniformity gone a bit mad, in another sense it is variety, because this is not something you see very often.

It is clearly a recent thing, and Wikipedia confirms this:

Between 1990 and 1991 the market received a dramatic redecoration which transformed its appearance, enhancing its architectural character and detail. The redecoration scheme received a special mention in the Civic Trust Awards in 1994.

Ah yes. Commercial, you understand, but not too commercial. The subtle business of not being too businesslike.

I passed through this place on my way to Monument tube, having been wandering towards the City and its Big Things from the Bethnal Green area, enjoying the last daylight of a very fine yesterday. Of which maybe more here later, and of which maybe not more here later. (This blog is also not very businesslike.)

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The electricity meter man photos my electricity consumption with his mobile

Indeed. And, I got him to hold the pose while I photoed it:

Okay, mine’s a rubbish picture, but: you get the picture, and in any case the fact that you can’t read the numbers is a feature rather than a bug. I’m sure he got his picture. He has already typed into his other little machine a note of my address and electricity score. So it will be entirely clear to him which number he is confirming, or conceivably correcting, with his photo.

Just another example of what mobiles contribute to the economy, not just by doing newsworthy stuff like transmit big gobs of money or send portentous messages to and from people on the move, but simply by helping workers to do little bits of work. Often, mobiles and their cameras are used to record the progress of work. This is using mobiles and their cameras actually to do the work, because this particular work is recording.

I know: smart meter. Well, someone recently tried to install one, but for some reason it couldn’t be done, or not yet.

To really appreciate this, you have to have experienced what happens to your electricity bill when your electricity consumption is recorded wrongly.