Europe – Page 11 – Brian Micklethwait's New Blog

Sun and rain in Brussels – February 2005

Every so often, I rootle through my rather chaotic (increasingly so as I go backwards) photo-archive, and every so often when I’m doing that (as I was doing last night), a particular photo jumps out, that I have no recollection at all of having taken, but (and) which I really like.

Such as this one:

The sunlight hitting the trees, and the pavement and the road, looks rather like snow.

That’s exactly as it came out of the camera. Which was only my second ever digital camera, a Canon A70.

Which sort of suggests that although things like superzoom on your camera have got a lot zoomier and cheaper, the basic way these things work hasn’t changed that much.

The screens on the backs of cameras, on the other hand …

Although come to think of it, what we see above is a scene with an abundance of light bouncing around in it. It’s when things get darker that the latest cameras really come into their own, compared to this old thing. The indoor photos in the same directory, of some long ago event in Brussels that I attended, now look very blurry and dated in their appearance. Either that, or hideously flashed, which I hate, and never do now, no matter what my camera says.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

From the age of bridges to the age of bridge collapses?

Just a question, suggested by this bridge disaster. today, in Genoa.

Every few weeks I go looking for new and photogenic bridges, and don’t seem to find anything much. But now that all these great bridges have been built, and now that they are all getting older, or getting really old like this one, and are having to be kind of rebuilt …:

The highway operator said work to shore up its foundation was being carried out at the time of the collapse.

… this could be the first of many such bridge collapses.

Oh My God. Now I want more bridge collapses, just to be right.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Waterloo sunrise

Radio early bird Julia Hartley-Brewer tweeted this photo, early this morning:

Best comment:

Enjoy it while you can Julia, because after BREXIT there will be NO sunrise. The Polish and Romanian workers who lift the sun up every morning will be gone.

Those laser beams that her camera has created make the sun look like a … white hole.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Tim Harford at Think 2018

Here. Video, lasting just over twenty minutes. Just watched it. Good.

Particularly interested by what he says about how, without cheap paper, the revolutionary changes ushered in by the printing press could not have happened. Mass produced printed material printed on animal skins not economically doable.

Harford ends on what he thinks is a depressing note, about a woman who supplies the final bit of muscle to a huge warehouse system, by receiving verbal orders from an all-powerful robot, which she simply obeys, second by second. Go here, get this, this number, take it here, …

Well, it’s a job.

Personally, I think that having to think all the time about your work, when you are at work, is hugely overrated. Whenever I have had a “job”, I liked it when my job was my job, but my thoughts were my own. Best job? Driving a van, delivering number plates. Drove on autopilot most of the time. Thought my own thoughts. Didn’t “buy into the company vision”. Not “committed”. Wasn’t “invested” in the work. Just did it, mostly without having to think about it. Bliss.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

The notes for my talk

The talk in question being this. I show this photo of my notes here more to remind me to keep thinking about this stuff, than to tell you what I was talking about. For that, maybe better wait for the video.

I spent most of my spare time today working on that, even though it may not look like it. In the end I had far too much I wanted to say, but I did manage to blurt out a decent proportion of it. The thing to remember in such circumstances is that they don’t know what you forgot to say. They only know what you did say. If that was okay, then it was okay.

There is one big misprint, towards the end. Where it says “Era 2 effects”, twice over, the second “Era 2” should be “Era 1”. This did not throw me. I only just noticed it.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

I need a link dump

Twitter is causing ever more interesting things to pile up on my computer screen, and slow everything down. (I know, “bookmarks”. Hate them.) So, here is a blog posting consisting of such links. Which I can come back to and follow through on but probably never will, but possibly just might.

Eyebrows – we all have them, but what are they actually for?

The Kremlin has a Reckless Self-Image Problem.

Via 6k, how to take bizarre photos by stuffing wire wool into a egg whisk, setting the wire wool on fire, and swinging all that around on a rope. Do not try this at home, unless you want to burn down your home.

Next, a Twitter posting about cactus patterns:

So frustrating! My cactus patterns are going viral on FB, but the person who posted the photo of them a) didn’t credit me and b) deletes any comments I write responding to people asking for the patterns.

But what if she made that up? As a ruse to get the world to pay attention to her cactus patterns? Or, what if she hired, in good faith, some sleazy “internet marketer” who deliberately posted her photos on some faked-up Facebook site, minus any credit, told her about it, and then blocked her complaints? The sleazy internet marketer then advised her to complain about this to all and sundry, knowing that all and sundry would sympathise. She seems like an honest person, doing honest business, which is why I pass this on. But a decade of internetting has made me cynical.

Next, a Spectator piece about someone called Scaramucci, who is writing a book about Trump. The piece says more about Scaramucci than it does about Trump, but his book sounds like it will be quite good. Scaramucci sounds like he has his head screwed on right, unlike a lot of the people who write Trump books.

Also in the Spectator, Toby Young realises that his wife is smarter than he is. And she chose to stay at home and raise their kids because that’s what she wanted to do. You can feel the tectonic plates of Western Civilisation shifting back towards stay-at-home mumhood, even as mere policy continues to discourage it. Jordan Peterson, take a bow. That man is already raising the birth rate in rich countries, by encouraging both fatherhood and motherhood. The only question is: By how much? Trivially, or significantly? My bet, with the passing of a bit of time: significantly.

George Bernard Shaw tells it like it was and is about Islam. I lost track of how I chanced upon that, but there it is. These days, GBS would probably get a talking-to from the Thought Police, a talking-to which might well include the words: “We’re not the Thought Police”. If the Thought Police were to have a go at her, they just might get an earful themselves.

Mike Fagan liked this photo of Mont Saint Michel with sheep in the foreground. I can’t any longer find when he liked it, but he did. Reminds me of this Millau Viaduct photo, also with sheep in the foreground.

Boaty McBoatface got turned into David bloody Attenborough, but Trainy McTrainface proudly rides the railway lines of Sweden. As usual, You Had One Job supplied no link (so no link to them), but here’s the story.

Thank you Paul Marks for telling me about someone telling me about Napoleon’s greatest foe. His name? Smith.

The sun is now spotless, or it was on April 11th.

David Baddiel has doubts about the bloke who said “gas the Jews” rather a lot, to a dog. As do I. It should be legal, but don’t expect me to laugh.

Tim Worstall:

All of which leads to the correct Brexit stance to be taking. No deal. We’ll go to unilateral free trade and the rest of you can go boil your heads. We’ll give it a couple of decades and we’ll see who is richer, OK?

Quillette: The China Model Is Failing.

The three temporarily separate Elizabeth lines.

Wisdom.

Anton Howes on Sustained Economic Growth.

John Arnold made a fortune at Enron. He is now spending some of it on criticising bad science.

Human genes reveal history. This book is number (about) twenty on my to-read list.

Philip Vander Elst on How Communism Survived Thanks to Capitalist Technology.

And finally, Bryan Caplan still thinks this is pretty good.

I now feel much better. And more to the point, my computer seems a lot sprightlier than it was. This has been the computerised equivalent of cleaning my room. The job is not done, but I have taken a big bite out of it.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

3D printed bridge looks like alien technology

Here.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

An encouraging picture for Spurs

I became fixated on Spurs in the 1960s, like a baby goose, because then they were so good. Plus, I always liked their Jewish angle and still do. I have supported them, strictly at a distance and media access permitting, ever since. They’ve been sporadically good since that ancient time, but never as good. Finally, that seems like it might be changing.

Today Spurs beat Chelsea at Chelsea, the last time they did that having been in 1990. Spurs are now in fourth place, which if they stay there is high enough to get them into the Champions League again. They are now 8 points clear of Chelsea in fifth. With seven more games to be played, it’s not settled yet, but things just got a lot better for Spurs.

I just watched Dele Alli’s two goals on the TV highlights, and with both it was not just the skill but the speed with which he did what he did that was so impressive. Before that, Eriksen hit what the radio commentators were calling a potential goal of the season. One of those long distance, fast and late inswingers.

So, to celebrate, here is a photo I took of the new Spurs stadium, which will get moved into next season or thenabouts. It will be a few games before the Spurs team settles in and starts enjoying their home advantage whenever they play there. But judging by how well they did this season at the at first unfamiliar Wembley, it shouldn’t take them too long to settle into New White Hart Lane.

So, this is how New White Hart Lane was looking last November, with one of the Walthamstow reservoirs in the foreground:

Mmmm. Cranes.

I haven’t checked progress more recently, and can offer no photos from since then. But here are 103 more pictures, and counting, of New White Hart Lane’s progress. I knew you’d be excited.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Assorted Twitterings

I follow Tom Holland because I have liked several of his books (especially Persian Fire), and because I often agree with him, as when he says things like this:

The assumption in Europe that its brand of colonialism was uniquely awful is, in a perverse way, one of the last hold-outs of eurocentrism.

Very true.

Via Tom Holland, I came upon this, from Anthony McGowan:

I came across a place called Strood. I looked it up (having no idea where or what it was), I found this achingly poignant statement: “Strood was part of Frindsbury until 1193, but now Frindsbury is considered part of Strood.”

It’s the implication that “now”, in the Strood/Finsbury part of the world, began in 1193 that makes this so entertaining. I guess they have long memories out there in the not-London part of Britain.

Anthony McGowan is someone I don’t agree with a lot of the time (here is what I think about that). But, I also liked this:

An article about the history of the Chinese typewriter. One old machine had a strange pattern, as some characters had been polished by over-use. It belonged to a Chinese-American immigrant. “The keys that glitter with use are: emigrant, far away, urgent, longing, hardship, dream”.

McGowan doesn’t supply links to where he got these intriguing titbits, which I don’t like. But despite that and other similarly nitpicky nitpicks on my part, Twitter is working, for me. At present I have no plans to depend upon it to say things, although that may change, for I am too distrustful of its increasing political bias. But it is supplying me with much more stuff to be thinking about and writing about.