Quotulatiousness

February 6, 2013

Old and busted: organ transplants. New hotness: 3D organ printing

Filed under: Health, Science, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 00:03

Matt Peckham on the very near future of organ replacement technology:

Say you need a new trachea, a part of the body we’ve already managed to replicate using stem cells and successfully transplant to a human with late-stage tracheal cancer (I’m not making that up or exaggerating). With a 3D printer and a bunch of stem cell-saturated bio-ink, you might be able to just print that trachea on demand thanks to a new technique that lets you pass human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) through a printer nozzle without destroying them.

A team of researchers from Scotland announced Monday that they’d finally managed to get an inkjet-style printer to craft an organic 3D object. Not an actual organ (well, not yet), but these scientists claim they’ve been able to clear a crucial hurdle: getting hESCs, prized for their ability to become cells of any tissue type, to survive the printing process.

The solution involved rejiggering the way the inkjet-style 3D printer worked, specifically the printing valve, which had to be tweaked to ever-so-gently deposit blobs of hESCs in programmable patterns without compromising the viability and functionality of the cells themselves. The researchers figured out how to do this using two types of bio-inks as well as allow for independent control of the amount in each droplet (with considerable control granularity — down to less than five cells per droplet). The results of the experiment were just published in the bio-science print and online journal Biofabrication.

January 20, 2013

Identifying Britain’s “greatest” land battle

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Europe, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:41

Setting aside the fact that there’s no rational way to compare battles from different wars in different eras, the National Army Museum is holding a poll to determine the top five British battles, then a debate among historians followed by a concluding vote to determine the “best” of them.

As well as famous battles, the list includes some less well-known clashes, such as Megiddo in 1918, in modern-day Israel, where a British-led force decisively broke through the Ottoman front lines.

The earliest battle on the list is the English Civil War clash at Naseby, in 1645, in which the Royalists were defeated by the Parliamentarians’ disciplined New Model Army.

It is one of two that took place on British soil between two armies from this country. The other is Culloden (1745), which marked the end of the Jacobite rebellion.

Not all the battles ended in victory. The list includes the failed Gallipoli campaign (1915-1916), in which Britain and its allies tried to invade the Ottoman Empire.

Others are less conclusive: such as the Crimean clash of Balaklava (1854) – noted for the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade — and the Somme (1916).

The most recent engagement is Musa Qala, in Afghanistan, where, in 2006, a small garrison of British, Danish and Afghan troops withstood a lengthy Taliban siege.

Only land battles are being considered, ruling out naval victories such as Trafalgar (1805) and air campaigns such as the Battle of Britain (1940).

Speaking non-scientifically, clearly the most important land battle in British history was the clash between Wolfe and Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham:

… also known as the Battle of Quebec, (Bataille des Plaines d’Abraham or Première bataille de Québec in French) was a pivotal battle in the Seven Years’ War (referred to as the French and Indian War in the United States). The battle, which began on 13 September 1759, was fought between the British Army and Navy, and the French Army, on a plateau just outside the walls of Quebec City, on land that was originally owned by a farmer named Abraham Martin, hence the name of the battle.

The battle involved fewer than 10,000 troops between both sides, but proved to be a deciding moment in the conflict between France and Britain over the fate of New France, influencing the later creation of Canada.[2]

The battle (and its aftermath) tend to be ignored in Quebec, but it shouldn’t be:

Montcalm died before dawn on the 14th. Hit again, probably by a Canadien militiaman, Wolfe died as the French ranks dissolved. Fighting on the Plains continued until dusk, sustained by Canadien militia and their native allies. When Quebec sovereignists killed plans to re-enact the battle they helped keep that heroic story secret. Perhaps they had no idea that it happened. When French regulars fled, the militia fought on.

Five times they stopped Fraser’s terrifying Highlanders from slaughtering the terrified regulars. Thanks to their despised militia and aboriginal allies, Montcalm’s French regulars could safely stop at Beauport, catch their breath, and begin a long, dreary march back to Montreal to prepare for another year of war. Did the separatists not want anyone to know?

December 30, 2012

Hugh Trevor-Roper on the “invention” of Scotland

Filed under: Books, Britain, History, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:33

In the Telegraph, Adam Sisman reviews a book by Hugh Trevor-Roper (an old article from 2008, but still of interest):

Trevor-Roper was repelled by Scottish nationalism’s appeal to atavistic tribal loyalties. He knew that historical myth, however innocently concocted, could have unforeseen, even pernicious, consequence; the romantic fantasies of Goethe and Wagner had fired the imagination of the Nazis.

Trevor-Roper believed that ‘the whole history of Scotland has been coloured by myth’, and he took it upon himself to address some of these myths in this book, largely written in the 1970s, but set aside while still in draft. His former pupil, Jeremy Cater, has skilfully edited the text and has added a useful foreword.

The Invention of Scotland identifies three overlapping myths that have shaped the self-image of that proud nation.

The first is the political myth of the ancient Scottish constitution: that pre-medieval Scotland had been governed by a form of limited monarchy. Time after time this anachronistic notion has been torpedoed; but after a while it has always resurfaced. To this day, the Declaration of Arbroath is brandished by patriotic Scotsmen as their equivalent of the American Declaration of Independence, albeit written in the 14th century.

[. . .]

The third myth is that of traditional Scots dress, which Trevor-Roper shows to have been got up, largely for commercial purposes, in the 19th century.

The kilt was devised by a Lancashire industrialist as a convenient form of dress for his Scottish employees; while the clan-based differentiation of the tartans was the invention of two brothers calling themselves the Sobieski Stuarts, who in 1842 published their Vestiarium Scoticum, an elaborate work of imagination which served as a pattern-book for tartan manufacturers.

[. . .]

A chapter entitled ‘The Coming of the Kilt’ traces what Trevor-Roper calls ‘the Highland takeover of Scotland’. In the 19th century ‘the apparatus of Celtic tribalism’ would be assumed by the Scots aristocracy, ‘those whose ancestors regarded Highland dress as the badge of barbarism, and shuddered at the squeal of the bagpipe’. The apotheosis of this tendency would come when George IV paraded in Edinburgh wearing a kilt of ‘Stuart tartan’: disguising himself, snorted Macaulay, ‘in what, before the Union, was considered by nine Scotchmen out of 10 as the dress of a thief’.

November 7, 2012

Scotland: sing an offensive song, go to prison

Filed under: Britain, Law, Liberty, Soccer — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

Kevin Rooney looks at the sad state of free speech (or should that be free singing?) in Scotland:

Imagine the scene: a young man is led away in handcuffs to begin a prison sentence as his mother is left crying in the courtroom. He is 19 years old, has a good job, has no previous convictions, and has never been in trouble before. These facts cut no ice with the judge, however, as the crime is judged so heinous that only a custodial sentence is deemed appropriate. The young man in question was found guilty of singing a song that mocked and ridiculed a religious leader and his followers.

So where might this shocking story originate? Was it Iran? Saudi Arabia? Afghanistan? Perhaps it was Russia, a variation of the Pussy Riot saga, without the worldwide publicity? No, the country in question is Scotland and the young man is a Rangers fan. He joined in with hundreds of his fellow football fans in singing ‘offensive songs’ which referred to the pope and the Vatican and called Celtic fans ‘Fenian bastards’.

Such songs are part and parcel of the time-honoured tradition of Rangers supporters. And I have yet to meet a Celtic fan who has been caused any harm or suffering by such colourful lyrics. Yet in sentencing Connor McGhie to three months in a young offenders’ institution, the judge stated that ‘the extent of the hatred [McGhie] showed took my breath away’. He went on: ‘Anybody who participates in this disgusting language must be stopped.’

Several things strike me about this court case. For a start, if Rangers fans singing rude songs about their arch rivals Celtic shocks this judge to the core, I can only assume he does not get out very much or knows little of life in Scotland. Not that his ignorance of football culture is a surprise — the chattering classes have always viewed football-related banter with contempt. But what is new about the current climate is that in Scotland, the middle-class distaste for the behaviour of football fans has become enshrined in law.

November 3, 2012

Remembering the ill-starred Darien expedition

Filed under: Americas, Britain, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:18

History Today notes that the Darien Colony was founded by Scottish would-be colonists in what is now Panama on November 3, 1698:

On July 12th, 1698 five ships carrying 1,200 eager colonists left the Port of Leith in Scotland to a rapturous send-off. Most of the ill-fated emigrants did not know where they were going and did not find out until the sealed orders were opened at Madeira, but they were brimming with enthusiasm anyway.

A voyage of three months took them across the Atlantic to a harbour on the mangrove-studded Caribbean coast of Panama. On November 3rd, they took formal possession of their new territory, confidently naming it Caledonia and laying the foundations of the settlement of New Edinburgh. But it all went horribly wrong. Hundreds died of fever and dysentery before the colony was abandoned.

[. . .]

Scotland blamed the whole fiasco on the English. Paterson himself was bankrupt, but still believed in his scheme and tried vainly to revive it. Meanwhile, the Darien disaster seems to have persuaded hard-headed Scotsmen that their country could not prosper by itself, but needed access to England’s empire, and it helped to pave the way for the Act of Union between the two countries in 1707. Under the Act the investors in the Darien scheme were quietly compensated for their losses at taxpayers’ expense.

July 5, 2012

British army reduces and consolidates 17 units

Filed under: Britain, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:47

As reported earlier, the British army will be losing several battalions of infantry in the consolidation effort to reduce the army’s total manpower by 20,000:

The four infantry battalions to disappear are the 2nd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, the 2nd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment (Green Howards), the 3rd Battalion the Mercian Regiment and the 2nd Battalion the Royal Welsh.

A fifth infantry battalion, the 5th Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland (Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders), will become a single company to carry out public duties in Scotland.

The Armoured Corps will be reduced by two units with the mergers of the Queen’s Royal Lancers and the 9th/12th Royal Lancers and the 1st and 2nd Tank Regiments.

The Royal Artillery, the Royal Engineers, the Army Air Corps, the Royal Logistic Corps, the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers and the Royal Military Police will also be affected.

[. . .]

Details of the other changes are:

  • The Royal Artillery will be reduced from 13 to 12 units with the withdrawal of the 39th Regiment Royal Artillery
  • The Royal Engineers will be reduced from 14 to 11 units with the withdrawal of 24 and 28 Engineer Regiments and 67 Works Group
  • The Army Air Corps will reduce from five to four units as 1 Regiment AAC merges with 9 Regiment AAC
  • The Royal Logistic Corps will be reduced from 15 to 12 units with 1 and 2 Logistic Support Regiments withdrawn from the Order of Battle and 23 Pioneer Regiment disbanded
  • The Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers will be reduced to seven units with the withdrawal of 101 Force Support Battalion
  • 5 Regiment Royal Military Police will be removed

Update: As you’d expect, the changes are not being welcomed by current or former soldiers.

The reforms have caused anger and frustration within senior ranks. Earlier this week, a leaked letter to General Wall from one senior officer in the Royal Fusiliers showed the anger brewing over the scale of the proposed cuts.

Brigadier David Paterson, the honorary Colonel of the Regiment of Fusiliers, said the decision to axe one of its battalions would not “best serve” the armed forces and “cannot be presented as the best or most sensible military option”.

He added: “I, as Colonel, have the duty to tell my men why it is their battalion, which at the time of the announcement will be the best manned battalion in the army, with recruits waiting in the wings, was chosen by CGS. I will then also have to explain to my Fusiliers in a fully manned battalion why they are likely to be posted to battalions that cannot recruit. This will not be an easy sell.”

June 15, 2012

The Never Seconds flap reveals highly selective anti-authoritarian reactions

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Food, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:52

Brendan O’Neill is happy that the petty authoritarians at the Argyll and Bute council have rescinded their ban on young Martha Payne’s school lunch blog, but points out that the Twitstorm that helped publicize her plight is remarkably selective in which kinds of official bullying they will oppose:

But what a shame that these decent folks’ opposition to council heavy-handedness in relation to school lunches is so spectacularly partial. What a shame, for example, that they haven’t offered solidarity to those millions of children who have been banned from bringing sweets and crisps into schools, which, as I once reported for the BBC, has given rise to a black market in junk food in school playgrounds. What a shame they didn’t speak out when councils, behaving like a Tuckshop Taliban, stormed into schools and shut down tuckshops and vending machines that sold chocolate or Coke. What a shame they didn’t have anything to say when mothers in Yorkshire who passed chips through the schoolgates to their children were slated in the media and depicted as Viz-style “Fat Slags” in The Sun. What a shame they didn’t complain when it was revealed that some schools are taking it upon themselves to raid children’s lunchboxes — made for them by their parents! — in order to confiscate anything “unhealthy”.

What a shame, in other words, that only one kind of authoritarianism in relation to school dinners is criticised — namely that which censors people from revealing how crap such dinners are — while other forms of authoritarianism, which control both what children can eat and even what their parents can provide them with, are tolerated. Like stern headmasters, it seems concerned hacks will only give their nod of approval to nice, polite, healthy schoolchildren, while withholding it from the rabble, from kids who eat chips and cake with the blessing of their stupid parents. Those kids, it seems, can be censored and censured and controlled as much as is necessary.

May 28, 2012

Playing definitional games to demonize ordinary people as quasi-alcoholics

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:02

Most reasonable people would agree with the notion of using the government’s powers to help “problem drinkers” to drink less. It sounds like a good idea, unless you’re a weirdo libertarian type. Or a “problem drinker”. Building on this, the Scottish government recently passed a minimum alcohol price law with the stated intent of helping “hazardous” drinkers to drink less. But what’s the definition of a “hazardous” drinker? It’s almost certainly not what you’d expect:

A model of the possible effects of minimum pricing by the University of Sheffield has often been drawn upon by the media due to a lack of definite information on the effects of MAP. On the surface, the results look relatively reasonable to someone in favour of minimum alcohol pricing. At 50p per unit, the study suggests that the average ‘harmful’ drinker would be most likely to reduce their intake, followed by ‘hazardous’ drinkers, with ‘moderate’ drinkers suffering least, which, of course, all sounds very fair.

But on closer inspection, it appears as though my own drinking is hazardous. If you’re male and drink more than a pint a day of fairly standard lager on average, yours is too. If you’re female, you’re entitled to even less before you abandon moderation. ‘Binge drinking’ can be any more than 8 units in a single session, or three pints of lager. No, this is not a joke. Millions of British people, who certainly wouldn’t think of themselves as dangerous consumers of alcohol, are in this category. The words ‘hazardous’ and ‘binge’ seem almost bound to bring to mind serious, tabloid-beloved alcohol abuse. This isn’t the case.

[. . .]

Alcohol addiction is a serious social problem. Like all addiction, it’s closely associated with more severe health risks, mortality and crime, and requires the attention of government. Whether price increases help is debatable. An enormous 2009 meta-study of the effect of price on alcohol consumption certainly shows that alcohol consumption is inversely responsive to price. As the cost of alcohol rises, all groups drink less.

But the study also shows that heavy drinkers are significantly more inelastic than others, reacting less to price. This might well seem logical, as the group contains people who are addicted to alcohol. Alcoholics are less likely to consider increases in prices in the same way that casual drinkers do. Will some of the most dependent drinkers simply increase the amount they spend? We don’t yet know. Scotland is about to find out.

So aside from the basic nanny state meddling, the price hike won’t actually produce the reduction in alcohol consumption by the very folks it’s intended to target. It will increase profits for the producers of the cheapest forms of rotgut booze. What’s that old saw about unintended consequences again?

Three Jubilees, three different Britains

Filed under: Britain, History, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:18

In The Economist, “Bagehot” looks at the three most recent Jubilee celebrations, to see what the events might show of the state of Britain.

The 1977 Silver Jubilee:

Celebrations in 1977 involved children’s food—sausage rolls and jelly, hot dogs and ice cream—and beer for the grown-ups. There were violent sporting contests, from tugs-of-war to free-form football matches. To conquer reserve, fancy dress was worn, often involving men in women’s clothing. From the West Midlands came news of an all-transvestite football game, with the laconic annotation: “all ended up in the canal.”

London displayed both patriotic zeal (flag-draped pubs in Brick Lane, big street parties in Muswell Hill) and hostility (cheerless housing estates, slogans declaring “Stuff the Jubilee”).

Scotland was a nation apart. A file reports “total apathy” in Croy. In Glasgow the anniversary was called “an English jubilee”. Snobs sneered along with Scots. At Eton College, a wooden Jubilee pyramid was smashed by old boys. At Oxford University, examinations were held on Jubilee Day, in a display of indifference.

The 2002 Golden Jubilee:

By 2002 and the Golden Jubilee, Britain comes across as a busier, lonelier, more cynical place. The royal family was “just showbiz”, sniffed a diarist from Sussex. There is angry talk of Princess Diana and how her 1997 death was mishandled by the queen. There are fewer street parties than in 1977, all agree. This is variously blamed on apathy, the authorities (whose job it is to organise events, apparently) and above all on health-and-safety rules. In 1977, in contrast, one Wiltshire village cheerfully let a “pyromaniac” doctor take Jubilee fireworks home to add extra bangs.

And finally, this year’s Diamond Jubilee:

Visiting Wimbotsham, Bagehot is shown elaborate plans: cake-baking contests, pony rides, a teddy bears’ picnic, a sports day, a pensioners’ tea. But there will be no tug-of-war (people might hurt themselves) and the face painters have liability insurance. Still, the festivities will dwarf those seen in 2002, locals say. The monarchy endured a “big lull after Diana”, suggests David Long, the driving force behind Wimbotsham’s Diamond Jubilee. As the queen grows older, she is “more highly thought of”. Linda Nixon, a Wimbotsham pensioner, credits Prince William’s royal wedding with reviving enthusiasm. Prince William and his brother Prince Harry are “like everyday people”, she says.

May 16, 2012

Scotland’s latest moral panic, soon to spread to England

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:00

A spectre is haunting Scotland: the spectre of cheap booze and binge drinkers. The most recent regulatory answer, raising the minimum price of alcohol, won’t solve the problem.

Scotland announced minimum pricing for alcohol this week, at 50p a unit; the price of the cheapest spirits will now rise by almost 50%. It will arrive in England soon, although possibly at the more timid rate of 40p per unit. It will only make a tiny difference, says the government, as it contemplates raising prices for a commodity almost all citizens enjoy (86% of the adult population drink alcohol), and at a time when prices are rising everywhere.

So why bother doing it? The government says it will save lives, even as it announces the speed limit on some motorways will be raised to 80mph, which will cost lives. I am not sure if the deaths created on the roads will be offset by the lives saved from gin, but it seems that more deaths on the roads are acceptable, but more deaths from alcohol are not. Do I smell snobbery? David Cameron says that alcohol “generates mayhem on our streets and spreads fear in our communities” — so I suppose I do.

Minimum pricing is a result of a national moral panic about alcohol, which follows on the trail of moral panics about tobacco and obesity, which are created by the tabloids and their beloved pictures of girls vomiting into gutters with their skirts hitched round their waists; there is a whole crocodile of moral panics, squeezing its way into Downing Street as more important issues are ignored.

[. . .]

Drinking is something that terrifies some but delights many. Drinkers can be ghastly, but so can politicians, and so can sober politicians. Minimum pricing comes from an ancient place – the desire for a neat society – and it expresses Cameron’s desire to appear to be doing something, while he does nothing elsewhere. Where one stands on minimum pricing depends entirely on whether you believe it is a person’s unalienable right to get shit-faced drunk at the market price, no matter what your income. When so many rights are threatened, who would dispute it?

May 14, 2012

Scottish minimum alcohol pricing: “Health fascism is back with a vengeance”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:30

A released statement from Sam Bowman, Head of Research at the Adam Smith Institute, responding to Scotland’s minimum alcohol price decision:

“Minimum alcohol pricing is a miserable, Victorian-era measure that explicitly targets the poor and the frugal, leaving the more expensive drinks of the middle classes untouched. It’s regressive and paternalistic, treating people as if they’re children to be nannied by the government.

“To make things worse, all signs suggest that the minimum price will be successively raised once it’s in place. This is what happened in the UK with alcohol and tobacco taxes, which are now among the highest in the world. It’s like boiling a frog – bring in a low minimum price that only affects the most marginalized part of society, the poor, and raise it gradually every year without people noticing.

“The reality is that Britain does not have a drink problem. The definition of “binge drinking” has been redefined so that a grown man drinking more than two pints of lager is considered to be “binging”. The number of diseases defined as “alcohol-related” has tripled in the last twenty-five years. In fact, we drink less than we did ten years ago, less than we did one hundred years ago, and far less than we did in the 19th Century. Hysteria about drinking alcohol is a red herring invented by the health lobby. Health fascism is back with a vengeance, and minimum alcohol pricing is just another brick in the wall.”

May 12, 2012

What’s in a name? Just centuries of military tradition

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:33

The military bureaucrats and their civilian masters are well on the way to stamping out all those awfully old-fashioned names and symbols of the Scottish highland regiments:

Senior Downing Street sources said David Cameron is not yet at the stage of overruling Philip Hammond, his Defence Secretary, over his proposal to replace iconic names like the Black Watch with battalion numbers.

But they were keen to emphasise that no final decision has been made and the Prime Minister is aware of the potential political damage to the campaign to prevent Scotland separating from the UK.

[. . .]

Fury has been mounting since the Defence Secretary told the Daily Telegraph earlier this week that the “ancient cap badges have largely gone” and some traditional regimental names are now just “attached in brackets”.

Under Mr Hammond’s proposals, the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland (3 SCOTS), would become just 3 SCOTS and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlands would be names 5 SCOTS.

[. . .]

The former Labour Government faced a fierce backlash when the battalions were amalgamated in 2005 to form the Royal Regiment of Scotland, but they were promised they could keep their historic names.

Jeff Duncan, who managed the Save Scotland’s Army Regiments campaign, said yesterday it had restarted and nearly 1,500 had signed up in only 48 hours using the social networking site Facebook.

April 27, 2012

Michael Ignatieff’s incautious remarks prove he was the wrong leader for the Liberal party

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:05

Matt Gurney on the media kerfuffle over Michael Ignatieff’s perhaps-quoted-out-of-context remarks on Quebec and separation:

Michael Ignatieff is not entirely right when he claims his now infamous remarks on the inevitability of Quebec’s independence, made during a BBC interview discussing Scotland’s possible exit from the United Kingdom, were taken out of context. He is correct that the sound bites that aroused so much media interest in Canada did not do justice to the full interview. But, in the final analysis, he did indeed say, in clear terms, that Canada and Quebec are essentially two counties, that they have little to say to each other and that Quebec is at a “way station” on its inevitable road to full sovereignty. Ignatieff, a brilliant man whose political instincts remain as faulty as ever, may regret saying what he did, but he did say it.

Separatist politicians welcomed his comments, as it “confirms” that Quebec’s independence is inevitable. Federalist politicians, particularly those unkindly disposed toward the Liberals, slammed Ignatieff, and the party he led for good measure. It was all premised upon the idea, whether sincerely believed by Ignatieff’s critics or not, that his comments may in some way encourage Quebec to leave.

That’s unlikely. But it might — just might — hasten along the day when the Rest of Canada (the ROC, as it’s called) decides to rid itself of Quebec.

Ignatieff described the situation we face as Quebec and Canada having nothing to say to each other. That’s not exactly it. It’s not that we don’t have anything to say, it’s just that we don’t have anything in common. And the more we talk to each other, the clearer that becomes. But that growing distance between Quebec and the ROC is not, as Ignatieff described it, a “contract of mutual indifference.” If it was, that would be fine. But that isn’t the system we built. Quebec’s indifference to the ROC comes at a cost — almost $7.4-billion in transfers from other Canadian provinces a year. That’s effectively half of the total sum dispersed through the equalization process. That’s not indifference, that’s bribery. And the price Quebec is willing to settle for is not necessarily the price the ROC will be willing to pay indefinitely.

April 13, 2012

Mapping 18th century shipping patterns

Filed under: Africa, Americas, Asia, Economics, Europe, History, Science — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:06

An interesting post at the Guardian on tracing historical shipping patterns:


(Larger version at the original URL)

James Cheshire, of Spatial Analysis, has taken historical records of shipping routes between 1750 and 1800 and plotted them using modern mapping tools.

The first map, above, shows journeys made by British ships. Cross-Atlantic shipping lanes were among the busiest, but the number of vessels traveling to what was than called the East Indies — now India and South-East Asia — also stands out when compared to Dutch and Spanish records.

I was surprised to see how many trading voyages there were to and from the Hudson Strait — fur trade traffic, I assume.


(Larger version at the original URL)

This second map shows the same data for Dutch boats. The routes are closely matched to the British ones, although the number of journeys is noticeably smaller.

You can also see the scattering of journeys made by Dutch ships to Svalbard, off the North coast of the Norwegian mainland

March 29, 2012

Edinburgh may be killing the cultural golden goose

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:46

Tiffany Jenkins talks about the origins of the world famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the powers-that-be who seem to be determined to strangle it with red tape:

In 1947, eight theatre groups turned up to perform at the newly formed Edinburgh International Festival, an annual event established to celebrate and enrich postwar European cultural life. The theatre groups had not been invited, and were not part of the official programme. So instead they created a spontaneous festival on the side. Growing year on year, with the theatre groups encouraging others to participate, this alternative to the Edinburgh International Festival eventually established itself, in 1959, as the Festival Fringe Society.

Today, Scotland is home to some of the top cultural events in the world. Many take place in Edinburgh during the August months, attracting high-profile authors, artists, comics and theatre companies from all over the globe. At the heart of this cultural firmament is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, an event now funded and supported by government and local councils. Yet, in a nasty twist, those very same central and local authorities, currently enjoying the prestige of being associated with a world-renowned festival of culture, are seemingly intent on stifling the spontaneous, do-it-yourself impulse that originally gave birth to the Fringe.

[. . .]

From 1 April 2012, it will become necessary to have a ‘Public Entertainment License’ to undertake any kind of public art in Scotland. Previously a licence was only required for events charging admission. Starting next month, even the smallest local events being run for free — say in a café or a bookshop — will require one, which must be applied for six weeks beforehand. This will include exhibitions in temporary places, gigs in record shops, free film screenings, music in pubs. You know, even really dodgy stuff — like poetry readings to 10 men and a dog.

Apart from the form-filling and curtailment of spontaneity — you cannot just ring around a few friends and suggest a performance at the weekend — this will cost money too. In the past, fees for a ‘public entertainment licence’ have ranged from £120 to £7,500, requiring several months’ notice to be given to the council and three weeks public notice. Nothing will happen without long-term planning. Small venues, like cafes, which support artists and performers by hosting free events, won’t be able to cover the costs. And they shouldn’t have to. Art doesn’t need a licence, and nor do we to enjoy it.

What we are seeing is the hyper-regulation of everyday life where anything we choose to do spontaneously and between ourselves is seen as dangerous or threatening. The authorities want to monitor, codify and regulate the most normal, everyday interactions and behaviour.

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