Who Were the Sea Peoples?

I took a trip to Oxford yesterday. It was the first tourist activity I've done since I arrived in England. Except, of course, for the tourist activity I like the most: finding out what it's like to live in some place, especially what the people who live there are like. At the standard tourist spots, that is not what happens: they are filled with other tourists, not the residents. That bothered me when I stayed in old Quebec City: the entire old city area is a giant tourist attraction. After a few days, I realized I wasn't in a real city at all, but in something equivalent to Colonial Williamsburg on a larger scale. The countryside the London-Oxford train passes through, once one gets perhaps 25 minutes out of London, is lovely. Autumn is fully setting in here, and the trees lining the green fields are muted tones of green and gold and brown, much quieter than a New England fall, but with their own charm. The English rivers are enchanting, full and slow and lazy, their b...

Passing through Paddington Station, I saw a sign reading: "Caution: Cycle Thieves About." I guess it's like rotating your tires -- you don't want the thieves getting all worn out on one side or anything.

New York and London are quite similar as far as how people behave walking around the sidewalks, and both quite different to where I grew up. (Over here, we say "different to.") The high density of people on the sidewalks seems to lead to most pedestrians dehumanizing everyone but the people they are walking with. Whereas in the small city I lived in as a yoot, someone approaching you would meet your eyes, say "excuse me," or perhaps gesture to avoid a collision, in New York and London people are far more likely to stare at your feet and try to outguess you. This morning I was stunned by how far people can take that attitude. A woman was walking down a passage in the underground about twenty feet ahead of me. She must have decided she was going the wrong way, because she suddenly reversed directions, so that she was walking straight back at me. Now, the passageway was quite wide, and there was plenty of room for her to go around me. Of course, I could have move...

Drying one's clothes outside brings surprises. Two days ago, I put on a shirt and found that a bird had used it for target practice. This morning, as I pulled up my boxers, I felt a small lump on the waistband. I pulled it off, and then looked to see what it was. I found that I was holding a decent-sized, live wasp in my fingers. Yikes! I have no idea why I wasn't stung, unless I luckily had employed just the grip Steve Irwin uses to hold a wasp and not be stung by it.

In my local (that means a bar) the other night, I was in the loo (that means the bathroom) when I heard some fellow drunkenly ranting about "frogs" and "genocide." Did he want to wipe out the French? No, because then I heard "amphibians." I left the toilet and went to wash my hands, where I found the ranter, wearing an Irish football jersey, addressing his victim -- I mean, audience. He leaned closer and told the fellow, "You know, in this life you can be anything you want to be, if you put your mind to it." Even a raving, batty drunk!

If you're sick of having an elitist, Ivy League alumnus, multi-millionaire, Skull-and-Bones member, warmonger as president, then be thankful you live in a country where you have the opportunity to replace him with a man who is an elitist, Ivy League alumnus, multi-millionaire, Skull-and-Bones member, and warmonger.

I passed a Woolworth's in North London the other day, then turned because I realized I was curious: Would a Woolworth's here smell the same as one in the states? Yep, it sure did. Just what is that smell? Caldor and Bradley's always had pretty much the same odor as well.

From left to right, me, Lionel Robbins, and Pete Boettke:

I'm in Los Angeles so naturally the discourse at parties eventually runs towards how Dubya is the new Hitler. However, the other evening when somebody made the comment, "I think the election is going to be a disaster", I was thinking how amusing it would be to respond, "oh, you think Kerry has a chance?" but I kept my mouth shut because I wasn't really in the mood to antagonize people. (I hadn't drank anywhere nearly enough and was looking for a ride home.) Later, I realized that I should've responded with something closer to my own sentiment, "so you think somebody is actually going to win the election?" In my bumper sticker count system, Kerry wins slightly over Bush in the Los Angeles area. There are a lot of anti-Bush stickers but that doesn't necessarily mean those votes are going to Kerry. They might. They might not. Nobody anywhere seems really excited about their candidates. If nobody shows up for the election...

I've been to several "right-wing" Protestant churches, and what's odd is that they generally hold the following two beliefs: (A) America is going to h*ll in a handbasket. Our culture is absolutely disgusting, and if we don't shape up God is going to take us out to the toolshed. (B) America is the most wonderful country that has ever existed. Foreign people would gladly welcome our bombers and take the chance of being blown to smithereens, if only to be more like us. Again, I am not trying to make fun of American Christians; I'm one of them. I'm just making this observation...

William Shatner has offered to pay $210,000 to ride into space. (Doesn't he know how much he could've saved by booking his flight though priceline.com??)

I was walking down the main road near my house the other night when a police van, containing two cops, came to a halt by the curb. My mind flashed back to a night in sleepy Redding, CT, when I was walking home from my local around midnight and had a cop pull up alongside me. His window came down. "Excuse me, sir, are you just out for a walk?" "Actually," I responded, "I was down at the Georgetown Saloon, and I'm walking home." "Oh, you live near here?" "Yes, Highland Avenue." "How long have you lived there?" "Four years." "And what's your name?" "Gene Callahan." "And your birthdate?" Well, I had tried to be patient, but that was about it. Instead of thanking me for not drinking and driving, this nitwit was going to grill me because not many people in Redding walk at night. "Are you going to send me a birthday card?" I asked. Chagri...

Here's a new angle on this situation: On the tube yesterday, I saw a sign showing an abandoned piece of luggage on a seat and reading: "Don't touch, check with other passengers, inform station staff or call 999." In other words, if you just ignore the bomb, maybe it will go away. For the want of a semi-colon, the train was lost. Of course, the US is as full of badly worded signs as is England. At my old office, there was a sign on a door reading, "This door must be kept closed at all times." Wouldn't a wall have been a better choice than a door, in that case?

The other day, a headline The Times read, "Hurricane Ivan Leaves Behind Wreckage Worth Billions of Pounds." Perhaps Ivan can drop by my place and leave some of that wreckage there. I'd even be satisfied with wreckage worth a million pounds.

The other night someone said to Jan Lester, "Jan, how is Escape to Leviathan selling?" The actual title of Jan's book is Escape from Leviathan , so the new title changed the thrust of the work a bit. However, it did suggest a series of titles Jan might produce: Escape for Leviathan , in which Jan escapes from a prison to rescue the State, Escape Through Leviathan , where Jan uses the labryinth bureaucracy of the State to elude his ferocious and vicious pursuers, and my favorite, Escape with Leviathan , in which Jan and the State run off to a deserted tropical isle together, leaving the bewildered populace longing for both authority and critical rationalism.

* I was on the tube a couple of days ago, when a voice came over the PA and said, "This train is quite crowded. When exiting, please use all available doors." I know how to use one door or another to get off the train, but I froze in puzzlement as to how I could use "all available doors" to get off. It was six stops past mine before I just punted and used the one nearest to me. * And I was looking forward to having tons of yummy English muffins when I got over here, but I haven't seen one! Have the English sold all of theirs to the states?

Following up on Bob's post below, I got a good laugh when I heard Donald Rumsfeld warning other countries (he meant Iran and Syria) "not to interfere in Iraq's internal affairs." You see, buddy, if there's any interferin' to be done, we Americans gonna be the ones doin' it.

Apparently the UK paper The Guardian was trying to promote a Kerry win. Outraged Americans correctly pointed out that Britain has no business interfering with the elections of another country... I mean, with the elections of the United States.

For those of you who haven't heard, SpaceShipOne recently won the $10 million X-Prize. (Commentary here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/murphy/murphy87.html ) If and when I get a few hundred million bucks, I'm definitely going to set up prizes like this. That's really one of the main benefits of being rich, I think. You get to decide the arbitrary hoops that everyone else jumps through while they're "paying their dues."

* I'm beginning to get the notion that there's some fellow named "Beckham" who is something of a celebrity here. It's mostly the fact that his name has been in the front page headline of some tabloid every single day since I've arrived that has suggested that to me. * In America, fast food service jobs are held mostly by Hispanics, in order to prevent the customers from wasting the staff members' time by talking to them. England doesn't have much of a Hispanic population, but fast food places here have gotten around that difficulty by employing Eastern Europeans who can't understand the customers instead. Last night, I stopped at a sandwich shop. "Cheddar Cheese Sandwich" was listed on the menu. But how was it prepared? A typical cheese sandwich here might include pickles and mango chutney -- not bad, actually. So, I asked the chap behind the counter, "What's in the cheddar cheese sandwich?" "Cheese." ...

* Many of the doors around LSE bear a sign saying "Door Alarmed." Well, I'm starting to become alarmed that all these inanimate objects are so worried. * I'm writing this in the LSE library, where it's about 10 degrees colder than it is outside -- and it's not warm outside. * And the library has a sign saying, "When in the library, your cell phone must be strictly switched to silent mode." Now, I know how to switch my cell phone to silent mode, but how do I do so "strictly"? Ought I to warn it, in harsh terms, of the punishment I will deliver should it ring?

* Wednesday night, Ireland beat the Faroe Islands two-nil in World Cup qualifying play. In the States, of course, we'd say "two-nothing." But no one ever seems to say "two-zero." Why is that? * And I'm surprised that there are enough young, athletic males in the Faroe Islands to form a football (that means soccer) team. * My clothes are again "drying" on the line. I hope to be able to bring them inside by Sunday. I'm thinking of skipping the washing machine altogether and putting my laundry straight outside, since it gets both washed and dried there. * I asked directions to a restaurant from a news agent. He told me it was right across the street from "steer box." Now, I wasn't sure what a "steer box" is, so I asked him where that was. He pointed it out to me. Starbucks. * While on the topic, it's interesting to note the different effects produced by American and English rain. In the US, mushrooms pop up...

I was flipping through the channels on TV here in England, and happened on a quiz show. One contestant was an accountant. The profession of the other wasn't mentioned, but he was named " John Gray ." I thought, "That's a funny coincidence, but of course it's a common name." Then, at the end of the program, the host mentioned that a famous poet would be on next week. Hmm, could it be? A few days later, I was talking with Jan Lester, Pete Boettke, and David McDonagh, and Gray's name came up. I asked if he appeared on quiz shows, and David said, "Yes, regularly." So, while his political thought may have gone downhill, I can report he's very good at making words from scrambled letters.

I was able to bring my wash inside! We line "dry" our clothes where I'm living. The trick is to get them out and back in during one of the 12-hour windows without rain. Well, Sunday I mis-timed things, and today was the first time I was able to bring them inside. It's not that they were actually dry, or anything like that. It was just the first time they weren't dripping wet. Now they are in my bedroom, really drying.

The UK sinks are puzzling. There are always two separate faucets, so that you can choose to scald your hands or freeze them when washing up. And some of the sinks have a nifty "instant-shut-off" feature, where the faucet only runs as long as you are pressing down the tap with one hand, making it impossible to rub your hands together under running water.

Someone was busking (that means playing music or singing for change) in the tube (that means subway) line tonight. The song she was performing was "Walk on by." That seems to me to be the most unfortunate choice for a busking song I've ever come across.

...heading down the escalator at the tube, but I didn't catch him. * In both the US and the UK, waiters in Indian restaurants typically wipe your plate just before they place it in front of you. Is this supposed to inspire confidence? It always makes me worry that the wait staff fears the dish staff is not really doing their job. * The new Scottish Parliament building was just opened... 3 years late and 10 times over budget. Who but the government could wind up 1000% over budget on a building? At least here they have the honesty to call state projects "schemes." * The book store on the LSE campus is selling Waterstone's Giude to Literarute for Dlysexic Chilrden . * The cigarette packs here have labels with big letters saying "Smoking Kills." Well, at least one government scheme has succeeded, since the labels have reduced the number of smokers per capita in Britain to only like 10 times the number in the US.

A block from LSE I found Drury Lane. I've been searching up and down it for the muffin man -- no sign of him yet, but I'll report back later. Also near LSE is a building declaring itself, in very large letters, to contain "The Government of Gibraltar." What is it doing way up here? Oughtn't it to be down in Gibraltar? The first few days here, I would look outside in the morning to see if it was going to rain. I've learned to stop doing that: It is going to rain.

I saw Tony Blair on TV today saying that the invasion of Iraq was necessary because "sanctions weren't working." I agree. Saddam had only been reduced to having zero weapons of mass destruction. Clearly, the only sign of the sanctions working would have been if he had had a large negative number of WMDs.

So I'm back in Los Angeles after a really difficult three years in Miami. I had no idea I'd be gone so long and I'm really only here to gather my abandoned belongings and go back to Miami, reluctantly. Sigh. The task is overwhelming as it is but for various reasons it's become even more daunting. The first thing that happened is my hostess locked us out of her place for several hours. Then other problems magically appeared. I'd just about had it when my ex mentions the New York Dolls are playing. I wasn't sure about it but at that point I was so frazzled that getting anything accomplished was out of the question and I do love the Dolls. I went to the show straight from working on my vehicle so I was covered in oil and gas too. Within three or four songs the curative properties of the Church of Rock N Roll were working their magic and all my troubles just slid off my back...or maybe it was the motor oil.

My first jet trip since 9-6-01 and I'm sitting in the airport at Miami. The last time was actually eventful. I was "selected" to have my checked luggage x-rayed and the Black fellow sitting behind me had a copy of the Koran. Things I probably would've forgotten about now except for the obvious reason. At the time I had no idea of the personal disasters lurking in my near future. Family illness after illness kept me from traveling far so flying home to Los Angeles was out of the question until now. Once again I was selected for the super duper inspection only now it involves having to take your shoes off (damn you shoe bomber), having some stranger rifle your panties in the carry-on bag and a groping that makes you feel like you are entering prison--a naughty prison. I was thinking the entire time, "even if a terrorist gets on board, I'll rip him to shreds with my bare hands so there's no point to this nonsense." I told this to my pal Ivan a few days ...

If you want to emphasize something, turn it into a question. For example, LSE hasn't issued me a student ID yet. I was about to try to make copies at the student copy center, and I imagined answering, in response to a request for my ID: "They haven't issued me one yet, have they?" I went down to Picadilly Circus. Not only did I not see Marcus, I couldn't find the circus at all -- no tents, no clowns, no elephants! My advice is, "Don't bother." In the suburb to which I just moved, there is a eatery called -- I'm not making this up -- "New Jersey Chicken." All right, what the heck is "New Jersey chicken"? I grew up 100 miles from NJ, and I've never heard of such a dish or style. Do you get a little map of the turnpike carved into your roaster? And the breakfast place nearby offers "Bubble and Squeak" on its menu. I have to order that one day. The sidewalks in London seem to be made of some specially po...

One great aspect of being at LSE: I'm writing this sitting in the Lionel Robbins library; my department is housed in the Imre Lakatos building and was founded by Karl Popper; one of the staff is holding the Lachmann Chair; soon I'll be seeing Pete Boettke deliver the Hayek Memorial Lecture; and the second holder of the chair in politics was Michael Oakeshott.

OK, I've settled in a bit here in the UK, so I'm sending off my first dispatch: 1) British pubs are notably different than US bars in terms of how devoted the patrons are to conversation. At 5PM in a London pub, the volume of noise produced by the multitude of conversations occurring is startling to anyone accustomed to US bars. 2) Marlboro Lights here have brown filters: What's up with that? 3) The way I cope with crossing British roads -- where they drive on the wrong side -- is by frantically swinging my head back and forth in both directions. More to come.