And this really isn't very cultural at all, but I'll say it here anyway, namely: I'm coming up in the world.

This posting, linking to a Samizdata thing I did yesterday about where oil comes from (if you're interested don't miss the comments because that is where the real argument is argued, by people who actually know what oil is), has me number two in a list of four writers linked to.

Writer one is Charles Krauthammer, writer three is James Lileks and writer four is Victor Davis Hanson. I am strictly fourth in this company, because you wouldn't catch any of these three boasting about being in a list involving the other two, and me. But even so … score.

This reminds me of when I subbed a couple of times for David Starkey (i.e. as one of the in-house interrogators) on the Moral Maze.

The thing about social climbing is that when you are a low-to-middle ranker, then if you want to socially climb, you probably need forget worrying about being seen to be socially climbing, because you probably will be. So, just do it.

One of the world's more annoying things is those extremely grand people who don't have medals or wear fancy uniforms, and who are tremendously gracious to "ordinary" (which gives the game away) people, and who imagine themselves to be above social climbing, or who are sold to the world by their devotees as above social climbing, just because they don't wear a suit and a tie or a chest full of stupid medals or make sure everyone calls them Sir Blah Blah, if Sir is what they are. Bollocks. They are just at a different level, the posh bit nearer the top where low-to-middle rank social climbing like I just did isn't how you get higher any more. i.e. where they are competing with other grandiosities like Lenin or Gandhi or Mick Jagger. You can bet that when they were still hussling their way up out of the huddled masses, they hussled.