We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

Samizdata quote of the day

As a woman, I am much more interested in protecting the right to free speech than I am in catering to the possibly-offended. If we are raising girls to feel damaged by a photo of a woman in a bikini, my goodness we need to do better.

Kate Andrews

14 comments to Samizdata quote of the day

  • terence patrick hewett

    As a Martian I am amazed that most of you earthlings spend most of your time looking at a box in the corner off the room – you humans are really weird.

  • Stonyground

    I think that the ‘what would aliens make of us?’ is a really interesting thought experiment. I have a similar approach when contemplating how historians from a hundred years in the future will judge us.

  • Stonyground

    I forgot to mention that I watch hardly any television.

  • terence patrick hewett

    The only really good thing about television is that when you drop one out of the window it makes a satisfying implosion – goes like thunk.

  • Sorry Terence, but clearly the last time you threw a TV out of a window was many many years ago, and it was a CRT TV. In this digital age, they just go ‘crunch’ without any satisfying implosion.

  • Mr Ed

    In this digital age, they just go ‘crunch’ without any satisfying implosion.

    And some have the nerve to call it ‘progress’.

  • Chris West

    OMG Stonyground, that’s offensive! The proper term is non-terrestrial persons, you bigot. I’m surprised you didn’t tack on the adjective ‘illegal’ because I know you were thinking it!

    =P

  • Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker) Gray

    But girls in bikinis ARE offensive! I always find my thought-processes disrupted whenever one of them is near! And I was just about to solve world peace, or hunger, or something like that! And I bet that largish women are offended by the competition! So, if we banned all bikinis, and have everyone wear drab clothes, we’ll also have world peace. What could be simpler???

  • terence patrick hewett

    @Perry
    Yes it was about 30 years ago: oh dear one of life’s small pleasures snatched away.

  • Penseiveat

    @tph,
    I always thought an implosion went “Gnab”.

  • NickM

    What grimly amuses me is the bikinis are evil (due to causing girls to want to be slim) thing is espoused by exactly the same people who five minutes later will be involved in a tirade against “epidemic” childhood obesity*. The intellectual incoherence is awesome. I guess the only way to square the circle here is if there is a single state-approved bodyshape. Fine, if you wanna hold that vile viewpoint because it is at least coherent in it’s evil but… These people also hammer on about things like self-ownership of their bodies. They are of course impossible to argue with because you can’t argue with someone who believes A and not A simultaneously. Even in the most extreme interpretations of quantum mechanics the wave function has to resolve to a specific state when observed.

    Personally, I think it is only the quiet rage of envy that enables such intellectual dissonance. Although I could be wrong and it is only the patriarchy that demands logic. Well… maybe it does but I’ve done enough formal logic in my time to know the very nature of reality got in there way first.

    *I have lived almost all my adult life near schools and you see the kids in the street. I say “adult life” because obviously as a kid I was one of them! The kids these days just don’t tend to be fat at all really and I am basing this on having lived in areas ranging across the social spectrum from verging on sink-estates to very middle-class areas.

  • JohnW

    If it “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg” to paraphrase Jefferson, what business is it of government?

  • Paul Marks

    Yet again “Feminists” hard at work preparing the West for an Islamic future.

  • Yet again “Feminists” hard at work preparing the West for an Islamic future.

    Paul wins the thread IMHO. 🙂