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]
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I got a call yesterday from Tim Evans of CNE saying that the Libertarian Alliance is now listed at the Stockholm Network website. For a brief few hours yesterday afternoon, if the LA’s hit counter is to be believed, the LA was getting more hits than Samizdata. So this is a plug for the Stockholm Network website. Thank you guys. If you want to learn about all those Free Market Institutes which now abound throughout Europe, this is the cyberplace to go.
Founded in 1997 in London and Stockholm, the Stockholm Network is a dynamic working group of European market-oriented think-tanks. We have two primary objectives: to build a wide network of pro-market policy specialists within Europe and to use that network to influence the future direction of European policy-making on issues of pan-European importance.
And that’s what they are doing. The blogs are a very different proposition from operations like the Stockholm Network. People don’t read the blogs to learn about Institutes, and to be steered towards amazingly long publications only in Acrobat format about European Fish Stocks – The Way Forward. They read blogs for fun, for daily ego massage and navel tickling. Nevertheless, if you want to spread ideas among the suit-wearing, fun-avoiding, core value adhearing, mission statement stating, movers, shakers, policy makers and action planners, this is all part of how you do it. You create virtual shopping malls of ideas and idea-mongers like this one, and help people to find whatever they want. → Continue reading: The Stockholm Network
Because of the vagaries of the internet, comments are occasionally attached to Samizdata pieces that were posted many weeks ago. Such comments are liable not to be noticed. Well, my email this morning contained the text of a most helpful and interesting comment from Lisa Wylde on my piece about dog expert Jan Fennell. Here’s what Lisa said:
I was fortunate to get a place on one of Jan Fennell’s two day foundation courses. This was spent in her home, and to see how content and relaxed her own dogs were was an absolute inspiration. I have been interested in canine behaviour for many years, and it is interesting to see that many of the “experts” do not own dogs themselves – or indeed some of them own ones with “problems”. Of course there are some behaviourists, such as the late John Fisher who have a lot to teach us, unfortunately not all of them are as dedicated to the canine mind and spirit as he was.
You state that you should “ignore them all the time” this is not actually the case, simply that when YOU want to play and fuss your dog – YOU call them. Assuming they respond to your call, you can play, cuddle, fuss, whatever you want to do. But if you are sitting on the settee watching the tv, for example, and the dog comes to you uninvited, and plonks his head (or body!!) on your lap – you would quietly push them away, because you had not instigated contact. This is why some people believe it is cruel, “ignoring your dog all the time” but this is not actually what you do – just simply when you are relaxed and want to play with the dog you do so, and you would both enjoy it more, but if the dog was demanding to play, barking, jumping up etc. although you may accept his behaviour in the park when you are appropriately dressed, you may not appreciate the same “request” by your dog when you are dressed up ready to go out! Consistency is the key, if the dog knows that you will only play with it when you want to, and therefore learns manners, both of you will really relish that quality time together!
Lisa, thank you very much for this. This was the aspect of Fennellism that had been most bothering me, and you have answered my bother perfectly. After all, if you are supposed to ignore your dog all the time, then quite aside from the cruelty to your dog aspect, what, for you, is the point of having a dog? I knew there was an answer that I hadn’t assimilated, and I sort of knew what it was, in fact I must have read this answer myself in Jan Fennell’s book. But, I hadn’t absorbed it properly. Thanks for your explanation, and for your general confirmation of what I have believed of Jan Fennell ever since my sister and brother-in-law first told me about her, which is that she is definitely on the right track – the right dog track, you might say.
Alpha dog Brian with two pack members
Instapundit reports that the Cato Institute is having a go at gun control in their nation’s capital city. Makes sense. The media people don’t have to go far for the story, unless they’re scared of course, what with the law not having yet been changed the way it should be.
Reynolds links to Fox News, who make it clear that Cato is really rolling up its sleeves and getting stuck in to the issue.
The CATO Institute, a public policy research group that bases its work on libertarian principles, is crafting a legal challenge to Washington, D.C.’s law, claiming that all Americans have the right to defend themselves.
“The Second Amendment provides an individual right for a person to bare arms, not a collective right, not a right of the states, not a right of the militia, but a right on each and every person,” said Bob Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at CATO.
I don’t think that’s quite what Bob Levy said. Seriously, I never thought I’d see this particular spelling mistake done for real.
One of the extra shake-it-out-and-chuck-it-out items with the latest Radio Times, which I nearly did chuck out but then decided to take a look at, is one of those catalogues full of slightly stupid software for £49 “reduced to £39 SAVE £10”. But one of these software packages looked really good. It was a virtual train set. “Build your own landscaped railway”, said the brochure. I went to the edream.co.uk website to investigate further, and it said, of this build-your-own landscape railway (if that doesn’t get you straight there, click on “Hornby Special Edition 2002” on the right of the main page):
Adults and children alike adore model railways but how many can afford the money and space for their own set? Well, you can! This new 2002 virtual train set costs less than £20 and lives in your PC so there’s no clutter and no tidying up. Operate legendary engines ancient and modern from The Flying Scotsman to Eurostar around sprawling track layouts to whistle blasts and the clackety-clack of rolling stock as you switch points and pull up at platforms and sidings.
→ Continue reading: Virtual trains in two dimensions (and in three?)
UK Transport is now Transport Blog, and has a burst of short but varied new postings. This is a good name, combining Patrick Crozier‘s all-embracingly global field of vision (although the latest postings are mostly British, with only the occasional Japanese reference) with his general gloom about his ability to dazzle. No “Transports of Delight” nonsense.
Now that Patrick has moved it over to Movable Type, I am nagging him to set me up with automatic posting rights to Transport Blog, to take up some of the slack when he gets too depressed about the state of Britain’s deeply depressing transport infrastructure, for words, as it were. When my campaign has succeeded, this is the kind of stuff I’ll be putting there, although if Perry wants to insert a weekend type picture here, I recommend this as being more his (our) kind of thing.
Being a pedestrian with a heart condition is about to get worse.
In my previous posting here, about Gordon Brown’s plans to wreck the British economy, I said that all that was one reason I was happy. Here’s another: Brian’s EDUCATION Blog. It’s not for me to be saying how good this is, but I can say that so far I am managing to keep on doing whatever it is I’m doing. I’m not running out of things to say.
For example, I’m already thinking about a post I hope to do soon concerning the vital importance to the development of Silicon Valley not just in a general way of Stanford University, but in particular of just one academic at Stanford University, a man called Frederick Terman. I’ve semi-known about this man for almost as long as I’ve known about Silicon Valley, but there’s nothing like having to write regularly for a specialist blog to make you learn the outlines of a story like this properly, by the simple procedure of writing it out. Quite aside from what others may be learning from it, think what Brian’s Education Blog is doing for Brian’s Education. The ambiguity of the title is entirely deliberate.
And what about the writings of others that I might otherwise have missed? → Continue reading: BEdBlogging BEdBlogging BEdBlogging
David Carr is happy, because now not only is he sunk in gloom but he reckons all of us are, and especially me, Samizdata’s Optimism Correspondent. Bad news David, I’m happy now.
I have a number of reasons to be happy, but I’ll focus on just one. Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has been taxing the British economy at a higher rate, but, to his surprise and consternation, the extra tax revenue that he assumed he would get by putting the rates up has not proved to be forthcoming. In the House of Commons yesterday, he had to explain. He blamed the world economy. (Don’t they all?)
Well guess what. I told you so, on Tuesday May 28th. This makes me happy.
What this confirms …
(I was referring to a piece by Paul Staines)
… is that British government income is now as high as it can be. Increasing the percentage rate of taxation doesn’t increase government tax income, it merely slows the economy down and causes government income to remain static. Similarly, if the government were to reduce the percentage rate of tax, government income wouldn’t decrease. This would merely cause the economy to surge forward, and the smaller slice of a bigger cake would end up being the same size as the bigger slices of smaller cakes. Britain is now at the top of the Laffer Curve. Isn’t that exciting? In plain English, the bastards are taking us for the absolute maximum amount they can, and if they get any greedier we stop coming through their bit of the forest.
Gordon Brown’s response to his problem is that he has decided to take the government a lot deeper into debt than he originally had in mind to do, which is a further – albeit disguised – increase in the rate of taxation. If the government borrows the kind of money it now intends to borrow, it will raise the interest rates that all other borrowers have to pay.
So let me leave all my winnings from my previous bet on the table and give this prophecy game another whirl of the wheel. Brown’s latest decision will slow the economy down some more, and he still won’t get his hands on enough money to finance his spending spree. These plans can never materialise, and that fact will have to be recognised if Britain is not to be pushed down the far side of the Laffer Curve towards economic meltdown.
What this all shows is that, as usual, there are, in the words of Noel Coward, bad times just around the corner. What it also shows is that enjoying life is all about attitude. It’s not the facts that make you happy or unhappy; what counts is how you look at them and what you make of them.
The way that the blogosphere in particular and West in general is slowly but surely focussing in on the all-too-human life of the very founder of Islam himself reminds me strongly of the way that we anti-Soviet elements in the 1980s finally stopped pratting around with nonsense about how Communism had been “betrayed” by Stalin, and said, no, it had just been done, by Lenin himself, and by Stalin, and by all Communists since then.
This from Scrappleface last Friday is a send-up correction note by the Nigerian newspaper that had sparked off the rioting by venturing a few mildly humorous observations about the Lenin of Islam:
“We regret our statement earlier this week that Mohammed would have chosen a bride from among the Miss World contestants. Upon further study of the life of the religious leader, we determined that he would have preferred to marry someone much younger than these women–since his favorite wife was Ayesha, who was six years old when he wed her.
“In addition, it is unlikely that Mohammed would have chosen just one bride from among the contestants, since he was married at least 11 times after his first wife died. The editors regret having printed such a poorly researched assertion.”
And how about this, from the “in fact” section of the December 2002 issue of Prospect (no link, you have to subscribe to view), picked up from the November issue of Commentary?:
The prophet Muhammad engaged in 78 battles, only one of which was defensive.
→ Continue reading: Muhammed and Lenin – the similarities and the differences
John Ray identifies a teeny little error in my Anglo-Australian cricket piece that can’t be left to correct itself only in comment number 8 on that:
Dear Me!
Somebody has their history skew-whiff!
Australia ruled by the Poms in Bradman’s day?
Australia became independent in 1901.
Clang. Sadly for me, and happily for Australia, John is of course right. First it was Shane Warne not bowling very many googlies, and now this. I feel like an England batsman, again.
My misremembering of Australian history is based on a misremembering of a Bradman biography (Bradman by Charles Williams – Little Brown, 1996) that I read some years ago, and in particular, I believe, a misremembering of the following paragraphs, from Williams’ Prologue, which I quote here at some length because it’s good stuff: → Continue reading: Australia – a correction!!
I went over to Michael Jennings‘ blog to read his cricket piece, the first version of which was apparently eaten by Blogger (the blogospherical equivalent of Wordstar), and which I recommend to all Americans enthusiastically. The cricket piece, not Blogger.
I also found a link to this piece of nonsense, which must be what they mean by the bursting of the internet bubble.
Like me, Tim Blair has been pondering England’s amazingly bad performances against Australia – two down and three more humiliations to go. He suggests that something to do with better running between the wickets, or some such, might improve England’s chances. He may be right. I am in no mood to disagree with any Australian on matters cricketing just now. (See the corrective comment on this, setting me straight about Shane Warne, from Michael Jennings. Michael, when it comes to being an Englishman who is confused about Shane Warne, I am not alone.)
But may I humbly add a further suggestion as to why Australian cricket is now doing so well compared to English cricket, apart from the fact that Australians are, you know, Australians, while the English are merely English. → Continue reading: Cricket – the Anglo-Australian contrast
Alice Bachini has been out shopping, for her aunties:
What I can afford is Marks and Spencer room spray, or Woolworths scented cushions for putting in your wardrobe. But it seems to me that if aunties wanted that kind of thing, they would buy it for themselves already.
If they wanted a normal sort of thing, they’d buy it themselves.
Because so many people can now afford to get normal things, there are now special places called gift shops, and special mail order catalogues called gift catalogues, to enable you to buy abnormal things to give to people at Christmas. This is a recently encountered abnormal thing selling operation, the dead-tree catalogue for which came with the Sunday Times of about a fortnight ago. My favourite abnormality here is the hat you put on to catch incoming ping pong balls.
Rich people used to love this kind of nonsense, when they were the only ones who could afford it. But now they are above such stuff, and live in places which are ostentatiously full of empty space. → Continue reading: Stuff
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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