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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Alec Muffet, redoubtable trencherman that he is despite his dainty frame, pointed me at this splendiferous expression of the manifest superiority of western civilisation:
Multi-bird roasts, where different types of bird are stuffed inside a larger one, have become the thing to carve this year – and the more birds involved the better. One of the top-sellers is the Waitrose four-bird roast: guinea fowl, duck and turkey breast stuffed inside a goose. Demand has soared 50 per cent this year – even though each roast costs an eyewatering £200 [about $400 USD].
The surge in popularity may have something to do with TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s creation of a ten-bird roast on his show two years ago. He stuffed an 18lb turkey with a goose, duck, mallard, guinea fowl, chicken, pheasant, partridge, pigeon and woodcock – producing a remarkable Russian doll-like dish. But now his effort, inspired by recipes dating from Tudor times, has been dwarfed by a behemoth containing no fewer than 48 birds of 12 different species. This massive roast, the proud creation of Devon farmer Anne Petch, weighs almost four stone (more than most airlines’ baggage allowance), costs £665, and has enough meat to serve 125 people.
Magnificent! However after reading the comments attached to this Daily Mail article decrying the practice, I could see my enthusiasm was not shared by all. The best comment and a real contender for the Samizdata Pig’s Head on a Spike Award for Thigh Slapping Hilarity was:
See, it’s because of madness like this that the terrorists hate us
– Marcus, Northampton, UK
The man is either a sage-like wag of the very highest order or a deranged Imam in need of an extended holiday in a certain part of Cuba… and an honourable mention also goes out for:
These graceful animals were alive and living a short while ago. Go veggie this Cristmas and let more of gods creatures experience what you do …Life
– James Mills, Nottingham
Naturally I felt the need to leave one of my own, as indeed you might:
This year for Christmas we are having one of these wonderful multi-birds and I am very much looking forward to it. However after reading some of the comments here, next year we are going to eat a PETA activist stuffed inside a Greenpeace activist stuffed inside a Animal ‘Rights’ activist stuffed inside Gordon Brown’s voluminous carcass (with a non-‘Fair Trade’ apple stuffed into his mouth).
Merry Christmas and God Deliver Us All… from priggish activists of all stripes.
Yummy! Nom nom nom!
Triticale (real name Tom Arnold), a blogger and commenter on more than 250 Samizdata articles, has passed away.
God speed, Good Sir, you were a welcome guest.
Yes, it is true. I am going to go and sign the treaty for the European Constitution on behalf of Belgium.
Now you might well ask yourself, why would Perry de Havilland have the right to sign the EU Treaty (do not worry, I intend to ‘accidently’ tip the ink pot over the foetid thing)? Simple… because clearly anyone can. There are many articles about what El Gordo is going to do and the long running weird protocol spat between Portugal and Belgium over where the treaty must be signed… but that should be academic to Belgium because Belgium still does not have a government, ergo there is no one who can sign on Belgium’s behalf… yet strangely that does not seem to be stopping the former government from doing just that.
If the people who were voted out of office in Belgium months ago can sign the treaty, then why not me too? They have no more right than I do to sign anything on behalf of Belgium. The fact that the Belgian establishment can and have simply banned popular political parties that do not play by the required consensus should indicate that to all intents, Belgium is not a democracy in any meaningful sense. This latest action indicates Belgium is in fact some sort of divine right oligarchy where being a member of the power elite is all the legitimisation you need.
It is gratifying to see mainstream journalists such as Alice Thomson also pointing out what we have been doing here for quite some time: people who vote for the Tory party under Cameron because they are revolted by the legacy of Tony Blair are in fact just voting for more of the same as Cameron and Blair are largely interchangeable.
I met two key Blairite special advisers from 1997 last night, they were as thrilled with the Tories’ progress as they were by recent sightings of Mr Brown’s psychological flaws. One said that Cameron would never treat the garden room girls at Downing Street in the way that Mr Brown does. Another wondered what job Cameron would give Mr Blair when (not if) he becomes Prime Minister.
All too believable.
This YouTube video on the Volokh Conspiracy shows a truly outrageous incident where a policeman in the USA tasers a man who was at no point threatening anyone and who was actually calmly walking away from the policeman. The longer CNN coverage gives more context and makes it more clear to me that this was a completely unjustified use of force.
Yet more proof no state should have a monopoly on the means of violence. The incident is astonishing and at least it does show the value to the public (and without doubt to honest decent policemen) of having all traffic stop incidents videoed.
A Muslim lawyer in Canada is trying to use the profoundly illiberal notion that ‘contempt and hatred’ should be criminal offences (which are by definition ‘thoughtcrimes‘), to silence Mark Steyn for his critical remarks about Islam. Bizarrely, the move to sanction Steyn is being billed as a ‘human rights’ action. That said, I suppose it is indeed a ‘human rights’ action in the perverse sence that the intention is to abridge Steyn’s human right to express his opinions in favour of allowing Islamists to have a veto over anyone printing anything they dislike.
Well, that sort of fascistic behaviour makes me both hold the likes of Faisal Joseph and the Canadian Islamic Congress in utter contempt and to hate them. I suppose I better give my lawyer a heads up then. Or then again, as it is their behaviour which makes me hold them in contempt and hatred, can I sue them for making that happen? Would that actually be any more unreasonable than what they are doing?
Just askin’.
Of course do not kid yourself that thoughtcrimes do not get prosecuted in Britain, or that it is only something Islamofascist lawyers do to us non-believers, because sadly nothing could be further from the truth.
Many of the Samizdatistas attended the Stockholm Network‘s Golden Umbrella Awards last night, an event that was described to me as the ‘Free Market Oscars’. The intention is to encourage the people working in the varied pro-market think-tanks and advocacy groups around the world by acknowledging their contributions to the cause of liberty.
In truth I attended with moderate expectations as I have struggled to say awake through all too many award ceremonies, but was surprised at how well the event was managed and produced and although it may damage my credentials as a cynic, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Helen Disney, the Stockholm Network’s CEO, is one of the most focused and appealing people on the free market scene and her team, such as Tim Evans (who as many of you know, also wears a Libertarian Alliance hat), should be congratulated on managing such a great event. The Master (Mistress, surely?) of Ceremonies was Dr. Karen Horn of the Cologne Institute for Economic Research and former economics editor for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She was an outstanding choice, attractive, witty and very engaging, thus setting a wonderful tone for the evening.
The after-dinner speech was delivered by C. Boyden Gray, the imposing US Ambassador to the EU. He is a terrific speaker and I found his less than flattering remarks about the US legal profession most endearing. There was very little to disagree with in his advocacy of reducing limits to free trade and he was frank about how this needs to happen on both sides of the Atlantic.
Another notably good speaker was Ján Čarnogurský, the former Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic. In fact the only speaker who hit the wrong note was Iain Duncan Smith MP, who launched into a defence of his own think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, although by the time he had finished speaking I still had no idea who he was defending it from or what the hell it actually does.
For details of who won what, see here, but the big winner of the evening was the Bulgarian think tank, the Institute for Market Economics, who walked away with two well deserved prizes. I was also delighted to see the very worthy UK based Taxpayers Alliance come away with an award. The TPA are like a fact-checking ‘urban guerilla’ organisation of thorn-in-the-side activists who have achieved results out of all proportion to the resources at their disposal.
I was quite struck by how young most of the think-tank and activist people in attendance were and that is surely a good thing.
The US Ambassador is an excellent speaker…
…and he towered over everyone! Seen here with Tural Veliyev of the Free Minds Association of Azerbaijan
Karen Horn and Cécile Phillipe, presenting an award to Richard Durana of the Institute of Economic and Social Studies in Slovakia
The delightful Cécile Phillipe, Director of the Molinari Economic Institute
Ján Čarnogurský is also an excellent speaker
Janet Daly is not someone I often agree with but I found little to disagree with last night
No, I am not going to put up any pictures of Iain Duncan Smith speaking
Big Pharma! Eye Catching Dresses!
Not much bloggage today because the Samizdatistas are… otherwise engaged tonight. We are at the Golden Umbrella Awards.
The deranged individual who forced his way into Hillary Clinton’s New Hampshire campaign office has given us all a wake up call. How much longer will we tolerate the situation where any lunatic can threaten innocent people?
After holding three people hostage for six hours, Leeland Eisenberg, 46, emerged from Clinton’s campaign office in Rochester in a white dress shirt and red tie with duct tape wound tightly around his waist over what he said was a bomb.
The message could not be more clear… ban duct tape now!
Do it for the children.
It always amazes me the number of businesses who use the Internet without really understanding how it has changed everything in business, not just the bits they find useful. The entire balance of power has been shifting towards information rich customers for years now and one of the things about this shift is that people’s tolerance for a company’s behaviour when things go wrong has also changed dramatically.
It has always been the case that when things go wrong, the single worst thing any company can do is to make a customer feel he is being ignored. In many ways, even a half-arsed press release is (just) better than none at all, but frankly the days when a press release drafted by a PR professional whose job it is to pretend everything is all right are long gone. That approach never worked, only now the fact the PR Emperor has no clothes (and in truth never did) is impossible to hide. Customers are going to tell each other just how much they hate you, if indeed they do, regardless of whether or not you participate in the discussion because companies can no longer frame the terms of the debate. This article is an example of that, in fact.
And so I was amused by a fairly trivial incident: a purchased a copy of the Epic/Microsoft games studio shooter Gears of War for the PC. Cool game. How do I know? Because I have repeatedly played the first two to ten minutes of the game before getting a wargame-g4wlive.exe crash to desktop. And judging from the number of screaming customers on the Epic forums, I am far from alone in experiencing this.
Now the truth is, games these days are bloody complex things and it is rare to get a major game released without some significant kinks, so far be it for me to criticise Epic for releasing a bugged game… it happens and is probably an inevitable fact of life.
Also I have no doubt that Epic has an army of coders working to fix the (many) issues that people have reported and most likely they will solve them all soon. Looking at their forums, both Epic and Microsoft developers posted early comments and that is exactly the correct approach. If people know for sure that someone is on the problem, it is amazing how much slack they will cut a company and in many cases, dealing frankly with the issue and frequently acknowledging there is a problem makes people empathise rather than criticise.
But after the initial surge of developer input, the forum started filling up with often highly irate and typically semi-literate gamers cursing and howling because they had become convinced that as the first attempts to patch the game had not helped a great many people, the companies had just banked their money and written the game off. In truth I think that is highly unlikely at this stage and it is an avoidable self-inflicted wound to have well paid programmers working to fix what may be a difficult problem but because your inept PR department does not make that clear on a daily basis, customers whose game is about as useful as a prismatic beermat are left incandescent with rage at being ignored (as they see it). Crazy corporate behaviour.
Interestingly, posts to the forum filled with F words and imprecations about the marital status of the developer’s mothers when they were born, seem to be generally left on the forum. I posted an invective-free article urging Epic to get themselves a new PR director and the post was taken down, which I must confess I find vastly amusing. So no prize for guessing which department is responsible for the Epic forums then.
The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment, those somewhat indistinct eras between the end of the Renaissance and the start of the Napoleonic Wars, were when the modern world was born. It was when rationalism emerged from the previous millennia where superstition and obscurantism were mankind’s norm and goring a sacred cow could bring down the wrath of the powers-that-be.
Yet it seems that there are still those in the west who hanker after having their beliefs protected by the force of the state in ways that other sets of personal values are not. So rather than surrender to Christian authoritarians who wish their views to be protected by law, thereby quite reasonably handing even loonier Muslims a tool to protect their equally preposterous views, a little final clean up work, a final long overdue flourish of Enlightenment thought, is needed.
Abolish every last one of the ludicrous blasphemy laws. Right now.
An article about the exploits of the Royal Anglian Regiment reminds us that the fighting in Afghanistan has been very sharp indeed: over six months the Royal Anglians suffered one hundred and forty four casualties (nine killed and one hundred and thirty five wounded), in return for one thousand Taliban killed (which according to the traditional 5:1 ratio which would probably be more accurate for the technologically unsophisticated Taliban, implies at least a further five thousand wounded).
Yet I cannot escape the feeling that the quality of the politics has gone a long way to undermining the quality of the military efforts. Why oh why are we trying to stop people in that poor country from growing the cash crop they have grown since time immemorial and thereby making enemies of people who just want to make money? And as paying people to not plant opium is a demonstrable waste of time, if the governments of the west are so keen to stop opium ending up on the streets of western cities, why not take the vast ocean of money wasted on odious subsidies to affluent western farmers in Europe and the USA, and instead just buy whatever opium the Afghan farmers can grow? At a stroke the Afghan economy is improved in the short term, distorting subsidies removed from western economies and Afghan farmers and warlords alike given a very good reason to maintain good relations with their western patrons (i.e. addict them to subsidies).
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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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