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]

Blawg

noun. A web log written by lawyers and/or concerned primarily with legal affairs.

(Probably coined by Denise M. Howell )

Misting

verb. Similar to fisking in that it is a refutation of another’s views, but misting is less aggressive and is usually humorous. ‘Mistings’ usually take the form of an imaginary exchange of views.

‘Misting’ is really MiSTing – from the show MST3K, Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was a show on The Comedy Channel about characters who were captured by malicious aliens and forced to watch terrible old sci-fi movies. They responded by commenting (rather hilariously) about the movies.

The term has rather different connotations amongst German speaking bloggers.

Link orgy

expression. When a blogger finds that he has been linked by multiple sites, or has been added to several blogrolls, in a short time.

(Coined by James Martin )

Going Underground

This is very cool. Here is a tube map (underground metro) that allows you to locate nearly 250 bloggers in London.

Hello China

Good news! Samizdata.net is still accessible in China, at least as of this morning! A few months back we did get a couple e-mails from Chinese readers, so it is good to know that the Great (Internet) Wall of China has some holes in it, no thanks to collaborators Cisco and Oracle (may the great EMP from the sky strike them down).

      • Communist China: GDP per capita (2001) $4,300 per year
      • Capitalist Taiwan: GDP per capita (2001) $17,200 per year
      • You are four times better off under capitalism

So here are a few things you are not supposed to see in China. Now stop messing around on the Internet and go out and conspire with someone to overthrow the state, willya!

If there is a God…

Or even if their isn’t, either we have free will, or we do not and are just deterministic biochemical meat puppets dancing to some unfathomable script… God playing with himself. If the latter is true, then what the hell, nothing, and I do mean nothing actually matters. Morality? Truth? Life? Death? Meaningless.

Even if you do not believe in God, the same questions are relevant. I would argue that we do indeed have free will (for an excellent discussion by an atheist on that, see sections of David Deutsch‘s remarkable Fabric of Reality). And if we have free will, the very notion of submitting to the slings and arrows of life when an arrow-proof shield can be fashioned with our own hands is surely unreasonable… and to forcibly require that a person do nothing when the means to build that shield exist is not just unreasonable but monstrous.

In the print edition of New Scientist, Tom Shakespeare, the co-author of Genetic Politics: From eugenics to genome advocates outlawing parents from using ‘sperm selection technology’ which can allow the sex of a child to be chosen. He sees this as a precursor to parents eventually selecting desired traits for unborn children:

On balance, then, I believe that sperm sorting will in the long run do more harm than good. And this seems doubly true of sex selection via pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. Even if there is no “gene for” intelligence, sporting prowess or artistic talent, few scientists doubt that gene-chip technologies will one day provide considerable information about genetic variations. Letting parents choose embryos on the basis of sex now, for no good medical reason, will make it harder in the future to say no when they ask to choose embryos on the basis of other traits.

This thinking is actually quite close to that used by socialists who argue that ‘private’ education should not be allowed because it should not be up to mere parents to decide what is best for ‘their’ children. Not only can private individuals not be trusted to make such decisions (it should be left to ‘experts’), it is also unfair to others if those children are better educated. Similarly, if physically more capable disease resistant children can be ‘created’ by parents, this is somehow seen as ‘bad’ for everyone else. → Continue reading: If there is a God…

Cyberpunk wetdream

Want to buy a robot mini-dragon to watch out for fires and intruders? Got lots of money? Then what you need is a Banryu.

It looks like something from Appleseed or Ghost in the Shell. Very cool indeed.

28 days later…

There is a new film called 28 Days Later, which to summarize extremely briefly, involves Britain in the very near future laid waste by a bio-engineered plague released by animal ‘rights’ activists. This plague, called The Rage, turns people into feral zombie-like killers.

Although the film has gained some rather good reviews, why bother shelling out your hard earned and heavily taxed money to see zombies up on the big screen?

Britain is already full of zombies tramping somnambulantly under the CCTV cameras, past the voting booths in which they can meaninglessly vote for ‘worst choice one’ or ‘worst choice two’ and only moving at all due to the sensory stimuli provided by the carcinogenic stench of greasy fast food dispensaries and the flickering light cast by sub-moronic Pavlovian response inducing game shows.

So why bother going to see a film about them when all you have to do to see zombies is look out your well barred and burglar alarmed window?

I am not usually this bleak-of-view, but to see the protections of both habeas corpus and double jeopardy doomed by a currently unassailable government… and yet to then see this greeted not with rioting on the streets but for the most part with a collective ovine shrug, does rather lead anyone who values liberty to dark sentiments.

We are tough on crime…

…and tough on the causes of crime


This meme hack was brought to you by Alan K. Henderson. See here for the inspiration.

Britain is indeed at war

Tonight three North African Muslims were arrested by MI-5 and charged under Section 57 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, with conspiring to release cyanide gas in the London Underground (the subway train system).

The arrested men were said to belong to an organization that is part of Al Qaeda.

If only the British State would spend a great deal more of its appropriated money on this sort of legitimate operation and building up our highly professional but vastly under-funded military… and spend vastly less time and stolen money distorting our economy, abridging our liberties and generally screwing things up, we would be a great deal safer than we currently are.

The Blog is dead…Long live the Blog!

Alas Dodgeblog is dead… yet despair not for Andrew and his eldritch minions have gone slithering and gibbering over to their new cobwebbed lair in some dark and dank corner of the otherwise fragrant realm of La Blogatrice, Sasha Castel.

Also, former Dodgeblog alumnus Mommabear has found a new den at On The Third Hand.

Good riddance

Moors murderess Myra Hindley has just died and is hopefully now burning in hell. Good riddance.