Samizdata

Lewinsky and Clinton have shown
What Kaczynski must surely have known –
That an intern is better
Than a bomb in a letter
When deciding how best to be blown
– Winner of a limerick contest on Long Island – the requirements were to use the two words, Lewinsky and Kaczynski (the Unabomber), in a limerick

He whose desires have been throttled,
who is independent of root,
whose pasture is emptiness –
signless and free –
his path is as unknowable
as that of birds across the heavens
– Dhammapada

This passage, to me, is about a free cosmopolitan, freed from imposed ties, much of his life seemingly empty but in fact intellectualised and indeed virtualized, his actions seemingly random to those who look on from outside but, like the birds, actually quite purposeful

No matter how one measures welfare, there’s more of it where governments refrain from causing poverty by curtailing markets
– Leon Louw

The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.
– G. K. Chesterton

It is terrible to contemplete how few politicians are hanged.
– G. K. Chesterton

Hey you over in Johannesburg: