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]
|
Okay, another plug for a funny piece of entertainment following my previous posting. My kid brother bought me the DVD of the first series of ‘Look Around You’, which is a glorious send-up of the 1970s programmes which were used to teach pupils and college students about science, maths and other subjects. The production styles: slightly fuzzy camera shots, corny old folk music, guys with Frank Zappa haircuts wearing tweedy jackets and black-rimmed spectacles, brought back scary memories of how long ago in style terms the 1970s now appears. I went to primary school in that era of flares, British Leyland cars, Roxy Music and endless labour disputes. The education programmes used to be narrated by some posh-sounding gent, or occasionally woman, normally with a perfect received pronunciation and heavy touch of condescension. The programme-makers would sometimes be a bit daring and let the vowels of Edinburgh or even Wales onto the show.
It may be unlikely material for a spoof, but the show Look Around You is in my view the funniest television comedy I have seen in years. I do not know if someone who was not brought up in Britain when these original programmes were made would ‘get’ the gag. However, if you are British, aged about 40 and your blood runs cold at mention of the words NHS spectacles or “modular study guides”, then rent out or buy this DVD. We like to bash the BBC here at Samizdata because of the tax-financing of it, sorry, the licence fee, but this is a gem and is in the same bracket in my opinion as ‘The Fast Show’.
(Health warning: I laughed so much at this show that my jaw is now actually quite painful. Avoid liquids).
The Monty Python purists may be offended – I tend to find such people awkward company – but if you want to have a fun night out and laugh yourself hoarse, then the crazy musical/panto/ “Spamalot” is a must-see event. It has been running in London’s West End for a few weeks now and has already been a smash in Broadway.
“We are the Knights who say neeeee!”
Well, I have just spent a very agreeable and maybe even an informative hour, watching P. J. O’Rourke telling me about the history of California’s state governors, on BBC4 television. Hyram Johnson, Brown, Reagan, Brown Junior, Gray Davis, Schwarzenegger – they have been a quite interesting lot, whatever you think of them. I say maybe informative, because you never really know how much of the story is really sinking in when you watch television. But, it felt informative. I certainly never felt as if my intelligence was being insulted.
O’Rourke neither concealed nor overdid his own conservative/libertarian leanings. He was the Republican Party Reptile of old, but now, he said, in connection with how Ronald Reagan ran political rings around the hippies (underestimating Reagan’s political savvy and seriousness was a habit that started early – that was made very clear), that he now entirely understands anti-youth policies. The story O’Rourke told was not so much of big versus small government, but of oscillations between somewhat simplistic outsider promises to clean things up, and a safe but grubby pair of hands to sort out the resulting confusions, followed by more promises to clean up the grubbiness, and so on indefinitely.
Two things have somewhat distressed me about O’Rourke’s career in recent years. First, despite several attempts over the years, he has never made much of an impact on British TV, unless you count his recent British Airways adverts. → Continue reading: P. J. O’Rourke does British television – very well
Finally, thirty or so years too late, the Communists have come up with a slogan with makes Communism sound attractive:
Well, not quite. Actually this poster is a send-up of the attitude of the music industry, which is now engaged in suing the Russian-based online music website AllofMP3.com for $165 trillion.
This meme – downloading mp3 files for free is Communism! – is but the latest in a long line of similarly wrong-headed memes collusively created by stupid anti-Communists and not-so-stupid Communists, or not so stupid anti-anti-Communists (also scum in my opinion), which make Communism look and sound far better and far sexier than it ever really was or will be. Workers demanding the right to free association is Communism! Workers going on strike is Communism! Adolescents having sex is Communism! Rock and roll is Communism! Having fun is Communism!
Please note that I am not saying that downloading mp3 files for free (or for that matter going on strike or having sex) is necessarily right or wise, merely that it is very attractive, and in a way that Communism never was. I mean, for starters, how many people, under actually existing Communism, had the kit to download, legally or illegally, and then listen to mp3 files?
I tried copying the above poster from this website, but I couldn’t make that work. So, I googled it and found it from somewhere else. Does someone perhaps have something against people downloading picture files for free? (LATER: the downloading of that poster is not a problem, see comments, but just a problem for me and my photo-processing software. Apologies.)
Rob Fisher has an interesting posting up about police harassment, as displayed in a reality TV show. Basically, the police took it upon themselves to mess with some apparently quite innocent citizens, fishing for crimes that they might have committed. And it turned out one of them had apparently done something evil. He had, apparently, committed the crime of failing to be on the police driver database. Said the policeman: “You don’t exist” …It turned out that the database did contain him, but spelt slightly differently.
Rob Fisher is depressed about all this. But what I think this episode – by which I mean not just the police harassing people, but it being on television, and Rob Fisher copying out what they said and blogging about it – is that one of the benefits of total surveillance (see my immediately previous post) might be that the authorities might find themselves having to behave rather better.
Well, that is the view of this guy, anyway. I must say I never got very hung up on elaborate theories as to why bits of sheep in tanks or rows of rubber tyres were not, in some profound sense, “art” or not. There are almost as many theories of what art is as supposed art objects themselves. For me, art has to enhance my imagination in some way and has to appeal to my emotions as well as my rational faculties. I like my art to be strongly stylistic but also grounded in some kind of reality (I am a sucker for 1950s comic art, for example).
This writer, David Thompson, is obviously not impressed by the incoherence of those who defend or propound much that goes under the title of modernism:
If some readers find it hard to believe that academia has actually been churning out people who can no longer distinguish between coherent argument and vacuous patois, it’s worth casting an eye over some of the more fashionable quarters of art theorising and cultural study. A cursory scan of Mute magazine (issue 27, January 2004) revealed the following nugget, from an essay titled Bacterial Sex written by Luciana Parisi, a teacher of “Cybernetic Culture” at the University of East London: “This practice of intensifying bodily potentials to act and become is an affirmation of desire without lack which signals the nonclimactic, aimless circulation of bodies in a symbiotic assemblage.” If you think you misread that sentence, try reading it again.
Thanks to the website of Stephen Hicks for the link.
Anyway, that is pretty much me done for 2007. Off to Malta with Mrs P at the weekend, assuming the fog does not interfere with the flights. Wishing everyone a great Christmas and prosperous New Year. I’d like to thank Perry and the other members of the Samizdata gang for taking this blog through to its fifth year. Now for the sixth!
I oppose arts subsidies not only because arts subsidies are thieving from people who do not want art thank you very much, although it is that of course. I also oppose arts subsidies because I really like art and I think arts subsidies damage art, by separating artists from audiences and by separating nob audiences from yob audiences, the aristocracy from the groundlings. With arts subsidies, you get High Art in one tent – precious, clever, obscure, self-regarding and pretentious, and expensive; and Low Art, brain-dead trash, in the other bigger tent. Without arts subsidies, they all go into the same tent and you get, well: Shakespeare basically. Shakespeare, nineteenth century classical music, the great nineteenth century novelists, twentieth century cinema (before that too got to subsidised into Posh and Trash), twentieth century pop music, all that is artistically vibrant, fun and profound.
So, arts subsidies are really bad, both morally and artistically. And the good news is that, at any rate here in Britain, they are about to be “cut”, which is a cultural word meaning “not increased very much”. And who or what do we have to thank for this semi-excellent circumstance? Why, the Olympic Games:
The Treasury has warned of a tough spending round and the Culture Department has let it be known that there will be no extra money for the arts so long as the country is paying for the Olympics, a bill we will be paying well beyond 2012.
This means, at the very best, seven lean years of standstill subsidy for the arts and, at the worst, selective cuts that will drive some ensembles out of existence.
This is especially good news when you bear in mind that “so long as the country is paying for the Olympics” and “well beyond 2012” actually mean “for ever”.
One of the reasons why I like the idea of a “flat tax” is that, by sweeping away all the existing loopholes, it removes a whole group of people who have a vested interest in pushing for special treatement from the Inland Revenue and instead creates a simpler system that is far easier to run, less distortive of economic activity. As a libertarian, of course, my main aim is to see the overall burden come down rather than be flatter; the flatness of the tax code is not, ultimately, as important as its weight.
One of the groups that have managed to chisel a tax break out of finance minister Gordon Brown is the domestic film industry. Apparently, the End of Civilisation As We Know It may possibly be arriving soon if we no longer make movies in England. It is all tosh, of course. Many British actors, directors, producers, technicians and photographers work all over the world, very successfully too. While financed with U.S. money and so forth, many of the biggest hits in recent years have had strong British themes, such as the Harry Potter series, and even the latest James Bond movie.
Boris Johnson has a nice article demonstrating the absurdity of trying to define what is a “British” film for the purposes of qualifying for tax treatment. Just get rid of these loopholes and focus on cutting taxes across the board, Boris. And please do inform your statist-minded Tory leader, David Cameron, about that aim.
I have just run across a copy of the South Park Episode [RealMedia file] (from ‘Operation Clambake’) which was blocked from airing in many places… and I thought our readers might enjoy it.
After many months of work, travel and no play, I went to a cinema to see Pan’s Labyrinth. A friend of mine thought it was my kind of film and he was right – it is dark, surreal and based on a fairy tale. It is set against the backdrop of the aftermath of the Spanish civil war. The story blurs the distinction between fantasy and reality but only to those who are not familiar with the stark realism of fairy tales. I know on which side of reality I stand.
Visually, the film is reminiscent of Mirrormask, which by comparison is light-hearted and flippant. Almost everything about Pan’s Labyrinth is dreamlike – imagery, acting, music. Except the violence and pain. This is no Disney movie.
It is a stark reminder of brutality of situations in which the warped and the sadistic have the upper hand. There are no heroes or winners. Just those who manage to preserve a shred of humanity by escaping to an alternative reality and by finding courage to act against the overwhelming evil.
It is also a reminder of the deep-seated morality of fairy tales. Tasks, rules, forbidden ‘fruit’ with dire consequences that follow any mis-behaviour. Monsters can be released by seemingly trivial acts of misdemeanour and can only be bound again at enormous cost. So just like the real life.
cross-posted from Media Influencer
This looks like it would swallow up my entire living room wall:
Move out that old armoire and clear off the living room wall – it will soon be time to make room for that new 70-inch LCD television.
With 42-inch flat-panel TVs flying off retailers’ shelves this holiday season as prices dip below $1,000, brokerage house Sanford C. Bernstein said in a research note on Tuesday that 70-inch TVs could be the “right size” in 2009.
“We decided to investigate the optimal screen size for high definition viewing,” wrote analyst Jeff Evenson in the note. “We conclude that 65 inch to 75 inch is the right size for a 10 foot viewing distance.”
Mind you, given my income levels, I am happy to stick to my modestly-sized flatscreen for the forseeable future.
As promised to various Samizdata people, here is my posting on the Kettering Gang Show. I have lived in Kettering almost all my life, but I had never been to the Gang Show before.
For those who do not know a ‘Gang Show’ is not an event put on by street gangs, it is an entertainment event put on by Scouts (which include not only the young cubs, and the adult scout masters but, these days, girl Scouts). It is a matter of songs, dances and comedy – put on to aid Scout funds (supposedly on every night of the year there is a Gang Show going on someone in the world).
Well on a cold and windy night I walked to event, passing only few groups of youths hanging about on street corners (surely, whatever one thinks of groups like the Scouts, these youngsters would be better off joining in rather than just hanging about, they looked rather depressed – even by my standards).
The singing, dancing and comedy routines were not amazing – but they were not bad either. And I was rather moved by the effort the children put in (the speed of the costume changes alone was very impressive). Even us in the audience tried to do our bit – we stood up and sang “God Save the Queen” at the start, and did a bit of participation in one song and movement thing (yes we proved that we could not sing and were uncoordinated – but we had a go).
My strongest impression was of the attitude of everyone (entertainers, people selling stuff, people checking the tickets, St John’s people on call against anyway getting hurt or falling ill) – all seemed to have a good time and to show benevolence for others.
The Northamptonshire folk may not be wildly attractive (neither the large native Northamptonshire people, nor London overspill stock like me) and they may not be clever or knowledgeable (but intelligence and knowledge are not always an advantage in life – after all I have the ability to produce strong arguments showing how any situation is hopeless and it is pointless to try anything, and I can produce lots of facts and stats to back up my inactive despair), but their faces showed both courage and good will – and not just good will for the event.
The people there were clearly honest and good (if not beautiful or profound). Rather like Tolkien’s hobbits, they are clearly folk who are both decent enough companions in the ordinary run of life – but better companions if something terrible were to happen.
|
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.
|
