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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On Wednesday evening, for reasons too complicated to explain (which partly have to do with the disaster that is transport in London), I found myself walking down the high street of Clapham in wonderfully multi-ethnic south London. (This is not the same place as Clapham Junction, which is some distance away). This area seemed to have more nice bars and restaurants than it did the last time I was there, and half way down the street I saw a place called the “Bierodrome“. Despite this slightly silly name, I looked at the menu beside the door and saw a vast number of fine Belgian beers listed. As I am a little partial to fine Belgian beer, I walked in and sat down. Most of the beers were bottled, but they had around ten on tap. I ordered a Grimbergen Blonde. This is not an especially obscure beer, but it is certainly a good one.
When you go into a bar in Belgium, every beer has its own special glass. These have the name of the beer on the side, and vary in shape depending on the kind of beer, as (it is claimed) different styles of beer taste best in different shaped glasses. Some of the weirdly curved glasses also look kind of cute. The size of the glass also varies from beer to beer. This definitely makes sense, as beers differ greatly in texture and alcoholic strength. It also gives Belgian bars some of their character. Walk into a good bar, and there will be hundreds of different glasses on the shelf behind the barman. Belgian beers are often 7%, 8%, 9% alcohol, and these are best consumed in relatively small quantities. The Grimbergen Blond was at 7% only moderate by Belgian standards, but rather strong by English standards.
When I ordered the beer, I didn’t specify a size, as I just expected that I would be given a size appropriate to the beer in question, as happens in Belgium. However, I was given a cute, curved, Belgian style glass, but very big. I asked the barman, and he explained that it was a pint. You see, I was in England. If you are in England and order a beer without specifying the size, a pint is what you get. With English beer this is excellent. In fact, it is superb. English beer is usually (but not always) weaker than some continental drinks, and lends itself to larger glasses.
That was fine. → Continue reading: English beer measures and the liberal French state.
This, linked to by the ever caring and concerned Dave Barry, gives a whole new meaning to the word freedom:
sacfree makes your sac free! In former times there were boxershorts or slips. Today there is sacfree, the first boxerslip of the world. sacfree brings you pleasant liberty (“bringt dir angenehme Freiheit”) and defines your necessity.
Briefly: A new dimension of comfort and liberty for your balls. And … sacfree is sexy.
Any ladies or gay gentlemen care to comment on that last claim?
Foreigners mishandling their private parts and the English language. Samizdata never lets you down.
But, watch out when some Germans want to define your necessity.
There is hope for England yet!
Wearing little more than sun screen, socks and boots, Steve Gough is walking the length of Britain to celebrate the joys of nudity.
The intrepid rambler insists he is not a nudist, but a person who wants to “enlighten the public, as well as the authorities that govern us, that the freedom to go naked in public is a basic human right.”
Amidst all the buzz and debate over the imminent recall vote in California and the prospects of ‘Big Arnie’ becoming the next governer of the state, I have been struck by another of those cultural differences between Britain and the USA, albeit a superficial one.
I do not know whether American politics is intrinsically more interesting than politics in Britain but I do think that it sounds a lot more colourful. While perusing opinion in the US-end of the blogosphere, I keep coming across American political figures who sound as if they have just jumped straight out of the pages of a James Ellroy novel.
For example, I can imagine ‘Cruz Bustamante’ as a diamond-toothed pimp-turned police informer; ‘Scoop Jackson’, as an alcoholic former baseball player turned seedy private detective. Even Jesse Ventura and Rudolph Guiliani sound like they might have been ‘button-men’ for the syndicate.
Cut to the UK where we have political figures with names like ‘Gordon Brown’, ‘John Major’ and ‘Iain Duncan Smith’. For all the world they sound like dullards with plain suits and narcolepsy-inducing platforms.
I do not know quite what follows from this or, indeed, if anything follows from it at all. If there are any dazzlingly clever cultural observations to be extrapolated then they surely only of trivial significance. The minutiae of American politics is, I daresay, every bit as dry and opaque as it is anywhere else but I would be tickled pink by the vista of characters with names like ‘Bustamante’ and ‘Ventura’ strutting their stuff around Westminster.
Sometimes a good story hides an even better one. In the sidebar of the Sun page quoted by Robert Clayton Dean I read:
And all that booze and the need for skimpy summerwear is good news for Durex condom maker SSL INTERNATIONAL, which firmed 1.5p to 335.
I had a strange experience last week, whilst camping on the Pembrokeshire peninsula in Wales. And no, it wasn’t the 16 hours of continuous rain on Thursday which almost flooded us out; you come to expect that kind of thing if you go camping in Wales. No, it was the strange and magnificent monastic retreat of Caldey Island.
For those who’ve never been to the Tenby area of Little England, in Wales, this is a small island just off the coast which is privately owned by a small group of Trappist monks. These Cistercian Trappists are an offshoot of the Benedictine monks, with the Cistercian monastic order being originally formed in 1098 by St. Robert of Citeaux, who thought the Benedictines were getting a bit lax and cavalier in their ways (for example, by failing to maintain a rigid vow of silence, every day, between sunset and sunrise).
And boy, are these Cistercian monks serious, even in modern times! They get up every day, at 3:15am, for a silent vigil, pray a further six times during the day, and then go to bed at 8pm. They eat no meat, except on either holy feast days, or if they’re ill, and follow vows of poverty, chastity and religious obedience. But after reading Murray N. Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty, the week before I packed my estate car’s roof rack with tent, wellies, and waterproofs, I was struck by the almost Rothbardesque island nature of this tiny sliver of Terra Firma. → Continue reading: The monks of Caldey Island
Today I received the following email:
Brian,
Brian has started a webring of Brians with blogs. If you would like to join us, go and sign up here.
Brian
What is a webring? If I signed up to it, would the rest of my life be ruined? The Brian who sent me this email seems to be gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, consenting adults, some of my best friends…, I’m personally in favour of gay marriage, blah blah blah. But if I sign up, will I be bombarded with gay porn for the rest of my days?
In general, I feel that it is good that we Brians are getting together, and if a webring is what I think it may be, we can perhaps sit on one, in a circle, perhaps somewhere in the countryside, and discuss the Brian Issue. That is, we can discuss why cuckolded husbands, send-up substitutes for Jesus Christ, etc. etc., in the movies, all seem to be called Brian. Brian is not a cool name, is my point. Maybe we Brians can get together and change that. (The danger, of course, is that by getting together in such ways as these, we might merely confirm all the existing anti-Brian stereotypes, and cause Brianphobia to become even more deeply entrenched.)
Meanwhile, how many indisputably cool Brians can be assembled? I offer two outstanding contemporary sportsman: the West Indian cricket captain and ace batsman Brian Lara, and the Irish rugby captain and ace centre threequarter Brian O’Driscoll.
Samizdata has been getting very political lately. I blame all these Conservatives who have wormed their way on to the Samizdata writers list.
So, to more serious matters. Here is an item to warm the cockles, drawn to my attention by this guy. He made this Portillo bon mot his quote of the day, and I think that this gem that he linked to last Friday deserves a chance to sparkle more universally than I have noticed it sparkling so far.
Masturbating more than five times a week between the ages of 20 and 50 could protect men against prostate cancer, Australian researchers claim today.
Excellent. The Anglosphere continues to pull its weight, scientifically speaking.
Inevitably, the Mother Country, in the shape of a charity worker, disapproves.
Dr Chris Niley of the UK’s Prostate Cancer Charity said: “It’s plausible – which isn’t the same as being true. One of the unanswered questions is whether the young men who were questioned may have exaggerated how many ejaculations they had had.
Speak for yourself you boring killjoy.
What we now need is another study about the correlation between being a rabid believer in expanding the power of the state, and getting prostate cancer, along the lines of this. That’s prostate as in pro-state.
Let me see. If I was going to criticise the government of Cambodia for something, what would I choose? It’s obvious, really. From the BBC
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has been named the biggest smoker among world leaders.
The United Nations has appealed to him to quit the habit, and after several failed attempts he said he was ready to try once again.
(Link via The Gweilo Diaries).
The German police, it seems are every bit as concerned about protecting the welfare of you and I as the British bobby, so it seems according to this article.
Good to know that in an age where we are threatened with global terror, soaring violent crime and property crime, police have such important things to do.
When Margaret Thatcher privatised electricity generation in the UK, a number of companies were set up to own the power stations, electricity grid, etc. One of these was Powergen. Quite a few other countries followed Britain in power privatisation, and Powergen diversified into other countries by participating in these privatisations. Therefore, the company now has assets in a number of places. Including Italy. Which has led to this extraordinary URL: www.powergenitalia.com.
(Link via The Gweilo Diaries).
A clean hippo is a happy hippo…
and remember: safety first –
never stand between a hippo and a dishwasher
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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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