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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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
Asks b3ta.com:
Men: Like looking at pretty ladies? Like laughing at bad translations of Russian mobile phone conferences? You’re in the land of luck as this site combines both.
It certainly does. Eldar Murtazin is impressed, and Andreas Von Horn (that’s what it says) translates:
Year by year, visiting CeBIT, catch myself at idea, that they have better organization, and exhibits for the first time are shown exactly at this exhibition, instead of wandering on the world, turning in an antiquity. But there is one big advantage of the Russian exhibitions and of SvyazExpocomm as one of the most appreciable, there are excessive plenty of beautiful girls on one square meter of the area. The last year one my foreign friend after visiting the exhibition has left in prostration and has told, that knows where to look for a wife. Girls in city centre which caused the genuine interest and remarks in the excellent form, have simply ceased to exist. The friend all the rest three days has spent at the exhibition, and according to him has not been sorry at all about it.
On results of the first day has collected about 500 photos of girls from various stands, a part from them we’ll publish in this picture story. I can not give up to myself such pleasure, and the reputation needs to be supported, in fact the tradition began the last year. To try listing all photos is senseless, further are photos that have appeared by will of case beside and have pleased me.
For knowing people and visiting the exhibition not the first year, CBOSS name talks a lot about, but I beg to assume, that in the last turn about billing. However, judge, I in my turn dream to shake hands with the person, which selects girls for this company!
Ah, those wacky foreigners.
 
From the ever alert b3ta.com comes news of giant microbes. My favourite is the common cold.
Billions of people a year catch the cold. Now you can get one too — without getting sick! Learn all about the Common Cold with this cuddly companion.
GIANTmicrobes, in a fit of propriety, calls these things “health dolls”. No GIANTmicrobes, they’re sickness dolls.
What, you are probably asking, does this mean for the prospects of western civilisation, immediate and longer term? I do not know. They are cute, I think.
This, on the other hand, also via b3ta, has got to be bad news for France. → Continue reading: Further proof of how weird other people can be
As a break from the usual tread-mill of Libertarian Principles, here is a story that best reflects the ‘quagmire’ Britain got itself into by having anything to do with the EU and the countries using its institutions to their advantage. Despite the ravenous inclusiveness of the European Union, the one thing there is no room left for is common sense.
The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that Italian Parma ham must be packed and sliced in Parma itself to be marketed with its name of origin. The Asda supermarket chain has lost its legal battle to carry on selling Italian Parma ham, because it is packed and sliced in Britain.
Asda’s Parma ham comes from Parma, but it is sliced and packaged near Chippenham in Wiltshire. Its delicatessen Parma ham also comes from Parma – but is sliced in its stores, in front of the customer. European judges have ruled that this is not enough under EU law to justify using the name.
Maintaining the quality and reputation of Parma ham justifies the rule that the product must be sliced and packaged in the region of production.
According to The Daily Telegraph Asda claimed the Italian law was not part of EU law and could not be applied in the UK, but ham from Parma was registered under a 1992 EU rule protecting the use of geographical names on some products. The battle went to London’s High Court, which passed the matter to the Luxembourg judges for a ruling on the EU’s Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) law.
The Parma ham producers’ association, which owns the trademark Prosciutto di Parma, has been seeking an injunction against Asda since 1997. Consorzio del Prosciutto di Parma won the battle despite judge’s recommendation to overturn the relevant European regulation and the advice the European Court of Justice received by one of its own members to invalidate the European Union rule.
As Asda representative said last year:
No one doubts that Scotch beef remains Scottish if sliced in Southampton; Jersey potatoes are still Jerseys when boiled in Blackpool; and cheddar cheese is still cheddar if grated in Gretna.
In most cases the court follows such advice, for example, the European court’s advocate general delivered a similar opinion in a case brought against a company that grates the hard Italian cheese Grana Padana in France.
Not this time though. When you next eat your Parma, you can rejoice in the knowledge that it has been subjected to the traditionally tough quality control by its Italian producer. I suppose there is a first for everything…
Once upon a time, there was a group of states within a larger nation who did something terrible…they allowed slavery. Eventually there was a dreadful civil war between those states and some other states who did not approve of slavery. Although the war was only incidentally about slavery and rather more about centralised versus decentralised power, it did at least have the happy effects of ending slavery.
The National Flag of The Bad Guys: The Stars and Bars!
The flag which The Bad Guys flew in battles
How do we know they were ‘The Bad Guys’? Because of slavery, of course, but mostly we know this because they lost and the winners get to write the history books.
So much later, after the war was over, one state used a flag which harked back to the old battle flag. They argued that most of the people who fought in that war from their state were just fighting for hearth and home and very few of them actually owned slaves anyway. Regardless, those days were part of their history and they rather liked their old flags.
Oh no…Echos of The Bad Guys!
This upset some people mightily and they threatened economic boycotts and all manner of other nastiness if the state did not change their flag to remove the symbolism of The Bad Guys of Old.
So the governor said people could vote on this, but then decided that no, actually, they couldn’t, or maybe they could… but in the mean time, here is a splendid new flag and will you leave me alone now?
The Flag Spangled Banner?
So folks stopped for a moment, looked at this new flag and agreed that it was just about the dumbest, ugliest dish-rag to flap over the state capitol ever. “Screw that!” they all cried, and so the arguments continued to rage.
Eventually however, they agreed to another splendid brand new flag and everyone was happy because this new flag does not look anything like the flag used by The Bad Guys of Old, right?
The State Flag of the Good Guys: The…er, um, ah…Stars and Bars
Those Americans… who says they have no concept of ironic humour? You just gotta love ’em.
A United States federal judge has ruled that Iraq provided material support to Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group al-Qaeda for the September 11, 2001, attack and is liable to pay $US104 million ($163 million) in damages to two victims’ families. The ruling, by Manhattan District Judge Harold Baer, is the first court decision stemming from the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Where does one begin? Cretinous? Idiotic? Ludicrous? Laughable?
The notion a US court would think it had any standing or authority to order Saddam Hussain’s Ba’ath Party, let alone the future post-Ba’athist government of Iraq, to do anything whatsoever is almost beyond belief. How divorced from reality is this? Judge Harold Baer and the people involved in this case must be suffering from serious metal delusions. I filed this article under the category ‘North American Affairs’ and ‘How very odd!’ because is sure has hell has nothing to do with ‘Middle East & Islamic’.
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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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