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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One of my all-time favourite bloggers – who also happens to be the funniest man in the blogosphere – is under attack from DailyKos contributor ‘dday’, who does not think Harry Hutton is particularly funny at all. This post raised the ire of ‘dday’ and provoked this response from the little pet. ‘dday’ starts off by qualifying his monumental whinge with a “some of my best friends are black, but…” type defence of his sense of humour :
I’m not above making fun of people. Actually I do it for sport.
For one so allegedly adept at the art of piss-taking, he does not seem to understand that whole irreverence thing. Later, ‘dday’ flashes his humour credentials again – just so everyone is sure it is not him with the problem :
I make jokes continually, so I’m pretty up on my joke construction.
You can imagine the sort of emasculated, PC jokes this guy would crack. I bet he’s about as funny as a gender feminist. Anyway, if the plight of those living in intellectual poverty concerns you, take a look at the “debate” via the links provided above. The related comments thread on DailyKos and that attached to the offending post at Hutton’s are also worth a read if you enjoy the spectacle of uncomprehending, outraged mewling from humourless dolts.
In the Nanny State, you can never have too many warning labels, so they might as well be scientifically based:
Warning: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity.
Caution: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.
Handle with Extreme Care: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles per Hour.
Note: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a ‘Gluing’ Force About Which Little Is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed.
The Onion just keeps on getting better.
This vacancy should send my career into orbit!
This is the kind of stuff one can find probing around ‘social networks’ in companies. Makes my job worthwhile and goes some way to restore my faith in the individual within a large corporation. I came across this video recently, an employee of a company I consult for is into online video and is a dedicated supporter of Revver, an online video marketplace.
I guess I could have found him though his blog but the blogosphere is too large these days. So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you… an interview with the founder and employees of CubeBreak.
Quicktime required to play the video.
The other day I received a letter which contained this message: “Darling, I adore you and I cannot live without you so if you don’t marry me I’ll kill myself”. I was rather disturbed by this and even more so when I saw that the letter was addressed to “occupant”.
The inimitable Tom Lehrer, composer of ‘Poisoning Pigeons in the Park’ and other gems.
George W. Bush in free fall.
Nudge with cursor as necessary.
And speaking of secret police, the KGB’s secret weapon, the ZiL 41041 (sedan) and 41047 (limousine) is now available for purchase on the free market:
The soft suspension is hiding the roughness of the road. Automatic 3-step transmission is conductive to tender starting and speeding up of the car. Multi-stage system of noise reduction, the effective sound isolation suppresses all the unwanted sounds in the car.
Perfect for any amateur truth-seeker!
Andrew Sullivan:
It strikes me that people with a secure sense of their own faith are often the least liable to get upset by parodies or comedies about it. Religions may deal in divine truths, but they are run by human beings. And the combination is often funny. True believers know that; and don’t care when they’re made fun of. Insecure believers – and they often need fundamentalism to keep their own souls untroubled by doubt – are the touchiest.
I am writing this in the wee island of Malta, a country which has one of the largest church attendances per head of any country in the world, from what I understand. (The Maltese have churches with the same frequency as golf courses in Florida). And yet the good-natured folk of this island strike me as taking pretty much the sort of robust attitude to their faith as Sully mentions. (Why are you blogging and not on the beach, Ed?)
And interestingly, his point applies just as forcefully to other, non-religious beliefs too. Humour can be a weapon but it is also a shield.
Tessa Jowell is the first British minister in recorded history to retire from her family on order to spend more time with her government.
– Andy Hamilton
Heh. Who was that speaker again?
From an email circular promoting think-tank events around Europe:
London
21/02/06 Policy Exchange “Why the Agenda of the Future cannot be delivered by a person stuck in the Past” – William Hague MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary
RSVP: info@policyexchange.org.uk
Seeing as Perry is dabbling in the kingdom of Animalia, I feel I should wade in with my own weighty observations. As it is summer in Australia, cockroaches are making their presence felt in even the most salubrious of households. This must be so – I live in a shared-house dump and they are everywhere.
Tonight, as I was in the shower, I noticed three large brown cockroaches (not the more numerous but less offensive small types) scurrying about the bathroom. This convinced me to abandon my do-not-kill-if-not-necessary morals and I thus plunged the three big brown blighters into the tiles with a – erm – plunger. You know – that rubber implement you use to unblock the drains. Well, it was the first thing that fell to hand. Anyway, this did the trick and happily broke the cockroaches perfectly in half. Fine – let them dry out a bit, sweep them up in a few days and be done with it. I am a student living in a shared house; cut me some slack.
I leave the bathroom after performing my twice-daily cleansing rituals – it is summer in Australia, after all – to attend to this and that. I return two and a half hours later to find the upper part of each cockroach still wiggling its (remaining) legs lamely; unsurprisingly, for it’s stuck on its back and missing half a body. The lower part – sadly disconnected from the mothership – was not returning calls.
Am I the only one who thinks this an amazing natural phenomenon?
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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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