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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UK Transport isn’t a blog name to make the heart race, or so Perry and I have been telling Patrick Crozier. Transports of Delight? Freedom Wheels? Libertarian Travelblog? But UK Transport by any other name would smell just as sweet, for just as long as he can keep it going and keep it coming.
For example, among several nice things there was a beautiful little piece there yesterday (Wed April 3) entitled Safety Costs Soar. I know: yawn. But read it. Says Patrick: “There is something of a shifting of the tectonic plates going on in government circles at the moment.” Trust me, this is about more than safety. It is but the grain of sand in the molecular depths of which a whole world is revealed.
Gosh, what a lot of e-mails I had waiting for me asking why I have not posted for a while. Unfortunately I have been too involved with unexpected business travel and family matters to be able to blog. To make matters worse my portable is sick and so I can only post from my office, which is a bit difficult.
I hope to do a few postings this week if my crazy schedule permits!
In the small hours of Monday morning I went to visit A Coyote at the Dog Show, on account of it being the first on the blog list on the Samizdata sidebar links. The Coyote man quoted (on Thursday March 28) an interesting opinion from Bill Quick:
Tens of thousands of folks are getting a charge out of creating and maintaining blogs, with absolutely no financial rewards – except for a handful of bloggers so tiny their numbers are statistically meaningless noise. The charge is enough for now, but it won’t last, and the blogosphere, currently in full expansion, will shrink like a popped balloon in another year or so, as hundreds of thousands of blogs go dark and dead.
The problem is simple: it requires too much work and talent to maintain a good blog, work and talent that brings in nothing tangible for the creator.
A similar thought had been occurring to me. Patrick Crozier tells me that keeping UK Transport in full flow is already an effort. Natalie Solent is off at the seaside. Will they go dark and dead? I do hope not.
I don’t think Samizdata will expire soon. Perry seems like a stayer to me, and is not arrogant enough to assume that he can keep Samizdata going indefinitely all by himself. Maybe he could, but why take the chance? There’s a team of us, and Perry is always on the lookout for more. (Libertarian, supermodel, good sense of humour, advanced philosophy degree, is the kind of CV he seems to like best, if you’re thinking of applying.)
Plus: We’re ideologically motivated. We have something big to say, and to keep on saying. We don’t get money, but we do get prestige within the libertarian movement. The Libertarian Alliance has chuntered along for two decades fuelled by little else, inspired by the mere dream of readership numbers per year of the sort that Samizdata now gets in a week. Samizdatans will come and go, but Samizdata itself could well continue into the 2020s.
Nor will Samizdata be the only survivor. Blogging won’t go away, any more than insects will merely because so many of them die per hour. Bill Quick thinking that it will sounds to me like the wishful thinking of a professional writer (which the talented Bill Quick is), wanting to believe that these damned amateurs will vanish and restore the status quo ante. Many will, true. Blogging, like the internet as a whole, will have downs as well as ups, but enough blogs will stick around to prove Bill wrong. Even if blogging is for many only a brief shining moment, millions will want that moment, and then millions more, until some even better way of writing your mind comes along.
And some of the blogs that do stick around will become much bigger than any blog is now.
Here is a picture of the intelligent and attractive Missy Schwartz. Sigh 
All round gentleman-about-town, raconteur, degenerate smoker of communist cigars and worthy blogger Brian Linse also moonlights as a film producer when he is not doing his proper job of blogging.
The production of his very interesting looking film called Den of Lions is well underway, shooting on location in Budapest, Hungary.
Progress reports and numerous pictures can be found at the film’s own blog site! Check it out. 
Blogger Chris Johnson of Midwest Conservative Journal may be a benighted conservative but at least he is my favourite kind of benighted conservative. His blog is wide ranging, informal, staunchly anti-idiotarian and laced with humour (such as his ‘break up LibSam’ campaign) [Ed: at least we hope he is joking!] with remarks like:
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy responded by saying, “I don’t look at judicial nominations through a political prism,” but had to cut his statement short when his growing nose poked a reporter in the eye. The reporter was not seriously injured.
If you like to sample conservative blogging but find some of them too po faced, then Midwest Conservative Journal might be just what you are looking for.
Samizdata slogan of the day
Bloggers may not be able to change the way newspapers are written, but we can change the way people read them
– Perry de Havilland
What I flagged up as a mere possibility here on Friday, March 08, 2002 in my article ‘St. Andrews is at it again’ is now a fact. The St. Andrews Liberty Club have started their own blog, and … well don’t take my word for it, go to The Liberty Log itself, and see what they say about the dinner at Tim and Helen’s where Tim and I showed them how Libertarian Samizdata works. And see also their excellent anti-anti-smoking stuff.
John Weidner‘s Random Jottings is a rambling, strangely structured blog that reminds me of wandering through an antique shop. It is a place filled with peculiar and fascinating artifacts, some clearly desirable and collectable and others curious but of unclear purpose like a button hook or silver chatelaine.
You are as likely to find information about a resurgence in skilled oriental rug making in Turkey as you are to see commentary on the war in Afghanistan. It may be the only blog I would describe as ‘charming’. Visit daily because who knows what you might find?
As is obvious from the previous article, we have a new gun in town… by the name of Adriana Cronin. You will quickly discover she is blogosphere’s very own Lara Croft, complete with serious motorbike and a need for speed.
The Samizdata Team based in and around London was delighted to be able to meet famed blogger Joanne Jacobs and her daughter for lunch in Central London yesterday.
Joanne and her daughter looked on impassively whilst the Guardian journalists were burnt in effigy for their amusement.
Natalie Solent regaled the room with her ‘The time I went shopping and forgot to leave the Chieftain Tank’s hand brake on’ story.
Former lefty Brian Linse has more or less succumbed to Stockholm syndrome and we will soon be asking him to become a regular contributor to Samizdata. 
It was tough but although he is still in a state of denial, the process is irreversible and we will have him signing his soul away signed up to ‘The Cause’ very soon indeed.
Mark my words, he will not be able to resist the forces drawing him back to salvation in London for long. We all know that latent libertarians like him never have an easy time coming out of the closet. Still, it was touching to see him actually eat the autographed picture of Barbara Streisand he used to carry around in his wallet.
You don’t believe me? Well I lured him into taking the Ethical Philosopher Selector test and this was his top 5 results (I was peeking and he didn’t cheat):
1. Rand (100%)
2. Sartre (98%)
3. Stoics (90%)
4. Kant (88%)
5. Nietzsche (79%)
That’s right… our former pet pinko aced RAND! We may have created a monster!
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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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