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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Our esteemed fellow blogista, Adil Farooq of Muslimpundit has been taken prisoner and forced into servitude by his crazed capitalist employer, no doubt driven insane by reams of government regulations and finally unhinged by one EU directive too many… ‘Military sources’ have informed DEBKA that this deranged employer may in fact have links to Osama bin Laden‘s brother’s aunt’s sister’s cousin from Manchester, Hilda bin Laden.
I propose forming a militia of concerned libertarian bloggers to mount a rescue mission… using sound military principals of deception and misdirection:
1. We lure his boss away by burning a pile of tax regulation forms in the street in front of his premises.
2. When he comes out to dance maniacally around the bonfire, a second snatch squad will enter from the rear of the premises, moving with cat-like tread.
3. The snatch squad will stun any lackeys on guard that they encounter with blows to the back of the head with a hardback edition of Murray Rothbard’s ‘Ethics of Liberty’.
4. They will grab Adil, egress from the combat zone and retreat for helicopter extraction at the LZ next to the Fish and Chip Shop down the road, possibly stopping off at a nearby pub for lunch en route before embarking.
I love it when a plan comes together.
Generally rational content, sheer variety and remarkable quality, that is why. Although sometimes certain stories get widely blogged, the differences in style and perspective makes it interesting to read them all.
Überblog Instapundit‘s often sardonic style contrasts with The Fly Bottle‘s head-on philosophical deconstructions. Natalie Solent‘s irony intensive and highly ideological approach makes an interesting juxtaposition with Dawson‘s anarchic Ann Coulter fixated streams of consciousness. Over on Where HipHop and Libertarianism meet we are just likely to be presented with a statement of home truths as we are to read a brief exegesis of some rap singer that I have never heard of. Tim Blair‘s dependably hilarious daily roundup of the sundry ruminations in blogland is an absolute ‘must see’. Combative Ken Layne is a treat as he ‘fact-checks the asses’ of the talking heads in medialand… and he may well have introduced a new verb into contemporary on-line English. Muslimpundit delivers intermittently updated but chunky analysis from a perspective that is Muslim and yet unmistakably British. Mind over what matters ponders with a style that is often querulous and analytical in equal measure. Transterrestrial Musings displays a style reminiscent to Instapundit (no bad thing) but tends to target different subject matter. Matthew Edgar reminds me of a splendid economics professor I knew, but hopped up on far too much caffeine. Daimnation heaps expletive ladened abuse upon moral relativists and would-be invaders of Canada. What is it about Canada that it produces so many pissed off bloggers?
And the list goes on and on and on and on…
There is some humour to be had at the prospect of Hobart’s Funnies chasing blogista to the cognoscenti Natalie Solent across the sandy parts of Normandy.
If you have any idea what this cryptic remark actually means, you really do need to send an e-mail to Natalie and explain it to her at great length.
Prof. Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago opines against the Internet in his article The Daily Me, due to its ability to present ‘customised’ news that is pre-filtered to suit the readers preconceived ideas.
Of course the power to personalize makes life much more convenient and in some ways much better. But from the standpoint of democracy, the rise of “The Daily Me” is a mixed blessing. For democracy to work, people must be exposed to topics and ideas they would not have chosen in advance.
[…]
In short, good citizenship requires far more than countless editions of the Daily Me. Democracy is undermined when people choose to live in echo chambers of their own design. The task for the future is to find ways to ensure that the Internet reduces, and does not increase, the risk of social fragmentation.
This does indeed raise some interesting points and I too have sounded off about how unwise it is to reside in a news-ghetto in which one is fed a diet of insular pabulum. Yet the ghetto that I had in mind is actually the mainstream media which, even more in the USA than in Britain, is in reality a near intellectual mono-culture of recycled received wisdoms presented within a profoundly statist meta-context. Nothing in print or on TV even approaches the variety of superb insights, loopy conspiracy theories, pedantic disections and pointers to obscure stories that can be found on-line.
Thus I would argue that there is a subtext to Sunstein’s remarks. Perhaps the source of his disquiet is that people will no longer choose to allow themselves to be propagandised quite so easily as was the case when BigMedia(tm) ruled the ink and airwaves unchallenged. I suspect that customised news from the established media’s on-line outlets is not all that perturbs the good Professor. Although news collection remains the realm of well resourced established media companies, the oligopoly of interpreting what the crude news data actually means has been broken forever. Just refer to Glenn Reynold’s article on instapundit a few days ago announcing his millionth visitor (1). I suggest to you that in our own small but growing way, the newsblog movement is contributing to this disquiet in academia who are, even more than the media companies themselves, the distilled essence of the ‘qualified’ purveyors of opinions. Yet the Internet can, and indeed has, provided a true market place for punditry that is aggressively non-deferential, fact-checking and dissecting the ‘experts’ in near real time… and some people out there do not much like it.
The new wave of ‘instapundits’, for Glenn is indeed the one who started humming the note picked up by the ever growing swarm, are saying things the main stream media would regard as commercial suicide regardless of what they actually believe to be true. For example how many mainstream journalists would admit to being profoundly ambivalent about democracy or admit to rejecting the very concept of exclusive national citizenship that Prof. Sunstein thinks so important? Yet that is what I think and I can say so without incurring the ire of a media proprietor. You do not have to agree with either of these views and that is the beauty of it all: I don’t really give a damn either way because I have no pecuniary interest in your views as a reader. I am not selling your eyeball time to advertisers or worrying about ratings, so if you decide the articles on the Samizdata are just so much pixilated flatulence and thus decline to come back, we will still be propounding our views of the world come what may. Regardless of whether or not Cass Sunstein approves, new and controversial voices are indeed being heard: after all, you are reading this!
Thanks to Basia Jedrzejowicz for pointing out the orginal article.
(1) = Editors update, September 2003: Instapundit had its 25 millionth visitor & Samizdata.net is well past one million visitors ourselves
The lastest blog to be listed is Moira Breen‘s interesting Inappropriate Response. I had been meaning to add it to the list for a while as it is well worth a daily visit. She points out in my diatribe against Star Trek’s Federation that I had missed some important facts, such as that Worf’s teeth are clear evidence of socialist healthcare and there is something deeply sinister about Deanna Troi. Eminently tupable but sinister nonetheless, I would agree.
I was trying to post an article to the Samizdata last night but I was having dreadful technical problems. I was cursing so loud that my friends came to see what was wrong.
Eventually we all decided that the problem must be the terrible Bosnian telephones lines, or perhaps the horrible ISP here in Sarajevo was resulting in bitdrop corrupting my post requests. I was so annoyed… how can I get fan mail/offers of marriage mail/free-plane-tickets-for-a-romantic-week-in-Cancun mail if I cannot post my Samizdata articles?
But now I discover that is was not the poor old battered and abused Bosnian infrastructure that was to blame at all. It seems that our good friend Mister Blogger.com had a bad case of ebola for a few days but he is feeling better.
So now I am happy because I can post again!
Unfortunately I have forgotten what I was going to say. Damn.
Just a few gems from Tim Blair‘s unmissable idiosyncratic daily round up of who is declaiming about what on which blog.
Hammer the stupid, Moira!… Fisked by the demented…Unspooling of intestines praised… Steyn rocks, albeit at a slower beat than bloggers … Rand Simberg and the Burqa of Death … Solent child thrills to notorious book… HTML abuse… Spears version 2.0 … Goldberg-bashing links… Reuters a major piece of crap… Drunken Australian linkage flaw… blog humor/tedium ratio explored… reason apparently not linked to suicide attacks
To make sense of it all, visit Tim Blair’s blog and receive your free can of Fosters. Excellent.
Matthew Edgar is taking part in a secret program designed to confuse enemies, misdirect attacks and generally spread chaos and confusion. His well written morphoblog radically changes appearance every time I visit it (or so it seems). His change to microdot sized typeface is also no doubt part of the plan to throw the forces of BigGovernment(tm) off the trail.
Over on Daimnation!, I saw this little gem:
YES! the Professor [Instapudit’s Glenn Reynolds] has listed me among his “recommended sites”. Glenn, as promised I will return your cat, mostly unharmed, at the agreed-upon location later today.
Well Mr. Penny, I would advise you to read more H. P. Lovercraft books and see what fate awaits people who mistreat cats. The Cats of Ulthar are watching your every move.
P.S. Damian, will you please get your hands dirty with a little html and fix those bloody links. They look like a train wreck!
Our most recent new link is the wonderfully named Recovering Liberal. The term ‘liberal’ obviously being used in it’s North American sense (i.e. illiberal). The subtitle is a particular delight: sacred cow slaughterhouse. Excellent. At first glance this blog seems more neo-conservative that libertarian but is a good read nonetheless. After all, us capitalists gotta stick together!
Whilst on the subject of interestingly named blogs, I would be interested to hear from readers what blog titles tickle their fancy (regardless of content).
My favourites are Opinionated Bastard, Fevered Rants and, possibly the best, Where HipHop meets Libertarianism.
What do you think?
Addendum: Yikes. What could I have been thinking? How can I write about interestingly named blogs without a tip of the hat to The Edge of England’s Sword and The Fly Bottle, both of whom we are already linked to (see side bar).
Back on December 6th, we reported in Grim tidings in blogland, that Natalie Solent was hors de combat with a busted brain box. However the world is once more running in well oiled grooves: she is is back in action and blogging her heart out!
…He chortled in his joy.
Hurrah! Someone must have poked Adil Farooq with a sharp stick because because the excellent Muslimpundit blog has once again started loudly proclaiming some common sense from the minarets.
He is in effect pointing out the absurdity of ‘multiculturalism’ (which is of course nothing of the sort) and puts the boot in where it is sorely needed. The fact such self-evident remarks are even controversial is a testament to the degree of stupidity often heard on the subject
I would have thought that any attempt to accelerate the integration of citizenship-seeking immigrants into Britain, thereby preparing such people at the outset to take advantage of more opportunities to help increase their welfare, would have been welcomed by all. After all, this is what immigrants come for – to increase their living standards through seeking jobs. Taking English classes would make this easier
It is a dark marvel that there are people who cannot understand that!
Muslims often claim that their religion is misunderstood by America and others in the West. Well, in the aftermath of September 11, that is no longer the case. Non-Muslims have bent over backwards to understand Muslims, their history, their religion, even the source of their grievances, in an effort to understand what they are dealing with. The onus is now on the Muslims to do the same, and to actively throw off the shackles of ignorance and misunderstanding that they persistently have had have of America and others in the West. It will not be easy, but then serious introspection never claims to be, especially in the Muslim World, where vast hordes of people are almost always wrong almost all the time.
Now if that is not a brutally objective critically rational perspective, then I don’t know what is!
A highly recommended blog for all, but particularly those who mistakenly think the merest whiff of Islam invariably causes homicidal dementia and an urge to take flying lessons. Now all we have to do is hassle the hell out of Adil to update the blog more often.
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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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