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 suppose that to many Samizdata readers the quotes below will be old news. But it was newsworthy news to Patrick Crozier when he wrote it, and it was news to me when I read it about two days ago. I realise that two days in blog time is a lifetime, but I think this double titbit may still have enough pep left in it to be worth recycling here in full. I hope so.
Two bits of news today (or at least news to me today) suggest that there’s going to be a hell of a battle between rival blog management systems.
First up is Movable Type who are introducing a new system called TypePad. This will be a sort of Movable Type Lite with the additional features of a template design facility and inclusive hosting. The idea is to appeal to the casual ie not very technical blogger and bearing in mind that the lack of templates and fact you have to find your own host are the very things that put people off switching to Movable Type it would appear that they could be on to something.
Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Blogger is hitting back with Dano, the Blogger that works ie a Blogger where the archives don’t do a runner every five minutes. I assume that they will lick their archives problem which should prevent a haemorraging of customers but that still leaves the problem of lack of flexibility which the introduction of no more than about five new tags will do little to alleviate.
So, to sum up, MT are going to compete on Blogger’s ground of being easy to use and Blogger are going to compete on MT’s ground of actually working. Things are about to get very interesting in the Blogosphere
And the morals of that are, I suppose, (a) that if you are still with Blogger and you are a technophobe, give them a few more months to fix their archiving nonsense; and (b) that blogging as a whole is about to conquer the known universe, or they wouldn’t be fighting over it like this.
Patrick has been quietly writing things at CrozierVision, but hasn’t been telling anybody. What I’ve been telling him is: stick with your two blogs, CrozierVision and Transport Blog, and help the rest of us sort ourselves out. Transport Blog is slowly improving its regularity and broadening its scope, now that Patrick is being assisted by a handful of Transport Blog occasionals: me, Michael Jennings, David Farrer, with more to come I expect. It is slowly becoming a group blog. I wonder where he got that idea from.
Patrick and I have been collaborating on the look of my two blogs, starting with the Education one. It has taken me months to persuade some blog-techno-savvy person to sit next to me in my kitchen and press buttons for me while I strode about making aesthetic judgements, because it has taken months for Patrick to decide that being blog-techno-savvy is what he does, but finally it has happened.
The verdict so far is: a few like it and the antis have stayed quiet. Which is as it should be. I made it clear that I was only in the market for compliments and would be ignoring all complaints.
The London-and-surrounding-areas blogosphere is showing no signs of running of out steam.
Salam Pax posted a big update yesterday, with photographs taken during a trip from Baghdad to Basra via Najaf.
So, those of you who thought he was not ‘for real’… has this changed your mind? Whilst it is difficult to be sure, I have always suspected the ‘Baghdad Blogger’ was exactly what he said he was.
I cannot speak for other of course but, as far as I am concerned, if you’re not making enemies then you are not trying hard enough. Conciliation is for wimps.
With this is mind I must commend the blogosphere (well, certain sections of it anyway) for their admirable efforts as enemies are, indeed, beginning to nail their colours to the mast.
Case in point here is a certain Bill Thompson who wants the world to know that, while he loves blogging, he is very worried by actual bloggers:
Yet the blogeoisie and their acolytes dismiss ‘journalism’ and those who practice it, arguing that the direct reporting of events is the only thing needed. As Dave Winer says: ‘The typical news article consists of quotes from interviews and a little bit of connective stuff and some facts, or whatever. Mostly it’s quotes from people. If I can get the quotes with no middleman in between – what exactly did CNN add to all the pictures?’
This isn’t about not liking blogs. It’s about not liking unaccountable concentrations of influence, about believing it is still true that ‘the first duty of the press is to obtain the earliest and most correct intelligence of events of the time and instantly, by disclosing them, to make them the common property of the nation’ – and about noting that ‘most correct’ does not mean ‘what the blog says’.
Mr.Thompson names a few names in his diatribe (but rudely fails to mention the Samizdata) and ruminates darkly about ‘economic libertarians’ and their ‘voo-doo’. Looks like the large preponderance of libertarians in the blogosphere has not gone unnoticed in places where we sincerely hoped we would be noticed.
Given that Mr.Thompson appears to be a acolyte of the BBC/Guardian Axis, his animus is hardly surprising. Indeed, it is welcome. We cannot honestly argue that we have even reached base camp until we are well and truly getting up the noses of people like him.
And getting up his nose we most certainly are. Mr.Thompson makes not even a faint attempt at concealing his haughty indignation that this gathering moss-ball of independent voices does not include any (trumpet fanfare, please) ‘PROPER JOURNALISTS’. Yet, lacking in some such official stamp of professional approval, we spout off like men and women possessed, filling cyberspace with our dangerously ‘un-approved’ ideas.
I am going to hazard a guess that Mr.Thompson doesn’t quite get it. Perhaps it is simply beyond his ken that it is exactly his brand of arthritic leftist orthodoxy that we are aiming to disassemble. Or perhaps he does get it. Maybe he can see that the writing on the blogs is, as far as he an his ilk are concerned, the writing on the wall. Hence his complaint of us being ‘unaccountable’. To whom or what does he expect us to account to? The government? The BBC? A committee of appointed poo-bahs? Or ‘the people’, that abstract, meaningless totem on behalf of which guardianistas like Mr.Thompson love to crusade but which is, in fact, a euphamism for a committee of appointed poo-bahs?
It matters not. What matters is that Mr.Thompson is seething with resentment. He doesn’t like us and thinks we are far too wrong and far too influential. Good. All that says to me is that we are doing something right and that we must keep on doing it.
[My thanks to Steve Chapman for the link.]
If you have not checked out the Dissident Frogman‘s groovy new multi-lingual blog, then now is the time to rectify that oversight. However be careful not to push the red button.
Dissident Frogman is one of the best pro-liberty sites on the internet and is a reminder than there is more to France than Weasels. Just remember not to push the red button.
The Frogman is still working on the site so updates are a bit patchy at the moment; however it is worth checking it out now just to marvel at the sheer technical virtuosity of his graphic design talents. Note the ‘Busted Beards Al-Qaeda Fragboard’ in the sidebar…
…it adds a whole new meaning to the term ‘hit counter’
BUT DON’T PRESS ANY RED BUTTONS!
Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
I have always regarded blogging as a labour of love. At the very least it is means for people with something to say to the world to get these things off of their chest. But, let’s be honest, recognition out in the wider world is sweet and makes the effort all the more worthwhile.
So Natalie Solent can justly feel as pleased as punch that she can count the venerable Mark Steyn among her fans:
As to sites I like, a lot of them are the obvious ones, like National Review, but if I had to single out a non-big-media site, I’d put in a word for Natalie Solent, who writes from somewhere in England and has a way of looking at subjects from odd angles with interesting historical allusions.
Muchos kudos to our Natalie.
[My thanks to Steve Martinovich of Enter Stage Right for heads-up]
Our chum from Baghdad has some new stuff up, so check it out.
If the blogger archives are still phuked, just go here.
Although I have never met the guy, would not know him from Adam and I doubt we see the world in the same way, I am unaccountably delighted he made it through the war in one piece and is once more blogging.
If you want something cultural to read, I recommend postings numbers one and two of Nikos Salingaros week, over at 2Blowhards.
The postings are interesting. But even better, in my opinion, are some of the comments. I’ve posted tangential comments of my own about the “New Urbanism”, briefly on Transport Blog, and at somewhat greater length at my Education Blog. Meanwhile here are bits from two of my favourite of the Blowhard/Salingaros comments, so far.
First, here is “Tom”, replying to something Michael Blowhard had said about suburbs:
You are so right about the zoning, transportation department, fire department rules ossified since the 50’s creating inevitable horrible suburbia. I have done work in suburban areas and the results are completely predetermined by setbacks, maximum lot coverage areas, single use zoning, minimum parking space numbers and transportation department road standards. This is where the problems with modern architecture really are – a socialist/utopian attitude towards city planning. Even in many areas where they object strongly to this kind of thing, the solutions are always increased regulation – appearance reviews, stricter zoning, etc which just makes the problem worse. The reason all suburbs in america look the same is because there are two (i believe) companies that publish model codes for towns that they just buy off the shelf. The role of new urbanism should be fighting these standards.
→ Continue reading: Comments on Salingaros
I find it fascinating to see which blog posts generate passionate interest and a deluge of comments.
Often it is articles that I expect will shuffle down Samizdata.net’s page largely un-remarked before falling into the archives which turn out to be the ones greeted with clarion calls and angry-villagers-waving-torches, whereas some of what I think are ‘dynamite articles’ generate little more that a subdued murmur and the occasional burp.
Blogger Sina Motallebi has been arrested by Iranian authorities for the ‘crime’ of giving interviews to Persian language radio stations outside Iran and for his blogging (in Farsi).
I suspect giving his plight as much publicity as possible may give the notoriously intemperate Iranian security services at least some motivation to play it cool if they think the spotlight of world opinion is on them.
It is a good thing we in the west have freedom of the press and internet, eh? No way would such heavy handed tactics be tolerated in somewhere like the USA, right? Right?
Bloody media. Always complaining. Thus Rumsfeld at the end of last week, himself complaining about all the newspapers featuring looting instead of liberation.
Last night, I caught John Simpson of the BBC opining that the fall of Saddam is of no significance to any country outside of Iraq, and I don’t know where to start, so hopelessly mistaken does that strike me as being. The argument was that because Saddam’s regime was a “dead end”, it couldn’t therefore be of any greater consequence when this inconsequential regime was toppled. And then various other Talking Heads took it in turns to agree. They didn’t seem to understand that there could possibly be anything between America invading a country and smashing all its statues and bombing all its bunkers and decapitating all its leaderships, and having no effect on a country whatsoever, despite having lots of bases in a newly liberated country right next door. Twats.
Nevertheless … → Continue reading: Two cheers for the media
Patrick Ruffini is having server or hosting problems and thus has set up a temporary blog at patrickruffini.blogspot.com.
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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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