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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Blogger N.Z. Bear has a cool feature on his blog “The Truth Laid Bear,” in which he attempts to quantify the flow of blog-to-blog links within the blogosphere. He identifies the blogs that are most often referenced by other blogs, and he also identifies the blogs that most frequently link to other blogs.
You can probably guess who is #1 on both lists. Where does Samizdata rank? We are tied for 18th place on the list of blogs most cited by other bloggers. However, we are way, way down there in terms of linking to other blogs, tied for 96th place. So, here is a link to HappyFunPundit, which is on a roll with its last two entries. HFP’s “music industry suckage report” is one of those pieces where you realize that someone else has just articulated what you thought all along but couldn’t quite express yourself. And while the Kevin Richardson vs. George Voinovich flap is funny enough as a straight news story, HappyFunPundit’s take is even funnier. Well done, Dan and Steve.
I just noticed that UK Transport now has a hit counter, and I pushed the little cross, expecting just a number. But as most readers of this probably know far better than I, what you actually get is a whole new page of numbers. And the news is that the UKT cup is either almost completely empty, or else starting to get definitely, detectably damp at the bottom, depending on how you look at it. VISITS: Total: 869, Average Per Day: 29, Average Visit Length: 1.10, Last Hour: 5, Today: 24, This Week: 240.
You can see how a regular journalist, looking at numbers like those, would say, forget about that. I, and I hope Patrick, with our backgrounds in unofficial paper pamphlets stuffed into envelopes and the like, are more easily impressed. I definitely am. Compare Total with This Week, or Average with Today (that was at 11.30 am today), and maybe you’d agree. Patrick seems to be excited, because (as Natalie Solent also noted) he was up at 6.43 am this morning. This is about when I go to bed.
There’s a mass of recent UKT stuff to look at, and Patrick does write beautifully, with a decent sprinkling of human being outbursts and idioms to enliven what from other keyboards would be uninterrupted number and date crunching. What I like about Patrick is: he’s honest. You always feel that he’s saying it like he’s seeing it. If he’s confused, he says so. If he deviates in his head from the libertarian orthodoxy (e.g. on Compulsory Purchase Orders being necessary to build railways) he deviates right there on UKT. Which means that when he does express a strong judgement that counts for something.
Nevertheless, of all the recent stuff on UKT, the thing that most impressed me was an email from Tim Hall, whoever he is. It’s full of insider knowledge about the sad fate of brand-new but never used railway carriages, or something, and what it means is that UKT looks like continuing its slow but steady rise to significance. Patrick doesn’t have to write the entire thing himself. He may not know as much about roads and planes and ships as he does about trains, but there are surely others out there ready to fill in, as soon as they hear of UKT’s existence. In a year or two, he could have himself an entire ideologically simpatico circus of regulars. Patrick is a one-step-at-a-time sort of person, and he’ll probably say something like: you’re very kind Brian, let’s hope you’re not too kind, wait and see, etc, etc. Which is all part of why I’m starting to get seriously optimistic about UK Transport.
For sex (bikini reference!), violence (attack by dog! blood!) and much, much more, go to Bitter Girl!
One of the many joys of the Samizdata is that it is a truly marvelous tool for weedling all manner of Libertarians out of their various hidey holes. So it is with nothing but pleasure that I accept the gentle rebukes of Paul Marks from whom I have not heard since sometime before the last Ice Age.
For the benefit of Paul (and others) let me make it clear that I accept that President Bush is not beyond criticism and I will leave it at that for the moment.
And, like Paul, I welcome the likes of Messrs Prodi and Petain speaking their minds. It means that blind people can hate them as well.
Natalie Solent links (Monday May 20) to a Guardian piece about blogging. That “fact checking your ass” meme is never going to die is it? They mention Glenn Reynolds of Instpundit by name and by blog. Do they know his meta-context?
I’m sure mostly they do. I’ve always rated the (what it now, just about, still, makes sense to call) “left” at least as good a bet in the long run for libertarianism as the (ditto) “right”. Most Guardian-readers love idea-based radicalism (making trouble for the high and mighty, such as many current Guardian-writers) more than they love socialism, if forced to choose. Many British (at any rate) onservatives, if forced to choose, love the high and mighty more than they love trouble-making (i.e. idea-based radicalism). (This is one of the meta-contextual reasons for the spat between the Libertarian Alliance and the Daily Telegraph. The LA suspects betrayal as the old establishment welcomes the new. The Daily Telegraph regards the LA as politically insignificant and out of the power loop, and hence socially inferior. Both have a point.)
Will there soon be lots of left wing blogs for us to link to and quarrel with? That would be something. Or will they all just be spoiler or defensive salaried offshoots of the mainstream media, like – and no offence is intended here, I’m just being descriptive – the Guardian’s web operations. (Mixed metaphor warning: can a mainstream have an offshoot? Make that journalistic treetrunk.)
None other than the talented and angst fuelled Bitter Girl! 
Steve runs quite possibly the strangest blog in the entire blogosphere, rejoicing in the name of Scrofula (morbid condition featuring swelling of the glands), tagline: News, Rumours, Stupidity and Muck.
He is particularly adroit at, um, interesting graphics (I particularly like his ‘Conan the Egalitarian’ and ‘David Blunkett as Robocop’). Many of his works are rather splendid animated gifs: watch Robert Fisk come to grief again and again! Make sure you visit his picture archive for maximum juicy goodness. Steve has a much better idea for a new EU flag than that silly barcode…
 Uncle Joe loves EU
😀
As someone who knows Tony Millard outside the blogosphere I can vouch for the fact that, yes, he was kidding in the two posts you find less agreeable (the reference to Chianti should have been a dead give-away)  . As with any good joke though, there was an underlying serious point to both of them, although I believe it had little to do with the proposed increase in petrol prices or depopulation of Britain.
His was a Pythonesque (Monty) take on the type of discourse committed in the name of libertarianism and various other ‘-isms’. That is a quasi-economic analysis, perhaps based on reasonable assumptions somewhere along the line but with a destination firmly in the barking moonbat land.
None of the above disputes, let alone refutes, your points about such increases being anything but a form of taxation, which we know is evil  , and I agree that no-one in their right free-market mind would consider this as a solution to any economic problem.
So let’s carry on fighting for Liberty in our varied ways. Tony Millard’s may be on the funny side, but the serious point is there. You just have to dig deeper for it. How British!
I liked Francis Moore’s short sting-in-the-tail posting over at the Liberty Log yesterday. 1), 2) and 3) are familiar enough this-versus-that contrasts (Korea, China, Germany), although deserving of infinite repetition. 4) (Britain) contains the provocative duo. Clue: they do the Liberty Log in Scotland.
Freedom and Whisky is also a Scottish inclined blog. There were two more good postings by F&W boss David Farrer yesterday, about Adam Smith and about the PC menace to Ryanair.
Have all these Scotbloggers been introduced? Presumably. If not, this should connect them.
The epidemic spread of Britblogging is definitely this weekend’s Britblogging story. Perry says he doesn’t want too much blogging about blogging, because, well, even to explain would be to break the rule, nevertheless …
… posted on the Libertarian Alliance Forum at 4.54 pm today, by long time Libertarian Alliance supporter David Farrer: “My new blog is now up and running.”
The first posting was last Wednesday, thus:
Welcome to this new blog. The title Freedom and Whisky links the two themes of this blog: libertarianism and Scotland. The libertarianism will, however, sometimes extend beyond events in Scotland and I shall also be covering non-political news of interest to me north of the border. I have therefore included links to a variety of Scottish sites which I often use.
Last Friday was the last Friday of the month, and that meant a meeting at my place. Libertarian Samizdata supremo Perry de Havilland talked about blogging, and many of those present were either blog bosses (Perry, Patrick Crozier of UK Transport, Andrew Dodge of Dodgeblog) or blog contributors (such as Samizdatans Tom Burroughes, David Carr and me).
The dark horse in the herd was Chris Cooper. He has written a number of things for the Libertarian Alliance over the years. One of my favorites of his was the first Personal Perspectives piece we ever published called Mere Anarchy, and he was writing about why Free Market Broadcasting would be a good idea long before most people realised that such a thing was possible, let along desirable. But he has been too busy working, raising a family, etc., to do as much libertarian writing since then as we’d all have liked. An ideal blogger, in other words. So I was especially glad when he showed up on Friday. And, it turns out that for the last month Chris Cooper has been doing Chris Cooper’s Blog (CCB from now on). Having glanced through CCB in amazement on Friday night, I gave it a proper read on Saturday.
Perry made a distinction in his talk between “mezines” and “pundit” blogs. CCB, rather like Natalie Solent‘s Blog, looks to be both. Like Natalie, Chris is an uncompromising libertarian but he doesn’t hit you over the head with it all the time. And when he does it can take a few seconds to register, such a tabby cat does he usually seem, what with writing about other things besides libertarianism.
You’ll probably need a longer attention span for CCB than for your average blog. It’s more like a nineteenth century gentleman’s diary, kept as much for its author’s pleasure, now and in later decades, as for anyone else’s benefit. If you want to read CCB over Chris’ shoulder you’re very welcome, but he’s not begging. But just like those nineteenth century gentleman he can write, I promise you.
CCB has not so far been strong on links, but this may merely be because Chris has yet to master the technicalities of that. I know the feeling. If that’s so, the fact that Patrick Crozier was deep into technical confabulation with Chris over my computer on Friday night could prove significant. In particular, CCB‘s left hand bit, now decidedly blank, should soon come alive.
I shan’t organise my life around Chris Cooper’s Blog, not yet. But I will be giving it a look every few days.
No, not really… but Brian Linse is back home in L.A. after completing filming of his movie Den of Lions in Budapest. He is back to his old blogging habits at Ain’t no bad dude.
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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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