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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We already have a ‘Samizdata quote of the day’ for today, but, yes, here are seven more. I wrote them down over last Christmas, and then forgot about them. Ant then today, I encountered them again. They still make me smile, so here they all are for you good people.
First, a couple of things said by Patsy Stone, the amazing fashion monstress played by Joanna Lumley in Absolutely Fabulous. Over Christmas there were two new episodes. So much for my “complete” box set that I found in a charity shop last year.
On the terribleness of the recent riots in London:
Oh I don’t know. Nothing wrong with a bit of extreme shopping.
On the drugs issue:
Have you seen the price of methadone? It’s cheaper to buy crack.
Also on a fashion theme, from one of those Father Christmas in a New York Shopping Store movies, said by the Lady Boss:
I don’t know if large women care what they look like, but if they do, let’s exploit them.
That’s the spirit. And depending on how the project turns out:
This is either the smartest decision I’ve ever made or the stupidest decision you’ve ever made.
Which has to be a very old joke, but like I say, it made me smile.
Next, this from the Headmistress of St Trinian’s (played by Rupert Everett), about her (I think) brother (also Rupert Everett), to her brother’s daughter:
Your father has a short memory masquerading as a clear conscience.
Finally a couple of overhearings from BBC Radio 3. Here’s something from the recently deceased Gustav Leonhardt, about and with whom they did a commemorative Music Matters show, featuring a recorded interview with him. Leonhardt is explaining why the biographical details of the lives of the great composers don’t interest him that much, only their music.
When you meet a genius, you don’t know he is one. He is only a genius when he is at work.
Finally, here is Professor Robert Winston, ruminating on science, in between introducing some of his classical favourites with Rob Cowan:
Uncertainty is a good place to be. It worries me when governments take a very assertive position on the basis of very weak evidence and then stick to it.
The phrase “climate science” was never uttered, but you got the distinct feeling that this particular Public Voice is thinking that CAGW is a band-waggon that it now makes more sense to get off rather than to shout from. I must remember to email the Bishop about that.
Something tells me that the CAGW-ists will, any year now, start having short memories masquerading as clear consciences.
As this is the anniversary of the day that the Blaine Act ended prohibition in the US, I feel that we are morally obliged to have a beer to commemorate.
– my colleague, in response to an email I sent around at work asking whether we should make the customary Friday lunchtime trip to the pub.
Via Bryan Caplan at EconLog:
“It’s only human,” you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept “human” mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure–as if “to feel” were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not–as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not.”
He’s quoting the John Galt speech out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. I agree with Caplan that that is a great quote. And she was right: if we say “it’s only human” when we refer to someone being an asshole, or forgetful, or inconsiderate, or loses their temper, or some such, shouldn’t we also say “it’s only human” when a person is thoughtful, considerate, productive, courageous and adventurous”?
On a slightly different tack, though, I think people often use the “I am only human” when, as the use of the word “only” implies, we are talking about the limits, and inevitable fallibility of we creatures. But then again, it is precisely because of our limits and partial knowledge, that it is all the more admirable, and worthy of note, when we imperfect creatures do the right thing, do things well, and show excellent character.
What is the difference between a landed family’s trust fund and a dole recipient’s benefits? I’ll tell you:
One of them is an income derived from a piece of territorial property, assigned by accident of birth, originally acquired by forcefully expropriating the previous owners but now generally regarded as legitimate and which is only paid by people who choose to occupy the estate in question instead of living somewhere else…
…and the other one is a landed family’s trust fund.
– Typographically challenged commenter ‘fjfjfj’
“As someone known for writing defenses of chain stores and explaining Plano, Texas, to puzzled pundits, I agree that way too many smart people, particularly on the coasts, are quick to condemn middle-American culture without understanding why people value one or another aspect of it. But they were even worse in 1963.”
– Virginia Postrel, writing a review of Charles Murray’s latest book. In a nutshell, she skewers his central thesis that America is so much more fractured than in the past. That rather depends on what the chronological starting point is.
Murray is most famous, or depending on your point of view, infamous, for his role as co-author of The Bell Curve. More recently, I waded through his tome, Human Accomplishment, which uses various metrics to measure the fecundity of Western civilisation in particular. He’s certainly not afraid of the gods of political correctness.
“The Vickys have an elaborate code of morals and conduct. It grew out of the moral squalor of an earlier generation, just as the original Victorians were preceded by the Georgians and the Regency. The old guard believe in that code because they came to it the hard way. They raise their children to believe in that code – but their children believe it for entirely different reasons.”
“They believe it,” the Constable said, “because they have been indoctrinated to believe it.”
“Yes. Some of them never challenge it – they grow up to be smallminded people, who can tell you what they believe but not why they believe it. Others become disillusioned by the hypocrisy of the society and rebel – as did Elizabeth Finkle-McGraw.”
“Which path do you intend to take, Nell?” said the Constable, sounding very interested. “Conformity or rebellion?”
“Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded – they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.”
– Neal Stephenson. The Diamond Age (his best book, in my opinion).
A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years
– Lysander Spooner
“How fashionable to wear clothes that are distressed. The young on the Westside of Los Angeles dress themselves in jeans worn, sanded, and razored to resemble something a six-month castaway might crawl ashore in. Why? They are trying to purchase a charade of victimisation, as the ethos of the Liberal West holds that these victims are the only ones of worth. but how to go about it? For the jeans can cost over one thousand dollars (one might buy them at Goodwill for two bucks, but, I am informed, they would be “seen through” and, though a closer approximation to true poverty, they are ineffective as a concomitant display of wealth.) It beats me hollow. Look at those Old Rich Guys in their Porsche, the young might say, but the Porsche is perhaps not an attempt to display wealth, neither to recapture youth, but to enjoy that which some years of labor have permitted as an indulgence.”
– David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge, page 63.
I don’t think earning about the same as Kenwyne Jones of Stoke City is cause for apoplectic outrage.
– Mark Littlewood of the IEA on the UK political storm about the head of the world’s sixth largest bank getting a bonus of something under one… meelion… pounds. (US readers may wish to read that again. A million, not a billion.)
Stoke City is currently the 8th best soccer team in England. It has 44 players in its squad.
[W]hile SOPA/PIPA may be stalled for now, a big part of the reason is that tech companies got into the lobbying game, too…That’s right, slowly but surely, Congress is sucking the tech industry into their world, making us play by their rules. We have to pay them off, literally with cash, or we get slaughtered.
…Well, we’re now playing by big government rules. Congress can set up a fight pit with Hollywood in one corner and Silicon Valley in the other. Who cares what happens. The money will just roll right in.
This is how criminal organizations run protection rackets. Congress is doing just that, only it’s completely legal.
– TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington on the spanner thrown into the works of SOPA/PIPA (for now)
“More people have heard of Tom Cruise than Ben Bernanke, but that doesn’t mean that Bernanke hasn’t had a bigger impact on their life.”
– Matt Zwolinski, a blogger at the recently expanded “Bleeding Heart Libertarian” group blog. He’s writing about the benefits and costs of intellectual versus political activism, as relating to Ron Paul.
The failure of Tom Cruise to influence my life is, I guess, something I can live with, although I did rather enjoy the latest Mission Impossible flick.
Katharine Birbalsingh is an heroic, principled woman who, against hideous odds, is trying desperately to open a free school – the Michaela Community School – in a part of South London woefully ill-served by state secondary schools. It will provide academic rigour, discipline, a liberal arts curriculum including Latin, uniforms, sporting facilities and extended school hours to children in one of the most deprived parts of London, regardless of race or social class or ability to pay. For those children whose parents can’t afford to go private, the school will be a godsend – possibly the single thing that makes all the difference in their life between success and failure.
Does it constitute a strong, persuasive argument against this project that Katharine Birbalsingh has a name which you can twist with an unfunny pun? Or that she’s disliked by some of her colleagues? Or that, in the eyes of her accuser, she speaks “BS.”?
No, it doesn’t. Indeed I’d suggest that these comments are actually counterproductive. They draw attention to the fact that criticism of Katharine Birbalsingh’s noble project is based not on reasoned argument but on prejudice and incoherent rage. This is why they’re so well worth quoting: because they let the enemy do our work for us.
– Delingpole comments on a comment.
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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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