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]

Samizdata quote of the day

Authoritarianism is a disease of the mind. It criminalizes the act of asking “why?” It is the obedience-sickness that turns good people into perpetrators and victims of atrocities great and small.

Cory Doctorow

Samizdata quote of the day

There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.

– William Gladstone

Samizdata quote of the day

Repeat after me, you greenie morons … cold kills, cold kills, cold kills … greenies kill. You granny killers should be up for manslaughter.

– The indefatigable Richard North spells out just how much worse cold weather is than hot weather.

Samizdata quote of the day

“In the 19th century, the British would have answered Mr Riley-Smith’s question “What has trade to do with human understanding” very readily. It has a great deal to do with it, we would have said. Commerce is the main means of peaceful intercourse with other people. It is the circulatory system of the world. It is part of the constitution of liberty which, as the author rightly says, we exported to America. If we have forgotten this, it is we, not the United States who are – both metaphorically and literally – the poorer.”

Charles Moore, writing about what he regards as an interesting but in some ways wrong-headed book about America by Tristram Riley-Smith.

Samizdata quote of the day


Jack lost his iPhone last night. He has therefore been stuck at home on his Playstation 3 all day.

– An (early twenties, male) customer overheard in a coffee bar in the East End yesterday afternoon. I can understand how the world outside the front door is a scary, scary place if it is just you, completely unaugmented.

Samizdata quote of the day

The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.

– Lysander Spooner

Samizdata quote of the day

“By God, The Guardian is a loathsome newspaper; a local north London morning daily for Stalinist metro libtards, perpetually arrogant, snobbish, self-righteous, humourless, dull, relentlessly middle class, cowardly and cheap.”

Rod Liddle

As regulars know, I am not Mr Liddle’s greatest fan but when he is on form, he really hits it out of the park, as they say in baseball. The whole piece is an exhilerating piece of invective, all the more delicious in that its targets deserve everything they get.

Brown went wilde in government

Gordon Brown must have read Oscar Wilde when he was studying as he has spent his entire career implementng one of his aphorisms in government:

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes

For this reason, he will be remembered for a very long time

Samizdata quote of the day

Personally, I’d like to see some Congressmen forced to testify before a panel of car dealers, about the budget deficit’s Sudden Acceleration Problem.

Instapundit reflects on the travails of Toyota.

Samizdata quote of the day

Every time Labour show a whiff of recovery the pound crashes.

– Guido Fawkes comments on his graph showing that The Market Hates Labour.

Samizdata quote of the day

The problem is that 71.3% of what passes as peer reviewed climate science is simply junk science, as false as the percentage cited in this sentence. The lack of trust is not a problem of perception or communication. It is a problem of lack of substance. Results are routinely exaggerated. “Scientific papers” are larded with “may” and “might” and “could possibly”. Advocacy is a common thread in climate science papers. Codes are routinely concealed, data is not archived. A concerted effort is made to marginalize and censor opposing views.

And most disturbing, for years you and the other climate scientists have not said a word about this disgraceful situation. When Michael Mann had to be hauled in front of a congressional committee to force him to follow the simplest of scientific requirements, transparency, you guys were all wailing about how this was a huge insult to him.

An insult to Mann? Get real. Mann is an insult and an embarrassment to climate science, and you, Judith, didn’t say one word in public about that. Not that I’m singling you out. No one else stood up for climate science either. It turned my stomach to see the craven cowering of mainstream climate scientists at that time, bloviating about how it was such a terrible thing to do to poor Mikey. Now Mann has been “exonerated” by one of the most bogus whitewashes in academic history, and where is your outrage, Judith? Where are the climate scientists trying to clean up your messes?

The solution to that is not, as you suggest, to give scientists a wider voice, or educate them in how to present their garbage to a wider audience.

The solution is for you to stop trying to pass off garbage as science. The solution is for you establishment climate scientists to police your own back yard. When Climategate broke, there was widespread outrage … well, widespread everywhere except in the climate science establishment. Other than a few lone voices, the silence there was deafening. Now there is another whitewash investigation, and the silence only deepens.

And you wonder why we don’t trust you? Here’s a clue. Because a whole bunch of you are guilty of egregious and repeated scientific malfeasance, and the rest of you are complicit in the crime by your silence. Your response is to stick your fingers in your ears and cover your eyes.

Willis Eschenbach is unimpressed by Dr Judith Curry‘s ideas about reestablishing trust in climate science. Lots more Climategate commentary and links from North.

Samizdata quote of the day

“What’s really going on, I think, is that the nature of class war has changed. The old virus has mutated. The old social and political divisions have given way to two new classes — rather as on the trains. Those in economy are most of us, paying for the comforts of those in first class. And those in first class are the new political class — all those who owe their advancement and their security and their pensions and their privileges not to their backgrounds or their talents, or even necessarily their political parties, but to the state and our taxes.”

Minette Marrin