“I’m not sure what is more sickeningly ironic to hear at a food summit – the thoughts of a brutal tyrant such as Robert Mugabe or a would-be genocidal murderer such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Tough call.”
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“Happily, we were indestructible. We didn’t need seat belts, airbags, smoke detectors, bottled water or the Heimlich manoeuvre. We didn’t require child safety caps on our medicines. We didn’t need helmets when we rode our bikes or pads for our knees and elbows when we went skating. We knew without being reminding that bleach was not a refreshing drink and that gasoline when exposed to a match had a tendency to combust. We didn’t have to worry about what we ate because nearly all foods were good for us: sugar gave us energy, red meat made us strong, ice cream gave us healthy bones, coffee kept us alert and purring productively.” – Bill Bryson, The Live and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, page 106. I adore this book. May 31st, 2008 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we formed angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer that question. – Thomas Jefferson, quoted in a recent book by Christopher Hitchens. May 29th, 2008 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Okay – it’s like this. There’s a tribe living by a river, and in the river there are crocodiles. The tribe has one particular piece of wisdom passed down through the generations. It goes like this: if you happen to meet a crocodile, don’t stick your head in its mouth. Every now and then – and who knows the reason – people ignore this advice. Which is sad. Because they die. But very stupid because they were warned. They had a choice. The moral of this story is – you can’t afford to be stupid. There are crocodiles. – The words of Steven Moffat, as spoken by Julia Sawalha, in the final episode of Press Gang. Few things recently have pleased me as much as the announcement that Moffatt will be the new showrunner of Dr Who. The rumour today is that Neil Gaiman will be writing for the show, too, so there is lots to look forward to. May 28th, 2008 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
Greedy, greedy, lying, incompetent, untrustworthy, crooked bastards. – From the first comment in response to Guido Fawkes‘s latest revelations about how much MPs are now deciding to pay themselves May 27th, 2008 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Meaning is a bit like happiness, the more you go looking for it the less you find – The incomparable Lucy Kellaway May 25th, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
In Third Way Britain both the bureaucrats and the nosey neighbours get to spy on you sunbathing nude in your garden. – A line from a gloriously rude review of an absurd book by our soon-to-be former Prime Minister. May 23rd, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
This would have been the Samizdata quote of the day if there was not one already. It is from our own Michael Jennings, commenting on this posting at my blog, which is about the promising future of specialist publications online – as opposed to general purpose ex-newspapers:
This was only in a comment, so Michael should not be blamed too severely if his facts turn out a bit wrong. Very probably, the moon does now have lawyers. May 21st, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
There are certain things you have to be realistic about. Dirty Harry would not be on a police department at my age. – Clint Eastwood. Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival. May 21st, 2008 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
So that’s it. The argument is over… Low tax-low spend economics is finally threatening to become not just irresistible in terms of rational debate and empirical evidence – which, in fact, it is has been since at least the 1980s – but something far more devastating in electoral terms: it is poised to become cool. It will now be unthinkably unfashionable at dinner parties to defend the notion of the state as the monopoly supplier of virtue and fairness. – Janet Daley in a Telegraph blog May 20th, 2008 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Two substantive political issues are the federal budget deficit and the war in Iraq. Now, if you’re electing Democrats to control government spending, then you’re marrying Angelina Jolie for her brains. This leaves the Democrats with one real issue: Iraq. And so far the best that any Democratic presidential candidate has been able to manage with Iraq is to make what I think of as the high school sex promise: I will pull out in time, honest dear.” – PJ O’Rourke. He is still the greatest. May 15th, 2008 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
I just came across this. What’s happened is that they’ve discovered another Vivaldi opera, and classical music blogger Jessica Duchen is less than thrilled:
Well said. Or to put it another way, the trouble with the authentic movement is that it isn’t actually very authentic. But the real point here is not the alleged tedium of Vivaldi operas, so much as the exuberantly self-centred relish of her own eloquence with which Madamina Duchene writes about them. Lovely. May 14th, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
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