Are you uncomfortable enough? Good. Welcome to my world.
– Adriana Cronin-Lukas, on dealing with day to day annoyances of Eastern Europe’s post communist legacy
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December 22nd, 2005 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Pity Samizdata.net does not have a catagory for articles called “Treason & Betrayal”. December 19th, 2005 | 76 comments - (Comments are closed)
Protectionism does not aid development. Developing countries with open economies are catching up with rich ones; those with closed economies are falling further behind. – Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s Shadow Secretary of State for International Development December 15th, 2005 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
My least favourite radical chic interviewee: the talented but humourless Ute Lemper. Ensconced in a luxury suite at the Savoy, she embarked on a lecture about the downtrodden masses, and was so busy talking about how East German workers were exploited that she forgot to even acknowledge the existence of the maid who’d put a tray of tea in front of her. – Clive Davis commenting on this. December 14th, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
I admit to feeling a little uneasy at the sight of a Muslim woman shrouded not simply in a headscarf but a face-concealing, head-to-toe chador, and wonder just how much choice she has had in deciding her lifestyle. I am not hugely sympathetic to a Muslim seeking asylum because he claims to have been discriminated against because of his support for sharia law. I cannot celebrate such culture in the way that I celebrate Italian National Day in Leichhardt or the Tet festival in Cabramatta or Greek Orthodox Easter or a Seder at Passover or a service of Eritrean Orthodox Church, such as the one I attended a couple of years ago in a borrowed Church of England in London, or lunch with a couple of Palestinian intellectuals. Some multicultural theorists will squawk and say that I prefer only a soft multiculturalism (if they insist on calling it that) that does not offend western liberal values. They would be spot on. My acceptance ends when the assault on the liberality of society itself begins. – Andrew West, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald. (Link via Tim Blair) December 13th, 2005 | 52 comments - (Comments are closed)
Society is something emergent that occurs when people interact with each other, you cannot point at it and you cannot owe it anything. When any politician says the word ‘society’, you can be damn sure what he really means is ‘the state’. December 7th, 2005 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
An unfunded pension is like a university education. If everyone has one, you can’t expect it to be worth anything. December 4th, 2005 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
Mr Drucker says that modern government can do only two things well: wage war and inflate the currency. It’s the aim of my administration to prove Mr Drucker wrong. – Richard Nixon December 3rd, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
December 1st, 2005 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
“If the French social model is so great, why is the country in flames?” November 17th, 2005 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government’s invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason. – Ali Rahimi, Ben Recht, Jason Taylor, and Noah Vawter of MIT, getting down to the really important research. I wonder what they think of lampshades? (Link from Scott Wickstein). November 16th, 2005 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
“No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow – and quite rightly – to take every advantage which is open to it under the taxing statutes for the purpose of depleting the taxpayer’s pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue.” – The Lord President Clyde, 1929 November 11th, 2005 | 48 comments - (Comments are closed)
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