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

…the only way to use (teleportation) as a secret weapon is to allow our enemies to bankrupt themselves thinking they can produce a teleportation machine.

The Air Force is to be applauded for investigating technologies that may have value for national security…But wormholes, negative energies, warped space-time, etc., require futuristic technologies centuries to millions of years ahead of ours. The only thing going down the wormhole is taxpayers’ money.

Michio Kaku

Samizdata quote of the day

What an exciting time it is to be alive: ours still is the golden age of scientific discovery, creationists and other ignoramuses notwithstanding.

Abiola Lapite, commenting on yet more advances in genetics.

Samizdata quote of the day

I had never heard the word blogger until May 25 . But now I know them well because of all the amazing coverage they had of the protests. My friends overseas all followed what happened through the blogs, because they have more credibility than the mainstream media.
Rabab al-Mahdi, a political science professor at the American University in Cairo, and an opposition activist.

Samizdata quote of the day

We spent all this money to do things legally and right, and all the sudden it becomes illegal to do something legal
Nick Mari

The state is not your friend, Nick.

Samizdata quote of the day

There is no “tolerance”, there are only changing fashions in intolerance.
Mark Steyn

Samizdata quote of the day

“I do not really think the House of Commons is ‘My Cup of Tea’, I am too much of an individualist, and also, too self-centred and set in my ways. Enough if I remain a mute, just adequate back-bencher, but frankly most of the problems that so excite ‘the Hon. Members’ leave me quite cold and indifferent.”

– Sir Henry “Chips” Channon in his diary entry for December 5th 1935.

Samizdata quote of the day

“No part of my job involves stopping people from fornicating”

– Elena Procopiu

Samizdata quote of the day

A minority of musicians not only dislike the capitalist world, but they believe they can eschew it. Some of them have set up the sort of micro-firms that capitalism makes so easy to do. So they have spurned being sub-contractors or suppliers to large firms, and have become entrepreneurs instead – and think of it as rebellion.

– Richard D. North in Rich is Beautiful

Samizdata quote of the day

GR: Do you think our technological civilization *is* fragile?

SS: On the contrary, I think it’s immensely resilient. Note that famines generally occur in countries where peasant farmers are still the majority! It’s precisely the complexity that makes it so hard to damage; economies are like ecosystems, they’re more stable as they grow more complex. They work around damage.

– Science Fiction writer S.M. Stirling (interviewed by Glenn Reynolds), stating something that is pretty obvious when you think about it. I think I would also argue that the global communications and global supply chains that have come into existence in the last few years make it dramatically more resilient rather than less. There are vastly more brains linked together and these supply chains actually contain massive redundancy.

Samizdata quote of the day

“The Government uses a false dichotomy that liberty and security have to be traded off against each other. But you can indeed have both life and liberty. The freedom to express yourself short of inciting violence does not threaten security but bolsters it: I want to know exactly who my enemies are by reading their freely spoken words. And when they cross the line and incite people to terrorism, I want the Government to do the one thing with my tax money of which I approve: protect me from these nutters by throwing them in jail or out of the country.”

– Perry de Havilland writing in today’s Times of London.

Samizdata quote of the day

“So what can Britain learn from Pakistan about fighting home-grown terrorists? Newsnight interviews President Musharraf”

– Martha Kearney.

Let us hope Gordon Brown was not watching, eh?

Samizdata quote of the day

“The Central American Free Trade Agreement is just at the beginning of a century of trade liberalisation, more significant and powerful than any previous wave of liberalisation. Europe and Britain can either choose to follow the path of America, Asia and China, or it should prepare for a century of decline. If the EU is to avoid long-term economic stagnation, it has to welcome globalisation – not fight it.”

– Alex Singleton writing in The Business newspaper.