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 never saw this coming, did we?
The Government signalled yesterday that it was willing to breach the first of its “red line” safeguards on the European constitution by agreeing to cede Britain’s veto over sensitive areas of criminal justice.
The shift in policy raises fears that Brussels could acquire the power to interfere with the common law tradition of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and rules of evidence.
Whereas, until today, nobody had ever thought that possible.
I remember once defining “compromise” as you doing something I want, and in exchange me doing something else I want. Which makes me a bit like the EU. What a horrible thought. Eeeeuuuu!!!
The good news in space travel just keeps piling higher. An american group has launched a rocket to suborbital altitude.
An amateur unmanned rocket has been launched into space from the Nevada desert – the first time this has been achieved by a privately-built vehicle.
The Civilian Space eXploration Team’s 6.5m (21ft) GoFast rocket is understood to have exceeded an altitude of 100km.
The BBC’s statement may not be entirely accurate. I would have to look into the altitude reached by Space Services Inc. of America’s (SSIA) test rocket in the mid-eighties. It was launched from Matagordo Island on the Texas coast and impacted in the Caribbean.
The GoFast rocket of the Civilian Space eXploration Team rates higher marks in any case. SSIA used the upper stage from a surplus Minuteman Missile, if I remember correctly. In contrast, these folk did it from scratch.
The only other private ‘launch’ into space I am aware of was a BB sized bit of molten metal fired into solar orbit by a shaped charge final stage of a Tripoli Rocket Society rockoon in the sixties.
This is only an appetizer for the year 2004. The main course will be a manned suborbital flight by Scaled Composites. This is almost certain to happen within the next few months. I would not find it at all surprising to see SpaceShipOne ‘passenger’ flights before this year is out.
This is a very good year.
No question about the big story in London today. Some idiots seeking to draw attention to their cause (which – oh dear oh deary me – I seem to have quite forgotten although I was told) by chucking some contraceptives full of chalk dust at the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s Questions.
If this dust had been scarily biological – anthrax or some such thing – then the subsequent behaviour of the assembled MPs was the exact opposite of what it should have been. Instead of remaining in situ to be cleansed by the cleansing squads, they immediately fled the chamber, which would have spread the contagion to the rest of us. There has to be a political metaphor there somewhere.
But fair play to them, our real ‘security system’ is not what we all do to prevent a disaster being disastrous; it is that once things have calmed down a bit, we chase after whoever did it and make life hell for them, and damn the expense. (Compare: 9/11.)
The usual protestations erupted today to the effect that “this must never be allowed to happen again”, thus proving that when stressed, MPs are just as foolish as Trailor Trash on the Jerry Springer show when facing similar mishaps, and just as keen on Total Safety as anybody else and just as doomed not to get it as everybody else. These things happen. The stupid people who did this will be chased down and made to wish that they had refrained. They will not be punished nearly as severely as they would have been if it really had been anthrax, but it will still be pretty frightening for them. If they did not see this coming, they are very stupid and deserve to be badly frightened anyway.
The idea that disasters are, on the whole, deterred rather than straightforwardly prevented, is, I think, a very fruitful one, with applications (again: 9/11) way beyond this one rather farcical episode.
None of which means that there will not now be a frighteningly expensive security panic centred on the House of Commons. New barriers will be erected. New badge systems to restrict access to the place will be devised, at a huge cost in muddle and frayed nerves as well as money. All kinds of restrictions to the manner in which members of the House of Lords invite people to the House of Commons (the problem today apparently) will be conjured up. Again: these things happen. One could no more stop such a process now than stop an earthquake from … quaking. But at the end of it, the world will still be a place in which malevolent or merely mischievous and unimaginative people (today’s culprits) will be able to create havoc if they are of a mind to. They will just have to find a slightly different way to do it.
Despite the best efforts of the Negatroid Hordes to convince us otherwise, much in Iraq is going very well.
DEMOCRACY TAKES ROOT: Democracy is spreading – from the ground up, as it should: “In the province of Dhi Qar, about 230 miles southeast of Baghdad and a backwater even by Iraq’s standards, residents voting as families will have elected city councils in 16 of the 20 biggest cities by next month.”
Read the whole article and then ask yourself where the journalists have been. No, not just their heads. We know where those are.
The May 1 issue of New Scientist contains an item ‘Why our fears about fat are misplaced’ written by Paul Campos, a Professor of Law from the University of Colorado. We have often stated our belief fat is the new job frontier for government bureaucracy and Professor Campos seems to agree with us. He states unequivocally that no research directly links fat to shorter lifespans. Sedentery lifestyles and other factors, yes. Fat alone? No. In his own words:
Ultimately the current panic over increasing body mass has little to do with science, and everything to do with cultural and political factors that distort scientific enquiry. Among those factors are greed (consensus panels put together by organizations such as WHO that have declared obesity a major health crisis are often made up entirely of doctors who run diet clinics), and cultural anxieties about social overconsumption in general.
He notes that in one recent study:
It added up to just one extra death per 10,000 “overweight” women per year. The authors still treated the findings as strong evidence of a causal relationship between weight and cancer
Professor Campos also has a book on the subject, The Obesity Myth.
The Government is quick to latch on to polls that seem to support its position. Let’s see how they like this one:
A recent poll by independent research group yougov shows that 61% of people support ID Cards in principle, way down from the previously claimed 80%. Almost half objected to the proposals in the draft Bill to force innocent citizens to keep the Government informed of their address. Other measures in the draft Bill such as being fined for not telling the Government of a lost card were fiercely opposed.
It seems that the more the British people learn about Big Blunkett’s plans the angrier they get.
The poll found opposition to compulsory ID Cards was so strong that almost five million British citizens are prepared to join protest marches. In addition, a massive three million people would be prepared to take part in civil disobedience in order to scupper the oppressive plans.
Opposition was particular strong amongst those aged under thirty where 34% were “strongly opposed” to the plans.
Commenting on the results Simon Davies of Privacy International said: “What this survey suggests is that the government is staring down the barrel of another Poll Tax revolt, but on a larger scale.”
Full story at ePolitix.com.
Detailed poll results (pdf format) at: Privacy International
PS: If you’re in London, don’t forget the public meeting this afternoon.
Cross-posted from uk-id-cards.blogcity.com
According to the great leader’s physician, Fidel Castro can live to “at least” the age of 140 years old. His proof? Castro still has the strength to go on protest marches. God help us if participation in moonbat gatherings is all it takes to guarantee more than a century of life on this planet; if you think old people are crazy these days, just wait until they’re all sporting “Not in my name” badges and spouting communist rhetoric.
Speaking of which, how long do we reckon it will it be before Fidel’s fans start trotting out this doctor’s expert opinion as further evidence — along with the country’s literacy rates and supposedly world-class, “free” healthcare — that Cuba is a great nation from which we could all learn so very much?
Do not cooperate with attempts by the state to take your property without prior consent… and have some fun playing with them in the process.
With the minds of the world’s intervening classes fully occupied elsewhere, Zimbabwe is now a problem too small for those who might otherwise have done something about it to be bothered with, yet still too big and difficult for anyone else to be able to handle. So, Robert Mugabe’s monstrous and murderous political machine will continue to churn its way through what remains of the country and its institutions.
If the anguish of the cricket world serves to draw some of whatever international attention is left over from Iraq to the anguish of Zimbabwe, then so much the better. Personally, I do not give a damn about cricket, or England cricket, or Timbuktooan cricket, as such. Cricket will stagger on, no matter how this Zimbabwe row plays out. But if cricket helps to keep Zimbabwe and its misgovernment in the headlines, then the more and more continuous is cricket’s anguish, the better.
Cricket-wise – and this is the new development in this particular bit of the story – the state of the Zimbabwean cricket team has become so disastrous that even the International Cricket Council has started to worry about it. Until now, the ICC has only been concerned with (a) money, and with (b) making England’s cricket administrators squirm, pretty much for the sheer fun of it (but also because of (a) money), by demanding that England send a touring team to Zimbabwe later this year, no matter what. But now, the Zimbabwe team is such an embarrassment, and the continuing schedule of so-called Test matches between the Zimbabwe also-playeds against Sri Lanka, and soon, even more embarrassingly, Australia (the best cricket team on earth just now), that even the ICC has realised that cricket as a whole is being, as sporting administrators like to say from time to time but usually only when someone cheats, Brought Into Disrepute. ICC administrators are thus inexorably being brought into personal contact with the people who now rule Zimbabwean cricket.
I do not know for sure what is going to happen any more than any one else knows for sure, but here, for what it is worth, is my guess about how events will now unfold. → Continue reading: Cricketing while Zimbabwe starves
I ran across this little item from ten days ago while catching up with postings on a network admin group:
Ordnance Find Closes Baltimore Tunnel
BALTIMORE (AP) — The Baltimore Harbor Tunnel has been closed indefinitely after a worker at a nearby construction site discovered military ordnance.
Nine munitions, ranging in size from 500 to 4,000 pounds, had been found since early Wednesday. The construction site, less than a half-mile from the tunnel, was once used by the Navy to assemble and disassemble ships.
Disposal teams were working to determine the status of the munitions, said Col. Tim Madere, of the Aberdeen Proving Ground.
Military investigators are trying to determine exactly where the ordnance came from, said Cpl. Greg Prioleau, a spokesman for the Maryland Transportation Authority.
The closing was ordered by Gov. Robert Ehrlich on the recommendations of ordnance disposal teams from the U.S. Army, Baltimore City, the FBI and the Maryland State Fire Marshal. Adjacent portions of I-895 also were closed.
The furore over blog publishing software Movable Type‘s new licence arrangements continues to send shockwaves across the blogosphere. As it happens we were considering moving away from MT to a different php based content management system for Samizdata.net anyway (and we certainly will now)… but I think that what is really interesting about this incident is that trackback has truly come of age.
Like many very thoughtful bloggers, I think SixApart have just taken their best weapon, pointed it right at their foot and pulled the trigger.
But what really interests me is that the storm of hostile trackbacks have provided SixApart with magnificent and unequivocal information on what their market really thinks. The business implications for spontaneous feedback like that are almost inestimable. Of course that does not mean SixApart will correctly respond to the explosion at the core of their business model, but the fact is that the information they need to do exactly that has just landed on them in a very helpful and rather spectacular manner.
Trackback has come of age. It is now an indispensable feature for any commercially oriented blog.
The irony is so thick that you could not chop through it with an axe.
Amid all the hand-wringing and condemnations over incidents which may or may not have taken place at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, there does not appear to be even a bat-squeak of high moral tone over rituals of abuse and humiliation that are most definitely occuring in British schools: [note: link may not be available to non-UK readers.]
DOGS are visiting at least 100 secondary schools in England and Wales to search pupils for drugs, particularly cannabis. In some areas a private security firm is providing dogs and handlers to check children.
Sniffer dogs are viewed by some head teachers and governors as a softer option than random drug tests.
Well, they are also a softer option than the ducking stool but that does not justify their deployment. Nor are such degrading exercises made any more palatable by spoonfuls of sugar:
Annette Croft, the head teacher, said that there had been unease among some pupils when they were lined up to be sniffed by the dogs. She told Druglink magazine that the exercise was “a very mellow, humane and civilised response to the threat of drugs”.
Priceless! How about a mellow, humane and civilised response to the threat of drug warriors and their unquestioning footsoldiers. Really, is there any order these people would not obey?
Parents were asked to sign a letter of consent to the searches, which is usual in most schools where dogs are used. Any pupils who do not consent are searched by hand.
See, participation is voluntary so that is all okay then.
Only four pupils were picked out, including one who provided information about cannabis smoking on the school bus.
Confess and you will be spared, my child.
I am sincerely at a loss to comprehend the volcanic eruption of outrage and revulsion over the treatment of Iraqi prisoners when schoolchildren in this country are subjected to ritual abuse and humiliation as a matter of policy.
I expect there will be no shortage of angry respondents to point out that there is no comparison. They are right. The Iraqi prisoners were, at least, adults and while that does not excuse or justify brutal treatment, one should similarly spare a thought for just how intimidating it must be for children to be lined up by burly security men and set upon by dogs.
No, they are not being hooded, chained, beaten or kicked in the nether regions by belligerent squaddies but I get the feeling that the overlords of the drug war would gleefully institute such measures and, if they did, that the otherwise squeamish and human-rights obsessed British press would report on their progress with equanimity and no small degree of satisfaction.
Shock treatment, you see. It’s for their own good.
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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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