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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Today I bought a great book in a remainder shop. It is a year by year history of London, strong on strange and intriguing events, not heavy with the theorising. Lovely.
It is a blogger’s delight. I have already culled three postings from it – two for here and a ‘how very odd’ posting here.
Here is another fascinatingly odd factoid, entry number six for the year 1729:
WIFE-SELLING IN THE CITY
It was reported that ‘Last Wednesday one Everet, of Fleet Lane sold his wife to one Griffin of Long Lane for 3 shilling bowl of punch; who, we hear, have since complained of having a bad bargain.’
A salutary reminder that ‘Christian’ men could be fairly primitive to Christian women, not so long ago. Many Muslims still are, of course. But if we Christians can mend our ways, they surely can too.
A team from the EU Commission is hotfooting it off to North Korea in the wake of that ‘minor-train-incident-which-never-happened-and-anyway-even-if-it-did-it-was-caused-by-reactionaries‘:
Development spokesperson Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe said on Friday that a representative from the EU’s humanitarian assistance team in North Korea will visit the site late tonight (early morning local time) to assess the situation.
They may have to fly in some emergency directives. But, on to the truly pant-wettingly, hilarious, quote-of-the-week bit:
Asked whether the EU representative would be allowed to get a clear picture of the situation on the ground given the secrecy of the Pyongyang regime and the time elapsed since the accident occurred, Mr Ellermann-Kingombe pointed out that they had been invited by the authorities to visit the site.
“We have no reason to question their intentions”, he said.
And probably no motive either.
St. George’s Day Party at the New Cavendish Club, ergo more drinking and less blogging 
Glenn Reynolds has reported some recent photos purportedly showing flag drapped coffins at Dover Air Force Base are a hoax. According to a NASA headquarters statement, the pictures are actually of the coffins of the Challenger astronauts:
An initial review of the images featured on the Internet site www.thememoryhole.org shows that more than 18 rows of images from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware are actually photographs of honors rendered to Columbia’s seven astronauts.
Apparently a number of news outlets fell for it hook, line and sinker.
Every few days, with this in mind, I trawl through whatever google has to offer under the heading of “education”. Mostly, it is dreary and depressing stuff about how (a) things are terrible, and (b) it is all the fault of those other bastards, or (if it is Africa) (a) things are terrible, and (b) things are terrible. Only when it comes to Chinese people or Indian people is the education news ever very good by the time national newspapers get hold of it, and of course that only depresses other people.
So, this story made a nice change:
The quality of education and behaviour of pupils at Probus Primary School have been praised by Government inspectors.
Ofsted inspectors highlighted children’s good behaviour and attitudes towards learning and the partnership with parents and the local community.
The report notes the improvements made since the last inspection and concludes that achievement is satisfactory overall and standards are rising.
It said: “Probus is providing a sound education for its pupils. There is good teaching through the school. The school is well led and managed and there is a good partnership with parents. There is a good team ethos and members of staff are supportive of each other.
“Pupils are well cared for and those with special educational needs make good progress.”
What this really illustrates is probably only that whereas national newspapers like bad news, local newspapers prefer good news. The national newspaper definition of news is: whatever someone does not want printed. Local newspapers are such that whatever someone does not want printed tends not to get printed, because that someone plus all their employees and friends and relatives add up to a significant slice of the readership. Thus, local newspapers are full of sickeningly satisfactory happenings, where everything went according to plan and everyone was happy and satisfied with the outcome. The news, every time is: our readers are good people, successful people, happy people.
There is occasionally bad news, so bad that its occurrence cannot be concealed, in which case the story is how nobly our readers are coping with the situation, but on the whole, there is simply not enough bad news to go round.
Britain as a whole cranks out enough misery, conflict and personal embarrassment per day to satisfy the nationals, and of course the nationals also have a whole world of misery to contemplate beyond their nation’s borders.
But Truro and Mid Cornwall, the area reported on by the newspaper that supplied this Probus Primary School story, is just too nice a place for all the news to be bad.
Everyone is aware by this time that al Qaeda’s attack on Madrid led to the election of the candidate who promised immediate withdrawal of Spanish forces from the coalition in Iraq. The Spanish electorate are acting like the child who, after getting knocked down by a schoolyard bully, cowers in the hope said bully will stop hitting them and just go away.
Based on this thought, I was going to do a cute ‘appropriate’ modification of the Spanish flag.
To my chagrin, I have discovered the Spanish flag already has a yellow stripe down the middle.
There are times when the newsies reach depths which even I find difficult to fathom. There has been an ongoing debate with the DOD by the lowest of the breed about access to Dover Air Force Base where our war dead make their first stop on home soil.
The DOD says it is being sensitive to the needs of the families; that most do not want the return of their loved ones turned into a ratings carnival for the Evening News.
Personally, if I were a family member and a loved one of mine were being returned, I would expect quiet and dignity. If the DOD ever changes the policy in favour of the paparazzi, family members should consider applying their weapon of choice against the nearest, most expensive cameras.
Kicking a cameraman in the balls could be equally educational to the receiver, even if she doesn’t have them.
Recently, this blog noted the repressive measure by the Irish government to outlaw smoking in pubs and restaurants, even though no-one is either forced to work, drink or eat in these privately owned establishments. When thinking, however, about how to frame the arguments against such bans, it is very easy to just rail against the latest nanny state outrage but not give examples of how the market can cater much more effectively for tobaccophobes instead.
Sticking with the issue of smoking in pubs, consider this. In a market order, different pubs will enforce different rules depending on whether the owners figure that they can get the most business by either banning smoking totally, banning it in part of the building, or by installing smoke extractor machines, or even creating American “cigar-bar” type establishments where smoking is positively encouraged as part of the whole pub experience. The point is, the more choice there is, the more opportunities for those who have different tastes to get along in congenial company without the need for unnecessary wrangling.
This also gives a great example of how private property can and does act as a solvent of potential conflicts, a point which collectivists rarely pause to consider.
It is uncertain how health and safety regulations have encouraged bars and restaurants to change the way they deal with this issue, apart from requiring owners of premises to enforce minimum standards. But the trouble with minimum standards is that businesses have no real incentive to raise standards much higher than such a level because the cost is unlikely to bring a commensurate reward. The paradox is that letting the market work could actually raise standards much higher overall.
As with all such issues, you can be sure that legislators rarely bother to consider the law of unintended consequences when it comes to things like this. plus ca change…
Here’s one I almost missed:
CCTV footage sought for TV show
According to The Publican, Sky are seeking pub landlords who can provide them with “dramatic or funny” CCTV footage. Faces of those “not involved in the incident” will, of course, be blurred out.
Which implies that faces of those who are involved will be visible. Maybe acceptable if the footage shows a crime – but what if it’s just “funny”?
I don’t know about you but I reckon my friends would recognise me even with a blurry face (situation normal?).
My Mum definitely would.
Every single incident and accident on the UK rail network in recent years has prompted a torrent of bug-eyed wailing about the ‘disastrous effects of privatisation’ and the iniqiuties of those ‘greedy’ shareholders who insist on putting their squalid demands for profit ahead of safety concerns.
The answer (say the established media, the transport unions, the sundry activists, lawyers, Uncle Tom Cobley and all) is to take the network back into public control. Only when the ‘distorting’ private profit-motive has been eliminated, they say, will it be safe to travel by rail.
As safe as this?
Up to 3,000 people have been killed or injured in a huge explosion after two fuel trains collided in North Korea, reports say.
The blast happened at Ryongchon station, 50km north of Pyongyang, South Korea’s YTN television said.
Nationalisation kills! Privatisation now! Put profits before people!
I can report a successful semi-transition to my new position in Dallas, Texas, where I am on the legal staff of a large health care system. I am still very much in transition, but once our house sells in Wisconsin things should settle down and allow me to get back to regular blogging.
I had thought I might be able to shed the pseudonym when I landed in a new place. I do not like pseudonyms, but in my former position I was doing political work for clients, a business where where publicly held strong opinions of my own would be both a professional liability and a disservice to my clients. I expect to be doing political work for my new organization, so at this point it seems prudent to keep the pseudonym.
Still, I hope to hook up with the du Toits (and any other Dallas-area Samizdata readers) soon. Just let me get my concealed carry license first.
I have heard it said that war is politics by other means and, similarly, that politics is war by other means.
However, it appears that some people in the USA are not really much interested in pursuing ‘the other means‘:
It’s hard to imagine a greater clash of cultures within America than that between George Bush’s Republican party and the New York left.
Ever since the announcement, in January last year, that for the first time in convention history the Republicans would be coming to Manhattan, a multi-layered conflict has been looming…..
This example, from the grassroots conservative site FreeRepublic.com, indicates that animosity is flowing freely on both sides.
“Frankly, I wouldn’t be shocked to see real street battles,” the piece says.
“The extreme left is angry. Angrier than I’ve ever seen them. And they will be made angrier still by the harsh security measures which will be required to protect the dignitaries in New York. But the right is angry too, and there will be a lot of conservatives converging in New York City for the event. If the left wants to fight, expect the right to fight back……
Sitting on a sofa, dressed like a Manhattan bike messenger, one student who identified himself simply as William said he was spending the week attending a raft of different group meetings on the protest.
After he was arrested in Miami during the recent Free Trade Area talks while simply walking down the street, he said he was looking for a more meaningful encounter in August with the NYPD:
“If you are going to get arrested, it might as well be for something rather than nothing,” he said, with a disturbing cheeriness.
Yes, well, it all looks very strange from this side of the pond where partisan politics is still a remarkably genteel business. The occasional caustic comment is about as confrontational as it gets over here. The very idea of Tory matrons from the Shires fighting pitched battles with delegates from the Teachers Union on the ‘mean streets’ of Bournemouth is just too hilarious and far-fetched to even contemplate.
Is this a reflection of something very different about the nature of the British polity? Is it because there is much more of a polite consensus over here? Or is simply because there is so much less at stake in the British electoral process?
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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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