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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Michael Blowhard has been making movie lists again, this one being of New York movies that portray the “arts scene” there. Here’s one that a lot of Samizdata readers will know all about:
The Fountainhead. Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, from the Ayn Rand philosophical potboiler, lovingly over-directed by King Vidor. Way-over-the-top bliss about a my-way-or-the-highway architect who’s loved and hated by a real woman. Wait till you see Neal get excited about the way Coop handles a jackhammer.
I always felt that Cooper was miscast in this. Cooper’s “manliness” seems to me to have been of the unnatural, aspirational kind. Fighting the good fight, facing down the bad guys, is not something that the Cooper character ever did because he enjoyed it, or because it came naturally to him. It’s the lips, I think. So female and “sensitive”.
On the contrary, Cooper embodies heroism precisely because he is actually something of a girlie boy, who’d rather be indoors. It’s not that he lacks the physique to do the manly stuff, nor is he stupid. The problem is that his mind is not the heroic sort of mind. He’s not naturally quick and decisive. His natural metier would be something like academia, where he would have time merely to think about things, without scary deadlines. He wouldn’t win any Nobel Prizes, but he’d make a comfortably, unstressed living. But High Noon, or whatever, looms, and he must deal with it. And he doesn’t funk it, no matter how much he is tempted to.
The Cooper character typically says little because he hasn’t yet worked out what on earth to say. Other more obviously manly stars – I’m thinking of someone like Clark Gable – say little because, although they could say a lot and occasionally do under pressure, what’s the point? Talk is cheap. Action is what counts, and Mr Real Man has already decided what he’ll do.
Cooper spends The Fountainhead communicating to me not intellectual certainty, but bewilderment and confusion that any man could possible be this confident about anything. He says all the Howard Roark words and goes through all the Howard Roark motions not because he believes in it, but because he can’t think of anything else to say or do. That can’t be right.
But then again, maybe it is. Maybe Howard Roark can’t think of anything else to say or do either. If so, that can’t be right either, but that’s a different argument.
SCENE: A secret chamber underneath Whitehall. ‘Q’ is busy directing a gaggle of technicians when the sliding doors swish open. In steps OO7.
Q: Ah, Bond
BOND: Good morning, Q
Q: Off on another mission I hear
BOND: Yes. Her Majesty’s Government has gotten wind of a conspiracy by an International Hate Speech Syndicate. Seems they’re plotting to flood the civilised world with language that might be perceived as offensive.
Q: The Fiends!
BOND: Precisely. They must be stopped.
Q: You’ll need the proper equipment, Bond
BOND: Have you got my standard issue Walther PPK?
Q: Good grief, Bond! Are you mad? We can’t have people running around with guns. You might hurt someone. No, we’re going to issue you with these.
[Hands over a pair of brand, new trainers]
BOND: That looks like a pair of running shoes, Q
Q: Very observant, Bond.
BOND: Are they rocket-powered?
Q: No, but they are air-cushioned. If some snarling, evil henchman comes at you, you just slip them on and run like the blazes.
BOND: Hmm. I see. What about my Aston Martin?
Q: Sorry, Bond, but we’ve had to scrap that.
BOND: WHAT??!!
Q: It’s all part of our commitment to meet the targets for environmental protection agreed at the Johannesburg conference. You’re going to be issued with this bicycle.
[Wheels up bicycle]
BOND: Does it have any special features?
Q: It certainly does; it comes with a safety helmet and a set of knee-pads. Now do pay attention, Bond; you must never attempt to ride this bicycle without the proper safety equipment.
BOND: What about that silver gadget on the handle?
Q: Ah yes. Now if you press this little silver button here….
BOND: It fires a heat-seaking missile?
Q: No it’s a little bell that goes tring, tring, tring. Let’s everyone know you’re coming. Effective up to 5 metres.
BOND: I feel safer already
Q: Now remember, Bond, this is all the property of HM government and it has to be returned in one piece.
BOND: I’ll do my best, Q
[BOND turns to go]
Q: Oh and Bond……
BOND: Yes, Q?
Q: Do try to avoid seducing any beautiful, exotic women on your travels.
BOND: Is that because it may compromise the mission, Q?
Q: No, it’s because you may well end up in prison, Bond. Dismissed.
- Take a sheet of grey construction paper.
- Hold it over your head.
- Look up at it in a dark room.
That’s approximately what I can see from here. T’is a normal Irish night, so I’d also need slow wipers for my eyeballs.
I would just about see the glow from a dinosaur killer asteroid,.. if it passed directly overhead.
I ran across some interesting remarks by Donald Rumseld about the bureaucratic explosion in Washington of the last twenty to thirty years:
“Well, I suppose the two things that leap to mind — one is the interaction between the Congress and the department has changed dramatically since the 1970s. Back then the — as I recall, the authorization bill was about 50 or 60 pages. Today it’s 900 pages. The degree that the committees of the Congress — the staffs have blown up by many, many multiples on the congressional committees, with the result being that there are just an enormous number of requirements and inhibitions and restrictions and prohibitions that are imposed on the department. We’re up, I think, in the 900 level of reports that we send up there. I don’t even know who reads them, but we’re killing trees all over the globe. And it’s — they get put into the law and then people just keep doing it. If we just could knock off half of the reports and cut the rest of them in half and use a single color — (laughter) — like black and white — (laughter) — and then put them on the computer and give them the electrons and let them make the paper, we could save so much time and so much effort.
But the second thing is the interagency process. If you think about it, our overnment was organized in an earlier period. These departments and agencies the president has practically no ability to change without congressional approval. And the nature of our world in this 21st century is so different that all you can do is about from time to time add a new department. So over my lifetime, I’ve seen the Department of Housing and Urban Development added and the Department of Transportation added and the Department of HHS added and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs added, and now the Department of Homeland Security added. But nothing ever ends. We just keep layering on top.”
The National Ammo Day BUYcott is today, November 19th. Remember all those people in other nations who have been disarmed by their governments when you stock up on a few boxes of your favorite 9mm and 308 Win.
No retreat. No surrender.
This is very cool. Here is a tube map (underground metro) that allows you to locate nearly 250 bloggers in London.
Anyone who recalls reading my report on the ‘Liberty and Livelihood March’ that took place in London (although ‘took over London’ is more accurate) in September may have been as struck as I was by the militant tone of the participants. They were very angry people.
Of course, such belligerent postures often turn out to be more an expression of bravura rather than a forewarning of intentions but if this report in the Telegraph is anything to go by, then maybe they did really mean it:
“Militant hunt supporters are threatening to sabotage essential services, including electricity pylons, gas supplies and food deliveries, in reaction to the Government’s decision to introduce a Bill that would ban foxhunting.”
Home-grown insurrection about to begin?
“The Real CA were hopping mad, really furious, and the talk was very serious indeed. They are talking about highly criminal acts, but they feel they have been driven to it.”
I can corroborate that the people on that march were, indeed, hopping, jumping and skipping mad but is the ‘Real CA’ real? One can never entirely discount the possibility that this is a Security Service operation designed to smoke possible insurrectionists out of the woodwork and neutralise them before they start actually embarking upon any campaigns of damage or disruption.
Certainly, if the Security Services were not aware of the ‘Real CA’ they most assuredly are now and, if the insurrectionists are good to their word, what is HMG going to do about it?
You did something because it had always been done, and the explanation was “but we’ve always done it this way.” A million dead people can’t have been wrong, can they?
– Terry Pratchett
Daryl Cobranchi blots out “The Kingdom” (i.e. Saudi Arabia) from the story he’s quoting from and says: Guess where this is? The quote he copies and pastes says all the usual things about how private sector education in these parts works better and costs less than the government’s efforts. I guessed India, through having already done a piece about Indian education for my new education blog.
I was also going to hide this posting away in the same place, but then I thought Saudi Arabia? That’s definitely Samizdata territory. That’s of a lot more than merely educational interest. So here I am here with it, and here’s the paragraph that follows the ones that Daryl recycled, from Arab News:
Essentially I am not an enthusiast for the privatization of the education system on a wider scale. However, the experience makes us appreciate the private sector’s quality and apparent superiority. The quality of government schools s not because of a shortage of funds. At the same time, it is the sheer size of the government bureaucracy and machinery that weighs it down and renders it ineffective.
Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid‘s use of the word “essentially” reminds me of how Kingsley (novelist father of novelist Martin) Amis used to say that “essentially” is another word for “not”. The grammar doesn’t quite work out with the above quote, but that aside, if this man is not an enthusiast for the privatization of education, it makes you wonder what a Saudi Arabian who is an enthusiast for the privatization of education would be like.
It’s been a hard few years for a lot of friends of mine. Up until I left Pittsburgh in 1989 I was usually out at nights with the local Deadhead crowd. My room mate of many years was in Sandoz, one of the top local bands of the time. They were at the core of the Pittsburgh Deadhead scene. As a local folk-rocker I’d always been on the fringes of it. Year in and year out, the audiences which supported local writers like myself were largely part of that scene.
It was saddening when I heard Gerry Garcia had passed away and the Dead would no longer tour. Their concerts were just undoubtedly the craziest, most fun, warmest and friendliest I can imagine ever to exist in this life. You simply had to experience the all day parking lot party followed by four hours of continuous music by the Dead. No warm up band: they played for the love of the music. No searches for hidden tape recorders: they reserved the center section for the TapeHeads. There was always a forest of microphones there. Every Dead concert that ever was can be had on a bootleg tape. The Dead even encourage fans to trade show tapes on the Internet. Just don’t trade their studio work… that’s all they ask.
It is with great pleasure I read they are touring again albeit with out Gerry because he’s, well, dead, not just Dead… You known what I mean.
I suggest you read the article. The changes since 1995 when they last toured should give you an indication of exactly how fast Liberty is being undermined in America. People go to Dead concerts to get high, dance naked, groove on the music, be nice to each other, party until dawn and in plain words have an incredibly good time. Times so good you savour them for the rest of your life.
A State that blocks innocent pleasure is hardly worth fighting for except the enemy we face is far, far worse and stands against absolutely everything about a Dead concert or a Rainbow Gathering.
If you want to know “Why We Fight”, join their tour and let yourself go. Saving this life style is something worth fighting for.
  
1990/91 Pittsburgh Dead Scene
Photos: D.Amon
Good news! Samizdata.net is still accessible in China, at least as of this morning! A few months back we did get a couple e-mails from Chinese readers, so it is good to know that the Great (Internet) Wall of China has some holes in it, no thanks to collaborators Cisco and Oracle (may the great EMP from the sky strike them down).
- Communist China: GDP per capita (2001) $4,300 per year
- Capitalist Taiwan: GDP per capita (2001) $17,200 per year
- You are four times better off under capitalism
So here are a few things you are not supposed to see in China. Now stop messing around on the Internet and go out and conspire with someone to overthrow the state, willya!
Or even if their isn’t, either we have free will, or we do not and are just deterministic biochemical meat puppets dancing to some unfathomable script… God playing with himself. If the latter is true, then what the hell, nothing, and I do mean nothing actually matters. Morality? Truth? Life? Death? Meaningless.
Even if you do not believe in God, the same questions are relevant. I would argue that we do indeed have free will (for an excellent discussion by an atheist on that, see sections of David Deutsch‘s remarkable Fabric of Reality). And if we have free will, the very notion of submitting to the slings and arrows of life when an arrow-proof shield can be fashioned with our own hands is surely unreasonable… and to forcibly require that a person do nothing when the means to build that shield exist is not just unreasonable but monstrous.
In the print edition of New Scientist, Tom Shakespeare, the co-author of Genetic Politics: From eugenics to genome advocates outlawing parents from using ‘sperm selection technology’ which can allow the sex of a child to be chosen. He sees this as a precursor to parents eventually selecting desired traits for unborn children:
On balance, then, I believe that sperm sorting will in the long run do more harm than good. And this seems doubly true of sex selection via pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. Even if there is no “gene for” intelligence, sporting prowess or artistic talent, few scientists doubt that gene-chip technologies will one day provide considerable information about genetic variations. Letting parents choose embryos on the basis of sex now, for no good medical reason, will make it harder in the future to say no when they ask to choose embryos on the basis of other traits.
This thinking is actually quite close to that used by socialists who argue that ‘private’ education should not be allowed because it should not be up to mere parents to decide what is best for ‘their’ children. Not only can private individuals not be trusted to make such decisions (it should be left to ‘experts’), it is also unfair to others if those children are better educated. Similarly, if physically more capable disease resistant children can be ‘created’ by parents, this is somehow seen as ‘bad’ for everyone else. → Continue reading: If there is a God…
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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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