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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Yesterday, chewing gum was in the Eye of the Beholder who quoted from this story, about some US-Singapore trade negotiations:
Negotiators from both countries said they hoped to resolve the issue of capital controls quickly, clearing the way for a final deal.
But Mr. Zoellick apparently did not break down Singapore’s resistance on another issue: its longtime ban on chewing gum, a prohibition ordered to keep the nation’s streets and sidewalks cleaner.
I know how the Singaporeans feel. The relentless disfiguring of London’s public spaces with chewing gum deposits is one of the things that most often makes me wish that “public” spaces were more frequently privately owned than they are. Occasionally a fresh deposit actually sticks to your shoe, which is horrible. You later have to scrape it off with a knife. Usually the deposit has dried and just remains there, a black blob on the floor.
It’s the sneakiness of it that gets me. The chewing gum droppers know that in the grand scheme of things their petty little misdemeanour doesn’t rate very high on the wickedness scale. And it is exactly this that they exploit. In a world of terrorist outrages, ever rising crime of the more usual sort, ghastly new laws that won’t do anything about crime but will be ghastly, ghastly new … well, just read every second posting on Samizdata (which seems to be going through a rather grim phase just now, for some reason), … in such a world, who has time to moan about chewing gum? Only me and the government of Singapore it would seem.
If the chewing gum miscreants don’t drop their chewing gum on the floor, they stick it on a strategically chosen spot in an advert. The first few times you see this it can be funny, but for me this joke stopped being funny years ago.
What’s going on here? No doubt a lot of chewing gum misbehaviour is sheer thoughtlessness, perpetrated by otherwise blameless and worthy people, but not nearly all, I surmise. I think what we may also have here is a particular example of the pathetic-person-making-an-impact syndrome. Another example of this is people who make a point of crossing roads just in front of motorists who they know will slow up and be inconvenienced, because that way the regular (car-owning) world is forced to pay attention to their otherwise meaningless existence, if only for a moment. Take that! I’m not so insignificant now, am I? Chewing gum misbehaviour is even sneakier, because it is anonymous. Ha! That was me, but you’ll never know, will you, hee hee hee! Chewing gum as clandestine self-expression, a subculture of secret Jackson Pollocking.
And why are there so many pathetic people who can only make an impact on the world by annoying it anonymously with chewing gum? The answer to that would be a bigger and grimmer Samizdata posting. I merely flag up the problem.
Other gum scum (I like that – that’s my heading for this) scatter their chewing gum as part of a more general pattern of nastiness and parasitism and not-so-petty aggressions. Presumably what the Singaporeans also feel, in addition to simply not liking gum dropped everywhere, is that if it’s chewing gum droppings today, it may be bricks through windows tomorrow and robbing old ladies for small or not so small change the next day. This is the “zero tolerance” theory, which I think is also right.
I know what you’ll say, all you people who can only make an impact on the world by leaving clever little comments on blogs (which I do agree is better than gum dropping). There’s a difference between possessing chewing gum and chewing chewing gum, and dropping chewing gum. (Cue the great Gum Control debate of Christmas 2002: “The majority of gum users are in fact responsible people, and we should not allow a small anti-social minority to be the excuse for suppressing the harmless pleasures of the law-abiding majority …” blah blah blah.) True. But not my point here. Have a nice day.
A columnist for the Telegraph has been arrested and held in a cell for saying that the rural minority should have “the same rights as blacks, Muslims and gays.”
“Dear Britain,
In accordance with our jointly agreed plan for regime change in Iraq, we would like to place an order for various British fighting personel in order to assist with our military plans in the region.
Having carefully considered the wide range of assets that your country has to offer, we would be most obliged if you would arrange to place the following units at our disposal:
1. A large contingent of Glaswegians to be stationed at Iraqi pubs and bars where they can be relied upon to inflict heavy casualties on the enemy when their drinks gets spilled.
2. A contingent of chirpy, cheeky Cockneys who will boost moral by inventing rowdy, obscene songs about Saddam Hussein and who will also greatly liven up the eventual victory celebrations by dancing around in the fountains of Baghdad, half-naked and wearing Union Jack underpants on their heads.
3. Since we expect some degree of close-quarters fighting, a division of soccer fans will also be required; most particularly those with experience in ripping out the seats of football stadia and using them to hospitalise European policemen.
4. A contigent from Liverpool will also be desirable as it is anticipated that we will have to occupy Saddam Hussein’s heavily-guarded Palaces and therefore burglary skills will be required.
5. Also please supply all available drug-running gangs from Manchester as we understand that they have even more firepower at their disposal than we do.
Please confirm at your earliest convenience that the above-listed requirements can be met.
We look forward to working with you on what we are confident will be a successful joint venture.
Yours Sincerely
The Pentagon”
Hot off the Debian-Security mail list:
“It has been confirmed that the Twente University server rooms have now completely burned down. This means, (security,non-us,nm,qa}.debian.org and ftp.snt.utwente.nl are now lost. Rest in peace…
To translate and summarize http://www.webwereld.nl/nieuws/13242.phtml: “The fire started a little after 8AM CET. There are no casualties. The near Dutch-German internet exchange will take over some of the SURFnet activities. The network will probably be up again tomorrow, with help from HP. A new server room in another building was already being prepared anyway for use next month…”
And yes, also in the Netherlands it’s highly unusual that such a fire happens.
Regards, Pieter-Paul”
Triangulations, Third Ways and New Deals are all euphamisms for playing ‘Hide and Seek’ with reality. But reality is famously persistant and you can’t hide for long before it finds you. Then the game is up.
And even the ludicrously partisan BBC has to admit that the Labour government has a serious problem on the horizon:
“The Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday that the government’s coffers were £2.5bn in surplus last month, down by more than half on the same period last year, and well short of the £4.3bn predicted by analysts.”
The article points the finger at lower corporate tax takings but the real reason is that HMG has crossed over the Laffer Curve and further tax hikes will only result in diminishing returns.
This is a deeply worrying problem for a government that has ridden to power on the promise of an endless supply of lovely lolly to their core supporters in the public sector. That same public sector took them at their word and grows more militant by the day in its demands that HMG now cash the blank cheque they recklessly wrote to buy the election.
So the pot is empty and Chancellor Brown is left only with the option of massive borrowing to fund further spending. That means going back to the ‘bad old days’ of the 1970’s; something which Tony Blair has said repeatedly he is not prepared to countenance.
‘Hey reality, HMG is in the cupboard under the stairs’.
Greece has banned the sale of living dead dolls – kids’ toys featuring fiery eyes, scarred faces and bloodied mouths which come in their own little coffins. Oh, and the dolls also have their own death certificates.
 Playful Sybill Sybill is strapped in a strait jacket with a collar and chain while Inferno has auburn hair, fiery eyes and bat-like wings. They should be a hit with children who just love all things gory and gruesome. But no, the Development Ministry said:
“There is no way we will allow these dolls on the market…these toys constitute a serious threat to the smooth formation and development of the child’s personality and mental health.”
Unlike your knee-jerk statist interference., right? 
Germans are fighting back with humour! The country’s number one hit is called Der Steuersong (The Tax Song), and has found fertile ground in the hearts of a nation fed up with broken election promises and increasing taxes.
The song that shot to the top of Germany’s pop charts with more than 350,000 copies sold within a week is a spoof sung by Schroeder’s impersonator, Elmar Brandt, who has captured the mood of the country in the lyrics:
“Promises that were made yesterday can be broken today….”
“I’ll raise your taxes, I’ll empty your pockets, every one of you nerds stashes some cash away, but I’ll find it no matter where it is…”
“I’ll raise taxes now because the election is over and you can’t fire me now…”
“We could raise a ‘bad weather tax’, or an ‘earth-surface usage tax’, a levy for breathing, air’s going to become more expensive, and I’m only getting started..”
“A tooth tax for chewing, bio tax for digestion – nothing’s free anymore…”
Schroeder’s government of Social Democrat-Greens has slumped dramatically in voter surveys since the September 22 polls after breaking election promises not to raise taxes. On Monday Schroeder announced another new tax on equities and property sales – which the conservative opposition called the 49th new tax since he was first elected in 1998.
“I’ll rip you nerds off, you’ll be overpowered, I’m always in for a surprise…”
“There is no tax that I can’t collect. I want your bank notes, your sweaters, your cash and your piggy banks…”
“Dog tax, tobacco tax, car tax, ecological tax – did you really think that was the end of the line? Like a pirate hunting for income, I’ll raise all your taxes and if you’re broke, you can buy your food at a discount store or go hungry…”
I am not sure it sounds better in German (here is the full English translation) but the spirit of the song is sound. Ordinary Germans say that “it sums up what we’re all thinking.” Fed up with taxes? Well, what are you going to do about it?
noun. A web log written by lawyers and/or concerned primarily with legal affairs.
(Probably coined by Denise M. Howell )
verb. Similar to fisking in that it is a refutation of another’s views, but misting is less aggressive and is usually humorous. ‘Mistings’ usually take the form of an imaginary exchange of views.
‘Misting’ is really MiSTing – from the show MST3K, Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was a show on The Comedy Channel about characters who were captured by malicious aliens and forced to watch terrible old sci-fi movies. They responded by commenting (rather hilariously) about the movies.
The term has rather different connotations amongst German speaking bloggers.
expression. When a blogger finds that he has been linked by multiple sites, or has been added to several blogrolls, in a short time.
(Coined by James Martin )
There is a tendency among Libertarians to worry obsessively about every infringement by the state, to link up instances of state oppression, and to deduce from this either that there is a vast campaign to destroy freedom, or that we’re powerless to combat the tide of enslavement. This makes us seem obsessive, paranoid and miserable company, except to others of a similar emotional condition.
One of the problems is that it is literally possible for a single libertarian activist to discover every single instance of arbitrary power by state officials on a given day. The posting by Brian on some local bureaucratic monster in the U.S. state of Illinois is a case in point.
Most Europeans would be unable to pick out the state of Illinois on a map (so much for the vaunted European superiority at geography). Yet thanks to Brian’s posting, any English-speaking European looking for examples of state oppression could discover that – somewhere in Illinois – there is an instance of heavy-handedness happening now.
Consider what our knowledge in Europe would be of the Waco massacre if it had taken place before outside television broadcasts. Instead of assuming that everything’s worse because our databases are overflowing with complaints, we should note that we have the tools to expose state oppression almost anywhere on this planet. Think of Rodney King. Did police officers never beat black men before hand-held video cameras existed?
There may be a suit against the Feds over the use of Federal funds for electioneering purposes at the State level.
Wouldn’t it be lovely (cough) to see those Statist turkeys behind bars? (pass that over to me again would you?….)
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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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