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 I wrote a short article called The real England speaks in which I described a spontaneous expression of transatlantic solidarity. Much to my surprise, I clearly touched a raw nerve and the response was thunderous (see the comments section of the article to see what I mean).
As anyone who has read this blog for more than a few weeks will have surmised, samizdata.net is not just an overtly libertarian group of writers, but represents what can only be described as libertarianism’s ‘hawk’ wing… a sort of anti-anti-war.com. But I was not writing to encourage hawkish memes (well, not that time). In truth, when I wrote my article yesterday, I was not so much extending the sympathy of Britain to our confreres in the United States, at least not as the main thrust of the article, but rather highlighting the existence of a trans-national Anglosphere civil society of sorts that transcends the confines of states and governments.
That does not mean I think the remarkable outpouring of responses was ‘wrong’, far from it… just that it was not my objective and certainly not what I was expecting. Yet the response goes quite some way to confirm the contention of my article that there is indeed an ‘Anglosphere’ civil society and not just the distinct English speaking civil societies around the world, connected by sentiments far deeper than mere politics or state.
You may be aware that there are blogs for every corner of the human mind. Well, almost every corner, since the thought of blogs for some of the corners of the human mind makes me shudder. It is also axiomatic that people who came up with the weblog technology will have their own corner (or basement) of the blogosphere where their blog about blogging, that is, meta-blog to their heart’s content.
Although I am not a techie by any stretch of imagination (thank you, you may stop now!), I am very interested in technology and so the following post of a techie blogger, Jon Udell of John Udell’s Radio Blog caught my eye:
Every web user engages daily in this process of information refinement. Many share their results – that is, URLs with annotations – in the form of FYI (“For Your Information”) emails. Some also share their results on personal “links” pages. And a few employ a new tactic called weblogging. A weblog is really just another kind of annotated links page, typically in the form of a daily Web diary that filters and reacts to Web information flow according to personal and/or professional interests.
The current weblog craze is, in all likelihood, a passing fad. If you visit Blogger, a portal site that aggregates over 1000 weblogs, you may conclude that this form of communication has already suffered the same fate that befell the Usenet. One “blogger” (short for “weblogger”) recently complained that although there was once a hope that the weblog could become a powerful tool for reaching out and connecting with the world, it has become a powerful tool for self-gratification and self-absorption.
Two years later, he makes a similar argument:
Despite massive uptake of blogging in certain circles, I don’t see evidence that it has made much of a dent in scientific communities. The same is true, I think, in many other professions. Blogging seems huge to those of us engaged in it, and in important ways it is. Culturally, it represents a style of communication that is genuinely new. Technically, it may be the most popular application of XML. But blogging is still a drop in the ocean of email. It’s far from ubiquitous, and at the ETech conference, both Sam Ruby and I were surprised to see how little-understood RSS feeds were even among experienced bloggers.
Whether Jon Udell is right about the overall impact of blogging is not central to my point here, which is simple – understanding the technical side of information generation and dissemination opens more opportunities to generate and disseminate them as well as maximises the use of existing channels.
Underlying the weblogging movement are two technological trends – RSS headline syndication>1 and pushbutton Web publishing. I have recently come across the squabble over RSS formats that from a fifty-thousand-foot perspective looks like a tempest in a teapot. Neither the simplicity of RSS .9x nor the extensibility of RSS 1.0 matters to someone who has yet to experience the ‘virtuous cycle’ that is only recently being discovered by so many – for example, Don Box:
While spending my evening with RSS, I had two epiphanies:
1. The connection between blogging and RSS is deep.
2. WS-IL>2 is the closest we have to RSS in the web service space.
With respect to the first observation, the cycle looks something like this:
while (true) {
ScanRSSFeeds();
RantAboutStuffYouSawFromRSSFeeds();
ExposeYourRantsViaRSS();
}
What an amazingly virtuous cycle!
Before you start thinking of how sad spending one’s evening with RSS is and of any stupid puns on epiphanies or of any of the usual responses that the non-techies fall upon to compensate for their lack of understanding of squiggles, a much more important perspective springs to mind.
The above is worth noting, as technology is making difference to those who find themselves opposing the mainstream or standing aside from it. Communication via the internet, email, weblogs and other channels to come has transformed and will continue to transform the private and public discourse. Many bloggers have discovered the joy of sharing with the world ideas whose expression had, until recently, been confined to conversations over a pint of beer or a cup of latte. Not that there is a cause for rejoicing every time such idea is liberated and this freedom has its price (for a more precise total scroll down the left hand bar here for Havens of Fluorescent Idiocy). I do believe that we have merely scratched the surface of what blogging could do in terms of generating information and, more importantly, in terms of its aggregation.
On a more immediate note, RSS has to do with information filtering and as such is relevant to the blogoshpere. Various blog digests have been set up and disappeared, trying to find an intelligent way of sorting out the data and passing on information that is of interest. Preferences akin to mail filters would allow the user to filter only the data in which they are interested onto the page, from the entire pool of data. For example, a user interested in articles about “Football” would be able to set up a personalised channel that simply consisted of a filter for Football, or even for a particular team or player. Or for all references to Slashdot.org, or whatever. This would give him the largest selection of content, with the greatest degree of personalization available. Tools would be made available to simplify the process of creating these files, and to validate them, and life would be good.
I have risked boring you to tears with techie acronyms in order to get my message across – I see technology as the main tool (and a weapon, if necessary) of education, development, protection and dismantling of the modern state. If we fancy ourselves as making any impact with our arguments, campaigns, thoughts and outpourings via blogging, let’s at least explore it’s potential to the full.
Disclaimer: Those who blog purely for personal gratification and self-absorption, please ignore my rallying call. No need to spend evenings with RSS and various assorted technologies. 
Note1: RSS – a dialect of XML, a vocabulary for representing annotated links. What exactly RSS stands for is itself a subject of controversy – Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication, or John Udell’s favorite, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.
Note2: WS-IL – Web Services Inspection Language (WS-Inspection) 1.0
In yet another travesty of British justice, Barry-Lee Hastings has been convicted of manslaughter for defending not just his property but his family from a career serial burglar.
Naturally the state sees things differently.
Det Chief Insp Matthew Horne said the case sent a clear message that people in such circumstances should call the police “and let us do our job. If you take the law into your own hands there is always a danger”
Yet in the last year we have had story after story of the Police responding to pleas for assistance by turning up hours if not days later. The fact is, the job which Detective Chief Inspector Matthew Horne is speaking about is not your protection but rather the protection of the State’s monopoly on the means of violence.
Institutionally speaking, the safety of you, your family and your property is purely incidental: if it were otherwise, a person could legally own a weapon for their personal defence in Britain… yet regardless of the fact you may manifestly be at risk from violence in a high crime area or live in a home which has been robbed again and again and again, you may not even use a kitchen knife, let alone a gun, to protect yourself. Ask Barry-Lee Hastings.
The state is not your friend.
What happens when a “we-didn’t-go-to-the-moon” moron calls an astronaut a liar? Yep. You got it in one. He gets decked… and that is exactly what happened when Bart Sibrel, an ignoramus, shoved a camera in Buzz Aldrin’s face.
One should remember Buzz is in his 70’s at the very least. So we have here a demonstration of what a lifetime of physical fitness can do. Mr Sibrel should consider himself lucky… had he done this twenty years or more ago, he would now be doing a richly deserved pretzel impression in an emergency room.
Congratulations to Buzz for giving Mr Sibrel his just deserts… and he’s definitely got my vote the next time he runs for the NSS board!
Buzz Aldrin chatting with members of National Space Society
at their 1992 conference in Washington, DC (photo: D.Amon)
I have watched the documentary filmed by two french brothers this evening… and wish to make it clear they are a total exception to the below. They shared the danger of their new found friends in the NYFD, survived the WTC collapse side by side with them and throughout told an honest story.
I only wish the world of the media had more Men like them.
Why do you repeat, time after time, that we are terrorized? We are not. As a people we grieve our dead; we wish life for ourselves and our loved ones, but we are not “terrorized”. Is it perhaps your own coping mechanism, your own cowardice?
Why do you repeat, time after time, that we feel vulnerable? We have always known that. Have you already forgotten all but the youngest adults among us grew up knowing holocaust was 15 minutes away, every minute, every day, every year of our lives? Is it perhaps a realization that you too could die that makes you cry out your cowardice in our name?
Why do you repeat, time after time, that we have lost our innocence? We have long known and lived with the nightmare that some day an American city would see a mushroom cloud in its’ center. However terrible and unexpected the events we have survived, they are as nothing to what we understand we will have to survive and overcome in the future. Is it perhaps your own ignorance or failure to believe the reality of those risks that make you appear as cowards in our eyes?
Why do you repeat, time after time, that we are uncertain about our future? We are not. We will overcome any attack, no matter how deadly, and we will have the resolve to punish those responsible, to hunt them down to the ends of the Earth and kill or imprison them, even if they are crippled old men by the time we find them. Is it your own short attention span that leaves you incapable of understanding that others might take on a task of decades? Is it another sign of your lack of moral fiber and perserverence?
We are none of the things you say in our name. It is your own mirrored image you speak and write of, not ours. Do not speak for me. I am an American; I am proud of that fact; I grieve for my dead and I feel pride in the bravery and spirit and individualism shown by our heroes of that day… but I do not cower in fear and neither do my fellow countrymen.
Silence your fear-palpitated hearts and palsied hands. Listen to our voice. Listen to our spirit and share our strength….but never again tell us we are afraid or uncertain.
Is it right, on the day when most minds (certainly the minds of most Samizdata readers) are focussed on a war that is very much in progress, to think also about an earlier one, the Cold one, the one that ended, approximately speaking, around 1990? I hope so. Like everyone I have my “what I was doing”, my “how I heard about it” and my “how I felt as I watched it” stories concerning today’s recollections of a year ago. (Someone rang me. I was at my desk. I didn’t like it.) But, rightly or wrongly, appropriately or inappropriately, I choose also to ruminate today upon events from an earlier time. (And besides, I cannot possibly do better than Perry’s photos, or David’s inspired “root causes of American anger” posting of last Sunday.)
So anyway, in the latest issue (October 2002) of Gramophone, there’s a letter concerning the Hungarian composer Ernst von Dohnanyi (1877-1960), from Professor William Lee Pryor of the University of Houston. Here’s this letter in full (but with apologies for the absence of Hungarian accents):
In his review of some orchestral music by Dohnanyi (June, page 44), David Gutman writes, ‘I wonder how many readers are still bothered by the bizarre trajectory of the pianist composer’s wartime career.’ This is no doubt a veiled allusion to false charges brought against this greatly maligned musician during the Second World War. I knew Dohnanyi well and would like to respond.
→ Continue reading: Not a Nazi and not an anti-semite – just an anti-communist
I flew home from London today. The fact I accepted this for a travel date is one tiny finger of defiance to those who misunderstood Americans so badly. I am not going to say a great deal as much is being said by those with far more right than I to say it. Today we remember. Today we honour. Today we come together and reiterate just how undefeatable is the spirit of our free country
Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch said to his BBC interviewer in New York City a few minutes ago: “We will fight. And we will win”. Our enemy does not understand us and has no conception of what they have awakened. If our enemies did have any idea of what they have unleashed, they would be terrified of the fearsome retribution that awaits every one of them.
“We will fight them. And we will defeat them.”
First, let me extend a truly heart felt thank you to people all over the world who shared a moment of silence today. As Perry’s pictorial post shows, although the loss was centered on America, the grief and the support is global.
One of the things they teach in the modern American corporate culture is Franklin Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Habit number 5 is Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. Over this past year, I have struggled to apply that habit to the September 11 attacks. Albeit simplistic, this is so far the best I could come up with.
It came to me this morning as a local radio station played some school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, which ends “with Liberty and Justice for all.” That in a nutshell is what America is all about. A fact verified by the millions of immigrants who arrive destitute on her shores and build a life of peace and prosperity within her borders. And that, in a nutshell, is what her enemies hate. It is not just that we own color TVs, drive big cars and live in relative peace in nice houses. It is that ANYONE, regardless of race, color, creed, sex, political inclination or background, ANYONE who comes here can, with a little effort, share that same life.
These terrorists know in their hearts they can never contribute anything positive to the world and instead hate all those who try. Like the vandal with a sledgehammer defacing a statue, they have decided it is easier to destroy than create. Instead of swearing allegiance to a nation that values its citizens, they swear allegiance to a crazed individual who lashes out at the world to fulfill a personal vendetta.
What they have yet to realize is that reducing tall buildings to rubble and snuffing out innocent lives does not make a profound political statement. But it does speak volumes about the tiny, hateful, cowardly minds that conceived of and carried out the destruction. Evil minds that, once eradicated, the world will neither long remember nor ever lament.
Here is a completely gratuitous picture of Elizabeth Hurley, who we very much wish would write for our splendid blog
Pubs, ladies fashion stores, restaurants, banks, cafes, mobile phone stores, boutiques, gift shops…
If you are looking for the real England, you will not find it in the pages of the Guardian, but rather on the high streets and in the shop windows.
I have just got back from lunch and what I saw on the King’s Road in Chelsea, here in London, amazed me. There is no law requiring it, no government departments ‘encouraging’ it loudly, yet shop after shop are displaying signs saying words to the effects of “At 1:46 pm to day, we will be observing two minutes silence in remembrance of the atrocities on September 11th of last year in the United States.” Others are expressing memorial sentiments, still others just displaying small American flags. No doubt these signs will all be gone by this evening, but they are there now.
Some signs are hand written by shop managers, others were clearly printed by a head office… but the signs are there and they come not from above, passed down from the salons of the chattering classes, but from below, from the true heart of England.
There is indeed an Anglosphere and it is very, very real.
Rage against the Panopticon State!
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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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