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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Earlier this week I got back from a week in Brittany. During the first few days of my stay, I and the friends I was staying with visited the island of Belle Ile. Their daughter is my god-daughter, and she was singing (very well) in a classical singing festival that happens in Belle Ile every year.
While in Belle Ile we also enjoyed other sorts of music making. In particular, at midday, in the fish market of Belle Ile’s biggest town, La Palais, we listened to a small beat combo called, as I later learned from the small print in
…continue Some Brittany holiday snaps
This inscription is carved onto the Memorial to those who died serving in Bomber Command during World War II.
The memorial was unveiled by the Queen just under a week ago, on June 28th. It is at Hyde Park Corner, in London, at the western end of Green Park. I photographed it this afternoon.
A Brief History of the Age of Steam: The Power That Drove The Industrial Revolution Thomas Crump Carroll & Graff, 2007, 370pp., paperback, $15.95 (but now much less – I got my copy for £3.99 in a remainder shop)
The best thing about this book from my British point of view is that it does not focus only on British events and circumstances. It surveys the entire world, as best it can in the space it allows itself. In most other stuff I can recall reading about the history of the steam engine, Newcomen, Watt and Trevithick, the British pioneers
…continue The age of steam powered transport
One of the recent themes of this blog’s authors has been to challenge, and hopefully demolish, the “narrative” of how the current crisis proves the weaknesses of “unregulated capitalism” (I could be far ruder than that but I am not a swearblogger). Another, related theme that we try to plug away at is to show how previous acts of interventionism, with politicians playing the role of strong hero on a big white horse, have failed or if they have “worked”, been by-products of massive state mobilisation for war.
Prime exhibit: the New Deal of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. When I was
…continue Being beastly about FDR and the Keynesian narrative
I have started reading The $12 Million Stuffed Shark by economist Don Thompson, and it mentions (on page 11 of my 2008 hardback edition) an episode I vaguely remember:
In 2003 a 25-year-old student named Clinton Boisvert at the School of Visual Arts in New York was asked to produce a sculpture project showing how the emotion elicited by art could impact on life. Boisvert created three dozen black boxes each stenciled with the word “Fear.” He had just finished hiding the last of these in New York City subway stations when he was arrested. A dozen stations were shut
…continue The modern art of outrageousness (but also of other things)
If you want to know why Bishop Hill is one of my favourite bloggers just now, you need look no further than this delightful posting today, which I now reproduce in its entirety:
There’s a lovely anecdote doing the rounds of climate sceptic blogs about Sir David King, the climate alarmist and former chief scientific adviser to the British government.
It seems that President Putin asked some of his leading scientists to meet Sir David when he went to Moscow as part of the entourage of the foreign secretary. King apparently launched into his standard spiel about how we’re all
…continue King versus President
On November 19, 1941, the light cruiser HMAS Sydney of the Royal Australian Navy was returning to the port of Fremantle after escorting the troopship Zealandia to Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra. The Sydney spotted what appeared to be a merchant vessel about 150km off Shark Bay on the coast of Western Australia. As it happened, the vessel in question was the quite heavily armed German merchant raider HSK Kormoran, painted black and disguised as the Dutch vessel Straat Malakka. The Kormoran had been responsible for sinking ten merchant ships in the previous year in the South Atlantic and
…continue A mystery is solved, at least in part
Hundreds hacked or burned to death in Kenya, in response to and election that may well have been rigged. Shootings and suicide bombing by Islamic radicals in many parts of the world. And news of record prison suicides and savage violence here in Britain. And, of course, the centralization and growth of government. Less wildly violent than the preceding, but hardly welcome and based on the same principle – the threat of violence.
Yesterday Cyprus and Malta became part of the Euro Zone. Thus further centralizing power in the hands of the EU and the magic circle of politically connected
…continue An evil start to the year 2008
Most people in the UK, and many abroad, are familiar with the case of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian who was shot dead by Metropolitan police as a suspected suicide bomber on 22nd July, 2005. The latest in this saga is that the shooting was ruled a breach health and safety laws.
Well, okay, I am fairly sure that Jean Charles de Menezes would have felt his health and safety were not well served by the people who shot him dead. But surely coming to that conclusion cannot have taken more than two years of deliberation. The Met screwed
…continue Asking all the wrong questions
It has been a while since my last visit to the excellent India Uncut blog – too long.
First laugh – Amit’s latest post links to a chef dispensing advice concerning prawns. As an Aussie, I was rather amused to discover some poor Seppo writing in, wondering what to do with that whole ‘vein thing’ running down the back of a prawn. Kiss it goodbye or let it lie? Basically, if you bought your prawns to impress – as a stand-out ingredient in some culinary masterpiece you’ve had up your sleeve for months – then you should clean them.
…continue One click, two laughs
After seeing an encouraging headline on the front page of yesterday’s Daily Express (“AT LAST, A JUDGE BACKS A MAN WHO SHOT A BURGLAR”), I bought the paper, read the story, and looked for further enlightenment by googling “Judge Andrew Hamilton” “Kenneth Faulkner”. I got these headlines:
Judge stirs debate on self defence
Shot burglar case sparks debate
Judge Backs Farmer Who Shot Burglar
Sadly, however, there is rather less to this story than meets the eye:
Prosecutor Michael Auty told Judge Andrew Hamilton that charges against Mr Faulkner had been considered but not brought, since his intention was to
…continue What is reasonable force?
I was watching the early evening news, and there was an interview with and report about the man who is about to provide the legal defence for Saddam Hussein, a person called Jacques Vergès. It so happened that, by pure coincidence, I had been reading about this man earlier today. He makes an appearance in this book about the remarkable life of the remarkable language teacher Michel Thomas, Thomas having been involved as a prosecution witness in the trial of Klaus Barbie, whom Vergès (characteristically) also defended.
It was already clear from the news report this evening that Vergès will
…continue Jacques Vergès will not defend Saddam Hussein – but he is already attacking America
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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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