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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Nice to see I am not the only Obama detractor who nevertheless wants Romney to crash and burn. Shikha Dalmia over at Reason writes 5 Reasons why conservatives should root for a Romney defeat:
The GOP is in a state of intellectual flux, illustrated perfectly by the ideological heterodoxy of its presidential field. Various strains representing different interests are fighting for the soul of the GOP: The neocons are duking it out with anti-war Paulistas. Social moderates are trying to wrest some space from pro-life religious conservatives. Deficits and debt worry everyone, but there is no consensus on entitlement reform. The GOP allegedly stands for the free market—but it has yet to figure out whether Bush’s financial bailout was right or wrong.
A visionless, rudderless, gaffe-prone presidency is the last thing that Republicans need right now. Having to defend Romney’s slips—he’s insulted 7-Eleven cookies, said he enjoys firing people, and announced he is not concerned about the very poor, and that’s just this year—will further contort the party’s soul. Four years of Romneyisms, all of which smack of elitism, will cement the image of the GOP as the out-of-touch party of the rich.
Better that the GOP remain in the political wilderness for another four years (and, hopefully, find itself) than have a Romney presidency prolong its intellectual and moral confusion.
That is more or less how I see it as well.
Boris Johnson says the government should go in for “more tax cuts.” More in addition to what? There have been no significant tax cuts. In fact every week there are proposals for ever more inventive methods of extorting money from the hardworking and the thrifty.
– Peter Mullen
Andrew Copson asks rhetorically in the pages of the Guardian, “Should we allow faith schools at all?” The general opinion in the comments is that “we” should not.
To be fair to Mr Copson, he probably did not write the subheading and his article talks about state funded faith schools. A proposal to ban state funded faith schools, though clearly intended to ensure that pupils are not exposed to opinions Mr Copson does not like, is less illiberal than a proposal to ban faith schools tout court. (In fact I am in favour of such a ban myself, though my ban would be accompanied by a ban on state funding of all other types of school, and preferably all other types of anything.) Many of the Guardian commenters reject such quibbles and are simply totalitarians. For instance, the second comment by “whitesteps”, recommended by 123 people at the time of writing, says,
Of course there shouldn’t be faith schools, though such a ban wouldn’t go anywhere near far enough.
Religion should be treated as a controlled substance only accessible after a certain age, with the religious indoctrination of small children treated as a form of mental abuse.
I always find the sublime confidence of such people that they will always be the ones to allow or forbid very strange. Given the course of events over my lifetime, perhaps such confidence on the part of “progressives” and tranzis is justified – however there are many still alive who remember a time in Britain when certain religious prohibitions were backed both by force of law, and by the sort of public opinion that leaves offenders with fewer teeth. I used to think that the lesson had been learned by all sides. I used to think that nowadays the principle that freedom of belief must apply to all to protect all was accepted by all. How naive I was.
The BBC reports that certain ISPs in the UK must block access to the Pirate Bay, but supplies few details. The International Law Office has detail:
The claimants relied on Section 97A of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, which requires ISPs to take measures to block or at least hinder access to infringing websites.
1988? This legislation has been lurking around since before the Internet. Never mind scary new legislation: one wonders what is lurking in old legislation, waiting to be used. Says section 97A:
The High Court (in Scotland, the Court of Session) shall have power to grant an injunction against a service provider, where that service provider has actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright.
All it takes is reams of vague legislation and the right interpretation to be made.
Update: As Dave points out in the comments, it seems that section 97A was added by The Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003, in 2003. My point about old legislation is weakened but this post was also intended to shed light on how Pirate Bay was blocked. It really is Nomic.
The Ministry of Defense wants to put surface to air missiles in residential areas as part of security measures for the Olympics. This is highly irregular. They are to be used against…
…all manner of airborne attacks from the 9/11 style assault to a smaller “low and slow” attack from a single light aircraft.
I would be surprised to see hijacked airliners ever again. A light aircraft attack sounds plausible, but shot down aircraft wreckage landing on London might still be considered a win for the terrorist.
There are also to be army troops, fighter jets and naval ships at the ready. The MOD are certainly preparing for more than a kid with a bomb strapped to his chest.
On the Sunday between the two rounds of voting for the French presidential election, a curious thing happened in North-West London. Two Frenchmen rang the doorbell of my parents’ house and asked to speak to my mother (who is French). They wanted to know if she would be supporting Nicolas Sarkozy next Sunday, and if she had any doubts, would she like a leaflet outlining the President’s agenda for his second term. Naturally, not a word of English was spoken.
As it happens, I have never been canvassed in France for a French presidential, or any other kind of election. I was under the impression it was not done the same way as in the UK (privacy laws and so forth). Yet here were a couple of party activists, one white, the other of likely South-East Asian origin, wandering around London looking for swing voters. With about 400,000 votes cast by French citizens in the first round outside France (a turnout of nearly 40% of the registered overseas electorate), I can see why this get out the vote operation [GOTV] would exist. But even in London, where most of the UK’s half million French people live, it is not a case of calling door to door.
Before recent changes to French election law which create constituencies outside French territories that are represented in the National Assembly, presidential elections in the Fifth Republic (since 1962) were already a worldwide affair. Citizens in such French territories of Wallis and Futuna, Tahiti and Mayotte would cast votes at polling stations in Mata’utu, Papeete and Mamoudzou respectively. → Continue reading: National elections go global
…the Great Firewall has been an enormous boon to freedom. Without it, the authorities in China would not have been foolish enough to allow the entire country to have internet access. With it, they thought they would be able to control the flow of information, so they hooked up to the net, and now they’re in a position where disconnection is unthinkable.
– Perry Metzger
Intel is keeping up the pace established many decades ago in Gordon MooreŠ› eponymous law:
The chips are the first to become available from any company with features as small as 22 nanometers (the finest details on today’s chips are 32 nanometers), allowing transistors to be smaller and packed more densely. Ivy Bridge chips offer 37 percent more processing speed than the previous generation of chips, and can match their performance while using just half the energy.
I personally believe it is one of the reasons why Socialist efforts at Global Domination have been spiked. It is damned difficult to control the flow of information when individuals have this kind of power in their hands.
Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt
– Attributed to Herbert Hoover
The Wisconsin Recall election on June 5 is national news and a much discussed political watershed moment. And, conveniently, voter ID laws have been temporarily blocked during the recall.
If this bastard wins the Wisconsin Republican gubernatorial primary, expect all hell to break loose.
His platform is available courtesy of Occupy Wisconsin.
I didn’t know about the Republican primary and thought that what everybody is calling “The Democratic Primary” didn’t have any Republican elections on the ballot. I hadn’t planned on voting.
That bastion of unbiased neutrality, aka Wisconsin Public Radio, even put up an article saying that “Gov. Walker is urging Republican voters not to meddle in the Democratic primary recall elections on May 8th” . Notice the NPR article has the exact same date that the Government Accountability Board (notice 5 to 1 Democratic appointees) announced that they had qualified an additional 369 petition signatures that they had previous determined to be ineligible and Kohl-Riggs would be running against Walker.
Their plan might even work. If it does, expect what we’ve seen so far to look like it was a warm-up.
I am on the email list about new technologies that “Mr Singularity”, Ray Kurzweil, puts out. And this one caught my eye:
The onslaught of ultra-tiny technology is giving rise to the idea of “printable spacecraft” consisting of electronic circuits, power generation, sensing, fluid handling, propulsion, telecommunications and mobility subsystems — all integrated onto a single substrate, Leonard David at Innovation News Daily reports. The project, if successful, could allow scientists to one day pepper other worlds with atmospheric “flutterflyers” as well as “flutterlanders” — devices the size of postage stamps or confetti that reach a surface imbued with sensor smarts.
Research on the notion of printable spacecraft is being scoped out under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program — one of many novel space initiatives detailed late last month at a NIAC symposium in Pasadena, Calif.
“Flat-sheet spacecraft” with printed chemical sensors can be deployed high above a target world and flutter to the surface like a leaf, eliminating the need for large and complex landing systems. The spacecraft would see a low-G impact at touchdown.
The main problem with monetary policy is that there is such a thing as monetary policy.
– Detlev Schlichter
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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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