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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In some parts of the world, non-performance is a serious matter:
An Italian man who married without telling his bride he was impotent must pay damages for abusing her “right to sexuality”, a top court has ruled.
The man had failed to fulfil his conjugal duty and deprived his wife of the chance to be a mother, Italy’s Supreme Court said.
His wife had already had the marriage annulled on the grounds of non-consummation.
The amount of damages will now be decided by a lower court in Sicily.
If this poor guy’s self esteem low to begin with, it must be hurtling down through the earth’s crust by now.
Dr Johnson’s Dictionary
Henry Hitchings
John Murray 2005
The fifteenth of April marked the 250th anniversary of the publication of Johnson’s Dictionary, the making of which Hitchings has subtitled The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World. Johnson lives on as a personality, immortalised by Boswell, but more for his idiosyncrasies and oracular bon mots than for his literary eminence. Should interest flag, the appearance of another biography or an interesting book, such as this one, revives him as an icon.
This is not to minimize his status as a writer (after all, how many eighteenth-century writers are nowadays – a word barely admitted by Johnson – read for pleasure?) However, the considerable bibliography listed by Boswell does consist mostly of what Johnson would certainly have regarded as ephemera, though the 208 bi-weekly numbers of The Rambler (March 20th, 1750 – March 14th, 1752), essays of 1200 – 1500 words, were collected, revised and published, going through ten editions during the lifetime of the author. His novel Rasselas can be compared to its advantage with Voltaire’s Candide, as treating the same subject matter in greater moral depth than Voltaire’s cynicism could plumb. Both were published in 1759 and so closely together that Johnson remarked that “there was not time for imitation”. Written hurriedly in a week to pay for his mother’s funeral and sent to the printer in instalments, it was never, Johnson claimed, actually read by himself – until 22 years later, when he came across a copy in Boswell’s coach, which he devoured with great interest.
Between the ephemeral and the immortal lies a dictionary, or, I should say lay. Until forty or fifty years ago the same dictionary could stay on the shelf for reference for the same period of time. Now the paperback dictionary attests its impermanence, as technological and social neologisms crowd in for recognition and definition. Whereas we accept the fluidity of our vocabulary and by extension of our language, from the late seventeenth century on there was a general suspicion, voiced by Dryden, Defoe and Swift, that both would lead to incomprehensibility. An authoritative” dictionary would prevent such a trend getting out of hand by “fixing” the meaning of words and even, by excluding some as unsuitable, “refining” the language “for ever”. Johnson moved away from this purist to the pragmatic approach of recording words which were used rather than prescribing those which should be. But he confined himself to the written word, preferably from the works of authors who were dead. → Continue reading: How Johnson did it in 42,773 words
At last, that bastion of idiotarianism the BBC is going to go off the air for a while, God willing! That these grasping tax funded parasites are going to strike during major televised sporting events is splendid news so maybe now more folks might be a bit less willing to shell out £125 (about $240) per year in order to support an institution filled with moral relativists, collectivists, reflexive anti-Americans and pro-Islamofascists.
A nice analogy from the inestimable Tim Blair, posting temporarily on Tim Dunlop’s blog due to an outage at his own.
High-income earners pay a higher rate of tax than people on low incomes. So why is it unfair, as Kim Beazley argues, that high-income earners receive a larger tax cut?
An analogy: your house and your neighbour’s house are both burgled. You lose a television. He loses a DVD player, microwave, his collection of Chomsky memorabilia (it’s an inner-city house), and a unique framed Leunig depicting Mr Curly’s pedophilia arrest. Would it be unfair if police were to return all of this fellow’s belongings, and you were only to get back your 24-inch Sony?
This morning I ran full tilt into a journalistic conflict of interest issue. I had to pull half of a story because my official position within an organization gave a subcontractor contractual clout. Their rules required a veto over publication of information on the event. The story items were neither earth-shaking nor of great import. Nonetheless, I was not allowed to use information I felt important to my article.
I feel it necessary to state this publicly as a matter of integrity. I do not claim that all blogs and bloggers should or must always do so. It is a matter of their individual choice. You, the reader, will place your trust accordingly.
I know such issues have been discussed here and there in both main stream and the practically main stream of major blogs. I certainly do not think there is any problem that most bloggers have real lives and work with real organizations doing real things. Or that bloggers make little or no pretence of being unbiased angels in white, pure mindless beings with no belief or ideals, capable of weighing ideas as the Egyptian God Ma’at weighed souls. We are not. We have no interest in being boring and unopinionated.
Here at Samizdata we attempt a reasonable level of professionalism in our writing and presentation. I am certain we do not always meet the full level of our aspirations, but we do indeed try. What we can promise is that our biases and conflicts are out on the table for all to see.
I have recently been re-reading (well, more like re-dipping into) Herbert Butterfield’s The Whig Interpretation of History (first published 1931), mainly because I prefer light (as in not weighing very much) reading when I am out and about in London, as I often am now.
The gist of this slim but profound and highly influential volume is that the past did not consist of people arguing about the same things as we argue about, and trying to do or to stop the same things as we are now trying to do and to stop. History is not a smooth ascending line during which perfection as we understand it slowly manifested itself, despite opposition of the same sort as we enlightened ones still face now. Monarchy, aristocracy, democracy. Religion, toleration, secularism. Tyranny, freedom. That kind of thing. The past had its own contending pre-occupations, its own contending definitions of progress. And just because something did lead to something else, that does not mean that they intended it to at the time. → Continue reading: Reformation and toleration: comparing Europe then to Islam now
I am on the road once again and sit in an upper Manhattan Starbucks as I write. I face another string of busy days; Saturday morning I fly to San Francisco where I will be doing my usual Wizard of Oz impression as a backstage magician for a JP Morgan technology business conference. Then, after a week of 6am crew calls and 12+ hour workdays, I will be off on a red-eye flight to Washington DC.
In DC I put on my National Space Society hat. Within that organization I am the overseer of conferences, The One Whom All ISDC Chairs Must Fear… which brings me around to why I am writing this article in the first place.
The National Space Society’s 24th International Space Development Conference starts on Thursday May 19th and runs through Sunday afternoon at the Sheraton National Hotel. It looks like it will be quite a show this year.
NASA is running some programming tracks of their own in conjunction with the Society this time around and we also have our usual strong private space showing. Our speakers include such luminaries of the private road to space as Burt Rutan, President of Scaled Composites and SpaceShipOne designer; Dr. Peter Diamandis, Founder and Chairman, X Prize Foundation as well as Chairman and CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation; Will Whitehorn, President of Virgin Galactic; Elon Musk, President of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation; Jim Maser President and General Manager, Sea Launch Company LLC; Jim Benson, Chairman and CEO of SpaceDev; David Gump, CEO of Transformational Space LLC; Eric Anderson, CEO of Space Adventures; Brian Feeney, Team Leader of The da Vinci Project (a Canadian based suborbital space venture); and many more.
But, as the late night TV commercials say, “Wait! There’s more!” This year we have an absolutely unforgettable and unmissable event: a Gala banquet in an exciting location whose management will not allow me to disclose to you. Go through the conference agenda and see where Hugh Downs is speaking. It is a great event and who knows? Maybe you will run into me there.
Whilst Britain remains fixated on the aftermath of Tony Blair’s unprecedented third term victory against their intellectually bankrupt and dependably inept opponents, it would behove people in Britain to pay a bit more attention to the electoral earthquake which shook Ulster which has resulted in David Trimble’s relatively moderate Ulster Unionist Party has almost completely collapsing in favour of Ian Paisley Democratic Unionist Party.
Now that the only two significant political players locally are the two extremist parties from either side of the sectarian divide, things look like they are about to get dramatically more… interesting. The message from the Northern Ireland’s protestant majority seems pretty damn clear to me but is anyone actually listening? I have a feeling I am going to be spending a lot more time keeping tabs on what get said on Slugger O’Toole, that most indispensable source of insights for all things Northern Irish, to see how things develop.
Jim Babka, President of DownsizeDC has more to report today:
The Senate is supposed to vote on REAL ID Act this afternoon. “Roll Call” reports yesterday that governors are protesting the creation of a national identification system. Plus, we know of other organizations that are now rallying their forces. We’re not alone in this fight.
It’s traditional for the Senate to vote unanimously in favor of Conference Committee Reports – to rubber stamp them. As a result of all the voices they’re hearing, I’m not so sure that’s how this is going to play out. Let’s keep up the pressure all the way to the finish line.
The REAL ID Act could signal the end of real privacy in America, as this article suggests.
And I told you yesterday about my experience on an Omaha, Neb. radio show. Well the host might not have gotten it, but his local paper certainly did! Did our interview influence the following editorial? {Registration required} Who knows? But it’s well worth reading to get a clear understanding of this issue. And when you share our campaign with your friends, encourage them to read this article for a clear explanation.
Send another message to the Senate right now, asking them to vote down the appropriations bill containing the REAL ID Act. Tell the Senate to send the appropriations bill back to the Conference Committee to remove the REAL ID Act. Send your message by Clicking here
I just can’t help myself, it seems. I suppose my attitude towards Dems suffers from the soft bigotry of low expectations, – I really don’t expect any better from them. For the Reps, well, they have been marginally better than the Dems on liberty issues, but whatever principled commitment they had to Constitutional limited government is apparently no match for the strong solvent of controlling the unitary state.
This time, really, a nice even-handed non-partisan bashing that indicts both Dems and Reps on federalism. I happen to think that dispersed power is one of the most critical bulwarks for freedom in any society, and one to which many seem oblivious to. The column details the ways in which the dispersion of government power in the US has been destroyed by both Dems and Reps.
Since the Great Society delusions of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Democrats have assumed the powers of Congress are unlimited absent an express constitutional prohibition. The assumption turned the Constitution on its head. It evoked stentorian pledges from Republicans to honor traditional state prerogatives and to restore the Founding Fathers’ design of a limited federal government, not a Leviathan. But after capturing control of Congress and the White House, Republicans are bettering the instruction of Democrats in pulverizing federalism. The pledges of change proved hollow, like a munificent bequest in a pauper’s will, to borrow from Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson.
The US Constitution successful in preserving individual freedom as long as it did in large part because it dispersed power so widely among and between the state and national governments, the governments and the people, and between the branches of the national government. That dispersion is at an end, and with it is born the unitary totalising state that is, and always has been, the bane of individual freedom.
One side note – the article actually does a decent job of capturing the embryonic “new federalism” jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, but any Court that will uphold an abomination like the McCain-Feingold political speech controls offers faint hope indeed to libertarians.
This item is in from the folks at DownSizeDC:
TIME IS RUNNING OUT
I’m sending out today’s Downsizer-Dispatch message earlier than usual. The Senate may vote TODAY on the “emergency” appropriations bill and the REAL ID Act. Hammer them. And do it now.
Let them know that you know that they can vote down this bill and then come back and do the spending bill again (that is, if they really must take another step toward national bankruptcy), only next time they should do it without the REAL ID Act. Tell them you know it won’t be easy, but you want them to show some backbone on this vote. Tell them you will remember what they do. The REAL ID Act must not be passed.
Send your message by clicking here.
This is interesting. It is Maurice Saatchi, in the Telegraph, ruminating upon the Conservative electoral defeat:
It will come as a surprise to my Conservative colleagues, as they absorb the lessons of last week’s defeat, to learn that the Tory Party lost the 2005 election in 1790. That was the year Edmund Burke first advised Conservatives to concentrate on: What is not What should be.
With that single fatal distinction, pragmatism became the hallmark of Conservatism. Absence of idealism became its invisible badge of honour. And aimlessness became the pinnacle of its morality. There would never be a romantic bone in a Conservative body – or so Burke hoped.
Two hundred years later, Conservatism has fallen into an electoral slump, because it remains captive to his bleak instruction. At the 2005 election, the authentic voice of 18th-century Tory pragmatism spoke through the medium of the Conservative spokesman who said: “If you want philosophy, read Descartes.” He meant that the function of the Conservative Party is to make the trains run on time. That may be so, or at least partly right. But the lesson of the campaign we have just fought is that the mere promise of efficiency is not enough to persuade people that you would be an efficient Government. Mere anger at the problems of the world we live in is not enough to convince the voters that the Conservative Party is fit to solve them.
Read the whole thing. And while you are about it, read this Paul Marks paper to see what a misreading of Burke much of the above is. The usual Conservative practice where Edmund Burke is concerned is to misread him to be an unthinking, anti-principled pragmatist, and agree with that misreading. Saatchi misreads in the usual manner, but at least disagrees with the misreading. With the flair of the advertising man that he is, he signals his argument for principle by being a Conservative and opposing Burke. Good grief!! Would Burke himself have been pleased or infuriated? A bit of both, probably.
But never mind about such scholarly digressions. The point about this piece is not just what is being said but who is saying it. → Continue reading: Dumping pragmatism on pragmatic grounds
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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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