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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The Bazaar and the Bizarre A few more pictures from grimy, chaotic, interesting Istanbul…
Turkey… NATO member and on the frontline of the struggle for secularism
Hagia Sophia, now a museum, is a fitting place to ponder the fact civilisations and not just nations sometimes disappear
Perhaps the coolest place in Istanbul is a cistern, built by Justinian! It is unknown why the two statues of medusa are sideways and upside-down
The bazaars and streets are insanely busy and…
… you see the strangest things!
I must say I find the place fascinating, though my travelling companion might use rather different words.
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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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My guess as to why the two statues of the medusa are upside down or turned sideways is that both were taken from another structure.
Justinian’s people did not carve them – they just said “big bits of stone – useful”.
To turn something upside down or on its side is simply a gesture of contempt (or indifference) for such pagan things.
At least this is better than defacing the stone work (which was sometimes done).