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]
|
Some authoritarian asses in India who are enraged that a work of fiction called the Da Vinci Code will be shown in cinemas to anyone who wishes to see it, have threatened to starve themselves to death in protest if the movie is not banned by the state.
If these particular Christian protesters are as good as their word and are so keen to snuff it and thereby put their theories to the test, namely that there is a God and their actions (i.e. attempting to use the force of law to prevent freedom of expression followed by suicide if they are unsuccessful) would be viewed favourably by their deity, well why should anyone want to stop them?
You know, being a test pilot isn’t always the healthiest business in the world.
Alan B. Shepard, aviator and astronaut. I also rather like his terse message to Mission Control at the time of his flight in 1961: “Why don’t you fix your little problems and light this candle”.
I am sure he would be thrilled at the private sector space ventures that Dale has been tirelessly writing about lately.
David Cameron thinks it is the role of politicians to opine on what sort of clothing parents purchase for their children. I wonder if Tory voters who dislike the fact Tony Blair feels there are no aspects of private life which should not be subjected to state regulation, nevertheless like the idea of the leader of their benighted party ‘taking on’ businesses which sell clothes he disapproves of.
When Cameron says “I’ve never believed that we can leave everything to market forces,” I would turn the question around and ask if there is in fact anything he would truly leave to ‘market forces’, or as I prefer to call it, ‘personal choice’. I have no view regarding the rights and wrongs of what sort of clothing people buy for themselves or their children and I have no idea what the discontinued line of BHS clothing were actually like… but the real ‘creepy’ thing here is that a politician feels such matters are any of his damn business.
Now that the protests are no longer anticipating the overthrow of the Lukashnko government in a display of ‘people power’, the mainstream media moves elsewhere. The narrative of the post-Soviet dictator in Belarus is an uncomfortable fit with the comforting delusions of the West. The latest project to promote civil society is the radio station funded by the EU, the USA and the Czech Republic, broadcasting out of Warsaw. It has a mixture of healthy cultural programming and news, broadcast over a number of media: AM, FM and the internet. However the name, European Radio for Belarus, can only have been dreamt up by the Commission. One suspects that any popularity will be achieved despite its title, not because of it. Its more ferocious counterparts, Radio Svoboda/Radio Free Europe, campaign more directly for democracy.
European Radio for Belarus, is despite its name, not a foreign station broadcasting into Belarus. Rather, it is a Belarusian station just temporarily coordinating its operations in Warsaw. There is also an office in Minsk and correspondents all over Belarus. Operating since February 2006, European Radio for Belarus is funded by the United States and Czech governments, and the European Commission.
We have been asked frequently by other journalists, that are you like Radio Svoboda, Radio Free Europe which said that when democracy comes, it closes the next day. And we say that it is not our goal. We are doing vice versa, we hope that when changes come, we can return there and work as a professional, attractive radio station with balanced information and education content which would be really recognisable by people in Belarus. I think this is the main difference of our project and other pro-democracy projects around Belarus.
Just to remember that this is another day in Belarus: Anatoly Lebedko, opposition leader of the Belarussian United Civil Party was detained whilst attending an unofficial protest on the seventh anniversary of former Interior Minister Yury Zakharenko’s disappearance; and graffiti artist Artur Finkevich was imprisoned for two years hard labour, after writing “We want a change”.
Lukashenko is the enemy of change, improvement and progress: all of these trends will end his reign, or force him to fundamentally adapt to new ways. Now that there are more windows on the world, the yearning for change amongst those who can only spectate becomes ever more desperate.
of Lew Rothman and JR Cigars. Don’t ask me how I found this, but what’s not to like about the following?
Tobacco Crusader Waxman `Outed’ As Closet Smoker
SELMA, NC (AP): Lew Rothman, flamboyant president of the popular J.R. Cigar mail order tobacco house, today announced that Congressman Henry Waxman (D,CA) has been a steady customer for years.
“He usually buys a box of cigars about once a month,” Rothman said in a telephone interview yesterday. “But he’s a real cheapskate. Always buys the ten-dollar-a-box factory seconds, the real stinkeroos. And he never pays on time.”
Waxman, as chair of the House Subcommittee on Health and the Environment, had conducted a highly publicized campaign against the tobacco industry last year, which included televised grilling of industry executives. Thomas Bliley (R,PA), a pipe smoker, replaced Waxman as chairman of the committee in the current Congress.
Rothman says that he made the announcement now because “I’ve had it with that dried-out little creep. He owes me six hundred dollars in unpaid bills, and wants me to write it off. Called me at my home about it. At eleven at night. Woke up LaVonda [Rothman’s wife] and the kids.”
Rothman stated that Waxman “…said to make [the unpaid balance] a campaign contribution. Like I’d give a nickel to see that humorless little goniff re-elected. I’ll send a bushel of Avo pyramids to whoever beats him.”
Rothman continued, “I tried to be nice to that little hypocrite, because he is a customer and a Congressman. I even sat still while he put on that monkey trial in Washington. But this is too much. The nerve of the guy!”
Reliable sources at other mail-order cigar retailers confirmed that Waxman had been “a regular buyer, if not a particularly desirable one.”
Congressman Bliley declined to make a statement for the record, but was overheard to say, “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
Congressman Waxman could not be reached for comment.
From the Trenton Courier-Ledger, April 1, 1995, p. 5 col. 1
It looks like Mrs. T is reading some very sound literature these days. Any chance the Blairite currently leading the Tory party might be interested in something that challenges the orthodoxy like that book? I have my doubts.
Pete Worden, who once served various roles in BMD (Ballistic Missile Defense), began his directorship of NASA Ames a few days ago. He joked that after this talk he might be looking for a new job.
The reason for going into space is settlement he said. Since the National Space Society’s primary goal is settlement of space, this went down rather well as you might guess, as in ‘standing ovation’.
He talked about some of the reasons why the Moon is a very useful place for permanent habitation. There are a number of potentially dangerous technologies which could be developed there first before being applied on Earth. Things like replicators, real AI’s that evolve a million times faster than humans, sample returns from Mars, research on Zero Point Energy and others. As Pete said, “There is no EPA and damn few lawyers” on the moon.
Pete believes private ownership of land on the moon is of almost overriding importance. If we can get the international law unambiguously settled, there could be a land rush.
He laid out a way to solve global warming using the market and private ventures. A mass equal to about 30 super tankers placed at the Sun-Earth libration point is enough to build a sun-shade capable of blocking 1% of the solar radiation falling on Earth. It would put a planetary thermostat into human hands. Since he is talking about a large number of ‘small’ parasols rather than one large one, it allows the project to proceed in commercial sized, independant, competing chunks. How does it get funded? You identify equivalent carbon credit for the amount of solar radiation blocked and price your shade accordingly. At rates of dollars/ton of carbon emissions, 1% of irradiation represents trillions of dollars.
One of my Australian drinking buddies (who works on microsats) asked for Pete’s opinion on data purchase. Peter is for it and would be quite happy to buy data or offer anchor tenancies to private ventures that put rovers on the moon. There are several companies who are rather far along in this regard and I would say even his positive public statement will be of enormous assistance to them. He went even further and said he is interested in working with any privately provided space services.
I do not know if Pete Worden can pull this off or not, but I do know he is saying things he really believes. We know him and he knows us.
Before Worden, we had a short talk by California congressman Dana Rohrabacher who is pushing a “Zero G, Zero Tax” bill. He does not think there will be much resistance because it is creating business and investment that would not otherwise be there.
For those who do not know Dana, he was involved with the LP back in the early days but joined the Republicans and became, along with Ron Paul, one of our two ‘Libertarians in Republican clothing’.
Peter Diamandes of X-Prize fame (who I have know since he was an MIT student) gave the first public announcement of an idea he is working on at the Saturday night banquet. Peter, like many others at our conference, has little faith in NASA. Specifically he does not believe they will even get to Mars any time soon, let alone settle it. Peter is creative and has proven his ability to make things happen, so his idea on a funding strategy has more likelihood of crossing the dream bridge than the hot air of many sources.
It will cost billions to settle Mars, even if the known financial incompetency of the State is replaced by private, market based operations. Peter will be looking for persons of ‘supercredibility’ to do the kick off to raising funds by signing up 100,100 persons for the Mars settlement project. There will be different levels within that group; some will put in $100 thousand or even $1 million; the majority will put up perhaps $10 thousand or so each. I did not write fast enough to get the exact split, but it adds up to $2 billion. At 15% interest from investment it will not take very long to turn this into the $8 billion needed to make it happen. By the time he is ready to go, there will be a lot of private hardware for hire so he does not have to pay for the special multi-billion dollar hardware development projects which NASA always has to paste on the side. Once the project is ready to go, the 100,100 members will each have their name placed into a lottery where each has an equal chance, 1 in 1001, of winning. These will be ‘The First Hundred’ as in Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘Red Mars’ novel. Unlike in the novel they will not go in one big international spaceship, but rather in small groups.
This is a risky mission and people will probably die. Peter asked for a show of hands and asked how many people in the room would volunteer at even outrageously high risk levels of 1 in 3 or even 1 in 2. Over half, yours truly included, raised their hands. Pioneering ain’t dead in my circle of friends.
Oh. By the way. I forgot to mention… It is a one way trip.
Rusty Schweikert, a member of the Apollo 9 crew, spoke at the Saturday International Space Development Conference luncheon. Rusty founded the B612 Foundation to make people aware of the risk of asteroid impacts to our planet and to make sure something is done about it.
As it turns out, we are at this moment facing a slight risk on April 13, 2036 from 99942 Apophis if it threads a tiny keyhole in space on an earlier pass. The track of the possible impact points touches down in Siberia, winds parallel to the Pacific coasts of Canada, the United States and Mexico; passes over a few South American cities and crosses the South Atlantic before rising above the Earth’s surface near Africa. A Pacific hit would cause a tsunami many times larger than the one which hit Indonesia. It would cause an estimated $400 billion dollars damage and a large death toll on the US West Coast.
He told us an acceleration of a mere micron per second squared, applied over 200 days, could move the asteroid out of the keyhole. This would require international agreement because moving the impact point changes it from an act of God to an act of man as the possible impact point slowly crosses multiple national borders before leaving the Earth’s surface.
There is a very small chance Apophis will thread the needle and thus a large chance we will ‘get away’ with doing nothing. It does represent a wake up call because there WILL be a damaging asteroid strike within a relatively short time frame. If the the Tunguska strike had happened 6 hours later it would have struck in Central Europe. Next time we may not be so lucky.
And yes, Apophis was named for the baddie in Stargate who was in turn named for an Eqyptian snake god, the enemy of Ra, who personified darkness, evil and chaos.
I have been writing madly while cruising at 40,000 some feet on my way back to New York. The entire midwest is clear and I can see towns and cities laid out from horizon to horizon, orange grids and cloudy distant nebula sprinkled in the pitch black under the stars.
After my last post during the ISDC I was too deep into sleep deprivation and too swamped with work to attempt coherent discourse. Other than meals I hardly saw any of the other sessions. I did at least get in much late night party time with old and new friends from various rocket companies and organizations. Despite or perhaps because of our large numbers in the hotel, our somewhat noisy parties kept getting shut down. The volume level of a large number of engineers, activists and artists packed into a suite discussing their life’s passion, when mixed with copious alcohol, is impressive. This led to a series of ‘floating parties’, moving goodies from one part of the hotel to another to stay one step ahead of the security staff. The only ones who got mildly burned was one of the small rocket companies which had $500 of refreshments impounded over night. That is another story, of the sort best held for late night hanger talk — “Do you remember the time?” — amongst the insiders. All in all it was great fun.
Now for the news on this and future ISDC’s. The LA conference this year, the 25th ISDC, broke all records. We had over 1300 warm bodies at the event, a number which comfortably exceeds what we believe to have been the previous largest attendence. The profitability of the event was…. pleasing 😉
I am currently shepherding teams for several future years. Next year the ISDC is in the Dallas – Fort Worth area. If the organization of their party this year is any example, it will be well organized and a great deal of fun, Texas style.
The board approved a bid from a DC team for 2008. We had a couple pre-bid year parties thrown by the Australian led Canadian Toronto in 2009 team. They go through the bid and approval process next year. I also now have potential team leaders considering bids for 2010.
It was an altogether great experience. I will now and over the ensuing weeks pass on more about it.
It is good to see efforts being made to remind people just how monstrous things were in Eastern Europe before the collapse of communism. Films like Life of Others (Das Leben der Anderen) should be a good antidote to those who like to equate the oppressor and the oppressed.
Just as it only took a few years for revisionist liars like David Irving to try and re-write the history of Nazi Germany more in accordance with their likes, too many left wingers who praised the prevailing socialist system in Eastern Europe have not been forced to confront what it was they were supporting and what they wanted to force on the rest of us. What a pity there was nothing analogous to the process of ‘de-Nazification’ following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Revealed by the blogosphere for all to see!
|
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.
|
