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]
|
The unadulterated Sir Terry Animals loose in a car are never a good idea. Goats are generally the worst, but until you realise there’s a tortoise stuck under your brake pedal you’ve never known the meaning of fear, and possibly not the meaning of ‘old age’ either.
– Sir Terry Pratchett, The Unadulterated Cat. Sadly Sir Terry never really got to know the meaning of ‘old age’ himself. I think he did know the meaning of fear when contemplating a particularly cruel death for a writer, but knew even better the meaning of courage. I would link to the famous “embuggerance” statement to illustrate this point but so many other people are doing that right now that it has melted the internet.
|
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.
|
Sigh … I loved Good Omens.
I’m sure DEATH came to take him in person, out of respect.
It is a sad day. Indeed an embuggeration.
Oddly, when I was a boy my father actually did get a turtle stuck under his brake pedal. He was at pains to ask me afterward how in the world a TURTLE could escape from his cardboard box while under my observation.
I once had a 2 litre fizzy drink bottle stuck under the pedals of my VW Golf whilst driving in an urban environment, unknown to me, it had slid during a sharp left turn from the passenger footwell to the right hand side pedals through a gap between the two footwells I had assumed was solid. Unable to engage the clutch or brake, I could accelerate a bit but it was far from helpful, I juddered to a halt by letting off the throttle, and removed the bottle, cursing the design of a concealed hazard.
I never did manage to read any of his books. I understood that they weren’t factual.
Nightwatch is the best book on human political dynamics since The Prince 😉
But seriously, I mean it.
Mr Ed, I suggest that depends upon your definition of “factual”.
Miroslav, many thanks for the tip. I find it hard to read fiction, but I would recommend Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide series first three books as a wonderful send up of eminent domain, bureaucratic silliness and pomposity.
Mr Ed, if you like Douglas Adams you might give Pratchett a try. To me he seems sort of a cross between Adams and Kurt Vonnegut.
Laird, just based on facts. Almost all fiction repels me by either the author’s bias showing through or some inaccuracy.
I was slightly annoyed by Sir Terry’s opposition to a Papal Visit to the UK, partly by his lying with dogs, (for the benefit of our non-UK readers, the objectors were a bunch of bien pensant Socialists par excellence), but also by the tone of the objection.
The Vatican City State is Mussolini’s enduring legacy, along with a secondary use for lampposts, but it is a State, as was Pearl Harbor after the Japs left. However, the objection to State visits is that they are nonsense and a waste of taxpayers’ money, not the State in question.
We all slip away bit-by-bit. Aging is a disgusting process.
But with this disease it is more cruel and perverse.
There were little signs – such as saying that women in fantasy literature did not have the magical power of male wizard characters.
We could all think of examples that proved that statement wrong – how could Terry Pratchett (himself the creator of powerful female characters) write such a thing?
That was a small example – of the many and manifold humiliations we go through as our brains fail us.
If the mind is nothing more than the physical brain (a few pounds of flesh – which soon decays) then life is indeed a vile farce.
However, let us hope that this is not all the mind is – that is more than just the brain.
That somewhere now Terry Pratchett is himself again.
Mr Ed, I am unfamiliar with the (obviously entirely local) issue of his opposition to a Papal visit. Whether that amounts to “lying with dogs” I don’t know, but I will observe that taking a principled stand on anything occasionally results in some rather anomalous company. I don’t read much into it, especially if it’s a unique occurrence.
In any event, you might take a look at this review of Pratchett’s oeuvre.
Paul Marks
Because he understood fantasy as deeply as anyone ever did. Pratchett understood that to most men, women are more than half magical anyway. Giving one of those creatures real, wishing-makes-it-so magic doesn’t work as well as it does for men, because the contrast is poor.
In fact, I think many magical women in fantasy are attempts to externalize their innate magic. Look at TV’s Samantha–the name of her show tells you everything.
If that quote put into the mouth of the most consumate Tyrant in literature isn’t a perfect summary of Samizatan philosophy imaginable I have surely misjudged this place…
Many years ago, SWMBO and a neighbor lady decided we would adopt and raise a clutch of baby mallard ducks whose mother had been killed. (My better has a capacity for sympathy for stray animals that is beyond comprehending, but I don’t complain as it allowed a certain scarred old tomcat to benefit also).
I won’t go into the daily circus this became for several weeks, much to the delight of our young children, but, finally, they were old enough to take back to the neighbors’ lake place and release. (The ducks, not the kids, although there were days I considered it.)
We put three kids in the back seat, and four nearly full grown mallards in a big box in the back of my station wagon, and set off for the lake. It only took a few minutes of motion they couldn’t understand to send the ducks into a quacking, wing flapping, riotous frenzy.
The box was flopping all over the back of the wagon, with feathers, and occasional duckie heads, popping out to the screams of delight from the kids, the worried but laughing exclamations from the “mother of ducks”, and the indignant protests of the driver, who was wondering, not for the first or last time, how he had gotten himself into this lunatic circus.
After what seemed like hours, we reached the lake, actually less than two, and the circus train unloaded it’s animals and clowns for the parade to the lake. The orphans were released, to much rejoicing, and we trekked on home in a cloud of feathers.
My revenge was in making Noah’s wife and kids clean up the worst of the mess before I took the cattle car to the car wash, and getting ice cream for all afterwards, to celebrate life, and a job well done.
I wish I could explain what it has been like sharing my life with such a glowing soul, and watching her impart some of that warmth and exuberant love of life to our children, and receiving so much of its benefit myself. Alas, that poet doesn’t reside in this soul, and poor descriptions are all I can manage.
Pratchett was more than a writer, he was a shining example of a “wordsmith”.
“In the hall of the house of death is a clock with a pendulum like a blade but with no hands, because in the house of Death there is no time but the present…it swings with a faint whum-whum noise, gently slicing thin rashers of interval from the bacon of eternity.”
Veryretired, that was far from a poor description. I found it both funny and touching. If it wasn’t as riotously funny as a Pratchett or a Wodehouse could have made a description of the same scene – well, that puts your writing skills in the same category as those of 99% of humanity!
Analysing why things are funny is a sure way to get laughed at, but your sudden descent into cute-talk with “occasional duckie heads, popping out” definitely got a laugh from me. It replicated the visual experience of cuteness + surprise that gets pouncing kitten videos on YouTube so many hits.
In the Pratchett line I quoted, I loved the way he threw in and did not explain any further “Goats are generally the worst”.
As long as we’re sharing Pratchett quotes, I’ll contribute one of my favorites: “Everyone should occasionally break the law in some small and delightful way, Drumknott. It’s good for the hygiene of the brain.” (From “Snuff”.)
Natalie—much appreciated.