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]

“They looked at what you were eating … they looked at the way you raised your children …”

I completely missed this posting at Freedom and Whisky on Boxing Day, until F&W supremo David Farrer rang me on another matter of mutual concern, and he mentioned it. I forget why, but I’m glad he did. (He also gave me some very helpful tips in how to use my Canon A70 camera. He now has a Canon A80, which is the same only rather more so.)

To tickle your fancies, and to ensure that a decent number of you do investigate, try this:

It was all part of this terrible attack on people by those who had nothing better to do than to give advice on all sorts of subjects. These people, who wrote in newspapers and talked on the radio, were full of good ideas on how to make people better. They poked their noses into other people’s affairs, telling them to do this and to do that. They looked at what you were eating and told you it was bad for you; then they looked at the way you raised your children and said that was bad too. And to make matters worse, they often said that if you did not heed their warnings, you would die. In this way they made everybody so frightened of them that they felt they had to accept the advice.

Who do you reckon says that? Clue: look at the categories for this posting.

As an F&W commenter points out, we spend half our lives telling, if not everybody, then at least a great many people how they should be behaving better, so maybe we’re as bad … But, if we don’t, who will interfere with the interferers, meddle with the meddlers, nanny the nannies? Anyway, go there, and enjoy.

3 comments to “They looked at what you were eating … they looked at the way you raised your children …”

  • lucklucky

    Talking about digital cams maybe any1 can expect this soon too in them : Most recent version of Adobe Photoshop the CS version refuses processing of Euro and Dollar notes images.

    http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@76.LbIqbF2ZTFx.0@.2ccf3d27/83

    discussion here registration required.

    So anyone with artistic take that like to draw notes cant do that?..i guess arabic version cant process nude images, chinese version: dissent posters asking for democracy.
    I havent CS but a couple of friends tried with 10euro and confirm that.

    “This application doesnt support the unauthorized
    processing of banknote images”

    Then with a link for here http://www.rulesforuse.org/

    Expect anti Samizdata libertarian html soon…

    Btw they were so stupid that Imageready the webcompanion of Photoshop accepts the images and then can be sent to Photoshop for processing 🙂

  • Verity

    Well, if lucklucky hasn’t killed this thread stone dead, I the point is, we allowed it to happen (yes, this is what F&W implies). No one said Tony Blair nay, as they encroached and encroached and encroached. This week’s Speccie has a piece by Steven Glover of how the new press “authority” (yet one more oppressive quano suffocating freedom out of the formerly free British) will be dictating what the British press – the free-est in the world, save, possibly, Australia – writes and the proportions of column inches it devotes to opposing views. So free speech has gone (viz the thought fascists at No 10, the British communist establishment, the monolithic EU faceless bureaucrats, the CRE et al) and they are ready to crunch their jackbooted way into the formerly free British press. And they will do it. It’s newly created and already moving very fast, like that horrible little thing in ‘Alien’.

    Because no one said them nay and the glorious Leader, the “little father” said, “Don’t worry. I only want what’s best for you.”

  • lucklucky

    Sorry it was just a flash:) didnt meant to kill the thread.