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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I am not going to attempt a detailed analysis of the shooting of Erik Scott in Las Vegas because it has already been done. I would suggest you read it and then listen to what our own police experts have to say.
I do have opinions of my own on the general situation. I bet we will find some person of coastal liberal persuasion at Costco soiled their knickers at the sight of a perfectly legal weapon and made an hysterical and totally misleading call to 911. With nothing but the terror-stricken voice of an idiot to go on, the 911 operator primed the responding police for a deadly response. Then, to top it off, the responding officers were incompetent.
The officers should be sent to remedial training. But the real guilt seems to me elsewhere: I sincerely wish the person from Costco who initiated the fatal chain of events could be charged with manslaughter.
I will now wait for our more than competent police commentators to chime in…
I knew next to nothing about this woman but if the statist right and left attack someone as hard as they have her, I get a strong suspicion I might like her a lot.
Listen to this interview of her on Pajamas TV before the primary which she has handily won. Make up your own mind. She certainly hits the Austrian economics and small government buttons in my soul. Libertarians need to get behind this woman in November. If you are in Delaware, volunteer. You can make a really big difference for a small amount of effort.
The media are going to attack her mercilessly. In no time at all the MSM will be telling us horror stories about the loathsome habits of her pet fish (if she has any). Consider this your inoculation against them.
If I can forgive her for belonging to a clan that warred with one side of my family (the O’Neill’s) centuries ago, so can you!
I just have to add this Firefly clip noted by Glenn Reynold:
I must admit to being a bit gobsmacked by this:
Israel and the Jewish people found an unlikely defender in Fidel Castro, the retired dictator of Cuba, on Tuesday, when he came out strongly against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Holocaust and supported Israel’s right to exist.
I just read the details on the SpaceX Dragon capsule drop test which occurred earlier this month.
Rand Simberg pointed out this article. The level of incompetence shown by ‘professional journalist’ Peter Fenn is simply breathtaking to those who know the subject matter.
When I read something like this, it lowers my already sub-basement level of trust in professional media. If they are this bad on things where I know what is going on, what might they be feeding me in areas where I lack such inside knowledge?
It is really quite scary.
Business partner Rand Simberg has this to say about the attempts of Congress to design pork propelled rockets. The only practical idea in the lot is the BFR from SpaceX, and that (in my opinion) only if a market of 500 Metric Tons or so a year materializes.
I have expected this to come along as it seemed an obvious market step for SpaceX. They have announced their plans to enter the Heavy Lift arena.
If you are familiar with the politics in DC right now, this really puts the cat amongst the pigeons.
Rand Simberg attended the Boeing press conference and has supplied some notes on their CST-100 plans.
I am glad to see there will be competition in the LEO cargo and business passenger field. As much as I like Elon and what he has accomplished, there is nothing like real competition to grow the market.
I have not yet read ‘American Empire: Before the Fall’ yet myself but have been hearing a great deal about it.
I do not myself believe America is going to ‘fall’. Quite the contrary, I believe it is the ruling class in America that is about to go through a very big fall, albeit with some bad short term consequences for the nation before that occurs.
The very fact that a self-published book can rise so far in the Amazon rankings is a testament to just how ticked off average Americans are with the power elite.
Their day of reckoning is coming.
According to a Janes newsletter:
US Navy successfully tests laser with close-in weapon. The US Navy has for the first time in a maritime environment successfully destroyed four unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) targets with a laser, essentially proving the basic premise of adding a directed-energy weapon to Raytheon’s Phalanx close-in weapon system. The trial was sponsored by the US Naval Sea Systems Command’s (NAVSEA’s) PMS 405 Directed Energy Weapons programme office and used the navy’s own Laser Weapon System (LaWS) equipment, developed in conjunction with the Dahlgren Naval Surface Warfare .Center Dahlgren Division, combined with a Phalanx weapon mount.
The era of the ray cannon has arrived.
I am not talking about classical revolution by arms, but a revolution of ideas. I have been watching, and in may ways participating, in the growing split between world views that is contemporary America. I have little time for the fabric of the leftist views, although I have little problem with many of the lifestyle threads they support. They have now moved so far away from my own ‘center’ that I am much more inclined to throw in my lot with the ‘Country Party’ discussed in this The American Spectator article.
It is well worth reading, and although not perfectly congruent with libertarians, it is certainly far closer than the positions of contemporary liberals.
Many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for pointing this out.
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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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