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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This is not exactly a John Brown incident but it is certainly a serious shot over the bow of the Federal government:
This week, Wyoming Governor Dave Freudenthal signed House Joint Resolution 2 (HJ0002), claiming “sovereignty on behalf of the State of Wyoming and for its citizens under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government or reserved to the people by the Constitution of the United States.”
The warning in Resolution HJ0002 is pretty clear:
“That this resolution serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, from enacting mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers. The state of Wyoming will not enforce such mandates.”
Freudenthal himself states:
“For decades we have shared increased frustration dealing with the federal government and its agencies. What started out as a leak in the erosion of state prerogative and independence has today turned into a flood. From wolf and grizzly bear management, to gun control, to endless regulation and unfunded mandates – the federal government has become far too powerful and intrusive.”
If Wyoming were the only State to do this it would be interesting as it is the site of the libertarian Western ‘Free State’ project. As the article further reports, it is far more than that :
Wyoming joins 10 other states that have passed similar resolutions since last year; Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Tennessee passed theirs in 2009, and Utah, Alabama, and South Carolina have joined Wyoming in passing resolutions this year.
Let us pray that the second Revolution (or Civil War as the case may be) remains one fought out in legislatures and courts. Let us also pray that our side wins, because if it does not, the US is finished as a free and prosperous country.
SpaceX carried out a 3.5 second test firing of the Falcon 9 engines on the pad at the Cape. This successful test opens the way to the first test launch of the vehicle. I will be keeping my eyes open for news on potential first flight dates.
Iowahawk has delved into Shakespeare and uncovered
this little known masterpiece.
Enjoy!
I have surmised much about the Blue Origin program and on occasion heard things I was perhaps not supposed to, but this is the first time they have had a speaker at a major conference.
It is my belief they will do something major and public this year and this slight parting of the veil of secrecy fits that perception.
It is only a matter of time before ballistic missiles are rendered impotent and obsolete.
I am very happy to see key Republicans Newt Gingrich and Robert Walker have publicly backed the new NASA budget.
Glenn just emailed me a question: “When will we see a Tea Party campaign in Britain?” to which I have no answer. If I must hazard a guess, I would say it will be after the Tories take power again… and people realize Cameron is nothing but NuLabour in Tory clothing.
In any case, you may want to read Glenn’s WSJ report on the Tea Party Convention.
An old friend of mine who is now second in command at NASA gave an FAA AST Keynote speech on Friday which should warm the cockles of any free marketers heart. The new budget is a drastic directional change for NASA from the old Socialist Bureaucracy model to one using entrepreneurship and free market capitalism.
I am sure this is not enough for some of you, but it is a massive change towards the right direction which we should applaud and support.
All I can say is, “Go Lori!!!!”
PS: I will endeavour to write up my take on the new direction as soon as I can. As you can see from the previous article, I have been a bit occupied. If you take from the above that I am a tad… positive… about the new policy, you would be British in your level of understatement.
Now that the East Coast has mostly dug itself out of a snowbank and I am not busy on the job attempting to keep (or restore as the case was for several days) minimal capability at a customer site, the pictorial tale of the Blizzard of ’10 can be told.
I have been working for one of my usual customers in the DC area who has a large house that doubles as office and ISP. In normal circumstances this is a comfortable arrangement. Last week, however, was not so comfortable. We lost power by 22:00 on Friday; the emergency generator had a carburetor problem and we could not get it to run very long. When it did run, we got the ‘Doom lighting effect” as power to the lights and the UPS’s faded in and out. It was still snowing the next morning.
This shows the depth of the snow on the rear deck before the first blizzard was even finished. We got another ten inches or more in the second storm.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
An entire line of trees came down due to the heavy snow load. One could almost hear these poor enbarked-southerners crying out “But we’re not evolved for this!”
The railing and snow softened the blow so the car was luckily undamaged.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
The entire row but one beside the next house.came down.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
After a lot of shoveling, I went walking through the snowdrifts down by the canal with the owner’s wife. This turned out to be a bit more of an adventure than either of us had expected and I heartily concur with those who tell you to stay with your car if you are caught in a blizzard outside of town. Our one mile hike felt like ten.
It really was beautiful though!
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
I heard a crackling sound behind us and got my camera up just fast enough to catch the cloud of ice particles, snow and water as a tree fell into the canal.
This tree fall had someone to hear it and it definitely made a sound!
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
The sun came out the next day and with blue sky it was a magical sight, despite the fact we were still without heat and still had the problem of the failed emergency generator to deal with.
The woods around the house were almost magical looking.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
No, we were not attacked by Ent’s, but it was a damn near thing when the row of trees fell the other night!
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
This is just a random house we passed while looking for a new generator.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
This is the ‘tent’ we built to protect the new emergency generator.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
This is the 200 foot driveway two of us shoveled after the second storm. The snowblower made it through the first one and then croaked.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
I had a bit of fun with camera angles and the 7-8 foot high mounds of snow in a shopping centre parking lot. Perhaps it shows the area’s future. The glaciers will come again after all…
Is this the future of the DC area in a world of Global Cooling? Is it George Bush’s fault?
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Sometimes it takes awhile to get around to a story. I was in Huntsville, Alabama in November 2008 and talked my friend and fellow NSS board member Greg Allison into playing hookey from the meetings for part of an afternoon so I could take some of my own photos of the remains of the DCX rocket. When he told me about his classic Kentucky long rifle, I realized this was a photo op extraordinaire for…. REDNECKS in Spaaaace!!
Three things you do not do in the South. You don’t mess with a southerners dawg, his pickup truck or his spaceship.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Don’t even think it. He’ll shoot off your left at further than you can even see a squirrel.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
I thought this might interest and rile up some of our readers, many of whom I expect are as great fans of Michael Yon as I am:
Got arrested at the Seattle airport for refusing to say how much money I make. (The uniformed ones say I was not “arrested”, but they definitely handcuffed me.) Their videos and audios should show that I was polite, but simply refused questions that had nothing to do with national security. Port authority police eve…ntually came — they were professionals — and rescued me from the border bullies.
He was not at all pleased by the treatment and has written:
When they handcuffed me, I said that no country has ever treated me so badly. Not China. Not Vietnam. Not Afghanistan. Definitely not Singapore or India or Nepal or Germany, not Brunei, not Indonesia, or Malaysia, or Kuwait or Qatar or United Arab Emirates. No county has treated me with the disrespect can that can be expected from our border bullies.
When, I ask you, are we going to FIRE these un-american, untrained, brainless, worthless, useless apes? (I beg forgiveness if I offend any of our near relatives by use of this comparison. Great Apes are marvelous creatures.) Of course, they might have to go on welfare if we fired them because no one but a government bureaucracy would be stupid enough to hire people whose only contribution to America will be their retirement.
Mad? You are damned right I am mad. The TSA and INS are out of control. Disband it. Fire them all. NOW, DAMN IT!!!
New info from Yon in addition to the above on FB: “The Customs people (CBP) were the actors who handcuffed me.”
By the time the ‘evacuation’ bus delivered Rand Simberg and I to the parking lot of the Mariah Hotel, the wind was far worse. ‘They call the Hotel, Mariah’, Rand quipped on the bus. The wind, however, was more like raging beast. The car was just around back and we had to lean into the sandblast.
Rand thought there might be a party over at the XCOR hanger, but it was rather dark when we arrived. I was unconvinced anyone was still there and stayed in the car. Rand got out to knock on the office door and somehow managed to do so without being carried aloft like some Wizard of Oz character.
So. No joy on Plan A. Plan B perhaps? The spaceport bar at the Mariah? So, back we went. It turned out this was where the action was tonight. We did a quick turn of the downstairs and found Alan Boyle at work near the Christmas tree in the Mariah lobby. He worked so much today he must still have been sober.
Alan was transported from tent to hotel without missing a keystroke.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
While Rand went off to see who else was around, I took a few lobby photos and examined the rather interesting hotel trophy case.
Yep, this is the spaceport hotel…
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
When Rand did not turn up again after a few minutes I went looking and naturally found him with another journalist in the bar. Where else do you find journalists? (Except Alan of course.) They type, they drink and therefore they are.
I must admit my photos went rapidly down hill in quality. By the end of the night the results were about as blurred as what I was actually seeing. Remember, we had free Absolut and wine all day… this was just the after the party party!
It was around this time I heard the evacuation was not just precautionary: the tents had been demolished by the winds.
Len David and Rand Simberg at the Spaceport Bar.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Pretty much everyone was there, including Burt Rutan and Richard Branson.
Sir Richard hung out in the Spaceport Bar with a few hundred close friends.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Since Mojave is the first official commercial spaceport, I am guessing that makes the Mariah Hotel bar the very first official spaceport bar!
The first spaceport bar.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Mostly we stayed in our quiet corner: not too crowded there and the bar staff kept full bottles in our hands. Misuzu Onuki, designer of fashion for space travelers, joined us for awhile. It was impossible to get a candid shot of her as she is just too camera aware! This is not to mention that, by this time, it was surprising I could even find the shutter button…
Barb Sprungman, Len David and Misuzu Onuki.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Although the party showed little sign of slowing down, we had a long trip ahead of us. Rand pointed me down the hallway towards the front door, but I stopped in the front room to thank Virgin Galactic President Will Whitehorn for a marvelous time. I also noticed Sir Richard was still hanging out and seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly. He was in a small knot of folk talking in the back of the room.
Yep, this is just as I remember seeing it….
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
When we arrived back in LA, I posted my Samizdata teaser story and got into an online chat with one of my friends from the Mojave community. She asked if I felt like helping with the hunt for designer jackets tomorrow morning at the spaceport East fence…
This is the last of a series of 7 articles on the SpaceShipTwo roll out at the Mojave Spaceport. The previous article is here
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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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