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.
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At the beginning of the week I reported that in the EU you can no longer purchase a ticket to fly in a DC-3. However, if the need for the classic warbird experience strikes you, there are some truly amazing opportunities available in the US.
I was just perusing my August issue of The Aeroplane and found a special offer in it. With the reader code from that issue you can fly in not one, but two incredible aircraft, a B-17 and a B-25, for about four hundred quid. Check out the Yankee Air Museum if you want to see these gorgeous babes in flight.
They are scheduling flights from several locations in the US over the next several months so if you are traveling in the US, see if you can align your stars for an experience that I would just about die for.
If you are interested in a much longer exposition of what you have been reading in my aerospace postings over the years, listen to Burt Rutan as he describes how the socialistic model of State space flight has done exactly what socialism always does. It delivers the equivalent of rough brown toilet paper that is subsidized, overpriced anyway, and rationed because there is not enough of it. He does not say it in those words, but it is a view with which he would clearly agree.
He also shows why the Capitalist Space Race (the race to make money!) is going to take the lead in a surprisingly short time and that it will effectively be putting an equivalent of 5 times the NASA budget into human spaceflight within a very few years.
And by the way… I do not know the names of the other investors and developers he hints at, although I am aware (under NDA) of a few who are low profile and not seen on the Discovery Channel.
If you live in the tri-state area, or anywhere actually if you are up for it, please contact the LP team in West Virginia. They are short on people for the final push to get on the ballot.
The LP needs YOU!
Speaking of Ron Paul… here is a press release I received last night:
If they expected us to retire quietly from the scene, the political elite are in for a surprise.
Today I am making some very big announcements.
First, from August 31 to September 2 in Minneapolis, we will host a handful of events that will shake the political establishment. Everything will culminate on Tuesday with the official launch of the Campaign for Liberty at the Rally for the Republic.
The Campaign for Liberty will be the largest organization for peace, freedom, the Constitution, and sound money in American history. It will launch in grand fashion with lots of special guests and – if the early television and print inquiries we’ve received are any indication – plenty of media attention.
I would like to personally invite you and your family to join me and thousands of others in Minneapolis for these events and send a message to the Republican Party.
Tickets will go on sale for the Rally for the Republic this Friday, July 25 @ 10AM CST. We want this to be an unforgettable day, so we are holding a ticket bomb all day Friday in the tradition of our famous money bombs. How many seats can we sell on the first day?
In patriotic fashion all tickets will cost $17.76, so you can afford to bring the whole family.
This leads me to the second big announcement. After measuring the excitement and enthusiasm, we decided that the Williams Arena at the University of Minnesota was just too small to hold you. Therefore, we are making a significant upgrade. The Rally for the Republic will now take place at the Target Center, the largest arena in Minneapolis !
This promises to be the most spirited and provocative political event of the year! We held some very large rallies during the presidential campaign, but I have never attempted anything of this scale before. Its success rests entirely in your hands.
Later this week I will announce two internationally renowned musicians as headliners for the Rally for the Republic. We’ll also be joined by rock star Aimee Allen, NBC’s Tucker Carlson, Barry Goldwater Jr., Gov. Gary Johnson, conservative stalwart Grover Norquist former Reagan deputy Attorney General Bruce Fein, presidential historian Doug Wead, MTV’s Adam Curry, musician Mark Scibilia , and Frank Sinatra impersonator Rick Ellis . Other special guests will be announced soon.
My staff has been working overtime to provide you with three full days of entertainment. Please visit the schedule page of the website and read all about upcoming events. We also have a lodging page to help you find?accommodations in Minneapolis.
Together we are taking back our government and restoring the republic. Please join me in Minneapolis to kickoff the Campaign for Liberty and support our Revolution. Can I count on you to be there?
I hope our LP folk in Minnesota will be out there in force!
The Bob Barr for President efforts have been gearing up in Atlanta and if you want to see what you can do, you can find out about it here.
I would love to see that fund raiser counter spinning like the Ron Paul one did!
As of July 15th, it is no longer possible for a European to fly in a vintage DC-3. Air Atlantique ran a very successful farewell tour around the UK and its flights were sold out.
Perhaps one continent’s loss is another’s gain and these passenger-worthy classics will find a home across the pond where they can continue to bring the joy of flying in the most marvelous working airplane every built.
Maybe we should start a tradition like that of the Muslims, but instead of bowing towards Brussels at a given hour each day, we could give them the other end to show the full depth of our respect for them.
The Rocket Racing League will be doing flight demos of the Rocket Racer in Oshkosh later this month, between July 28th and Aug 3rd.
The RRL team has been working overtime to meet its goals for demonstration flights planned for three days during the convention. The flights, planned for July 29, August 1 and August 2, use aircraft based on Velocity Aircraft homebuilt canard designs. It marks the first public flights of these aircraft, which were first introduced in April.
I have heard (unconfirmed) as many as three RRL members may have their racers present. The development work on these craft was carried out by XCOR Aerospace at which a number of our readers work. Some of the Rocket Racers may use an engine from John Carmack’s Armadillo Aerospace. Because of the use of different fuel combinations a real race will see rockets with long colored flame tails behind them. Armadillo has been working on the injection of trace chemicals to allow an even wider range of colors for what many of us hope will become the most spectacular sport of the 21st Century.
Also on the near horizon is the third flight of the Spacex Falcon 1. The best information I have to date is it will occur no sooner than July 30 when the Kwajalein range again becomes available.
Did you know DC v Heller was a Libertarian plot?
The case that became D.C. v. Heller was the brainchild of three lawyers at a pair of libertarian organizations, the Cato Institute and the Institute for Justice. All were busy with other matters, so they hired Mr. Gura. “Alan was willing to work for subsistence wages,” Cato’s Robert Levy tells me, “in return for which he got a commitment from me that if the case went anywhere, it would be his baby. It turned out that that commitment was very important.”
My hat is off to James Taranto for getting the story right. Perhaps one of these days my New York schedule (and that of one of our journalist readers) will fall out in such a way that we can toast our natural born right to carry a BFG.
Here is a fascinating teaser for a Janes subscription only article:
US military pinpoints date for HELLADS ground test. The United States military told Jane’s it is on schedule for a 2010 ground test of a lightweight high-energy laser that could be installed on a tactical aircraft to destroy missiles, rockets and mortars. The laser, known as the High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS), is being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and General Atomics, along with several other contractors.
It is all coming together about as I expected, although perhaps a little faster than I really believed.
I think the United States is the greatest country that’s ever existed on earth. And I think that it is difficult to argue on objective grounds that it is not. I think the facts really point in that direction. It’s the greatest force for good of any country that’s ever been. I think it would be a mistake to say the United States is perfect; it certainly is not. But when historians look at these things on balance and measure the good with the bad – and I think if you do that on a rational basis and make a fair assessment – I think it’s hard to say that there is anything better. I wasn’t born in America – but I got here as fast as I could.
– Elon Musk during an interview for “From Paypal to Outerspace”, TCSDaily, 2008-06-16
Glenn Reynolds links to a video interview of numerous Louisiana citizens whose property was stolen by the police and sometimes destroyed. It was a time when that property was most needed.
Just because you have a badge does not mean you are not a criminal. The New Orleans police are storm troopers in my book and cowardly ones to boot. What else can you call heavily armed men who beat up an old lady and steal her revolver?
Now that some people have recovered their stolen property, it is perhaps time to severely punish these warriors without a clue. Criminal prosecution could be possible in a few cases. As to the rest, perhaps there are grounds for a class action suit for cost plus and triple damages against the city. At the very least, these ‘officers’ should be told to their face that their actions were illegal, unconstitutional and not even close to being American.
They really need to be taught a lesson about who runs things in a free country. The fellow at the end of the video said it succinctly. It is not our country any more.
It is damn well time we took it back.
Bob Barr is looking more and more to have been an excellent choice to carry our banner this year. He is getting the sort of serious media coverage we have only dreamed of despite us working towards it for decades. Ron Paul’s run for the Republican ticket earlier this year has probably had a great deal to do with it.
On Sunday Bob appeared on CNN’s Newsroom and ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos
That is a lot of media impressions so I really have to congratulate him on a sterling start to the Libertarian Presidential Campaign. His job is not to win. That is just not possible yet. He is an educator who is out there to introduce our ideas to a mass audience for which a message of individual liberty is a novel experience. Bob is delivering in spades.
It is a good thing too: this is a message the general public will certainly will never hear from ‘the other guys’.
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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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