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 remember having a discussion some years back about what was the oldest pub in the world. I still do not have the answer to that, but I recently came across the list of contenders in Britain.
The oldest ones in Belfast are from the 1640 era, White’s Tavern and Kelly’s, the latter of which actually looks the part as the floor is enough below street level now that there are small ramps at the entryways.
Are there older pub’s in Europe, perhaps in Rome? Some little wine establishment tucked away near the ruins of the forum? Or perhaps in China. where one could imagine some spice road inn from Biblical times.
Could there perhaps be some ancient establishment in India with a sign saying: “Buddha Got Pissed Here?”
As I sit here warm and safe at Christmas I cannot help but think of those of you who are far from home and have placed your lives on the line to make the world a better place. There is every appearance we are well on the way to Victory In Iraq this coming year and I sincerely hope you are all home and safe with your families this time next year.
I send my very special Merry Christmas to our rough men and women on the frontiers.
It is half two in the AM as I write this Christmas greeting, warm in my well worn Aran jumper and to a soundtrack of carols playing on a 1990’s left over computer to which I have delegated such things. It struck me some of you might be interested in Christmas elsewhere, so I have selected a small number of photos to try to give you some of the atmosphere of a Northern Ireland Christmas.
The centerpiece to celebrations is City Hall. It has recently been attacked by a giant alien space station.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
The grounds are turned into a Christmas village with shops selling Christmas goods and foods from all over Europe.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Like any village in Ireland…. it has a pub!
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
We also have the typical modern mega-mall. It was filled with Saturday afternoon Christmas shoppers as I went in search of an ATM that could take my Chase Visa… and which had not been emptied by voracious shoppers. I finally found one, almost hidden behind Santa’s grotto, where the queue was only about eight shoppers in length.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
Unlike this somewhat longer ATM queue.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
A few hours later I was ensconced at the bar in my local listening to friends play a merry jig or three.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
But of course the most important part of Christmas anywhere is the company of old friends to share it with.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
And here is my Belfast Christmas Card to all of our loyal readers. Have a good one and feel free to eat and drink too much and in general overindulge in happiness and joy.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
With a little help from her friends, Japan has sent a loud and clear message to North Korea.
The interceptor fired by the JS Kongo knocked out the target warhead about 100 miles above the Pacific Ocean, said the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, which carried out the test together with the Japanese and U.S. navies.
Tokyo has invested heavily in missile defense since North Korea test-fired a long-range missile over northern Japan in 1998. It has installed missile tracking technology on several navy ships and has plans to equip them with interceptors.
The SM-3 is certainly a good enough interceptor to handle the appropriately named North Korean ‘Nodong’ ICBM. I say that because they seem to be as likely to fail as to get where they are going.
The LA Times blog has reported an explanation for the incredible Sunday fund raising feat of the Ron Paul campaign.
Back in November, the Paul campaign reported raising $4.2 million online in one day with what they call a “money bomb,” a fund raising gimmick devised by Trevor Lyman, a musician and self-appointed Paul fund raiser profiled by The Times’ Dan Morain yesterday. Sunday’s gimmick was to celebrate the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party on a website with a drawing of Paul that looks remarkably like that president on the penny.
I am happy to see the LA Times covering this story and extend a hearty Samizdata thank you to Nikki at that publication for informing us!
Apparently some Ron Paul supporters have opened up a concerted attack on the FEC with the method by which they are funding the blimp… and like good capitalists are making a profit at it. One of the people central to the effort is a former FEC member.
Read about it on Transterrestrial Musings.
Washington DC is just such a target rich environment when one tries to come up with a short list of which agencies should be abolished first.
If the thermometer on the Ron Paul Campaign fundraising graphic were real, it overheated and blew out the top of the glass last night. Their goal for this quarter, ending December 31st, was $12 million. As of noon here in Belfast, they have $12.6 million. The rate has been accelerating: if you watch for ten minutes you will see the number increase by thousands of dollars.
There has been grudging admission of his existence by the big name political news outlets, but they are hoping he will at some point ‘just go away’. That may not be the case. I do not think these people understand what is going on: Ron Paul’s campaign is as much about getting the ideas out as it is about getting elected. As long as there is money backing him, he will keep running, keep talking and keep growing our ranks.
Despite decades of work, the majority of the populace has no idea what libertarianism is about, and if they do, it is “aren’t they the bunch who want to legalize heroin?”. They do not understand the context because they have never really heard it. The strength of the Paul campaign shows there is a real strength to our philosophy. It shows a real yearning for a return to individualistic ideals. People want a government much restricted in size, one whose job is to defend our liberty and privacy rather than destroy it “for National Security Reasons”.
Amongst the other candidates there is really no one I much care for. I will admit that I still hold an “ANYONE but McCain” grudge. If he or Huckabee win at the convention, I might be voting for the Democrat. I do not find either Hillary or Obama as loathsome as I find those two.
Support for Ron Paul does not translate into support for any other Republican candidate. Quite the contrary. I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Republican Party. I and millions like me have either not voted or voted straight LP. if Ron is not the candidate we will simply revert to form. I really cannot imagine myself getting worked up about any of the other candidates. No, not even for Thompson. My questions to him would be: how many government departments will you call for the abolition of on your first day in office? Which ones are they? What is your target percentage for cutting the Federal government? 25%? 50%? More?
I much look forward to Ron and our people being at the Republican convention and injecting exactly that sort of small government rhetoric into the event. Our folk will not be present to watch balloons drop and see and be seen. They will be there to rock the boat: politely… but forcefully.
At least one pundit has claimed we now live in a ‘Momentucracy” where primary votes do not matter. The sense of ‘momentum’ and ‘inevitability’ which the candidate garners from big media is what settles the issue and causes the contenders to retire. There appears to be evidence of truth to his statement for much of the period from the seventies on. However… the internet may change that. In 1960 the televised debates revolutionized presidential politics. In the 2004 election the Dean Campaign showed how the internet might soon do the same. Few have been saying, as I am about to, that it might change the ground rules entirely. What will happen if backers of a candidate can bypass the drone of mass media against their candidate and for the Anointed One? No one believes the media any more, so given alternatives we just might find that politics gets a great deal more unpredictable and interesting in the coming years.
And, by the way… I love the sight of dollars rolling into the Paul campaign in the morning. It reminds me of… Liberty.
In the time it took me to write this article the number went up to $12.9 million…
A cup of coffee and a small bit of work… and now I see they have blown through $13M and are still climbing rapidly!
The $14 million mark has been passed as of 17:41 UTC
Over $16 million just after midnight UTC and there are no signs of slowing…
Quiet this morning since the US is just getting up. The counter spun up to $18.2 million whilst I slept…
Glenn Reynolds points to an excellent way to help out blogger Mark Steyn in his battle against being muzzled by the Saudi’s: buy his book!
Besides sending copies to the Canadian Human Rights Commission, I can think of some other people who should read more of Mark’s work.
Most of us grew up expecting the flying car would eventually come to pass. One of the more successful attempts occurred in the 1950’s but although some were produced, it never made it into the mass market. Although I cannot substantiate it, I understand the FAA of the time was rather horrified at the thought of such large numbers of people flying. Whether true or not, there are very real problems associated with aircraft which one does not face with a car: you cannot pull an airplane over to the side of a cloud when something goes BONK in the night.
Another issue is flying requires a pilot. Even with the new US FAA sport flying category, getting your ticket is no mean feat. Being a flyer does not just mean you know how to point the thing. It implies you are conversant with the rules of a three-dimensional sea, one whose buoys are marked with radio waves and whose small craft must stay out of the way of large aircraft not just for their own safety but for the safety of the heavy iron as well.
This is not to mention knowledge of meteorology, the jargon required to talk to towers and other pilots in order to communicate critical information quickly through sometimes noisy radio systems and all the rules and regulations which encode the hard won wisdom of a century of flight and the loss of thousands of lives. I could go on for a very long time but I will just say that being a pilot right now requires a skipload of skills and knowledge.
However, as we move deeper into the 21st century, some of these problems are abating. With smart systems and eventually self-repairing systems we will get flying machines which either won’t take off when there is a problem or get you down before it gets serious. With autonomous AI systems development moving along the way it is (think UCAV’s!) the knowledge base of the pilot will more and more be embedded in the avionics and the ‘driver’ will simply point the thing.
For all this to happen there has to be a Transition that opens up the market. And that machine may finally be here:
An aeronautical startup called Terrafugia has developed a small airplane called the Transition that it says can take to the sky as easily as the road. It is about the size of a large SUV and features innovative folding wings that collapse with the press of a button. Terrafugia calls it a “personal air vehicle.”
The team behind the Transition still has to design a drivetrain to propel the craft and a mechanism to transfer power from the propeller to the wheels, but it expects to begin flight tests late next year.
Production could begin as early as 2009, and Terrafugia says it’s already received more than 30 orders.
You will still need to be a real pilot, but at least you can save on the hangar or tie down fees.
Downsize DC has just reported on the introduction of an act to repeal the “Legal Tender” law. This is the law which requires Americans to accept the US dollar for “all debts public and private” regardless of whether they have contracted payment otherwise. According to Downsize DC:
Choice is good because it allows competition. Monopoly is bad because
it leads to price fixing. Monopoly control over what people use for
money provides the greatest price-fixing power of all, because it
impacts ALL of your economic transactions. The Fed can manipulate the
price of absolutely everything, by increasing the number of
circulating dollars (inflation), or by decreasing them (deflation).
This act opens wide the door to competing free market currencies, yet has little immediate or drastic impact. If people are happy with US dollars, they will simply continue to use them. Those that are unhappy with manipulations by the Fed or who simply prefer inflation hedged means of payment will be able to contractually specify their preferences.
Go here to ask your elected representatives to cosponsor HR 2756 and allow freedom of choice in money.
There is so much good news out there right now it is hard to know where to begin.
First off, Carla Howell and Michael Cloud have done it again. They have filed over 78,000 signatures for a ballot initiative to repeal the Massachusetts income tax, some 12,000 more than the requirement.
This is their second go. The first time the major media outlets in the state all but ignored them, other than an occasional hatchet job. Despite the virtual blackout, the measure got some 45% of the vote. This time around they are getting massive coverage right off the bat:
The Worcester Telegram and Gazette is owned by the Boston Globe –
which is owned by the New York Times.
The Worcester T & G is the third or fourth largest newspaper in Massachusetts.
After they ran the article on our END the Income Tax Ballot Initiative On December 3rd, they polled their readers on whether we should END the Massachusetts Income Tax.
A whopping 66% of their readers voted “Yes” – while only 34% voted “No.”
You can find out more here.
If you thought spiders and scorpions bigger than humans were just 1950’s B-movie creations caused by nuclear testing then think again.
Paleontologists from Bristol University and Germany found a rather large scorpion claw in a German rock quarry:
The discovery of a giant fossilised claw from an ancient sea scorpion indicates that when alive it would have been about two-and-a-half meters long, much taller than the average man.
This find, from rocks 390 million years old, suggests that spiders, insects, crabs and similar creatures were much larger in the past than previously thought.
This is not a critter you would want to find under a rock in your garden. Assuming, of course, you have very. very large rocks…
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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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