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’m still catching up on the backlog of email and work from my several days absence. Even so, this item from the Opinion Journal must be shared. These words from a woman who has just lost her husband and father of her unborn child should be an inspiration to us all.
Here is an excerpt from the statement issued by Pearl’s widow, Mariane a few days ago:
From this act of barbarism, terrorists expect all of us to bow our heads and retreat as victims forever threatened by their ruthlessness. What terrorists forget is that they may seize the life of an innocent man or the lives of many innocent people as they did on Sept. 11, but they cannot claim the spirit or faith of individual human beings.
The terrorists who say they killed my husband may have taken his life, but they did not take his spirit. Danny is my life. They may have taken my life, but they did not take my spirit.
I promise you that the terrorists did not defeat my husband no matter what they did to him, nor did they succeed in seizing his dignity or value as a human being. As his wife, I feel proud of Danny. I trust that our struggle will ultimately serve the greater purpose of resisting those evil people casting a shadow upon our world.
As I said “long ago” in the days after… we are all front line soldiers now.
I’m proud to serve with this woman.
Due to the seriousness of the threat against the Samizdata London Citadel, the craic Samizdata Belfast Drinking Brigade is rushing a reinforcement to London. An airdropped supply of deadly verbiage is expected by 21:00 Zulu time this evening at the latest.
Rumour has it that Samizdatistas are converging on the area from all corners of London.
40 years ago today John Glenn rode his Mercury-Atlas rocket into the pages of history. His short mission in the Friendship 7 capsule was the first American manned orbital flight.
I was just checking in at Xcor to see what they’ve been up to the last week or two. No new flights listed, but they are selling this really neat poster. Go for the signed copies. If they manage the next step – suborbital – it will be like having the autographs of the Mercury 7 team from 1960.
Besides – all you old net heads from the days of Space Digest know at least three of the people in the photograph besides Dick Rutan: Jeff Greason, Doug Jones and Aleta Jackson.
By buying one you’ll help fund the research program which will let you to go up some day soon.
Yes, I do have an interest in this. I know and like some of these people, I want them to succeed… and I want to go myself.
The FAA released AD 2001 06 22 a few months ago. This AD grounds all B17 Flying Fortresses until inspections of the wing spar have been carried out:
SUMMARY: This amendment adopts a new airworthiness directive (AD), applicable to all Boeing Model B-17E, F, and G airplanes, that requires inspections to detect cracking and corrosion of the wing spar chords, bolts and bolt holes of the spar chords, and wing terminals; and correction of any discrepancy found during these inspections. This amendment is prompted by reports of cracking and corrosion of the wing spar. The actions specified by this AD are intended to prevent reduced structural integrity of the wing of the airplane due to the problems associated with corrosion and cracking of the wing spar.
Sgt Stryker reports on an idea batted around ten years ago in the Spring ’91 Air Power Journal: fill obsolete aircraft with explosives and use them as remote controlled flying bombs.
It’s been done. The earliest I can think of off the top of my head was the secret mission in which Joe Kennedy Jr. died in WWII. He volunteered to pilot a B-24 Liberator packed with 20,000 pounds of plastic explosives from takeoff to altitude. He and the co-pilot were then to bail out. The Liberator was then to be flown by remote control from another aircraft… and crashed into its’ target. Unfortuneately the aircraft exploded before Kennedy and his co-pilot bailed out.
This month’s Aeroplane carries a story about “A Cat With Nine Lives” which mentions in passing that a number of Grumman Hellcats were flown into North Korean targets with a less than 50% success rate. Between August 28th and September 2, 1952 six drone Hellcats carrying 1000lb bombs were flown into a power station, a bridge, a railway tunnel and other targets. The Hellcats were controlled by AD-4N Skyraiders of VC-35.
Guess there is nothing new under the sun…
erratum: I realized this morning that I’d said Flypast instead of Aeroplane, as both new issues were sitting on my desk and I confused which one I’d just read which article in… I’ve corrected this above.
Addendum: a reader in Traverse City, Michigan pointed out a secret robot bomber project from WWII that I was completely unaware of. Information can be found here and here.
A few days ago I reviewed John Keyes’ new play and mentioned it would soon be going on the road. I rang him t’other day for details so our London readers can drop in to see this excellent bit of theatre.
John will be performing his two act play at the Wimbledon Studio Theatre from Sunday February 24th to Tuesday February 26th.
Enjoy!
After a long night of theatre and very loud music I needed something before heading back to the flat. What else but a New York Subway sandwich with Jalapeno’s… yep. In Belfast.
But don’t worry. When I was working in Manhattan I drank Guinness before going out for a Subway. Just like I do here.
Fair’s fair.
Yes, you can find some really great electric blues here. Not to sound like an agent for the Northern Ireland Tourist Board or anything… although a women friend of mine does work there. Rab McCullough’s band is simply on a level with the best you will find anywhere. He can compete with the best in the USA, and in fact has. He took 3rd in an international blues competition in Memphis a couple years ago. I stopped in to their gig at the Empire after the play since I’d not seen Rab in a couple months, and I’d just gotten an SMS message from a mutual former bass player of ours. Which is not at all to put myself in the same league as the unnamed bass player…
This is not a huge city, nor is Northern Ireland altogether very large. But the place has more talent per square meter than any place I’ve ever been. And that includes Manhattan. I’ve lived in the Village too, and I agree there are more fine acts there than in Belfast. But then, there are 10,000,000 people in New York City… and 500,000 in Belfast.
We’ve got you on per capita talent, no ifs ands or buts about it.
I have to add some comments on the play I was talking about, things that are simply “so Belfast”.
The play was held in Culturlann, a lovely venue in the very heart of Republican West Belfast. You can buy books down stairs on the history of the IRA. John is a actor born on the Protestant side of town with certain preferences common to actors. He wrote a play about a British born actor who settled in Ireland and was closely related to the various figures of the Irish revolution.
If you don’t understand how this all fits together, I am not surprised. You have to live and take part in Belfast for many, many years before you can hope to understand it. This is why I am usually smirking into my beer along with my native born friends when Americans come over and explain us to us.
Belfast is comprehensible. You just have to keep your mouth shut and listen for awhile… something that all too many people find impossible to do.
One of the perks of the arts community is that you get invited to things without having to pay. Arts people take care of their friends because like themselves, their friends are always broke.
Tonight I went to the night after opening night of a one man show by John Keyes, a marvelous actor. One of the top actors in Ireland actually. It was a very small crowd in a small venue… this is the trial run, the warmup before he takes it to London.
John is the agent for a close friend of mine, and although I knew he was a top actor, I only knew him in a social environment and had not actually seen him doing his professional thing.
I was awed.
He wrote the play and performed the two acts. Solo. One man show. He didn’t need anyone else. From the first word to the last I was rivited.
Well, almost. To digress… I used to do a great deal of theatre myself. Mostly tech, although I used to do work in musicals. I knew I was a mediocre actor. I pushed choreographers to new levels as they strove to find moves for three left feet… I got the parts because I could belt, pure and simple. Nonetheless, I decided that I was better off doing tech… and then someone talked me into producing a play. It’s that demon rum, something like that. Devil made me do it and it was a bad idea. I can only say that I did *not* commit homicide upon the director; I even went so far as to stop the cast from stringing him up from House One… and I never did theatre again. I was already losing pleasure in theatre because instead of watching the show, I saw the detail. I’d note the light cues, catch the flaws in the fields, nod my head at the use of a particular fresnel… in other words, the magic was gone.
So to come back to our story… I was watching John in the midst of a brilliant monologue and caught myself analyzing the reflections of the straw gelled PAR reflecting off the grand piano strategically placed as a distant backdrop behind him… and caught myself before it was too late.
That was my only slip of the night.
I won’t give you a lot of detail, but the show is about Michael Mac Liammoir, originally from London, who was a founder of the Irish theatrical tradition. A man whose passport was signed by De Valera himself.
The monologues and acting are brilliant. When John hits London, look for it.
I’ve read the posts on the recent EU regulation that nowhere in Europe should a workplace exceed 83db and did not think a great deal about it until tonight when I was standing up near the stage at an electric blues gig. There is a section of the bar near the speakers that is “musician country”. Everyone there is either a head or part of the family. It struck me somewhere arount the 3rd or 4th pint that the decibal level where I was standing was a bit beyond 83. Well, let’s face it. it passed 83 when the first chord was struck and went up from there. For myself, I’d hardly noticed it. If I’m due for hearing loss, the damage was done and finished with over 20 years ago standing in front of a speaker stack with my Hagstrom III cranked up to eleven. 83db? Is for wimps!
Which got me thinking. Where is the EU going to find someone with the pure balls to walk up to a rock band and tell them they are playing too loud for EU law? Thinking back to my own self in a younger and wilder format, I know exactly what would happen. I’d have stopped playing long enough to beat the crap out of him. Jail? Who cares? For most young musicians trying to make it jail would be warmer, cleaner and have better food that they can afford. Artists live on the fringe. Many bloggers comment on artists who have “made it” and that they are socialist. That might be true when they’ve got the gig with real dosh… but for most artists politics is just words. The enemy is whoever threatens your art.
Would you like to imagine what songs will be written if the EU starts trying to shut down punk rock bands?
And can you imagine what the regulation enforcers will look like walking out of a gig with a drum stick rammed up their arse?
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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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