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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Beijing, China. November 2011
Part three in an ongoing series
Remember when Samizdata used to have lots of beautiful bird photos? Well, here is another:
Beautiful bird or beautiful photo? Both, I would say. It’s a Cape Weaver Bird, which lives in South Africa. It’s the way that I at first thought that it had legs on its back that made me do a double take. And this particular snap appeals even after you’ve sorted out exactly what it’s doing and which way up everything is.
I found this photo at what has long been a favourite blog of mine, if only because he often says nice things about me. When I came upon these latest kind words about something I had blogged, I immediately went looking for something good by him for me to say nice things about, and it took me no time at all. I was only looking for something to be nice about at my own blog, but I think this photo deserves a wider audience, don’t you? Click on it if you want to see it bigger.
Further proof, if you need it, of the value of always having a camera with you.
For some light relief amid the gloom:
Fresh from his decidedly mixed record as the governor of California (which he pronounces “Calliwornia”), Arnold Schwarzenegger has an Austrian museum in his honour. This must make him feel every one of his 60-something years.
Odd bunch, the Austrians.
The Left needs to defend the riots; not to valourise the burning of grannies’ cars, but to make clear that we reject the whole bourgeois construction of events, that we stand in solidarity with the oppressed and that, when it comes to it, we will, without hesitation, join the “rioters” to overthrow the legitimised exploitation, state-sanctioned violence and sham “democracy” that oppress us all.
– Ian Grigg-Spall
The easy part is taking all the photos. The slightly harder part is knowing which are worth foisting on other people, not least because foisting is more complicated than taking. Anyway, I hope you enjoy these Brittany holiday snaps which I took a couple of months ago and have now picked out as worth exhibiting here.
My usual Brittany airport destination has been Brest, quite close to where the friends whom I regularly visit live, in Quimper. But, probably because of the new and very obviously architect-designed buildings, all plate glass and shiny metal at peculiar angles, that have been constructed at Brest airport, Ryanair no longer sends its 737s from Stansted to Brest. It either costs them too much or it takes them too long to turn their planes around, or some combination of the two. Ryanair prefers its airports to be not very glorified sheds.
So instead I arrived in Brittany at Dinard, near the coastal town of St Malo. And when my friend came by car from the other end of Brittany to collect me, it made sense for us to have a wander around St Malo, which has a particularly fine smaller and older version of itself, right next to the sea, with a wall around it that you can walk on top of.
On the evening of my arrival I observed this:
What could it be? A wreck perhaps? Odd.
A week later, in the course of my return home, we visited St Malo again, and once again took a stroll around the old town walls. The tide, having been in when I arrived, was out, and all was revealed:
It’s a swimming pool, refreshed and replenished every time the tide comes in. Which makes a lot of sense. When the tide goes out in that particular part of coastal France, it goes out a long way, and wherever the sea is, my guess is that the currents in it can play evil tricks, what with the tides having such a long way to travel, and through such complicated places. How much nicer to wait for the tide to be out, and to take a swim in a nice safe pool, as this person obligingly proved for me.
Now here are a couple snaps of images done by other people, both timeless and universal in their different ways. First, an advertisement, on a bus shelter:
I don’t think I need comment on that, other than to say that I haven’t seen this particular advert in England. Which proves … I don’t know what.
Second, another universal set of circumstances:
Not very well photoed by me, for which apologies, through a shiny shop window. Had I been a cleverer photoshopper, I might have been able to straighten that out, but you surely get the picture, and clicking on it makes it that bit clearer, as with all of these snaps.
A sheep in the middle is saying “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me”, to get to the precipice quicker.
Again, I’ll let readers draw their own conclusions about what particular contemporary circumstance is being portrayed. Euro purchasers perhaps? You decide.
Finally, a surfer, photoed through rain:
This was taken at something called the Baie des Trépassés, which does not mean the Bay of the Very Out of Date. Trépassés means people who have trespassed as in “crossed over”, in other words people who are dead. The very same complicated coastal currents which caused anyone drowned at sea anywhere near it to wash up at the Baie des Trépassés (hence the name) now cause the waves in the Baie des Trépassés to be bigger than in any nearby places, hence the surfers. Of the many intriguing places I have visited in Brittany, this was the weirdest. The vile weather when I saw this place only added to the weirdness.
There are few headlines I have enjoyed more, ever. Sadly, owing to BBC Online’s disreputable habit of invisibly editing stories, this one has lost its original title, which was:
Deadly cucumbers claim more lives
What’s glorious in this story is not just that incongruity, not amusing if you or people you know suffer organ-failure owing to an infected salad vegetable; it is the way the world stubbornly refuses to adopt superstitious man-made categories of what’s safe and wholesome. The cucumbers were deadly because they were organic.
“Robbers perform surgery on God inside this domain (or stately home).”
– Antoine Clarke’s translation (see the comments) of the French bit of a multilingual sign warning against thieves, that I recently photoed in the Brick Lane part of London.
Usually we like to joke about how the foreigners get English wrong. So, it’s good to notice when we get one of their languages wrong.
There have been three Chinooks with US markings circling overhead above my house in London for quite some time now, and for a moment I thought that maybe the rapture was at hand and they were here to air lift me off to heaven… or wherever else it is that rotorheads go when they kick off for the last time.
Actually a place with large helicopters perpetually circling overhead fits my preconception of ‘heaven’ rather well, so maybe the world *did* end as I was certainly watching them in complete rapture.
Result!
Hello? Is there anyone else out there?
This is magnificent:
ORLANDO, Fla. – Florida officials are investigating an unemployment agency that spent public money to give 6,000 superhero capes to the jobless.
Workforce Central Florida spent more than $14,000 on the red capes as part of its “Cape-A-Bility Challenge” public relations campaign. The campaign featured a cartoon character, “Dr. Evil Unemployment,” who needs to be vanquished.
Florida’s unemployment agency director asked Monday for an investigation of the regional operation’s spending after the Orlando Sentinel published a story about the program. State director Cynthia Lorenzo said the spending appeared to be “insensitive and wasteful.”
Workforce Central Florida Director Gary J. Earl defends the program, saying it is part of a greater effort to connect with the community. The agency says it served 210,000 people during its last fiscal year, placing nearly 59,000 in jobs.
(Via Division of Labour.)
As the DoL blogger says, it reminds me of the old Milton Friedman saying that people tend to be a lot less prudent if they are spending other people’s money.
On a flippant note, the point about capes reminds me of that hilarious, Ayn Rand-style character (the designer with the bobbed black hair and East European accent) from The Incredibles, who insisted that for any true superhero, capes were a no-no. They get trapped into the air intakes of jet engines, etc. It pays to be careful.
As regulars may know, I delight in finding and occasionally republishing barking moonbat comments, since they are, in their little, sad way, a marker for our times. Take it away, music maestro!
“You mean, the anti-war movement that is comprised of the political action groups, the infiltration of which by the CIA, FBI (and now branches of our military) that Commander-in-Chief Ronald Reagan provided for by signing E.O. 12333 in December of 1981, which infiltration is “for the purpose of influencing the activity of [those groups]?” Don’t worry – it’ll be back. Our military dictatorship knows it has to keep up the pretense that America is still a free and open society in which dissent is possible, so they’ll trot out their anti-war movement whenever they instigate another conflict for profit – because, like the ancient barbarians, they believe that war is the organizing principle of society, which is why George W. Bush declared never-ending COVERT war for “hearts and minds” against those who dissent against them in 2003.”
A commenter called “Saoirse”, writing in response to a comment by the Wall Street Journal on the strange behaviour of the so-called “anti-war” movement in the age of Obama. (H/T, Econlog).
In response to Fraser Nelson’s article about a recent book and TV series by Niall Ferguson, I came across this classic comment, from “Daniel Maris”. It blends self-loathing, bigotry, “fixed wealth” fallacies, Greenery, and other pathologies in a magnificent, take-it-with-ice, blend:
“Your praise is overblown. It was (the parts I saw) a good and interesting series, but it was hardly original stuff. Calling success factors “killer apps” doesn’t really take you much farther forward does it, however arresting the phrase?”
“However, unless I missed it, he didn’t really address the fact that the most successful economy on the planet at the moment is one that rests on a communist political dictatorship, firm rejection
of Christianity, oppression of its people, no free market in labour, no idea of private property as we would understand it, centralised planning and absence of academic freedom.”
But China has embraced elements of the free market, hence its current prosperity. Duh.
“Incidentally what does the mass immigration thing mean? Solvent can be taken to mean something that dissolves OR paradoxically it is commonly used to mean a glue.”
I think Fergon’s meaning is pretty damn obvious.
“IIRC Ferguson was claiming that it was a low figure? Is that right? Well that is absurd, because behind those 100 plus people lie 1000s of close associates and beyond them hundreds of thousands of general supporters – the sea in which they swim.”
“Mass immigration is nearly always favoured by capitalists who benefit from cheaper labour and are insulated from the negative effects (their children don’t go to the schools where 50 languages are spoken).”
Oh yes, all those evil foreigners causing trouble again.
“I suppose Scots feel they have to justify our imperial past given you find them in the forefront of the imperial project: colonisation, slaughter of natives, the slave trade and slave management (including of the women of course). It’s a dirty disgusting past and we should be ashamed of it. We should always ask how we would feel if the tables were turned (and some of us to now know how it feels).”
It is all the fault of those evil Jocks! (In fact, quite the opposite).
“Thankfully, I think the age of trade is probably coming to a close. We see the signs everywhere. Now with renewable energy, a country can have its own energy industry wherever on the global, no need to import energy. With advanced hydroponic and polytunnel agriculture we in the temperate zones can grow crops associated with the tropics. With improved recycling and use of novel materials, the need for imports is decreasing as well.”
Oh god, never mind the division of labour (Adam Smith was another Evil Scot!), we can make it all ourselves with recycled vegetables.
Have a good week.
This is a funky-looking camara from Sony – one of its “Alpha” models. When I first saw this picture over at Engadget, I thought it was an underwater camera – I am planning on doing more scuba diving later this year. Then I realised it was just a transluscent design.
I like this selection of odd-looking cameras. Some of them look as if they were whisked up by Q Branch. “Now James, this is something I am particularly proud of……”
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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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