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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That is not a sensational boxing headline being concocted; it is the name of an American athlete, being yanked around by some rather pompously programmed software. This morning one of David Thompson’s bits of Friday ephemera is a link to this, which is a link to this, which says this:
The American Family Association has a policy at its new outlet, OneNewsNow, never to use the word “gay” but to replace it with “homosexual.” And that works absolutely perfectly until they write an article about an athlete whose last name is Gay, as in Tyson Gay, the fastest man on the US Olympic track team.
This was of course hastily corrected, but the magic of copy-and-paste had already done the damage. Most quoters have quoted the searched-and-replaced version, but I’ll let you do it. Change “Gay” to “Homosexual” in this, from the revised-and-then-revised-back-again version:
Tyson Gay was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.
Or this:
“It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Gay said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”
Or, my favourite, this:
After the race, Gay and Dix looked at each other and slapped palms, then hugged.
But amidst all the joking, it should not be forgotten that this guy sounds like he might be a real athletics superstar.
No one ever has covered 100 meters more quickly.
I say “might”, because when you hear that an athlete is really, really fast your first thought may be wow, but a close second in a photo-finish is: I wonder if it’s just that the dopesters have now found a new and cleverer way to do it. Gay might, that is to say, be a very quick runner but a fake superstar. If you don’t want to be at the centre of universal suspicion, do not be a superstar sprinter, and in particular, do not come to the boil just for the Olympics. Lawyers may forbid constant reference to this suspicion in official big-media sports reports, but this is what all of us casual onlookers now think, and all the lawyers on earth cannot stop us. For Gay’s sake, I hope that this proves to be a real, drug-free record.
I also hope that, come the Olympics, Gay doesn’t choke. Ditto all the other athletes. But then again, if such a PR catastrophe in some way makes the government of China a little less nasty, maybe a bit of athletic choking would be a good thing. Sadly, however, if the story so far is anything to go by, such an eventuality would probably cause that government behave even more nastily, perhaps by inprisoning all the TV cameramen who concentrated too much on the choking.
The Duchy of Cornwall proudly announces that the Prince of Wales’s old Aston Martin has been converted to run on bio-ethanol – which is sourced as surplus wine from one of his Wiltshire estates. Which is fine by me. If a very rich man wishes to spend his own money in mildly strange ways, and is not really hurting anyone, then who am I to complain? (I personally benefit from the other-wordly advantages of living on the Crown Estates, and very nice it is too, even as a humble tenant without grace and favour.)
I think he should sack his PR, though.
What is presented as a noble austerity for the sake of the planet comes across as a highly elaborate self-indulgence, when just laying up the Aston for a slightly less thirsty car would surely achieve the same thing.
One might also say (and it might be the truth): “We had a lot of wine we couldn’t sell, so we looked around for something sensible to do with it, and discovered we could use it as fuel – even for the Aston Martin.” But they didn’t. Quite the reverse:
Sir Michael Peat, the Prince’s private secretary, said: “The bioethanol from our supplier happens to be made from wine. I think our wine is surplus English wine. It is wonderful. It is not corked.”
That quote’s in all press, so it isn’t a mis-statement coming out in a single interview. It was what the Clarence House establishment decided it would be best to say. They seem to think it is better to advertise not sane frugality, but his massive use of resources in being green – in judgment.
‘Champagne socialism?’ Is that when middle-class people drink it? In – you know… – restaurants?
And nor should they be, but here is Patsy Kensit interviewed in last week’s Observer Magazine:
Q. How do you feel about plastic surgery?
A. If it means you can look like Sharon Osborne, then why not?
If it is not a fierce deadpan joke, then that’s a spectacular case of body dysmorphic disorder you have there, Miss Kensit.
This is what I call gratitude.
On the subject of rare musical instruments, and as a sign of how desperate some investors are to make money away from the standard stock and bond markets, you can even invest in violins. I can see the jokes coming: “So, what do you invest in?” “Violins”. “Hmm, I’ve been on the fiddle myself”.
Groan.
Via this blog, comes this awesomely silly story:
The Greek Isle of Lesbos is suing the group Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece to stop using the term Lesbian. Seems they are tired of having the term for people from their isle be synonymous with the followers of Sappho. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos,” said Dimitris Lambrou, one of the plaintiffs.
Fantastic. Just imagine how one could play with this. Suppose the town council of Dorking, southern England, sues anyone who is referred to, or uses the pejorative term, “Dork”.
Greece: did not that country once come up with clever chaps like Aristotle or something?
As ever, those interested in silly lawsuits should keep an eye on Overlawyered, an invaluable blog.
I recommend this short illustrated talk given by an American academic (no: businessman – see comment) who taught at Beijing University and who went with his family on a trip to North Korea. Here is part of what he says:
This is a woman that was directing traffic with great resolve and military precision outside the front door of our hotel. We watched her for at least ten minutes, as she moved and rotated with complete control of her little domain, and we didn’t see a single car go by. [Laughter] I mean, you do have to wonder what they think. …
He then sees one of those giant stadium displays, done with thousands of big hand-held squares which keep changing.
This big display, which sat opposite most of the people is just a huge communist video monitor, one person per pixel. The resolution of this screen was about seventy by four hundred. The frame rate was one to two hertz, and you could get up to two frames a second, before muscle fatigue set in.
And then we see this screen in action. It is actually rather impressive, especially when you consider how much the poor bastards doing it probably get to eat each day. And they’re the lucky ones.
It often happens that people who report not on “the situation” in wherever it is, but simply on what they happen themselves to see, can supply an extraordinarily vivid feeling of what it must be like there. They don’t tell the whole story. But then again, they don’t pretend to.
Meanwhile, the latest “news” from North Korea, is that they are building a huge underground fighter runway, right near the border with the hated South, Thunderbirds style. It is supposed to be invulnerable to military attack. Fat chance. I wonder how many people will die while making it.
Belatedly, I joined the craze and had a go on one of my friend’s Wii games the other weekend. Terrific stuff: I played the golf, tennis, ten-pin bowling and shooter games. Bloody marvellous. You do need to get a large-enough television to make it work; unfortunately, I don’t really want to mess up my sitting room by putting a huge plasma screen on the wall, but some of my friends seem to be less squeamish.
The main downside, I find, is that if you are playing this game and have not stretched and warmed up properly first, you can actually do a bit of damage. The next morning, when I woke up, the left side of my back was quite painful. This is what happens to a 41-year-old wealth management geek who has not spent enough time doing sport for real. Time to turn off the technology and put on the training shoes.
A link to some Wii-related injuries. I wait for the first politician to try and bleat about the “Wii menace”.
The reasons why people upset their neighbours continue to grow:
A weightlifter has been fined £70 for exercising too loudly. Giran Jobe, 36, was charged with 47 breaches of a noise abatement order after neighbours complained that his two-hour training sessions with dumbbells left them unable to sleep. A council team investigating complaints about noise from his top-floor flat in Margate, Kent, found that at times the level hit 100 decibels – as loud as a rock concert.
I have not come across this reason for neighbour annoyance before. Anyway, in my experience, the most irritating thing about going to a gym – as I do at least twice a week if possible – is the pounding, Chavvy music that these businesses insist in piping into the rooms. There seems to be some assumption that you get better exercise if there is lots of noise assaulting the ears. Maybe it is to do with the idea that certain sounds encourage quick exercise: there might even be academic studies proving the link between a raised exercise rate and music. I suppose this makes sense; anyway, dancing is one of the best exercises of the lot. Although the JPearce dance technique is unlikely to catch on anytime soon, you will no doubt be relieved to know.
The top headlines from BT Yahoo! news a moment ago:
* Anger problem ‘ignored’ in UK
ITN – Chronic anger has reached endemic heights in the UK but is often ignored, according to a new report.
* Miss Bimbo website provokes outrage
In my neighbourhood of Pimlico stands one of the ugliest public buildings in the known universe: Pimlico School. Unbearably hot in the summer (all that glass), miserable in the winter, with the sort of cavernous, Stygian style unlikely to suit enquiring young pupils, the place is being demolished for hopefully something rather more attractive. I cannot help but wonder, though, at the resemblance between the school and the main spacecraft in Battlestar Galactica. Mind you, I have not seen any Raptors flying out of the end of it.
Some people actually like Brutalist architecture.
As you may or may not know, today is International Women’s Day (IWD) – it falls annually on March the 8th. This anniversary is not especially remarked upon in the Western world, yet it is a widely noted event in many of the countries that were closely allied to, had ideologically similar political ideologies to, or constituted the Soviet Union. I am living in China at the moment, and was first reminded of the advent of this year’s IWD by my Vietnamese girlfriend, and then by the Chinese state press. Otherwise, it would have passed me by completely.
I have to say I find it a little amusing that two countries I have spent a fair bit of time in of late – Vietnam and China – so noisily celebrate IWD, considering that women in both countries face considerable and ingrained discrimination, despite the official socialist repudiation of gender inequality. Still, the show must go on and my girlfriend came home from work on the 8th with a gift; the same one that all the women in her company (a large Chinese software firm) received to commemorate IWD. And what was her present? A gift pack of anti-dandruff shampoo and conditioner. A lot of women work at this company, so obtaining all that haircare product would have been a substantial purchase. There must have been a conversation in the HR department a few weeks ago that went something like: “I think this Head & Shoulders pack is suitable. I mean, we’re all for equal rights for women, but can we at least ensure that they are not leaving bits of their scalp about the place if they must work with us? Yes, I know, it’s a shame that the deal on the girdles fell through, but there’s always next year…”
I do not normally like receiving emails selling me products, but I thought I would have to make an exception for this:
Dear Antoine,
Virgin Galactic is delighted to announce a new destination… space. Climb to 360,000ft. at a cruising speed of almost three times the speed of sound, in unprecedented levels of safety and comfort. See our beautiful planet from 63 miles up and experience the magic of weightlessness.
Redeem 200,000 miles to receive 10% off the cost of a spaceflight, that’s an incredible $20,000 saving!* Join our future astronauts and book your place in history.
I look forward to the Nigerian version:
“My name is Mr.Moses Odiaka. I work in the credit and accounts department of Union Bank of NigeriaPlc,Lagos, Nigeria. I write you in respect of a foreign customer with a Virgin Galactica ticket. His name is Engineer Manfred Becker. He was among those who died in a plane crash here in Nigeria during the reign of late General Sani Abacha.
Since the demise of this our customer, Engineer Manfred Becker, who was an oil merchant/contractor, I have kept a close watch of the deposit records and accounts and since then nobody has come to claim the airmiles in this a/c as next of kin to the late Engineer. He had only 18.5mllion air miles in his a/c and the a/c is coded. It is only an insider that could produce the code or password of the deposit particulars. As it stands now,there is nobody in that position to produce the needed information other than my very self considering my position in the bank.”
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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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