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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But not green television the way you think. South African blogger 6000 is “not sure where this came from originally or if it’s true”, but he adds: “But you know, this is SA and people are nothing if not resourceful. It’s a cool story – I choose to believe.” Me too.
Spending fever has reached all walks of South African life. Here’s a fellow who lives in a squatter camp beyond Somerset West in Western Cape who now wants a television set – a new one, mind, not that second-hand thing in the pawn-shop window – so he buys one from the High Street furniture retailer.
But he’s back next day, saying the things keeps switching off just at the crucial moment. The shop checks it out and can find nothing wrong, but soon enough he’s back with the same complaint.
This time the shop sends out a technician to pop round to see what the problem is. When the technician gets there, he discovers our guy’s shack draws its electricity from a nearby traffic light, and that the TV only works when the light is green.
Good to know that almost everybody down there can afford to have “spending fever”, even if some prefer to economise on their electricity bills. 6000 has this as a mere scanned image of a newspaper report. I think it deserves the .html treatment.
Via the excellent engadget blog, here is a nifty item to put on the wall for all you health-freaks out there. Perhaps I should strap my arm to one of the controls the next time I read about the Archbishop of Canterbury, the eco-Leninist thoughts of Madeleine Bunting, or watch the English rugby/cricket/football team give up a lead?.
Or maybe I should stop doing all these things for a longer, happier life.
Global warming can mean colder, it can mean drier, it can mean wetter, that’s what we’re dealing with.
– Steven Guilbeault, Greenpeace 2005, as quoted by Canada Free Press
Afterwards, another activist clarified the remark by stating that of course taller can also be evidence of shortness, richer can mean living in poverty, baboons can mean chairs, giraffes can mean pencils and hello Ms. Robinson, your lacy trousers are well buttered with smoked trout, can you hear what I’m writing with my toaster?
My father told me a while back that I was distantly related to Henry Blofeld, landowner and legendary cricket commentator. The Blofelds are an old Norfolk landowning family. Well, if it turns out I am related to a family that has the same surname as one of the greatest Bond villains, then maybe I should invest in something suitably sinister.
It may be cheaper than a hollowed-out volcano, if only slightly.
Staying with the Bond theme, you can now, if you have the wealth, live in a beach resort in the same part of Jamaica as Ian Fleming’s old beachside home of Goldeneye. Back in 1956, during the Suez crisis, Anthony Eden, then prime minister, stayed at the Flemings’.
How’s this for a title and opening for an article:
Gender or race: White male voters face tough choices in S.C.
For these men, a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself: Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?
The howls of outrage that framing an article in such terms would cause is easy (and rather fun) to imagine. If ever there were two things that should not have have an impact on whom a person votes for, it should be the genetic characteristics of skin colour and gender. Dare I suggest that ideology and honesty might trump those two non-factors every time?
And yet this article will most likely pass without the slightest murmur from a great many people.
Gender or race: Black women voters face tough choices in S.C.
But if it is reasonable for black women in South Carolina to vote on the basis that someone is black or female, presumably they cannot object if other people decide to vote for candidates on the basis they are white or male. After all, it does appear that framing the choice on whom to support on the basis of racism or sexism is perfectly acceptable to the mainstream media. And there I was mistakenly thinking that those things were the cardinal politically incorrect sins of our day! Who knew?
I would not normally be moved to link to a ‘product listing’ page for a chain of Dutch department stores called HEMA, but that is exactly what I am doing now.
Why? Because it is cool and for no other reason than that. Click and just wait a few seconds to see what happens (and no, I assure you it is not another video ‘screamer’).
There is a truly bizarre story on Reuters saying that the French car manufacturer Citroën has apologised for running an advertisement featuring a scowling Chairman Mao.
“As a Chinese, I felt greatly insulted when seeing this ad,” a posting on web portal Tianya (www.tianya.com) said. “It is not only insulting Chairman Mao, but the whole Chinese nation.” […] “Chairman Mao is the symbol of China, and what Citroen did lacks basic respect to China,” another posting said.
Astounding. The man who was probably the most prolific mass murderer in history, who murdered between 44.5 & 72 million mostly Chinese people and brought tyranny to almost one fifth of the world’s population, is regarded by some people in 2008 as “the symbol of China”? That is truly surreal.
Well, I suppose he is in the same sense that Jack the Ripper is the ‘symbol’ of Whitechapel. Yet somehow I cannot see the residents of Whitechapel taking umbrage at an advertisement by Citroen featuring Jack the Ripper being portrayed with a less than congenial expression.
Just how many people does a tyrant have to order killed before he becomes absolute anathema in China? How many lives does he have to ruin to stop being ‘the symbol of China’? What kind of moral derangement is required to take insult in this manner? Well people in China should indeed be insulted, but by the fact Citroën used the image of that vile psychopath to portray anything other than horror, death and misery. How dare someone trivialise suffering on such a colossal scale? How would people react if they had used Hitler instead? People would certainly protest but somehow I do not think all too many Germans would be saying “The Fuhrer is the symbol of Germany”.
A Chinese person I know described the Mao era as ‘The Long Nightmare’. It seems some people in China do not want to wake up.
I was channel surfing the other day when I came across a strange caption at the top of my television that caught my eye, causing a definite double take…
WH O RE 1
Anyone care to guess what I was watching?
Then this is sooooo not the article for you.
As I am still in a residual Christmas torpor and fully expect to remain in one until after New Years Day, I am going to resist commenting on the appalling assassination of Benazir Bhutto by some Islamic fundi-mentalist fucktard and instead give you a link to the trailer for a completely gonzo Japanese movie.
Well it was either that or post a gratuitous cat picture.
Part of the problem with modern democratic states is they have far too much time to figure out new ways to regulate and control every aspect of life. They do this in order to pander to the sectional obsessions of this or that element of the electorate, and to satisfy the pathological control freak mindset that defines most people who are attracted into politics. Japan however find much less damaging and far more interesting ways to spend legislative time.
A debate over flying saucers has kept Japanese politicians occupied for much of this week, ensnaring top officials and drawing a promise from the defense minister to send out the army if Godzilla goes on a rampage. “There are debates over what makes UFOs fly, but it would be difficult to say it’s an encroachment of air space,” Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba told a news conference Thursday. “If Godzilla were to show up, it would be a dispatch for disaster relief.”
Oh how I wish the UK Parliament and US Congress would spend less time on implementing laws to abridge our liberties and more on how to prevent 170 foot tall radioactive fire breathing saurians from stomping on our cities and destroying our skolzandhospitalz.
Obviously the whole absurd ‘Islamic terrorists’ shtick was just a ruse to hide the terrible truth of what really happened on 9/11. After all, as so many people keep endlessly reminding us, Islam is a religion of peace, so huge Japanese monsters (no doubt under the influence of Haliburton mind control rays) are a far more plausible explanation if you think about it. Clearly this is something that should occupy legislative time from the moment our fine representatives go into session until the moment they go home at night. For pity’s sake, honourable members, do it for the children.
Magna Carta: yours for $21,321,000 (£10.6M);
Tales of Beedle the Bard: £1,950,000 ($4M)
Of course tha latter may be a more useful guide to one’s liberties in New Britain ™
I want one.
The website is great fun for over-grown teenagers like me.
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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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