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.
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The EU Referendum blog links to this fascinating article about the engineering history, so to speak, of New Orleans, referring in particular to this paragraph:
The lower Mississippi is in no way a natural river anymore. A law instituted in 1724 by a French colonial governor, whose name was Perrier, of all things, demanded that early homeowners in New Orleans raise the low natural levees upon which they all built. Three year later, Perrier declared the little city floodproof.
So there you have it. Do not blame Bush. Blame France.
Not really. The situation is a deal more complex than that. But it does seem to be true that once they decided on living lower than the Mississippi River, they found that the methods they chose to protect themselves from it only served to make it rise ever higher into the air, and themselves to sink lower and lower.
On Saturday evening I checked into a hotel in Odense in Denmark. The Danes are fairly relaxed, and I was not asked to produce my passport as I might be in some European countries. They did ask me for “something with my name on it”. I handed them my “Barclaycard Premiership Mastercard” (ie a credit card with English soccer logos on it) and my English driver’s licence. I did not show them my passport (it was in the car) and I did not mention my nationality.
However, the next day I got my receipt and it had “Michael John Jennings. Australia”. written on the top.
I am intrigued as to how they figured this out. It is true that my licence does have the endorsement “70AUS” amongst the fine print on the back, indicating that I did not ever have an English driving test, but was issued an English licence on the basis of having an Australian one already. However, I did not see the hotel clerk study the fine print on the back of my licence, and I would have been impressed had he known what that endorsement means.
Perhaps it was my accent? However, I have lived in England for nine of the last thirteen years, and English and Australians often cannot figure out my accent. (Often they can, too, but mistakes are often made). The Danes are excellent linguists, but I didn’t realise they were that good.
Or perhaps Australians just give off some vibe. Perhaps it is one that annoys British immigration officials, makes the French like us, and is instantly visible to Danish hotel clerks. Who knows?
I know what you are thinking. A piece of modern art type photography fit only for the Turner Prize and the dustbin. Here are a bunch of London pavement shapes that mean nothing, photographed by me this afternoon, outside a pub in Warwick Way, not far from where I live. No story here.
But click on the picture and it turns out there is a story in this picture after all.
But, I wonder what it was.
France has been attacked by an infestation of frogs! I know, the metaphors are even now exploding inside your head.
A campaign in France to exterminate frogs may sound like the beginning of a civil war, but these are no ordinary frogs.
The frogs are big, inedible, and Californian!
Since the frogs were first released, as a joke, on a private pond near Libourne in 1968, they have colonised ponds, lakes, marshes and gravel pits all over the département of the Gironde. They have been found in the Landes area to the south and in the Dordogne, Lot-et-Garonne and Loir-et-Cher départements, further north.
Some joke.
It turns out that the only way to kill these fearsome and deeply un-French frogs is to shoot them.
You really need to click on this picture.
Its enough to make you believe in parallel universes colliding, or something:
Doctors fear that the identity of a mysterious mute pianist found wandering on an English beach in April might never be known, a British newspaper reported on Monday.
[snip]
The so-called “Piano Man”, a tall blonde-haired stranger thought to be in his 20s or early 30s, was found on April 7 on the beach at Minster, on the south coast of England, soaking wet but fully dressed in a black suit and tie, with no clue as to his origin.
He has not spoken since and has not responded to written appeals while being kept under observation in the psychiatric hospital.
But he has fascinated social workers, the British media and the general public over his one means of communication: playing classical piano music.
When given a pencil and paper by hospital staff, he drew a grand piano — and then, when shown a piano at the hospital chapel, he impressed his carers with a remarkable virtuoso performance.
There are no leads.
Now, I am an imaginative guy, and I work with a major inner city hospital where all kinds of strange shit comes down, but I have a hard time coming up with any scenario at all that would explain this one.
Now this is what I call ‘global justice’:
A thirsty thief is being blamed for downing a bottle of water, valued at £42,500, at a literary festival.
The two-litre clear plastic bottle containing melted ice from the Antarctic was devised to highlight global warming by artist Wayne Hill….
The piece, entitled Weapon of Mass Destruction, vanished half way through the festival. Mr Hill fears the bottle was taken and then drunk.
“It was there and then it was gone,” he said.
Just like dozens of claptrap, modish, end-of-the-world theories then.
I enjoy watching and playing a bit of golf – despite my rather large playing handicap (gulp) but a question that comes to me as I watch the British Open up in blustery St. Andrews, Scotland is this: why, for the sake of reason, why, do so many golfers were such daft clothes? One guy is sporting a pink shirt, pink eye shade and the sort of trousers that constitute arrestable offences in some parts of the world.
Why?
Thanks to this Instapundit posting linking to this, and then following one of the links there, I have found my way to tifoc, sports blogger extraordinary, and well worth a read if you like cricket, soccer, F1, or just a different angle on things.
His posting of last Thursday refers to an extraordinary coincidence:
In 1981, the Pope died, Prince Charles got married and Liverpool were crowned Champions of Europe.
This year (2005), the Pope died, Prince Charles got married and Liverpool were crowned Champions of Europe.
However, tifoc did not spot this himself, and nor did the emailer who told him about it. (Unless the BBC reporting the same coincidence in April was itself a coincidence.)
Ashes anyone? This bizarre game last Saturday suggests that England are at least in with a chance of doing what they also did in . . . 1981.
I was cruising the net and saw an article titled Time magazine defuses CIA stoush. Sure, the story is interesting but… what the hell does ‘stoush’ mean?
Read this…
…then read this.
Oh how sweet and utterly deserved. As they would say in the on-line gaming world: owned!
Whilst in Zürich on business, I was puzzled to see large teddy bears everywhere on almost every street corner in the centre of town and a veritable platoon of them in the Bahnhoff … there seems to be literally hundreds of them scattered around the city. It is certainly interesting but I have no idea why they are there. Does anyone know?
Interesting but… a bit perplexing Who says the Swiss have no sence of humour?
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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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