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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This is from the ‘The Basra Rose’, the Iraq deployment section of the Red Rose, the newsletter of the 1st Battalion The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment:
WEATHER
Mon – HOT
Tue – VERY HOT
Wed – UNBELIEVABLY HOT
Thu – SO HOT YOU’LL CRY
Fri – AS HOT AS THE SUN
Sat – SO HOT LOCALS BURST INTO FLAMES
Sun – AS HOT AS THE DEVIL’S SCROTUM
In other words, it is a tad hot in Basra. Just so you know.
Sometimes, the gods of the internet just give you a gift.
A new panel charged with finding ways to make Connecticut government run more efficiently will release its report six months later than scheduled.
Yeah, I want to take advice on efficiency from these guys.
hehehehehehe. Just click the damn link, I am laughing too hard to write anymore.
In reverse order, they are:
10. You can trade an old .44 for two new .22s
9. You can keep one handgun at home and have another for when you’re
on the road.
8. If you admire a friend’s handgun, and tell him so, he will probably
let you try it out a few times.
7. Your primary handgun doesn’t mind if you have a backup.
6. Your handgun will stay with you even if you’re out of ammo.
5. A handgun doesn’t take up a lot of closet space.
4. Handguns function normally every day of the month.
3. A handgun doesn’t ask “Do these new grips make me look fat?”
2. A handgun doesn’t mind if you go to sleep after you use it.
AND…..THE NUMBER ONE REASON WHY A HANDGUN IS BETTER THAN A WOMAN….
1. You can buy a silencer for a handgun.
[My thanks to Dr.Chris Tame for posting this to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.]
Following the recent diplomatic spat between Italy and Germany, the EU Commission has moved to ensure that there is no repetition of such unfortunate incidents with a ‘Draft Directive on Cross-Border Insults’.
The new directive sets out a regulatory framework which will, in future, require all citizens of all EU countries to follow appropriate guidelines before publicly uttering any sort of cross-border insult.
The guidelines provide:
- Any insult which includes reference to national stereotypes can only be directed against a person or persons who is/are permanently domiciled in or citizens of the country to which the said stereotype is applicable. Insults may not be directed at persons who are merely resident in such countries.
- Insults which include reference to multiple stereoptypes such as ‘Arrogant beachtowel-hogging Schnitzel-brained Kraut metalbasher’ and ‘Pizza-munching dago wop greaseball monkey’ shall first obtain a written approval to utter the insult from the appropriate licensing body in the jurisdiction in which the insulter is a citizen or permanently domiciled.
- For the purposes of enforcement of these provisions, each member state of the Union shall establish an appropriate licensing body.
- In the case of a person wishing to utter a cross-border insult for reproduction in any print or electronic medium they must first provide a draft copy of the proposed insult to the proprietors of the said medium not less than three days before publication of the insult is due. This is to ensure that fair representations can be made by the person or organisation against whom the insult is directed.
- In the case of general insults or non-national stereotype abuse, the words used by the insulter must be words or terms that are recognised as being of an abusive or insulting nature in at least one or more Union member state. The use of Americanised insults such as ‘dickwad’, ‘dog-breath’, ‘asshat’ and ‘freakazoid’ are strictly forbidden as being inconsistent with European cultural values.
- Once a cross-border insult has been uttered (in accordance with these provisions) the person or organisaton against whom the insult was directed shall have a right of reply. In order to permit such right to be exercised the insulter shall allow a period of at least seven days before uttering any further insults.
French EU Commissioner Bertrand Maginot expressed his satisfaction with the new rules:
“We cannot simply allow insults to be traded in this uncontrolled cowboy fashion. If they are not subject to proper democratic control they could disrupt the harmony of European institutions.”
Critics of the new rules say they do not go far enough as insults that remain within national borders are still totally unregulated. However, a Commission sub-committee is expected to convene early next year to examine methods of regulating domestic insults as well.
Samizdata.net’s many spies have told us that these are being stockpiled in Iran for use during the coming ‘transitional times’.
The inimitable Alice (well, only by herself) sums up some ‘lightbulb blogs’. In the spirit of pro-Samizdata bias I select two for your amusement:
How many David Carrs does it take to change a lightbulb?
I had thought that the madness of last week’s lightbulb-blowing could not be toppled. I was, of course, wrong. Things are much worse than I thought then, in my light-hearted, innocent, Morris-dancing kind of way, and it is now perfectly apparent to all of us here at Samizdata.net that today’s lightbulb lunacy is tomorrow’s Mysteron plot to destroy the universe. Those who disagree must be conquered in the strongest terms. I refuse either to change the bulb or not change it. It is an outrage that anyone should dare to ask such a thing in the first place. I personally refuse to compromise and demand that they cease forthwith!
How many Brian Micklethwaits does it take to change a lightbulb?
Yesterday I posted about this article. Tomorrow I am going to post about this blog, which related to an earlier posting of mine here, about this rather interesting subject from last Thursday, which I’ve been wondering about for weeks, to do with car parks. I wonder whether anyone will comment or not? Sometimes they comment many times, and other times they don’t. It’s hard to predict these things. In the meantime, I might watch Friends tonight. Not sure yet, depends whether or not I blog about lightbulbs.
Heh.
In the last few days Britain has been depicted as the Paradise (soon to be) Lost in the clutches of the Federasts. Hope has been expressed that the British public may stir eventually and oppose Blair’s finishing touches on handing over the country’s sovereignty. The word “bovine” has been mentioned in descriptions of the UK public and the adjective is excruciatingly close to the truth.
Only with a public as sleepy and ‘tolerant’ of the destructive antics of its politicians and bureaucrats as the British public has been, a particular breed of Homo politicus characteristic to these isles could have evolved.
The species, known as Bureaucrat idioticus can be found in most governmental bodies, with highest density around local councils. In the last 50 years, it has adapted to a change in its original natural habitat from large forested ministerial departments to smaller, murkier quango marshlands.
It belongs to a larger family of Homo collectivicus, sub-group Homo nonsensicus, indigenous to Great Britain, a genetic dead-end variation on Homo socialist (see below).
However, the most famous branch of Homo collectivicus family is Homo communist, spread around the globe in the last century but currently experiencing an evolutionary hiatus.
The ubiquitous Homo socialist, another influential branch, occupies the same evolutionary niche in its biological family as the cockroach in the insect family. Finally, the recently prospering Homo transnationalis has made some headway to the top levels of the British public institutions, the Government and the Courts.
In the last decade, the Bureaucrat idioticus has been inter-breeding with Bureaucrat corruptus (its continental variety, as well as with its closely related Bureaucrat sanctimonis), which resulted in a virulent Bureaucrat federalis whilst facilitating deeper and wider entrenchment of Homo transnationalis in Great Britain.
Oh, we are so ready for the EU primeval soup!
Note: The ‘family tree’ for Homo Liberalis (original meaning) to follow.
In case our esteemed readership has not yet heard of FLAIR (the Far-Left Alliance of Indignant Revisionists) I have the pleasure to relay an interview taken from its case files.
The interview was conducted by Barry Fest, a long-time associate and one-time student of Brummagem Groat, who agreed to interview his erstwhile mentor on behalf of FLAIR. The occasion was the publication of Dr. Groat’s latest book, I Dunno: The Working Person’s Guide to Postmodern Relativism by the Belverton University Press. Dr. Groat is professor emeritus of Talkmatics at Belverton.
An Interview with the Relativist
FLAIR: Thank you for your time today, Dr. Groat. I’d like first to ask you about the subtitle of your new book, “The Working Person’s Guide to Postmodern Relativism.” Why does the working person need a guide such as this?
GROAT: For too long the working person has played victim foot soldier for the corporate conglomerates and their Pentagon enablers. Whenever the corpagon has wanted to go to war to protect profits, it has used absolutes – most notoriously the absolutes of “right” and “wrong” – to persuade the working persons of one nation to take up arms against the working persons of another. And whenever working persons have seemed ready to establish a government for working persons, the interested powers have eliminated the threat by appealing to the absolutes embedded, like post-hypnotic suggestions, in the subconscious of the working person. The rote inculcation of these absolutes is performed at an early age by traditional family units, which act as manufacturing plants for the corpagon’s future pawns and patsys.
The result is that by the time the working person is old enough to actually start working, he is a thrall of these absolutes and does not even know it.
I Dunno is intended to persuade the working person that he is better off without absolutes. – What we in the West consider right and wrong is not what everyone else in the world considers right and wrong. I try to make it plain that, in fact, one man’s wrong is another man’s right. Until working persons learn to accept this they will continue in their roles as ad hoc button men for their corporate bosses.
FLAIR: At what point did you realize there was a need to convince Joe – if you’ll pardon the colloquialism – Sixpack of the need to trade in his old absolutes for new ones?
GROAT: I’ve always – Wait a minute, I think you may be missing a very important point. It isn’t that this so-called Joe Sixpack needs newer or what you might even call better absolutes. He needs to discard the notion of absolutes entirely.
FLAIR: And what is the most compelling reason for him to do that?
GROAT: As I said, it will be impossible for him to find that his notions of right and wrong will be accepted by everyone. A notion of virtue produced by the Western process of reason will not be accepted in those societies that reject reason. – And how can you have a universal truth that is not endorsed universally? The Westerner, and that includes the working person, needs to take another approach: the approach I describe in I Dunno.
For the full text of the interview visit The Radical Capitalist.
The hunt for the fugitive Texas Democrat legislators has intensified with a set of playing cards being issued to troops in Iraq in case any of them turn up there.
[Alan K. Henderson rocks]
Others already having remarked that it is a slow news day here on Samizdata, I share the following extract by Harry Turtledove in the spirit of a sunny Friday evening. Have a good weekend.
30th November 1491
To: Their Hispanic Majesties Fernando II and Isabella
From: The Special Committee on the Quality of Life
Re: The environmental impact upon Spain of the proposed expedition of the Genoese navigator Cristóbel Colón, styled in his native Italian Cristoforo Colombo.
The commission of learned men and mariners, established by your Majesties under the chairmanship of Fr. Hernando de Talavera, during the period 1486-90 studied exhaustively the proposals set forth by the Genoese captain Colón and rejected them as being extravagant and impractical. → Continue reading: Report of the Special Committee on the Quality of Life
The Anglosphere is divided over the metric system… sure, it makes vastly more sense but, damn it, it is just too damn French!
But do not despair! That scholar and wit, the inimitable Diamond Geezer, has come up with a new and vastly superior system of measures suitable for the 21st Century. For example:
Length – the freedom
Definition: the distance one tank can advance in one minute
- the distance from Basra to Baghdad = 1 megafreedom
And who says genius is dead in Britain? Oh, yeah, that was me. Sorry.
Update: As usual, blogspot’s archives are phuked up, so just go here and scroll down.
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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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