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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Heard this rather good gag at a financial conference this morning:
A parish vicar dies and goes up to the Pearly Gates where he is greeted by St Peter. St Peter bids the vicar to step aside and sit on a wooden bench and wait for some formalities to be dealt with.
About half an hour later a farmer comes up, dressed in his overalls. “Ah, Mr Jones, welcome to Heaven! Please do step through the gates,” St Peter says. The vicar looks on, a mite baffled, but keeps quiet.
An hour later, a hospital surgeon of brilliant renown comes up, and again St Peter joyfully waves the good doctor through. Again, the vicar bites his tongue and waits to see what happens.
Suddenly, a sleek young man in a suit carrying a copy of the Wall Street Journal steps in. “Wonderful to see you Mr Gekko!” shouts St Peter. “So good to see you at last.”
At this point our vicar can contain himself no longer. “Why have you let in that capitalist pig through the gates while I, a humble servant of God, have to sit outside on a wooden bench?” the vicar exclaims.
“Well,” St Peter replies, “We let folk into Heaven these days because of results. You see, the farmer gets in because he produced food. The surgeon got in because he healed people. And you, dear vicar, produced no results. In your sermons most of the congregation fell asleep.”
“What sort of results did that hedge fund manager give, then?” asked the vicar.
“Well, that guy produced money for his clients. And unlike you, vicar, when he was at work, his clients were praying.”
…or how to ensure your kids are more technologically literate than you.
One of the best ways to motivate someone is to present the person with a challenge. For children, forbidding something works equally well, if not better. So when I came across this product in one of those little catalogues that come with Sunday newspapers, I immediately realised its potential to do an amazing service in further advancing the technological awareness of the young generation.
Achieve total control over TV time
Worried about the hours your children spend watching TV or playing computer games? This remarkable new British invention hands back control to parents. Using the electronic Parent Key, you program the child’s daily viewing allowances into Screenblock – say, 7-8 am and 5-7 pm. As the TV mains cable is routed via the locked compartment, Screenblock controls the power supply, turning it on and off at the times requested. But here’s the best bit! It also comes with two electronic cards which act like a football ref’s cards. Wave the yellow one at Screenblock and today’s allowance is reduced by 15 mins – and red means the TV stays off until tomorrow. The all-important Parent Key also overrides all settings when the kids are in bed and it’s time for grown-up viewing.
So far, so good. But if parents led by the desire to curb their children’s TV-viewing habits succumb to the advertising and purchase such devices en masse, pretty soon many a technologically gifted whizkid will be popular, spots or no spots. Not only ways to disable the screenblock will be devised, but kids will be ‘instructed’ in how to do that themselves without their modifications being detected. Part of the solution will have to be the inability of parents to notice the ‘adjustment’. Aren’t you just grateful to the screenblock inventors for broadening your children’s technological horizons?
I came across this little comment on man’s foibles in the middle of the chaos known collectively as “the holidays”. At the time I couldn’t do more than check the validity of the article which, I’m sorry to say, was accurate. While the date would now classify it blogospherically speaking as an archeological anecdote, I felt the issue it addresses is still poignant.
This article appeared in a local US newspaper on Nov. 15, 2002 but it’s importance may well be global.
Absolutely the Least Substantial Reason for a Knife Fight:
Police in Mansfield Township and Hackettstown, N.J., charged Emmanuel Nieves, 23, with aggravated assault on Nov. 13 after he allegedly slashed the face of his friend Erik Saporito, 21, as the two men fought after arguing over which one had more hair on his buttocks. [Express-Times (Easton, Pa.), 11-15-02]
As with any criminal act, there is something we as a society can learn. The lesson here is obvious: the bruised male ego can be a violent thing.
The more tickilish question, and the one we must answer if we are to prevent future attacks of this kind, is what finally triggered the assault? Was it ridicule (ha ha. your butt’s hairer than mi-ine!) or was it envy (my butt’s hairer than yours! nah na nahna na.)?
Its a sensitive issue.
The wonders of capitalism, or the false needs of the alienating consumer society? This gadget is designed to fulfill a role which is obviously important in badly ventilated homes and offices.
The question I would like to know is, does this methane filter reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and therefore should it be made compulsory under the terms of the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty?
Three pints of gas a day for an average person? You mean it’s more for politicians?
Do you have left-wing friends and relations? Are you stuck for ideas on what to buy for them this Christmas? Then fret no longer. Just hurry along to your nearest major retail outlet and pick up the latest version of ‘EEZI-SCREED’, the fast and trouble-free method of constructing perfect left-wing articles.
The EEZI-SCREED kit comes with a drawstring bag and a series of small plastic tablets printed with words like:
‘BUSH’, ‘CORPORATE’, ‘GREED’, ‘RACIST’, ‘ENRON’, ‘ZIONIST’, ‘RIGHT-WING’, ‘IMPERIALIST’, ‘OIL’, ‘SELFISH’, ‘AFRICA’, ‘SOCIAL’, ‘JUSTICE’, ‘INEQUALITY’, ‘CARING’, ‘ENVIRONMENT’ and ‘THIRD-WORLD’
together with a generous supply of prepositions and definite and indefinite articles.
All you have to do is to put all the tablets into the drawstring bag, give them a good shake and then empty the bag of its contents onto a table or other flat surface to create the perfect left-wing rant ready for publication in the Guardian, the Independent or the Democratic Underground.
‘EEZI-SCREED’ is the ideal Christmas present for the journalist, college professor or activist that you love. It’s the gift that’s guaranteed to provide endless hours of malcontented wailing and defeatist misery.
Get ‘EEZI-SCREED’ now, while stocks last!
Mark Steyn is in rare form, delivering a splendid satirical roasting of the detestable Harold Pinter.
‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose,’ Pinter continued. ‘You know why that is? Depleted uranium’?
[…]
“George W Bush says he’s dreaming of a white Christmas,” sneered Mr Pinter. “But for the rest of us it’s a nightmare. I wake up feeling like a man trapped in a snowy knick-knack with his face pressed up against the glass howling, ‘Let me out of here’, only to be buried under another ton of artificial flakes.”
Splendid stuff. It is a continuing marvel to me that Pinter can still appear in polite society in Britain without having doors slammed in his face.
It’s healthy to have a small amount of paranoia, but these guys have more than their fair share. Regrettably they no longer produce material but that said there is still nine years worth of the funniest (and sickest) cartoons I have ever run across to while away a lunch hour.
One of the things I like about America, is that Britain is far too stuffy, po-faced and politically-correct for this kind of thing. (Media player required)
[My thanks to Samizdata reader Boris Kuperschmidt for the link]
[Update: the link seems to have been withdrawn]
The irreverent Brainstrust reports how “devastated victims on all sides of the Miss World riots have claimed that they were merely trying to make an amusing point in an ironic manner and that their opposite numbers ‘have no sense of humour at all’.”
Read here about a comedy fatwa and call for a full-scale ironic jihad… It’s Friday, for God’s sake!
“This is my open letter to the Great Satan America.
You may ask, why do I hate America and fight against it? I answer, because America is the propogator of all the evil in the world and you worship only Jewish Usury and Krispy-Kreme Donuts. What kind of a culture is that? Only America sends coach-parties of Senior Citizens to desecrate and despoil our Holy Lands. I can but weep for despair amidst an ocean of Land’s End polo shirts and stretch pants. Is there no end to your cruelty, America?
Until now, I have been content with making rude gestures to them behind their backs and grossly overcharging them for bogus relics and bottled water. But no more can I suffer these indignities. Now is the time to act.
I now declare endless jihad on the Great Satan but, you have one last chance, America, to avoid this eternal war which will lead to your destruction, by agreeing to meet my demands:
1. Bill Clinton is not black and he must get over it.
2. Britney Spears must perform her next music video wearing chador
3. Do something about Michael Jackson. Now!
4. It is time for Barbra Streisand to retire. Nothing worth so much as a camel-dropping has come out of that woman’s mouth since ‘Funny Girl’
5. You must arrange a guest starring role for me on ‘The Simpsons’
6. Please tell Al Gore to shut the f*ck up about the Florida recount. He lost! Enough whining already.
7. You must immediately refund the sum of $275 that was outrageously stolen from my cousin, Musal, by a Jew-inspired tax audit of his dry cleaning business in Chicago.
Unless you accede to all of my demands, America, then I will be all over you like a cheap burqa. You will know no respite from me. I will haunt you both by day and by night. I will take the women from your homesteads, the cattle from your farmsteads and the knobs from your bedsteads.
You have been warned, Infidel.
Osama”
I have come across a useful list of terms that I post herewith for the benefit of our US readers. For more insults regarding the common language which divides us, please click on the link. 
British
biscuit
scone
lump of dough
fag
homo
gay
socialist
whig
tory
right-wing tory
green
bloke<
sod
oops
oh
jolly
very
really
quite
guy
bloody
darn
,
.
!
nude
nudity
flat
lift
chemists
loo
complain
chips
maize
corn
coffee
tepid water
cold water
tipsy
drunk
pissed
annoyed
irate
nice
cool
cold
snow
drizzle
rain
light breeze
windy
foreign weather
brolly
telly
umpire
bowler
football
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American
cookie
biscuit
scone
cigarette
fag
happy
communist
socialist
democrat
republican
tree-hugging
buddy
fuck
fuck
fuck
fucking
fucking
fucking
fucking
motherfucker
motherfucking
motherfucking
, you know
, know what I mean
, man!
pornographic
porn
apartment
elevator
drug store
rest room
sue
fries
corn
grain
espresso
coffee
beer
drunk
plastered
dead drunk
pissed
postal
cool
cold
freezing
snow storm
rain storm
flood warning
wind storm
hurricane
sunshine
umbrella
TV
referee
pitcher
soccer
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Via Monkeyfarts.
An interesting hysterical historical document has come into the possession of Rand Simberg.
It is a good thing this sort of idiotic nonsense would never happen in our more enlightened era, right? Right?
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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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