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 quiz on what firearm you resemble most certainly fits our ethos better than some of the other tests I’ve seen recently.
I think I could do worse than be compared with the H&K, although I’m more familiar with the Beretta:
# 1 H&K PDW
# 2 Glock 17
# 3 H&K PSG-1
# 4 Dragunov Sniper Rifle
# 5 Desert Eagle
# 6 Alliant Techsystems OICW
# 7 FN P90
# 8 Beretta M92
# 9 H&K MP-5
# 10 Steyr AMR
# 11 IMI UZI
# 12 Vektor CP1
# 13 Franchi SPAS-12
# 14 Taurus Raging Bull
# 15 H&K CAWS
# 16 Colt M1911A1
# 17 H&K G11
# 18 M4A1 w/M203 Grenade Launcher
# 19 MAC-10
# 20 H&K SOCOM
# 21 Kalashnikov AK-47
# 22 Ruger Super Redhawk
# 23 H&K HK69A1
# 24 FA-MAS
# 25 GE XM214 Minigun
Lists of wisdom culled from half a lifetime of banging around doing this and that are all the rage on the Internet just now, and why not? They can be a good laugh, and coming from libertarians they can even smuggle bits of the libertarian meta-context into the mainstream of polite society. So here are some of my bits of attempted wisdom of this sort, in no particular order:
(a) The importance of a country is inversely proportional to the splendour of its postage stamps.
(b) Nothing ever happens in rooms with matching chairs.
(c) Nothing guarantees the ruin of a large institution more certainly than the construction for it and by it of an architecturally magnificent custom-built headquarters. (I got this many years ago from a book by the famous Professor C. Northcote “work expands to fill the time available for its completion” Parkinson. But two questions: What was the Enron HQ like? And: How come Microsoft is still staggering onwards?)
(d) Speculative booms spike and begin their plunge downwards at the exact moment that the rule which all the suckers were following (“being a Lloyds name is a license to print money” (see (c) above), “you’ll never lose if you buy bricks and mortar”, “get your money into dotcoms, mate”, etc.) gets to me.
(e) Movies advertised with quotes in big letters from movie critics, rather than the names in big letters of movie stars, are best avoided.
(f) Any movie described by a movie critic as containing no ideas is packed with ideas, but of a kind that the movie critic disapproves of.
(g) “Courageux” is the French for stupid.
(h) Anything described as “the new rock and roll” is not now very big, and is about to get smaller.
(i) “Interesting” is English for stupid. (Well maybe not always, but it is when my mother says it.)
(j) Bad food is bad for you. Good food is good for you. To avoid doing bad to yourself when you eat bad food, eat an equal amount of good food, thus cancelling out the badness of the bad food. (This one is untrue. Sorry about that (see (m) below).)
(j) Whenever an “alternative” view is promised, it will be the same damn view as the last one, and the one before that, and the one before that …
(k) Whenever anyone says “there is no question of ” whatever it is, it means that there is and someone has just asked it.
(l) Actually following your dream is fine, but avoid using these words out loud. “Following your dream” is American for stupid.
(m) “Sorry” is the English for, well, pretty much anything an English person happens to be thinking. It seldom means that he’s sorry (see (j) above), although it does sometimes.
Perry is doubtless on to something in his post below. Stephanie Dopeout or Stuffy Dupont or whatever the bit of fluff mishandling Brian Linse’s office calls herself is doubtless miffed at not being invited to the Bash. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s also more than a tad jealous that Brian is enjoying the company of other women, especially intelligent ones that don’t have a price tag dangling in their cleavage. Has anyone else noticed how familiar Stephanie is with that whole “babe for cash” routine?
Here’s a tip, Stephanie. Copy Brian’s Roladex (that’s a phone number index, not a watch) while you have the chance. Stockholm Syndrome aside, we at Team Samizdata can be persuasive, verrry, verrry persuasive, and I would not be at all suprised if, upon his return, Brian sends you back to the low budget temporary help office where he found you. If you’re lucky, he’ll even give you a map so you don’t get lost again.
One more thing. Brian can’t afford a PETA lawsuit, so go easy on the hamsters. Remember: The water goes in the bottle. The food goes in the bowl.
I thought I would try the same test Perry tried to see where I was rated. I too was surprised to see some of the influences attributed in the listing though the top three seem about right for me.
1. Rand (100%)
2. Nietzsche (91%)
3. Hume (84%)
4. Sartre (80%)
5. Stoics (80%)
6. Kant (69%)
7. Hobbes (68%)
8. Prescriptivism (64%)
9. Spinoza (57%)
10. Mill (54%)
11. Cynics (53%)
12. Aristotle (51%)
13. Plato (49%)
14. Bentham (46%)
15. Epicureans (44%)
16. Augustine (40%)
17. Ockham (38%)
18. Aquinas (35%)
19. Noddings (22%)
The Ethical Philosophy Selector is an amusing attempt to see what a person’s philosophical influences are. Many blogs seem to be taking the test so I thought “what the heck”… My results leave me rather bemused given my dislike for Sartre.
1. Rand (100%)
2. Mill (90%)
3. Sartre (75%)
4. Epicureans (73%)
5. Kant (73%)
6. Nietzsche (70%)
7. Bentham (69%)
8. Prescriptivism (65%)
9. Aristotle (61%)
10. Stoics (60%)
11. Aquinas (59%)
12. Hume (56%)
13. Augustine (53%)
14. Plato (48%)
15. Spinoza (48%)
16. Cynics (47%)
17. Hobbes (47%)
18. Ockham (33%)
19. Noddings (23%)
BraWarstm! Nice Will Vehrs over on Blog Watch 2 makes a request for a Valentine Day Party report and next thing I know I have caused an international incident. So do Megan and I get those cool light-sabre thingies?
Just call me Chaos Girl 
There is nothing to the rumour that mentioning BRITNEY SPEARS increases the hit rate for a blog.
Blog me baby one more time!
Miss Veen has a series of sublime cat haiku which will be immediately recognisable to people who live with cats. For example:
The rule for today.
Touch my tail, I shred your hand.
New rule tomorrow.
Blur of motion, then-
Silence, me, a paper bag
What is so funny?
Small brave carnivores
Kill pine cones and mosquitos
Fear vacuum cleaner.
Read them all. Meow.
“Don’t you ‘honey’ me, you worthless fuzz-ball you do nothing except lie around all day swatting flies and telling stupid jokes to all your moron pals while I have to strip all the meat and feed the kids. Have you ever lifted so much as a paw to clean this cage? My mother warned me about you, she said you were no good…”
[Thanks to dear friend and Samizdata reader Ed Collins for supplying the photo]
Perry, question. Did not one of your dead relatives preside over the manufacture of an airplane named like the above? Was it not one of those post-war jet-propelled contrivances with a pod in the middle for the driver and the engine, and then two sort of strut things going backwards from the two wings to support the tail, in the manner of those flaps they have on the back of grand prix cars?
If I’m right about this, and following on from David Carr’s outing of himself and myself as vampires, do we not have a collective name for us all, or at least for David and me? Yes I think I finally have an answer, after more than half a century, to that Question you always get asked in bars and at parties: “What do you do?”
“I am a de Havilland Vampire.”
[Tentatively attributed to William DeBuvitz]
The August 2000 fire at the Los Alamos Laboratory had one significant consequence. A secret scientific document, discovered in a bunker whose security systems were mostly destroyed by the fire, was leaked to the public last weekend. Actually it reveals nothing that we didn’t already suspect. But it does show that the government has known all along that, besides arsenic, lead, mercury, radon, strontium and plutonium, one more extremely deadly and pervasive element also exists. This startling new discovery — the heaviest element now known to science — has been tentatively named GOVERNMENTIUM (Gv).
Conspiracy theorists speculate that Governmentium has been in existence since the time of the Manhattan Project or even the Philadelphia Experiment, and kept top-secret by the CIA. Perhaps its existence accounts for the explosive growth of bureaucracy over the last half-century. This astonishing element has no protons or electrons, thus having an atomic number of 0. It does, however, have 1 neutron, 15 assistant neutrons, 35 deputy neutrons, 80 vice neutrons, 145 supervisory neutrons, 165 team leader neutrons and 225 consulting neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 666.
These 666 particles are held together in the nucleus by a force that involves the continuous exchange of meson-like particles called “MORONS”, themselves surrounded by vast and undeterminable quantities of lepton-like particles called PEONS. Since it has no electrons, Governmentium is INERT. However, it can be detected chemically as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. According to the discoverers, a miniscule amount of Governmentium causes a reaction which would normally take less than a second over four days to complete. Unlike all other known elements, Governmentium does not decay measured according to its half-life, but instead undergoes continuous reorganization in which assistant neutrons, deputy neutrons and vice neutrons exchange places, causing a sample mass of Governmentium to actually INCREASE over time since with each reorganization some of the PEONS inevitably become MORONS, and, finally, neutrons, thereby forming entirely new isotopes. This characteristic of PEON-MORON promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Governmentium is formed whenever MORONS anywhere reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as the “CRITICAL MORASS.”
Governmentium has been found to concentrate in certain key locations such as governments, large corporations, and especially in universities. It can usually be found polluting the best appointed and best maintained buildings. Scientists warn that Governmentium is known to be toxic and recommend plenty of alcoholic fluids followed by bed rest after even low levels of exposure.
Perry left out the best bit of Ken Layne’s comments, namely:
“I also want to blow up that planet of Furbies who ruined the third Star Wars movie … before PETA gets over there. The PETA ship will come out of hyperspace and find nothing but pelts floating around.”
I find that so inspiring.
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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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