August 03, 2005
"I want to send you money" for Accelerando...
...the digital (PDF) version I'm reading now, but Charlie Stross tells his readers not to do so. I will, however, be buying several copies from Amazon as gifts to friends. Damn it's good!
February 20, 2005
Neil Smith calls Mike Lorrey out on the floor
On a mailing list I frequent, list owner Mike Lorrey took an unfair swipe at an old friend of mine, libertarian science fiction novelist L. Neil Smith. I forward the message in its entirety, and Neil took the time to respond to Mike in an essay released today, "Under False Colors."
Mike has quickly responded by taking the argument to his own blog, in a post counter-titled "Under Honest Colors."
September 01, 2004
Quote of the Day
As [Charles] Adams writes, the Lincoln Cult is terrified that this truth will become public knowledge, for it if does, it means that Lincoln "destroyed the separation of powers; destroyed the place of the Supreme Court in the Constitutional scheme of government. It would have made the executive power supreme, over all others, and put the president, the military, and the executive branch of government, in total control of American society. The Constitution would have been at an end."
Exactly right.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo
"Lincoln’s 'Great Crime': The Arrest Warrant for the Chief Justice"
August 28, 2004
Quote of the Day
You might want to take note of the interconnection between purpose and action in the minimal State. The minimal State does not, for instance, build art museums, because it does not exist to promote art but to enforce agreements and provide mutual defense. In order to build an art museum, the State would need to acquire the resources with which to build it. If people are willing to donate those resources freely, there is no need for the State to build the museum — it could be built privately. If people are not willing to donate the resources freely, then the act of forcibly taking the needed resources turns the purpose of the minimal State on its head — instead of enforcing the decision by the participants to respect each other's lives and property so that their own lives and property will be respected, the State then becomes an agent for some to abscond with the property of others. I may think it is a good idea to build a home for orphans, but if I take your resources against your will to do it, whether I'm an official of the State or a private citizen, I have violated the truce. To obey the truce, I must convince you to voluntarily provide resources for my goals, whether by trading with you or appealing to your charitable instincts.
In short, if the justification of the minimal State is that it exists, at the behest of a collection of sovereign individuals, to enforce a mutually beneficial truce among those who choose to participate in it, and to organize mutual defense against those who choose not to participate by violating the truce, then that justification does not reasonably permit the expropriation of resources for the purpose of projects that are merely laudable.
Note that this view of the minimal State cannot provide a justification for initiating warfare in distant lands which are not a threat its citizens' safety, regardless of how laudable it might be to re-arrange the social structures of those foreign places to suit enlightened tastes. However, by the same token, neither position prevents individuals from engaging in such activities on their own, at their own risk and with their own resources.
August 22, 2004
Washington Times article on the Free State Project
The Washington Times today has a rather long, neutral article on the Free State Project in New Hampshire.
August 17, 2004
L. Neil Smith on the "Hollow Woman"
I, like L. Neil Smith, didn't know until recently that the Statue of Liberty had been completely shut down since 11 September 2001, only recently re-opened "following about $7,000,000 worth of police state alterations." In an irony of circumstance that inspired the article's title, "Hollow Woman," the re-opening ceremony was presided over by a real-life hollow woman, Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton, whom Neil knew from her days in the Colorado Libertarian Party.
July 25, 2004
Quote of the Day
So, there are folks in Washington who must go in to the office every day and think they are involved with keeping our networks secure, when in fact nothing they do has any impact on the problem at all. This kind of thing appears to be a common feature of large bureaucracies. I've been struggling to come up with a pithy word or metaphor for it without much success. The only thing that pops into mind for me today is the Aztec priesthood. Those where the folks who thought that if they didn't cut out someone's heart every day, the sun would stop rising.
It is sort of the inverse of a "Cargo Cult." Instead of your actions bringing about no results even though you think you're doing everything right, the results you want keep happening even though your actions have nothing to do with it at all, and you are convinced you are the cause.
July 24, 2004
"Diminished Capacity": Perry Metzger has a blog now
My old friend Perry Metzger gave in today and finally started a blog. Now to convince him to add a comment mechanism...
Quote of the Day
First of all, the Founding Fathers loathed a democracy, calling it a tyranny of the majority. The United States is not a democracy. The United States is a constitutional Republic based on private party and individual rights. In the 1860s we passed the 13th amendment, which presumably eliminated slavery and it took well over 100 years to erase the racial hatred between the whites and the blacks. How does the American government think that they can go into another country and
override thousands of years of culture? It is not our job to export anything except products and services.
July 23, 2004
Quote of the Day
Security is an important aspect of a good life, but if you live in a society where a government potentate can nullify your citizenship and completely strip you of your rights just because he doesn't like your looks, with no real accountability for his actions, then you are not secure at all.
Self-defense is as basic a bodily function as eating and defecating, and cannot truly be delegated -- unless you want to live life as an effective cripple, or as someone else's property.
Scott Bieser
July 22, 2004
Quote of the Day
Personally, while I like [L.] Neil [Smith]'s idea in Hope of a "Bill of Rights Party", I think a better idea would be a "Mind your own damned business party":
Don't like guns? Don't own one, and mind your own damned business!
Don't like homosexuals? Don't associate with them, and mind your own damned business!
Don't like pagans? Don't associate with them, and mind your own damned business!
Don't like nuclear power? Don't use it, and mind your own damned business!
Don't like hunting? Don't hunt, and mind your own damned business!
See how easy it is? All the individual has to do is live and let live, follow the basic precepts of ALL major religions, as far as love, tolerance and respect, and mind their own damned business!
Ron Beatty
July 15, 2004
Quote of the Day
...the first highways were in fact privately funded, and, it can be argued that Xerox's networking protocols were better than TCP/IP at the time, but that's all another story. The general point is, sure the government does some good sometimes, just as even that crazy neighbor who no one suspected would go off and kill 50 peoples always seemed so quiet and did great things for the community playground project. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I can
point at dozens of things the government has done reasonably well, but there is no feedback mechanism that rewards the bureaucrats who did the good things and punishes the idiots who run the DMV for doing bad things, so there is no likelihood those seeds will sprout into oaks.
Meanwhile, though, dumb companies that piss off customers go under all the time, and good ones make people rich. It isn't that the same sort of idiots who run government agencies can't get their hands on companies for a while -- it is that they can't keep running things that way for long before the well runs dry.
Perry Metzger
June 28, 2004
ANARQUÍA: An Alternate History of the Spanish Civil War
Anders Monsen informs us of the publication by Brad Linaweaver and J. Kent Hastings of "ANARQUÍA: An Alternate History of the Spanish Civil War," which sounds like a great deal of fun in the vein of L. Neil Smith's "The Probability Broach." I'm a fan of Linaweaver's work, such as his excellent "Moon of Ice," which comes to market far too rarely.
June 25, 2004
BATF forcing rocket amateurs out of the field
This is nasty and upsetting news from Steve Pegram: "Rocket Hobbyists Dropping Hobby" due to hamfisted, jackbooted regulation by the goons of the BATF. Just when we're seeing the spirit of innovation in rocketry and space travel rekindled, the government is working to snuff that spirit. This crap needs to be fought... which seems to be happening by default, since many rocket hobbyists have chosen to ignore F-Troop anyway.
June 23, 2004
Austin, Texas becoming an LP powerhouse
Melissa Seaman passes along this interesting bit of local TV news coverage of the strength of the Libertarian Party in Austin, Texas, home of national candidate Michael Badnarik.
Michael Badnarik on the O'Reilly Show tonight
Eric Pavao reports that Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik of Austin, Texas will be interviewed by Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly tonight.
June 22, 2004
Quote of the Day
Bill of Rights Nullification by the US Supreme Court:
They have nullified the first: you have to be a politician to criticise a politician on TV or radio before an election.
They have nullified the second, repeatedly, since 1934.
They have nullified the third: we are now serfs, via taxation. We don't directly quarter the troops... they wouldn't lower themselves to live in our hovels.
They have nullified the fourth: there is no such thing as an illegal search anymore.
They have nullified the fifth: remaining silent is now unlawful.
They have nullified the sixth: you only get a speedy trial if the Supreme Court decides you deserve one, jurors are subordinated to the judges, and you can be tried secretly or get no trial at all if you are declared a "terrorist."
They have nullified the seventh: unless your civil case involves the exchange of 21 antique silver dollars, you have no right to a jury trial.
They have nullified the eighth: if you are declared a terrorist, it's torture and Gitmo time for you.
They have nullified the ninth: apparently the commerce clause and vague language about the common good cannot be contradicted by a later AMENDMENT.
They have nullified the tenth: no Supreme Court judge since the 1803 Marbury decision has obeyed that one.
The United States Supreme Court has finally nullified every one of the Bill of Rights amendments through judicial fiat. The destruction of rule of law in the U.S. is now complete.
Kristopher Barrett
June 21, 2004
"SpaceShipOne, Government Zero"
This is the in-flight face of the first non-government, privately-financed test pilot to earn American astronaut's wings:
The full story here. Now go out and buy a copy of Victor Koman's "Kings of the High Frontier."
Space history to be made in less than 7 hours
The world's first privately funded manned spaceflight will occur in less than 7 hours from now, with the takeoff of the carrier ship and spaceship from Mojave Airport at 0630 California time.
June 09, 2004
Quote of the Day
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
Ronald Reagan
June 02, 2004
C-SPAN archive coverage of the Libertarian Party national convention
I found out from posters to the smith2004-discuss list this morning that C-SPAN keeps video archives of recent shows available for downloading. A search for "libertarian" on their website yields all the video coverage of the recent Libertarian Party nominating convention in Atlanta along with a follow-up interview (which I'm playing now) with the newly nominated presidential candidate Michael Badnarik.
Quote of the Day
All of us must begin telling everyone we know—especially if they're not libertarians—that if they're fed up with this mess the Republicans have made in Iraq and Afghanistan, if they want to see the USA Patriot Act go down in flames, along with all the unconstitutional intrusions and limitations that it has inflicted on us, if they want to see drug laws, the income tax, and federal gun laws repealed, and if they don't believe life under a Kerry Administration would be any better than it has been under Bush, their only option is to see both "major" parties shocked and embarrassed by a high turnout for Michael Badnarik.
May 27, 2004
Quote of the Day
I believe it was Dr. Johnson who said famously that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." It is also the first refuge of an idiot. My loyalty is to the ideas on which this country was founded, not to the two-century-long string of governments that have done their best to destroy them.
May 07, 2004
Quote of the Day
Competitive systems can operate to check each other's excesses. Consider the codes governing the relations between U.S. corporations and their shareholders. The fifty states compete to offer standard corporation codes; companies can either use these default terms or tailor specific provisions in their corporate charters. (A company does not have to be physically headquartered in a state to claim it as the corporation's legal domicile.) Agreeable state rules, backed by well-established case law, can significantly cut the cost of doing business. The competition among states for incorporations and the taxes they bring makes legislatures responsive to new ideas and changing business conditions.
Equally important, company managers can't get away with adopting just any code that makes their lives easy. These rules govern a two-way agreement—between the business (essentially, its managers) and the shareholders. Opportunistic managers who try to use state laws to help themselves at the stockholders' expense are checked by another source of competition: the financial markets. So, for instance, when Pennsylvania passed a law designed to make hostile takeovers difficult, protecting managers but making stock less valuable, pressures from falling stock prices pushed most of the state's publicly traded companies to opt out of the law's provisions. Few other states adopted the same law, lest they lose incorporations.
The legal scholar Roberta Romano, who calls this federalist system of competing rules "the genius of American corporate law," writes: "As the Pennsylvania experience illustrates, the federal system provides a safety net against the consequences of harmful state laws. Some jurisdictions will have no or only mild takeover regulation, and this constrains how much other jurisdictions can act in this area and how much firms can take advantage of value-decreasing laws, especially when major commercial states such as Delaware and California have less onerous laws." Having many sources of competing rules, rather than a single, national standard, makes finding good rules—and eliminating or limiting bad ones—more likely.
Virginia Postrel
The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress, p145 (from Chapter 5, "The Bonds of Life")
April 06, 2004
Serenity: A diary of our family's experience in moving to the country
Apologies for Bob Tipton for not having gotten back to him in email, but I'd like to take the time to announce here that he's launched an interesting new blog, "Serenity: A diary of our family's experience in moving to the country." Included is a review of handgun training at Storm Mountain and other interesting material. Oh, and he does post photos; I'm a sucker for eyecandy, so I like that.
March 05, 2004
The Not So Wild Wild West: "hard work, trade, tedium, and peace"
Brian Micklethwait today on Samizdata comments on the myth of the "Wild West" that some of us have for years known as a myth:
One of the most potent anti-liberty memes has been that simple phrase, the "Wild West". Wild as in lawless, violent, murderous. And one of the most potent pro-liberty memes is therefore, if only because it negates the first meme, the fact that the Wild West was, in the words of a famous Journal of Libertarian Studies article by Terry Anderson, the Not So Wild Wild West.
This anti-"Wild West" meme deserves wider propagation.
Vermont town votes to secede & join New Hampshire
I'm not making this up. I heard this on Fox News a couple of days ago, the day on which the affluent ski resort town of Killington, Vermont voted to leave Vermont and join New Hampshire, 25 miles east, under which it was originally chartered in 1761. They're doing this in protest of outrageous Vermont property taxes... $20 goes out, $1 returns.
The Fox News online article summarizing the event contains mention of a significant factor that was missing from the broadcast version: the active participation of members of the Free State Project at the historic vote! Read and see. Also check out the TV ads the FSP used to help incite the vote.
Good luck to them: they've got a hard fight to undertake in the Vermont legislature, which will not want to lose one of their primary cash cows.
January 26, 2004
January 20, 2004
Movie adaptation of "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" in the works
Thanks to Anarchist on the smith2004-discuss list for passing on SciFi.com's report today that Tim Minear is working on a screen adaptation of Heinlein's libertarian classic novel:
Genre TV producer Tim Minear (Angel, Wonderfalls) told SCI FI Wire that he has been hired to write a screenplay adaptation of Robert A. Heinlein's 1966 SF novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. The novel deals with a 2076 rebellion on a former penal colony on the moon and has been read as an allegory about libertarianism and its costs.
Can't wait to see the trailers for this film. Minear wrote or co-wrote 4 of the scripts for the excellent Firefly series, I should add.
January 18, 2004
Quote of the Day
Being elected President and taking my cues from Alexander Hope. L. Neil Smith would be my Secretary of State ("go fuck yourselves, fellas -- TANSTAAFL!"). Russell Whitaker would be my John Pondero ("don't even THINK of reaching for it, sucker.") Genghis Khan [Mark Quon] would be my Secretary of Defense. Tom Knapp would be in charge of destroying every other Cabinet level department. ALL of you would be free to take whatever jobs you wanted, with the goal of putting yourselves OUT of a job in 60 days or less.
January 17, 2004
AnCap Wiki past the "stone soup" stage
Bill St. Clair's AnCap Wiki seems to be past the "stone soup" stage now. There are more anchors for adding content... in the form of existing content that about half a dozen contributors seem to have been adding in the last few days (myself included).
January 15, 2004
Bill St. Clair's "AnCap Wiki"
Bill St. Clair announces:
I got to playing with wiki [while] playing with one set up for collecting legal information for Hunter [Jeffrey Jordan]. I set up my own, initially to provide space to mirror that info, but then decided to call it "AnCap Wiki" and devote it to creating, in our lifetimes, anarcho-capitalist societies around the world. Check it out. Contribute if you're motivated to do so. Links to instructions near the top of the page.
Pretty ambitious goal for the site.
Quote of the Day
The internal combustion automobile is one of the biggest engines of personal liberty ever created, right up there with the firearm. With it, the individual is free to leave the jurisdiction, free to travel on his own schedule, and free to haul an enormous amount of stuff around with him if he desires. "Mass" transit trains its users to be livestock, and so it is no wonder that our putative betters are constantly trying force us into its cattle cars. The old saw about totalitarian governments making the trains run on time cuts deeper than many think. By contrast, the automobile makes you captain of your own ship.
Robert Clayton Dean
14 January 2004
January 12, 2004
Kirsten C. Tynan's "Space Entrepreneurship Network"
Just saw this on the smith2004-discuss list: Kirsten C. Tynan's "Space Entrepreneurship Network" website, which has a useful set of pointers to relevant "Treaties, Laws, and Regulation."
January 08, 2004
Ken Holder's "Another H.E.A.P. Site"
Remember "H.E.A.P." ("Holocaust Education and Prevention") from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon? Well, Ken Holder maintains an excellent H.E.A.P. site.
January 05, 2004
Oregon's Cascade Policy Institute
Yet another resource commended to me on my recent Portland visit by The Master of Recommendations, Michael Reed: Oregon's Cascade Policy Institute, which I can best describe as akin to the Cato Institute, but focussed on issues of interest to Oregonians. Lots of interesting analyses and recommendations on their site, good reading, much of it applicable to local problems in other states.
December 31, 2003
Quote of the Day
If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.
The Dalai Lama
May 15, 2001
December 21, 2003
Firefly: I can't recommend it highly enough
I'm on break between school terms, and am catching up on some entertainment. Friends on the smith2004-discuss list had been raving about a short-lived 2002 Fox television series called "Firefly," which had been cancelled due to poor ratings.
I'd actually tried to catch the first episode as it aired in the U.S. last year. I tuned in only to find that some sports event had pre-empted the airing. I tuned away in disgust. It turns out that Fox wasn't airing the pilot ("Serenity") that night; instead, they were airing "The Train Job", which was written hastily over the space of a weekend at Fox's whim... the pilot, which set up the world, the characters, and the arc of the plot, didn't air for weeks later. As a matter of fact, of the 14 episodes that were produced, 10 were aired, and most of those out of sequence.
Fox did nothing to promote the show, and placed it in a suicide slot. The show was pre-empted several more times by sports events. It died a year ago to the protests of a fanatical viewer base spread across continents. In the last year news of the series has spread by word of mouth - the way I found out about it - and seems to have created a larger fan base in its absence.
Less than 2 weeks ago, Amazon.com released the entire, properly sequenced set of Firefly episodes on DVD. As of this writing, the DVD set ranks 17th in sales, with 261 reviews and an average 5-star rating!
Firefly: The Complete Series is also available for rental from Netflix.com. Several weeks ago, I added it to my Netflix rental queue - they allow pre-release reservations - and as soon as it was available to be rented, it was shipped to me. My loved one and I spent several evenings this last week watching the entire set. We are completely enamoured of this series, and now we're wondering how we're going to follow up with anything nearly as good.
The show is the brainchild of director Joss Whedon, the creator of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and its spinoff "Angel". I've seen a few of both, and generally liked them, but I wouldn't have missed them if they'd been cancelled. "Firefly", however, is apparently the series that Whedon really wanted to do all along, an impression made stronger by his having actually said so (you'll have to see it in the "Extras" section of DVD #4).
I won't try to recap the series for the reader here, since you can visit Netflix, Amazon, and/or Fireflyfans.net for plenty of that. What I will say is that if you've been disappointed by television sci-fi (with the notable exception of Farscape, another casualty), you'll find Firefly an unexpected pleasure. That is, you'll enjoy it if you love science fiction but despise what's been made of Star Trek, and you have a libertarian bias toward freedom and all it entails.
Fans of the writing of L. Neil Smith will particularly enjoy this series: though set roughly 500 years hence, it has some of the best elements of both space opera and the classic American western. It also has some of the best ensemble acting I've ever seen anywhere. Oh, and there are guns. Lots of guns. Almost all the guns are real, reliable, effective slug-throwers of wildly individual variety. It was amusing that a laser pistol shows up only twice in the series: as the antique "Lassiter", the object of a heist in one episode ("Trash"), and as a battery-draining liability in the "Heart of Gold" episode.
The world of Firefly consists (I think) of roughly 70 terraformed planets and innumerable moons, many of them prairie lands. The "core" worlds are more urban, and are controlled by the Alliance (an alliance between whom and whom, I'm not sure, but I think between some English-speaking and Chinese-speaking hegemonies), and the fringe worlds, which are on the edges of Alliance influence. Most of the episodes center on the efforts of the crew of Serenity to simply make a living under the Alliance's radar, unmolested. Most of these efforts involve moving surprising cargoes (not a spoiler, but worth looking for: "black market beagles"). The crew aren't out to fight epic battles or carry out crusades... they're simply trying to be left alone.
If you've read this far, you might simply consider renting at least the first DVD. If you've not seen any of the series, you're at an advantage: you'll be able to see it in the order it was meant to be seen, without interruption. Try it and let me know what you think.
December 19, 2003
Technical Video Rental
A member of one of my mailing lists de-lurked today to introduce himself. He runs an incredibly cool and useful website, "Technical Video Rental", which advertises a carefully selected library of tapes, DVDs, and books for the independent-operator machinist. This should be of particular interest to those in the Free Arms Project.
December 18, 2003
"SpaceShipOne Breaks the Sound Barrier"
Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' pioneering flight. On the same day that a hobbiest at Kill Devil Hills was trying unsuccessfully to replicate that flight, the real news of the day went mostly unnoticed:
Today, a significant milestone was achieved by Scaled Composites: The first manned supersonic flight by an aircraft developed by a small company's private, non-government effort.
Rutan finally did it! This is fantastic news; congratulations to the Scaled Composites team. Images and a related story are available on Space.com.
October 20, 2003
Quote of the Day
Novelist Victor Koman was dead right, when he said (in his great work, Kings of the High Frontier) that the actual mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — its not-so-hidden agenda, having nothing to do with the development of space travel and exploration — is to keep scum like you and me from ever getting into space.
At the same time (as Victor also points out), NASA mouthpieces have been telling the public since the 1960s that our being able to visit space, perhaps even vacationing on the Moon, or in zero gravity at a space station, was "only about thirty years away". That's what they said in the 60s, that's what they said in the 70s, that's what they said in the 80s, that's what they said in the 90s, and that's what they're still saying today. It's always just about thirty years away.
October 09, 2003
Someone to watch: Michael Badnarik
I'd not heard of this guy before today, but a number of friends whom I deeply respect are throwing their support for Michael Badnarik, who is working to become the Libertarian Party's 2004 candidate for the U.S. presidency. See his blog too, in order to make up your own mind.
Libertarian Alliance UK mailing list
Not receiving enough email? Looking for yet another mailing list to consume? If you're a libertarian, and aren't familiar with the incredibly prolific pamphleteering of the UK Libertarian Alliance, I recommend joining the Yahoo mailing list libertarian-alliance-forum, if for no other reason than to witness the astounding post rate of my longtime good friend Dr. Chris R. Tame.
October 01, 2003
Free State Project picks New Hampshire Today
The Free State Project picked New Hampshire today, using an innovative voting technique called Condorcet's Method. It's interesting to see that the FSP people have done a good job getting the word out: on the same day of the announcment, the UK Guardian, a major daily paper (and leftist at that), writes its own coverage of the announcement: "'Free staters' pick New Hampshire to liberate for sex, guns and drugs."
Sounds like a fine recommendation to me.
May 03, 2003
Quote of the day
The earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1896
May 01, 2003
Quote of the day
Driven from every corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment on matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum.
Samuel Adams
April 18, 2003
"Passenger-Carrying Spaceship Makes Desert Debut"
YES! Just out today: Burt Rutan unveils Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne and its drop-ship, the White Knight.
Two years under wraps. Can't wait to see it up close.
Welcome, Australian Survivalists!
Proof that some of us pay very close attention to our server logs: howdy, Australian Survivalist readers! A special hello to "Warrigal".
April 17, 2003
Quote of the day
It is inconsistent with the nature of life - as revealed by the record of the past - for a species to remain in an environmental niche when the opportunity exists for escape. Most individuals of the species remain within the security and comfort of the environment to which they have become adapted... [But] certain individuals will always probe the limits of their environment. These adventurous few are the vanguard of a new development in the evolution of life... As most fish remained in the water, and most apes remained in the forest, just so, in tomorrow's world most of us will remain on the earth... But a small percentage of the human species... will leave us, and their descendants will spread out into the galaxy.
Robert Jastrow
Introduction to The Next Ten Thousand Years by Adrian Berry, 1974
April 03, 2003
A Great Ealing Comedy: "All at Sea", 1957
Some years ago, when I was living in London, my good friend and head of the U.K. Libertarian Alliance, Chris Tame, introduced me to the Ealing Comedies produced in the post-war era (40's and 50's, prior to purchase of the studios by the BBC). A combination of subtle parody and broad farce, these predominantly outstanding cultural treasures featured actors now well known across both sides of The Pond, such as Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers, and pop cultural treasures such as the late Frankie Howerd (that's the spelling) - "Oooh! Missus!" - not as well known outside England.
Last week, I noticed a strong recommendation in the March 29 mailing of Miss Liberty's Film & TV Update for one of these comedies:
My top TV pick for the week is the Alec Guinness film "All at Sea," airing on Wednesday (4/2) on TCM. This is an absolutely dead-on libertarian comedy about an amusement park operator who overcomes a corrupt and oppressive local government intent on seizing his business. To my knowledge, this film is not available on video and it rarely appears on television. If you don't have time to watch it now, be sure to record it!
The version shown on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which is now safely on my PVR because indeed, the movie's apparently not available on VHS or DVD in the U.S., was the MGM-distributed U.S. release of "Barnacle Bill", erroneously listed in the TCM program guide as having been released in 1958. The Latin numerals read "1957" in the credits, as do several filmographies.
Guinness plays Capt. William Horatio Ambrose, a competent and clever Royal Navy officer afflicted by a ravening case of seasickness ("I shall do my duty, M'am, to the best of my disability"), who buys Sandcastle Pier, a decrepit Blackpool wannabe. When Ambrose discovers that the local Mayor and Council have plans to steal the pier using eminent domain laws, he manages to have the pier registered as a cruise ship at anchor in harbor under the fictitious flag of Liberama: the RMS ("Really Motionless Ship") Arabella.
It's a great little piece, and now I have my own copy. In a similar spirit, I recommend "The Man in the White Suit", if you can find a copy. It's another Ealing comedy featuring Alec Guinness, from earlier in his career (1951): darker, with Randian undertones.
You won't find these comedies on Netflix, by the way: apparently, only Guinness' "serious" roles seem to be worthy of inclusion there. See Guinness's IMDB entry for a much more comprehensive filmography.
I can't help thinking about the Principality of Sealand when Capt. Ambrose recounts, "...hence my family motto: Omnes Per Mare... All At Sea..." when I read: "...Sealand's national motto of E Mare Libertas, or 'From the Sea, Freedom'".
February 27, 2003
HighLift Systems: a commercial space elevator in our near future?
I just found out about HighLift Systems today. Looks like someone is trying seriously to make a business out of the space elevator concept.
February 07, 2003
Why Aren't We There Yet? by L. Neil Smith
An article today in the Sierra Times by L. Neil Smith accurately reflects the mix of emotions I've felt in the last week about the Columbia tragedy. He's also got some interesting things to say about the asbestos link in both the Challenger disaster and the early collapse of the Twin Towers.
As for the space shuttles' solid fuel rocket boosters, the next generation of O-rings was simply manufactured without the offending asbestos. During the first few minutes of Challenger's fatal flight, burning gases inside the rocket tube ate through the substandard O-rings, creating a jet of flame -- exactly like a welding torch -- that cut into the auxiliary fuel tank under the shuttle and ignited it.For whatever it's worth, it was exactly this same phenomenon -- an insane political correctness with regard to asbestos -- that allowed the World Trade Center towers to collapse several hours earlier than they would have, killing three thousand people, if the use of asbestos hadn't been abandoned partway through their period of construction.
Speaking of the Towers:
As to Easterbrook, his notions about "rebuilding" NASA -- he wants to send the shuttles to a museum and let the space station burn up in the atmosphere just like Skylab did -- are exactly like the notions of those who want to rebuild the World Trade Center to a smaller, more humble design. Me, I'd rebuild it a mile tall and put Phalanx guns on top.
Read the article. After you read that, then read the text of a speech Neil gave 15 years ago at the December 1987 Future of Freedom Conference in Culver City, California.
February 05, 2003
Koman's book still pretty hard to come by in London
I have to agree with Russell's earlier posting about the Koman book cover and the lackluster marketing of the book itself. I tried to get the book on Amazon.co.uk, and it wasn't even listed. So I ended up going to a Barnes and Noble site instead, and to be fair they shipped it over pretty fast.
Book covers do make a big difference, to state the obvious. I quite like the cover on Kings of the High Frontier but I agree that the cover could be a lot better. The covers on books by folk like Vernor Vinge, Peter Hamilton or David Brin are in a different class, and draw the readers in. Also, SF art is still a much under-appreciated art form in its own right.
Perhaps, in the light of the current flurry of interest in what we do next about space travel and commercial development up there, there may be more interest in Koman getting a decent publisher with more flair and drive. It bugs me that his magnificent book was so hard to find while there is so much garbage on our bookshelves here in Britain and elsewhere.
I once went into a huge Waterstones bookshop here in Chelsea and there was not a single work by Heinlein, Anderson (Poul) or Larry Niven on the shelves. It's a bit like going to a classics section and seeing nothing by Hugo or Tolstoy. How the hell are young people going to get inspired by science and technology if there isn't the fiction out there to whet their appetites? After all, I am pretty sure many of the astronauts in the 1960s and subsequent decades first got their taste for their activities by reading a book by Heinlein or a Buck Rogers comic strip.
However, we Londoners can seek solace in The Forbidden Planet bookstore in New Oxford Street and Babylon 5!
February 02, 2003
Kings of the High Frontier, by Victor Koman
Just two days ago, Friday, I received by mail my only copy of a book I'd lent out to a former co-worker, who surprised me by finally returning it to me by a private express carrier. I'd been warned by Murray Rothbard many years ago never to lend out my personal books, as I'd never see them again... even if that book was one of Murray's own (which it was, which was a reason we were having the chat at school... another story).
Friday's mail gifted me Victor Koman's Kings of the High Frontier, to my relief - and to my erstwhile colleague's credit, in exactly the same good condition as I'd lent it. The events of the last couple of days, including my truly belated and short account of a visit I made a little over a year ago to private space transportation startup XCOR, prompt me to write at least a short recommendation, if not a comprehensive review, of this superb novel.
The story surrounding the publication of this book is a bit of an unknown to me. From what I can gather so far, Victor Koman first published it online, then arranged with a small publishing house, Bereshith Publishing, to publish the novel as the first book in Bereshith's new "Final Frontier Books" imprint. My "First Limited Edition" of 1998 is signed on a page that was sewn into the book, and numbered 545 of "...1250 signed and numbered copies". The frontspiece is enticingly subtitled "Book One of the High Pilgrimage", but I know of no as-yet published "Book Two".
I'm astonished that the Amazon listing for this edition of the book (there's also an even more limited edition listed for $75) mentions a 4-5 week availability, with a US$1.99 surcharge. This extra little charge is apparently due to the requirement that Amazon special order their copies from Bereshith, manually.
No knock on the excellent job that Bereshith did with the book - everything between the covers is as good or better than what most major imprints would have done - but the idea of limiting such an important work to 1250 copies borders on tragic. The only thing I don't like about the book is the unfortunate cover. I'll go out on a limb here, but I do tend to judge a book by its cover. Good books deserve good covers, and it's unfortunate that few publishing houses with a science fiction imprint produce to the quality of the cover - as an example - on Ken MacLeod's The Stone Canal (TOR). I've even seen people on various mailing lists recently mention that they had a copy of Koman's book "laying around, waiting to be read", but were put off by the cheap dustjacket.
These same people are getting around to reading the book now, and are exclaiming their delight: it's a first-rate piece of science fiction, and one of those books, like Atlas Shrugged, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, or Unintended Consequences, that you simply can't put down once you pick it up.
Neil Walsh, even with his slightly squishy Canadian sensibilities, gives a good account of the book in his otherwise glowing SF Site review, and the Amazon entry gives a large body of editorial reviews of the book, with synopses. Go there for a longer description.
L. Neil Smith stated yesterday, on the day of the Columbia disaster:
NASA needs to be abolished, rather than handed over to anybody. It's a great wonder that many more of these fatal accidents haven't happened. NASA's record of incompetence (read the original specs the shuttles were supposed to meet), together with their real mission -- to keep you and me out of space -- make them a burden and a liability to anyone who wants to get off this mudball or who simply desires to be free.
Koman is a friend of Smith, and the above is pretty much his thesis too... and an opinion I share wholeheartedly. Even as I write this, my TV in the background is airing the opinions of hairspray heads like Geraldo Rivera who are wailing and needling people like "space tourist" Dennis Tito that "non essential personnel" shouldn't be flying into space, since... get ready for this... "it's tooooooo dangerous..."
Well, hell, human life is inherently dangerous. There's no escaping that fact. There's also no such thing as risk-free human action.
Koman's characters take that risk on themselves, as free men and women, and defy a government and its bureaucracy - NASA - that have no intention of allowing the final escape from tyranny that space truly represents. The viewpoint characters (there are quite a few of them) explore some wild and wonderful - and mostly fairly plausible - escape vehicles. The engineering efforts alone are fascinating stories, but the characters themselves, by the end of the story, are well fleshed-out and memorable.
This book really deserves a much larger audience than its initial 1250 print run. It's the Unintended Consequences of the free space movement. Pick up your copy before it becomes unavailable... then carefully lend it out to your friends!
And while you're at it, contact Bereshith Publishing and see if they'll consider another print run.
February 01, 2003
The future is not NASA's
To cheer myself up, I've been perusing the X Prize website. As Dale Amon points out:
NASA will go to Boeing or Lockmart for a replacement. They are not going to talk to XCOR [spelling corrected by me - ed.] or Armadillo or any of the other companies who will develop the true space ships.What is my guess? I will suggest we'll see a half hearted program for a shuttle replacement initiated. It will run over budget or be stillborn like every other such program in the last 15 years. The ISS schedule will stretch out to a completion date of 2010, almost 30 years after Ronald Reagan called for a space station to be completed in 10 years. An X-Prize space ship will fly suborbital this year or next year and there will be private tourists on private suborbital flights by 2006 and orbital by 2010. NASA will then buy one for crew turnaround. The Russians will get a big capital infusion to turn out more Soyez and Protons.
On a related note, just yesterday I received by mail, from a former co-worker who had borrowed it, my sole copy of Victor Koman's Kings of the High Frontier, which I'm astounded to see is $75 new on Amazon, and about half that used. My copy is not leaving my house again anytime soon!
January 20, 2003
"Doing Freedom": wish I'd seen this site earlier
Daniel J. Boone writes about a site I wish I'd paid attention to earlier: Doing Freedom. Talk about some controversial articles: take "Improvised Claymores" as a good example!
January 03, 2003
Alberta ou Quebec? Il y a une difference, je pense...
I'm discovering more further to yesterday's piece about the Alberta secession movement, including this piece in Quebecois Libre by Jason P. Sorens, President of the Free State Project:
It is interesting that all but two of the states being considered border on Canada. Three of them border on Quebec. If we chose Vermont, Maine, or New Hampshire, there would undoubtedly be opportunities for us to collaborate with Quebec libertarians and decentralists in pursuing our own autonomy plans. If we chose Montana or Idaho, we could work with Albertans and British Columbians, who are themselves famously pro-freedom and anti-state. One advantage for the states of northern New England is that the example of Quebec's pursuit of self-determination should make citizens of these states less squeamish about standing up to our federal government than citizens of other states. In turn, our success in promoting the ideals and practice of freedom in northern New England should help to strengthen the libertarian element in Quebec.
At first approximation - from what I've been able to find out so far in what I admit has been a very short period - the U.S. western states he mentions seem to have more in common with their respective neighbors and, most importantly, seem to share a vastly stronger locally libertarian antifederalist sentiment. Still, he's doing some very good work in exploring possibilities most of the rest of us have not yet considered.
January 02, 2003
Welcome to the Republic of Alberta... ?
A friend at a New Year's party told me that the Canadian province of Alberta is a hotbed of secession rhetoric. (Con)federal capital Ottowa holds the same special place in the average Albertan's heart as does the District of Columbia in our American westerner's. Alberta, apparently, provides the lion's share of the taxes expatriated to welfare bums in other provinces, and they're not at all happy about it.
Also, there's a large and popular anti-Ottowa gun rights movement. Take, for example, the "Law-abiding Unregistered Firearms Association (LUFA)" (thanks to David Dieteman's "Civil Disobedience North of the Border"). This is a very well-organized and apparently effective civil disobedience effort. American gun rights groups could learn some effective lessons from them.
While researching this piece, I used the Google search string "Firearms Alberta secession"; the first hit return was "Welcome to the Republic of Alberta". It seems the site is offline. Try finding it; there is a Cached entry on Google. I wonder what happened to them.
This is my first take on this issue. I've just heard of it, and will be learning more about it as the months go by. I'd love to hear from people who are familiar with this issue in the meantime.
International Space Development Conference, 23-26 May 2003, San Jose, California
Thanks to Dale Amon for pointing this one out. I've got friends presenting at this event, "Roadmap to the Stars". Anyone planning to attend?
December 04, 2002
Another South African in (the) space (business)
Here's another surprise, at least for me: Samizdata's Dale Amon reports on a new venture of PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, Space X (Space Exploration Technologies). Elon Musk has a good business track record, so I'll be keeping an eye on this one.
Readers will recall another South African in space recently, space tourist Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Thawte (later sold to Verisign).
December 03, 2002
Quote of the day
They went north, into the teeth of the Ice Age, into direct competition with giant carnivores and stocky Neanderthals who had already adapted to life in the cold. They went north, into a world of challenge, where fruit, vegetables, and game were not available all year long and where efficient weapons, clothing, and housing were necessary. In abandoning Africa, they embraced a wider world that could be survived only through the development of technology. Thus was born Homo technologicus, man the inventor, amid fire and ice. Thus humanity transformed itself from an East African curiosity to the dominant species on this planet.
In a sense, the biblical tale of Genesis tells this story but has it backwards. It was not eating of the Tree of Knowledge that forced humankind to leave Paradise. Rather, it was the abandonment of Paradise that forced humanity to seek the forbidden fruit.
Robert Zubrin
Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization
December 02, 2002
Rainmaking
Man has long dreamed of being able to make the deserts bloom by changing the weather, but some folks seem to have a neat and inexpensive way to do it: wind powered rotors out at sea that would spray out a fine mist of sea water, drastically raising the nearby evaporation rate.
Now if only someone will listen...
November 28, 2002
Somalia and Anarchy, by Jim Davidson
I ran across this very interesting summation of the state of affairs in Somalia by Jim Davidson of the Awdal Roads Company. I'm becoming more interested in visiting the region.
November 19, 2002
Seasteading: an introduction
Like many libertarians, I've always wanted to live someplace free, and have been unhappy at not finding one. I've followed the nation founding movement with interest, and quite a bit of skepticism. In fact, my critical webpage about the Freedom Ship earned me my first threatened lawsuit. I also have a page of collected nation founding links, (which may be a little out of date at this point).
I am passionate enough about the subject to have considered trying to start my own new country project. My plan was to watch, gather information, learn useful skills, and eventually join or start a realistic venture. I didn't expect that to happen for a decade, but after a couple years I found Wayne Gramlich's first seastead paper. I was struck by the practicality of his thinking, which stood in stark contrast to most of what I had seen. Conveniently, he lived a couple miles away, and we began collaborating, along with Andy, an engineer.
The project is still in development, but I'll provide a quick sketch here of what makes seasteading realistic. There are several keys: proven technologies, scalability, and size, each of which is related to lessons learned from other failed ventures.
We are depending on proven technologies, not OTEC (which is currently experimental and requires huge plants to attain net positive energy generation) or seacrete (which is quite expensive when you use the correct figures, 0.1 lb/kwhr, not 4.2). The hull is made from ferrocement, power is generated by a combination of wind turbines, PV panels, and gas generators. This design turns out to be relatively inexpensive per unit area.
Lack of scalability is a classic mistake made by projects such as the Freedom Ship. Their structures are huge and monolithic, which means that in order to make them happen, vast capital is required. It also means that they are vulnerable to destruction by natural or human means. Big things usually appear in this world by growing from small things: "Rome wasn't built in a day". The way to make a tremendous vision happen is to bootstrap it and make sure that each level can create the next, like an inductive proof in mathematics.
Finally, modesty in goals of size is another strong factor in realism. Some other projects have looked for 100 - 1,000 times as much money as our first self-sufficient design is projected to cost. Frankly, we find them ludicrous. The only place you'll find the word "billion" used by seasteaders is in talking about other ventures. In order to have a sea city, we must start with a sea village.
Our research and designs are still under development, and we want our plans to be solid before we start with the mailing lists and fancy websites and all that. Check back in a few months, and be assured that we are plugging away in the meantime. Our first prototype will not be huge, but it will be buildable. We think actual implementation is the most exciting part of any vision.
Bio: Patri Friedman
Patri Friedman is your everyday purple-haired anarcho-capitalist computer nerd. He is interested in the usual mish-mash of cyberlibertarian topics - economics, politics, crypto, biology, math psychology, life extension and so forth. He passionately desires to live someplace with both freedom and community, and since there doesn't seem to be one yet, has a great deal of interest in the nation founding movement.
Patri's professional activities include tech consulting and high-stakes poker. He has a BS in math from Harvey Mudd College, and most of an MS in CS from Stanford. He is a California/National certified EMT Basic, and a Wilderness First Responder, thanks to WMI at NOLS, which he highly recommends.
Patri keeps a more extensive online journal on his website. He plans to run screaming from the USA in approximately 2-4 years, and is slowly planning his departure.
