h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Maybe it is a bit in my legal education for me to be spotting the such like, but a thought has just struck me - a tentative thesis:

When the law is unclear and the courts have to innovate, the law is developed by means of analogy and rhetoric; i.e. the snappiest soundbite wins.

This throught struck me while reading Sir Robert Stewart against The Feuars of Tillycoultry, M. 2469 1739 December 21 & 1740 February 1.

This is the bit that swung the case:

"... the extension now pleaded for by the pursuer is disagreeable both to justice and equity; for where a grant is made of a servitude of pasturage only, where is the equity, that the person to whom it is given in place of the thing granted, be allowed to claim a share of the property which the granter has kept to himself? or where the justice, that where one has granted a right of pasturage, which really and in effect exhausted the use of the land upon which it was constitute, should be allowed to recal his grant, and in place of the whole, give the grantee a part only,under the colour of giving him a privilege of blindly diving into the bowels of the earth to search for what he knows not where to find, and which, when found, might not be profitable?"

The argument then goes on to interpret an Act of 1695 in the light of this position. The Feuars won.

'twas the bowels of the earth wot won the case. The Feuars' advocate came up with a strong image and was able to attach it to a line of analysis by analogy of an Act of the Old Scottish Parliament - Michty! He persuaded the court to adopt a teleological approach...

I will have to keep an eye out for the such like in other cases.

Maybe I should buy that Morison's Dictionary. A snip at £400 plus postage, but where to keep it.

Caius once said something to me to the effect that lawyers reason by distinguishing, but I think that analogy has its place in there too, and that there is a creative tension between the two - legal reasoning is the process of likening and distinguishing. Judicial process is the process of reconciling the two and coming up with an outcome

Last night's X Files eppys were a mixed batch. The first was a comedy episode set in Hollywood with Gary Shandling playing Mulder in an X Files movie. It had some fun stuff in it but didn't really hang toegther. It was, basically, Moonlighting. The second was a dopplegangers story that just fell flat. Too many comedy shows. The producers were flailing around in Series 7 after having killed off the Syndicate and terminated a myth-arc, without having another one to replace it. No wonder Duchovny did what he did.

We had a nice salad for tea last night. Yesterday was wet but today is, so far, nice and sunny. Susan is out. Miah is at work.

Sausages, yes, sausages for tea.

Strange Japanese film:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPsd5BhDNu4

Here's one I fancy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tmxa8NZN3Y

Current reading - Gaudy Night, and The Passage, bu Justin Cronin.


Douglas

From last night's X Files:

(Nice hotel. SCULLY is in a bubble bath. Camera pans up her leg to her face. Her hair is up in a clip. She is drinking a glass of red wine and is on the phone.)

MULDER: (on phone) Hello?

SCULLY: (on phone) Hey, Mulder, it's me. What are you doing?

MULDER: (on phone) I'm, uh, working at the, uh, computer. What are you doing?

SCULLY: (on phone) I'm, uh, packing. Just, you know, getting ready for our trip back to D.C. tomorrow.

MULDER: (on phone) You know, Scully, I was just thinking about Lazarus, Ed Wood, and those tofurkey-eating zombies. How come when people come back from the dead they always want to hurt the living?

(As he talks, SCULLY's portion of the screen pushes to the left. The right side of the screen now shows MULDER in an identical bubble bath. There is a bottle of beer on the side of his tub in the same place SCULLY has her wine. It looks like they are sitting in a heart shaped tub together.)

SCULLY: (on phone) Well, that's because people can't really come back from the dead, Mulder. I mean, ghosts and zombies are just projections of our own repressed cannibalistic and sexual fears and desires. They are who we fear that we are at heart-- just mindless automatons who can only kill and eat.

MULDER: (on phone) Party pooper. Well, I got a new theory. I say that when zombies try to eat people, that's just the first stage. You see, they've just come back from being dead so they're going to do all the things they miss from when they were alive. So, first, they're going to eat, then they're going to drink, then they're going to dance and make love.

SCULLY: (on phone, smiling) Oh, I see. So it's just that we never get to stay with them long enough to see the gentler side of the undead.

MULDER: (on phone) Exactly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx5tSmOY_iM


Douglas

(MULDER's call waiting beeps.)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2010/07_july/12/sherlock.shtml

Note that Una Stubbs plays the part of Mrs Hudson.

I am rather looking forward to this one.


Douglas

Me too! Sounds fun, and I rather like Martin Freeman.

You might be interested in this in today's Grauniad.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/jul/22/prog-rock-genesis-rush-mostly-autumn

Double Doctor tonight on BBC3.

PJ's OH

Thank you PJ's OH Douglas is too well refreshed to give your message due attention at the minute but he will certainly look at it tomorrow.

Sue