The Dragon - An Unexpected Property Owner

 

I saw the film pictured above (The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey) yesterday and it left me more worried about the power of metaphor in literature than the worth of contract between warring fictional species. This is interesting as it can be missed how funny the joke of a dragon owning property is, especially when the dragon is considerable as a metaphor for all the jealously guarded gold in the world, all in a room doing nothing.

Yet that it is the cause of such misery, retrospectively, and such antagonism, contemporarily, not to mention all that moves for good and evil to restore any balance, the mood of any legal discussion seems condemned, if not to be condemning. Its stance is forced to seem aloof and oblvious to the implications, at one and the same time, of its lack of stance in a real world, a world where gold still has the same useless meaning as it does in the fiction, whether its value is real or not.

If it seems ridiculous that a dragon can have property, and there is even the slightest suggestion that law ought not recognise its property rights, then by implication -considering the metaphor- the legal stance ought be reflected upon for what this implicates in real life economics, and all in the good time of its own progress, of course. A legal stance ought not affirm a place for any economic system -encroaching on the otherwise scientific value of any such element of the periodic table - for a monetary value as something law would openly condone (rather than hesitantly be forced to deal with if at all).

This is all while its monetary value - being an economic fiction - in such a hypothetical scientific context viewed is of a different concern in deciding its stance than is law's. The various realities of others valuing our work done, economically, and profiting from it, the universe making sense, scientifically, and what we can say about these such things, legally, making sense, needn't be stances as are each so wary of one another's main concerns in order to get their own job done.

Legalities needn’t exist in the scientific world dictating what is scientifically possible within bounds of heresy. Science needn’t exist in the legal world dictating what is legally possible within bounds of revolution. Economics needn’t exist in the world of science and law, forever balancing such a relationship, and calling that such balance, if only but figuratively referring to it, limitingly, the price of gold.

[First posted as response to the following article on the irish website for human rights, Cearta.ie: <http://www.cearta.ie/2012/12/the-contract-in-the-hobbit/>]

The State of 21st Century Busking in Ireland

If you fear for your safety - and run - and they're role is made to protect you - you're in the wrong, for fearing for it so in their hands?!!! Tale told, of said incident, on said day, 'the man absconded from the scene'...arresting 'a man on the run'. Tale portrayed on video, however; fear for our lives, in their hands, has us know better an instinct in our natures; "the man feared for his safety in the hands of those sworn to protect it, and his instinct lead him to believe his safety better protected by making distance between himself and the unreasonable threat". Which instincts cannot be argued with, when faced with irreasonability, turning violent, as is sworn to protect and uphold peace. Who's to teach our insincts to suppress? Who's to suppress our desires to learn? What suppression is this?

If a gunman is on the loose, state needs give powers to certain chosen dutiful roles who might protect the public at large by having agreed powers to intervene. If a sing song is going on a bit late or a bit revelrous, tis not manhandling the state might ever dream up to create as the power of the role to curb it, in any circumstance, as it unfolds, while preferring to rely upon the rationality of human nature, and with sing song not being a threat to anyone needing such intervention. Indiscriminant use of violence wears yet the same uniform that looses faith for any or all of them: leading to not being able to discriminate between the uniform for the role of the power to intervene on physical threats, and the same uniform worn for noise pollution, or whatever sin it is against popular appeal requiring taste police to govern its suppression...that when the song says run, you run.

Nature gives us an instinct to take flight when in fear for our physical safety. Why ought we be in fear of our physical safety by those sworn to protect peace? What lack of reasonability of any state of affairs is not trusted to due process? Why blame the individual for this lack of trust - trust is a thing between such persons and roles - a relationship - not a one sided misunderstanding? Rather than any notion of malicious absconsion, a lack of faith exists that due process will win justice; and instinct in the moment doesn't ask of consequences what must seem to look right, as well as protect our physical safety there and then. As much as we should like to argue it, nature isn't going to change our genes - that we might lack such an instinct to take flight, from an unexpected and unreasonably violent situation...of power being in the hands of an aggressor as state. How can it be wrong to see an exit, and not take it? Better wait around for more beatings? Who's baton is this, to control the music as it sees fit, conductor, if you please?

Do you remember this, my holy ghost -these tensions causing- during the wars, just thus? How copyright interests should like to steal 50 years from us to send us back to Nazi germany. But its only going to need some few additions to the grand play to make its dream come true...The billion dollar industry can steal the platform -as is the step- between bedroom music and the stage, from the school of music - and, then, steal its back alley ways too?! But from whom? There is an industry responsible for this - not just a state.

If its interpretation is a question of representation and our chosen form of rule, "The busker didn't have an X-Factor phoneline for txt msg votes, and so was removed for being disorderly!"

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DmdZZz3_6tuw%26feature%3Drelated&h=oAQFDpYUS

 

 

If Microsoft didn't exist...

The writers who left us the Old Testament were way ahead of their time. This is a screenplay with drama and special effects requirements that Spielberg or Kubrick could never even aspire to produce.

To dream up those wild anecdotes and strange metaphors, the chancers who wrote the Old Testament must have known all about the Big Bang and Evolution and all that. They just knew the audience in those days would never stay glued to their seats munching popcorn long enough for the earth to cool let alone for life to begin.

The only shame really is that the sequel got more attention at the box office. I mean, if the Darwins and the Einsteins of their day wrote the Old Testament, then The Beatles must have written the New one. They were very popular and all but look what happened to them. Now, Jesus might have been equally as popular, and might have sold more records, if he’d had a four-track, but he wouldn’t have won any prizes.

But you can see why they say that had The Beatles not existed there would be a need to invent them (at least the Americans knew this and so they invented the Monkeys…). But what about all the other characters from the Bible? Not many people these days can relate to that spiel about Adam & Eve and their tragic banishment from paradise by god. Not because it’s not a good story or nothing – Genesis on its own could be re-written as a Hollywood screenplay and it would sell millions. If not for the special effects then for the brief nudity scenes. But to bring it up to date, there would have to be some changes to the script. For a start, with modern property laws and a half-decent solicitor on his case, Adam could easily sneak Eve back into the Garden.

But what if the story wasn’t the evolution of knowledgeable man, shedding his once reptilian form and learning how it all happens down below, what if it was the evolution of information from the confinement of the printed page to the liberation of networked hard drives. The story would be different then, wouldn’t it? It might also regain some of its magic and mystery too.

You can be sure that when Bill Gates slides out of the tree the second time round to tempt Eve, he’ll be armed with more than just an Apple. He won’t even try tempting Adam …not with so much as a Gateway or a Hewlett Packard…. You see, he knows Eve will be there, nagging at Adam,

“Doesn’t he have a 3COM, or an NEC to offer us, for god’s sake?”

“No, but look at the label honey, it’s got Intel inside”

And Eve going, “Look, Adam, unless it’s designed specifically and unconditionally for use with Windows, has broadband global network connectivity, and you can play one player monopoly on it, I’m just not interested.”

Nah, before consultation with the poor unfortunate and innocent young ones, all powerful Bill would have promptly grown limbs, learned how to use a typewriter, got himself legal advice, and then presented Adam with the Microsoft End-User License Agreement, or EULA for short. Do you reckon Bill took Irish at high school?

Ammunition dump for a war of words

With the dawning of the information age and a mass sense of political awareness not foreseen, or perhaps dreaded, by the ruling classes of our past, comes an era where everything that has previously been taken for granted is systematically open for questioning and debate. The extent to which this awareness includes consideration of modern capitalist democracies and their place in our world, not to mention their stronghold on the world’s material wealth, has yet to be seen.

In the centuries hence, the masses have been bred on the doctrine that what is to be accepted as the norm is, without question, the way things should be. Religious and political institutions were founded upon the conservative notion that the ideas that form their basis should not easily be open to change. This notion well suited those in positions of power within these institutions, and their associates and families, to the continuing detriment of the subordinate classes.

In the same way in which the church denied the phenomenon of biological evolution to protect her intellectual assets, the embodiment of political thinking is in danger of missing the boat with regard to the evolution of the market and information culture in general. The Internet, an institution founded upon the ethos of free and easy access to information for all, has little need for such patriarchal protection of her assets. Indeed, alternative visions and supplemental versions of reality do little to threaten its continued existence, nor do they interfere with the informative power it has over us in our daily lives.

Our selfish genes did not think to inform their carriers of their tendency to mutate – we had to guess from the evidence that we had evolved. However, upon brief inspection, the evolution of information makes no attempt at hiding its capacity to transform the light by which we see the world. Information being the gene, and so it follows that technology is the carrier, the PC is a case in point. What began its life as an efficient form of office stationary with a built-in filing cabinet has rapidly mutated into a library, a high street shopping mall, public meeting place, etc., not to mention a virtual death trap for reality escape artists. If it’s potential as a political rallying point should not be underestimated, then neither should its proposed use as a ballot box be ignored.

In order that the individual may internally adjust to the external reality of all that our political ancestors have kindly, but inadvertently, gifted us with, and before we may rightly accept it as being the most productive and adaptive reality there is for all, we must first explore the alternatives. These might include speculations of what our world might be like in the absence, to varying degrees, of ideas that have in the past deliberately inhibited peace, prosperity, and progress for all, including those outside the ruling classes.

Assorted Quotes and Ramblings

If it weren't for the simplicity of light and shade, whole worlds would not be ruled but eternally in complexity.

Society is no dumb experiment without an evil laboratory technician.

We are all impoverished, where divine leadership concerns the lowly, but some of us find order in the meekness.

In matters of difficulty, to formulate is the thing that functions best.

Human nature is suppressed behind a veil of benevolent artificiality; its necessity always producing a truth for generations of its contingency to take note of in any era.  

Advisement is the form of rule one uses to look beyond the manifest creator of ideas of craziness, to seek that others might own them, for their minds, instead.

No one suspects having had happened across one's worst enemies plans when praising the divine, yet everyone offers willingly such blueprints to the same audience when the same praise is misunderstood. Its harder for a snake to bite its own tail than to loose one's own desire for youth, but then neither of these things are too difficult.

Civilisation maintains a principle of normality as cannot be enforced, but that, conspicuously, it becomes unto a secretive nature, as too often errs to override its truth rather than to contain its lie.

The conceit, as believes a lie -a worse such thing, as fault -than were it to be true- is a mirror, to look upon, for such things as are but only flaws.

Were it but that such ideas were open to question, for different classes of object and their subjective interpretation, a mob could plan a dream that they were kings, and kings but lowly puppets.

The escape route of being civilised is so too often imitated that it soon becomes its prison-hold, and what was once a blessing of an imagination, more fertile than feedings' need, then, becomes, a garden, overgrown with weeds.

It ought surprise us nothing, while there is as much complexity -at least- in the mind, as in the body -as each part of the body is connected -at least once- to the mind- that mind ought be allowed to function with the same normalities as has allowed cultures of our bodies to become quite a subject of mind's humour.

God's truths are simple, not in substance - but in style.

Tisn't easier to bully a reflection of youth, as physics discriminates not, and so a memory of youth is neither simpler to fool.

That we are censured in such things -ought strike us as more strange- than that ever we had cowardice to express our most innate feelings about God.

Oh no I'm left with the last word in argument, but yet the confusion reigns on!

The omelettes made by breaking the proverb's eggs were all vegetarian, obviously.

They're coming for you, bumblebees; the sunflowers and the daffodils, united, marching through the trees...There's a million things I'd do sooner than to entertain a state of disbelief.

Whenever it turns around, that words stare man's wit in the face -rather than, through need of norms in man's reticent nature: language, being, as it is- the accidence of his cleverness becomes as clear as his flaws.

I could feel feathers rustling, in my subconscious, as yearning, in their purpose -for ink- to become my necessity, whereupon the papal visit to a revolutionary, I did solemnly reflect. My imaginary crown did seem to fashion itself from newspapermen, whereupon the periscope of the submarine of the royal carriage of secrecy, I did furtively spy. With my bemused wonder, like the sort, perhaps, as has a pigeon for a piece of bread, I did subtly remark upon a question as struck me as time it were asked...whoever checks the dogs and the bumblebees when Noah must take their boarding passes?

As with the duty of any soldier, if made a prisoner of war, to escape - so it is the unconscionable goal of any civilian, if imprisoned, to discover by which such war they can be made so dutiful:- and, thus, if this is successful, redefine the art of civilisation.

The divine purpose in prohibiting to women the rights afforded to men might just be to redeem those 

rights in reclaiming them, and more. 

Stances in Debating Copyright

          Stances in Debating Copyright:

(1) The pragmatics of file conversion.
(2) Making an accurate copy.
(3) Forming a standard for copying in general.
(4) Preventing others from making money on your intellectual property.
(5) Costing others to access your intellectual property.
(6) Having to put bread on the table.

          The path in pros and cons to a common sense debating stance:

Stance of opposition of copyright:

 - proponents of (1),(2),(3), who recognise (4) as limiting
 - of these who don't recognise (5) as limiting
 - of these who find sympathy for (6)

Stance of proposition of copyright:

 - proponents of (4),(5),(6) who recognise (3) as limiting
 - of these who don't recognise (2) as limiting
 - of these who find sympathy for (1)

          Comparing contrasting extremes (6) & (1)

Those who want (6) to put bread on the table (or to their opponents harsh criticism more likely want to put swimming pools in their back gardens) find difficulty recognising (1) the pragmatics of file conversion as a basis in whatever reality they can seek to control with artificial laws of the materialist realm.

Those who pursue (1) the pragmatics of file conversion (or to their opponents harsh criticism more likely who will take whatever they can get their hands on without considering any moral outlook) find difficulty recognising (6) having to put bread on the table as a basis in whatever reality they can seek to control with natural laws of the virtual realm.

          The middle ground is more likely the more interesting argument*

Strong proposition of copyright (6), +(4), (5)

Those who should like (6) to put bread on the table should like to elevate the dangers of (4) preventing others from making money on your intellectual property [as a fundamental purpose of copyright], [which conveniently reveals a watershed in profitability of implementation of copyright, which is already quite profitable] so as that this justifies a stance of (5) costing others to access your intellectual property, in the first place.

Mild opposition of copyright (1) ->(4) -(5) [defence against above]

Those who should like to pursue (1) the pragmatics of file conversion would recognise sooner (4) preventing others from making money on your intellectual property than (5) costing others to access your intellectual property in the first place.

Strong opposition of copyright (1), +(3), (2)

Those who should like to pursue (1) the pragmatics of file conversion should like to elevate (3) forming a standard for copying in general [as a fundamental purpose of copyright] [which conveniently reveals a watershed in timeliness of implementation of copyright, which has already quite passed] so as that this justifies a stance of (2) making an accurate copy in the first place.

Mild proposition of copyright (6), ->(3), -(2) [defence against above]

Those who should like (6) to put bread on the table would recognise sooner (3) forming a standard for copying in general than (2) making an accurate copy in the first place.

          *Key to notation:

(#) various stances, listed above.
+(#) elevated stance (to support another argument).
->(#) sooner recognition of middle ground than extreme, reaching out.
-(#) stance negated by opponent as a valid one.

The more interesting argument than comparing and contrasting extremes slots into place quite artificially as a set of political stances, with one another's grammar also being in the firing line and the stuff of competition in debating. The same grammatical flow satisfies both sides, and so a claim to a stance as pretends to terminology is rife as a hotbed of thorny prickly issues, with some semantic conflict where definition would lack, or instead where the will to seek agreement between stances would lacking.

The strong proposition and opposition stances elevate the card in their hand, so as the card behind their backs seems mysteriously more fundamental in nature when revealing it in argument. Both sides claim the fundaments and the morals are on their side. One has a lot of money to show for this, and the other a watershed in time which has already passed. Whichever of these is stronger remains to be seen.

The milder defence against these stances then would aim toward that strong hand, and reach out toward the middle ground, toward the hidden concealed card the opponent in debate would play, while yet negating and rejecting going so far as to accept that nearest stance toward the extremes as a valid stance.

Poem: Whereby Wonder Suits

            Whereby Wonder Suits



                                                   Whereby wonder suits,

                                                   Particles clearly manifest a union;

                                                   Encouragement follows appropriately,

                                                   Self-questioning integrity,

                                                   In conditions for quietude,

                                                   Befitting of a gentleman;

                                                   Compatible with application’s visicitudes

                                                   of self-explanatoriness,

                                                   Becoming of an officer,

                                                   Conducive to being,

                                                   Self-evident in reason.

Poem: Struggle

 

         Struggle

            I see you lying on the ground,

            Your face in dirt and blood and tears;

            Fighting me off you bite my hand,

            I cannot get a grip;

            You kick me back but still I try,

            We’ve fought like this for years;

            You can’t see much with dirt in your eyes,

            I only wanted to help you up.

Poem: The Shadow and the Moonlight

                           

                                   
                        The Shadow and the Moonlight
                       
                       

                                    I see a shadow hiding

                                    From the moon by candlelight;

                                    Behind my hand he’s dancing,

                                    But not for her delight.

                                    Nearly, though, he shows her,

                                    As the moonlight is eclipsed

                                    By the candle burning closer

                                    To my eager fingertips.

                                    Ask, she may, for answers,

                                    In this mindless guessing game,

                                   Why the shadow never dances,

                                   In the twilight of the flame.

Poem: Sentence

Sentence

Alien foetus floats in scattered light,

The newborn climbs the cage.

Hatchlings hang from the heating pipes,

Polaroids recount the days

A plant bears its foliage in triumph,

This season’s natural selection

Of shared memories peddled, or pushed,

A copper throne to elation.