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About a year before Game of Thrones debuted on HBO, I was in a bookstore looking though the fantasy section, thinking to myself that it had been a while since I picked up a new fantasy series (I read several when I was a teen, I'm now 35). I hadn't been plugged in to the scene for a while, but I had sort of been seeing George R. R. Martin's name in the bookstore for years, so I picked up Game of Thrones and saw the little "soon to be an HBO series!" sticker. I figured if they were going to make a fantasy series into a high budget TV show, I should read it first. And read it I did, tearing through the first books in a fury. I've done several re-reads over the past several years, reading the books once on paper and listening to the dulcet tones of Roy Dotrice for several audiobook re-listens. These days I usually have the audiobooks on if I am cleaning or driving, etc.
In February of 2015, I was in the middle of moving and other personal turbulence when a bolt of lightning hit me. I had been listening to podcasts about the Long Night and Azor Ahai from Radio Westeros and History of Westeros when something clicked in for me – the moon cracks in both the Azor Ahai story and the Qarthine origin of dragons story. That's when I smacked myself on the forehead and realized, "duh, a thousand thousand dragons pouring forth is a meteor shower." I am a big fan of world mythology, the older the better, and I am also a fan of Fingerprints of the Gods author Graham Hancock, whose work stresses the astronomical underpinnings of world myth. When I realized that Martin might be hiding an astronomy story in his in-world myth, the lights clicked on and I thought "yes, of course Martin is clever enough to be aware of and recreate this phenomena." I began thinking about his myth in those terms, and I had the connection between the second moon exploding and the meteor shower, and everything more or less unfolded from there. Somehow in the middle of packing to move, I carved out several days to write like a madman, staying up all night and following leads in every direction, and about a week later I had some kind of first draft. It really was a bit of a surreal experience – it was so stimulating to the puzzle and creativity parts of my brain that I literally only needed three or four hours of sleep a night, which is very, very unusual for me.
That first draft had almost all of the ideas covered in my essays so far in some form or another. It was crazy, though, jumping from one thing to the next and oh by the way the Deep ones might be real and oh by the way I don't think the cotf did the hammer of the waters and oh by the way Dawn is the original ice and Ned's sword might be Lightbringer and King Renly is acting like Garth the Green… you get the idea. I reached out to Yolkboy from Radio Westeros, who was nice enough to read it and try to make sense of it and offer some encouragement and feedback. I contacted a couple of Westeros.org members who I had seen sniffing in the right direction, most notably Durran Durrandon, who helped me refine the draft and sort through ideas and eventually produce a readable essay to post on the forums, my first real essay.
And then I pressed "submit."
What would happen next? I had no idea. My essay was pretty damn long, and very ambitious. Would people think I'm a pretentious know-it-all? That I'm out to lunch, seeing patterns in the noise and conjuring up phantoms? Would people even take the time to read it? Maybe it would get two comments, one of which was "Euron = Daario" and that would be it. I put a lot of time into it, and I was really excited about it – I really felt I had a hold of something, and the more I looked, the more things seemed to line up – but man, I had no idea how the forum community would handle it.
The response was far, far more than I ever expected.
Tons of positive feedback in general, and lots and lots of creative ideas. What I had hoped was that by pointing at this astronomy pattern and the general set of symbols associated with it, that others would take my ideas and make more connections and unlock other puzzles. This is exactly what happened. People had been studying certain characters or themes or angles of the books for years, and everyone has their own area of deep knowledge. When I put the astronomy idea out there, people came back with their favorite passages and said "hey look, i think the moon is doing some exploding here" or "hey, I think Sansa is playing a moon maiden role here, does that mean something?" etc, etc. I frequently receive messages from people who catch little passages and metaphors which I haven't identified yet, which just makes me just oh so happy.
The comments thread of that first essay was at least as dense as the essay itself – I really managed to attract some of the best and brightest minds on the forums to contribute their ideas. This too was exactly what I had hoped for, only infinitely more so. People chipped in with astronomy expertise, mythology expertise, book knowledge, different ideas about interpretations of text, and people's own theories which applied to the subject in some way. My own ideas were subjected to constructive criticism and scrutiny, and the ideas which needed to go away were dropped or modified, and the good ideas became more clear and better supported. The essays you see on this site are, for the most part, revisions of my first handful of essays which take into account all the things listed above, so I shall take this moment to acknowledge and thank everyone who participated in the conversation over the past several months on the Westeros.org forums… even the couple of cranky people who ticked me off that one time. 😉 Sometimes it's the slightly offensive criticism which gets under your skin that motivates you to go back and research your arguments a little better, so I really do mean "thanks" to everyone who participated.
Right now I am engaged in a re-read of the series after hopping around a lot during my initial research. I am going through the series chapter by chapter and making notes and highlighting text for each one. Notes are going into many categories, relating to all the things I have covered so far such as meteor showers, impact sites, Lightbringer stuff, moon stuff, hammer of the waters stuff, God's Eye, etc., but I also have many categories of notes which have not made it into essays yet, such as notes concerning the origins of the Others, Garth the Green and the sacred order of green men, the Night's King and the Last Hero, the ancient Starks, the War for the Dawn, the nature of magic in general, and more. I other words, I have several more essays to write before TWOW comes out. 😉 I also have plans to do line by line analysis of many key chapters, because many chapters are actually extended metaphors which must be analyzed in totality to really understand what George is saying. Many of the important scenes are played out like the "dumb show" in Hamlet, a play within a play which is at once telling a main story and a secondary, metaphorical story. These will be almost like a selected re-read project, and I already have several chapters outlined and dissected – I am really looking forward to these. Finally, I've got a few characters in mind which simply need their own essays, particularly the two Stark girls.
The newest development is that I have begun recording these essays as podcasts, to make them more accessible. I of all people, with my abusive audiobook habits, understand that it is much easier to find time to listen to a podcast than to read a long essay on the computer. You can check out the Mythical Astronomy of Ice and Fire podcast here, or just look us up on iTunes. My lovely and talented wife, sometimes known as the Amethyst Koala, has recorded the text quotes from the essays in her dulcet tones in order to break up my analysis. We hope you enjoy it as much as a good, fresh-baked cookie.
For now, it's only audio – if anyone is interested in doing accompanying graphics to make it a video, please contact me. I just don't have time to do video and audio. I want to spent my time writing essays… I have a bunch of half-finished ones that I would like to get out.
In closing, why am I here? I am here because George R. R. Martin has done something immensely clever, and I want as many people to be in on it as possible. That's it in a nutshell – I'm so impressed with what he has done that I simply want everyone to know it and appreciate it for the genius that it is. I might be wrong about any one part of my theory, but the broader point is simply to show that George is telling us about the Long Night events through the myths and in-scene metaphors in the book. I invite others to look at the evidence and come to different conclusions – the discussion can only help advance the theory. Most of all, I'm having a blast trying to follow this trail and I'd like to share that joy and excitement with everyone else in the community. The novels read like an entirely new experience once you have the basics of the astronomy pattern in mind. You won't be able to help yourself from noticing the astronomy metaphors, I promise. They add a layer of surreal, celestial grandeur to scenes which are already dramatic and poetic and beautiful and tragic as it is, in addition to giving insight about the past which may jut be insight about the future as well.
Thanks for reading my work, please leave a comment if you enjoyed it, even if only to say that you did – it always means a lot to me. And if you like these essays, please, please share them with other ASOIAF nerds. You know the type of folks who would enjoy this stuff, so don't hold out on them.
~ LmL


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PTS Patch Notes
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Chapter 5: War Games
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Game Mode: Fourlancer
- ITS TIME! Control ALL FOUR Freelancers yourself in this new game mode
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subset: commoncrawl


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Some Aspect of Reproductive Biology on the Effect of Pollution on the Histopathology of Gonads in Puntius Javanicus from Mas River, Surabaya, Indonesia
The present work aimed to study some aspect of the reproductive biology of the P. javanicus with emphasis on histopathology abnormalities of gonads and intersex problems. Fish samples of Puntius javanicus (local name:tawes) were collected from Mas River on the Surabaya downtown whereas highly pollution. Fishes were identified for morphological abnormality and gonad organs were evaluated. Histological preparation was done to observe the gonad condition. This report reveals that 20% male P. javanicus were found to be feminized on July 19, 2012 collection from that river. Some histological samples indicated the presence of testis-ova in fish gonad, which indicated the occurrence of intersex of this species. The above finding suggests that greater attention needs to be given to xenobiotic pollutants and endocrine disrupting chemicals problems.
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Chris Martin on Gwyneth Paltrow Post-Split: 'We Are Very Close'by Thomas Chau | PopCrush
Despite their unusual "conscious uncoupling" announcement at the end of March, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin maintains that he and Gwyneth Paltrow are still "very close."
In an interview with Valentine in the Morning on 104.3 on Friday, Martin didn't have much to say other than they still keep in contact.
Martin told the radio show (quotes via Us Weekly): "The truth is — well, I don't really love talking about this stuff. But the thing we told everyone at the beginning of the year is true. We are very close, we are not together. …That's the truth."
"You know, there's a lot of love," he continued. "So … there's no scandal I'm afraid. I wish I could give you scandal."
Martin and Paltrow have two kids together, Apple, 10, and Moses, 8. Despite the separation announcement, the two have been photographed together with the kids on numerous occasions.


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While slavery came under pressure in Virginia and Maryland in the late spring and early summer of 1861, elsewhere in the South the business of slavery went on, now seemingly secure under the Confederate government. On July 7, 1861, the Daily True Delta in New Orleans published an advertisement from the Southern Pacific Railroad seeking to buy or hire slaves for railroad construction labor. The ad read:
We will purchase or hire, for a term of five years, Nine Hundred or a Thousand Slave Laborers, to work on the Southern Pacific Railroad, in Texas–immediately west of Shreveport, La.–in a region secure and protected from invasion and molestation during the conflict which does exist between the two sections of this country. The country through which the road passes is entirely healthy, and for the distance of 400 or 500 miles west of Shreveport, it penetrates one of the finest agricultural countries on the continent of America.
Clearly, the railroad would not seek to purchase slaves or lease them for a five-year period, if did not believe slavery was secure.
Likewise, Harper's Weekly, in its issue of July 13, 1861, featured an excerpt of a story filed from Montgomery, Alabama, by the prominent British journalist, William Howard Russell, of the London Times describing a slave auction. The much traveled Russell wrote:
I am neither sentimentalist nor Black Republican, nor negro-worshiper, but I confess the sight caused a strange thrill through my heart. I tried in vain to make myself familiar with the fact that I could, for the sum of $975, become as absolutely the owner of that mass of blood, bones, sinew, flesh, and brains as of the horse which stood by my side. There was no sophistry which could persuade me the man was not a man—he was, indeed, by no means my brother, but assuredly he was a fellow-creature. I have seen slave markets in the East, but somehow or other the Orientalism of the scene cast a coloring over the nature of the sales there which deprived them of the disagreeable harshness and matter-of-fact character of the transaction before me. For Turk, or Smyrniote, or Egyptian to buy and sell slaves seemed rather suited to the eternal fitness of things than to otherwise. The turbaned, shawled, loose-trowsered, pipe-smoking merchants, speaking an unknown tongue, looked as if they were engaged in a legitimate business. One knew that their slaves would not be condemned to any very hard labor, and that they would be in some sort the inmates of the family and members of it. Here it grated on my ear to listen to the familiar tones of the English tongue as the medium by which the transfer was effected, and it was painful to see decent-looking men in European garb engaged in the work before me. Perchance these impressions may wear off, for I meet many English people who are the most strenuous advocates of the slave system, although it is true that their perceptions may be quickened to recognize its beauties by their participation in the profits.
Russell's words were made all the more powerful by an artist from Harper's Weekly that accompanied him on the trip, and captured the auction in the illustration below.
Source: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/leefoundation/civil-war/1861/july/slave-auction.htm
So clearly as the Civil War got underway, the business of slavery continued in the Lower South, seemingly encouraged by the belief that large parts of it, as the New Orleans paper contended were "a region secure and protected from invasion and molestation during the conflict." Certainly, this notion proved false for New Orleans, which less than a year after the July 7 article was captured by Union forces on May 1, 1862. Montgomery, Alabama, having lost its status as the Confederate capital to Richmond after the war began, largely lost its military significance, as did most of the rest of Alabama, and would not come under Union control until April 1865. But even though the winds of emancipation reached the city later it would not stay immune to them forever. But it would have been easy for the Montgomery auctioneer and other white Alabamians in July 1861 to convince themselves otherwise.


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The CW Network presented its 2013-14 broadcast schedule today to advertisers, affiliates and national media at the New York City Center in New York City. The Swedish DJ duo Icona Pop opened the show with their smash Top Ten hit "I Love It."
NOTE: Discuss CBS' fall schedule on this thread on our discussion forums or view more fall schedules on Fall TV Preview.
You can also view all 5 U.S. Networks schedule grid day-by-day.
THE CW's 2013-2014 PRIMETIME SCHEDULE
8:00-9:00 PM HART OF DIXIE (New Night)
9:00-10:00 PM BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (New Night)
8:00-9:00 PM THE ORIGINALS (New Series)
9:00-10:00 PM THE TOMORROW PEOPLE (New Series)
9:00-10:00 PM REIGN (New Series)
8:00-9:00 PM THE CARRIE DIARIES (New Night)
"We had a terrific season last year, growing our audience on-air, digitally and socially. Now we are building on that success by continuing to add more original programming all year long, and by adding high-concept, exciting shows to our schedule that will help us continue our mission of broadening out our 18-to-34-year old audience," said Mark Pedowitz, President, The CW. "'Arrow' was one of the breakout hits of this season, and we're using that show and 'The Vampire Diaries,' our two highest-rated series, to launch our new dramas 'The Tomorrow People' and 'Reign,' on Wednesday and Thursday nights.
"Klaus, Elijah, and Rebekah, the original family of vampires, have become fan favorites over the past three seasons on 'The Vampire Diaries,' and we know viewers will be excited to see more of their story in their new spin-off series, 'The Originals,' on Tuesday nights. And with 'Star-Crossed' and 'The 100' set for midseason, The CW is poised to keep growing and keep our momentum going."
The CW will launch its fall season in October 2013. Premiere dates to be announced at a later time.
Monday nights are the new home for Rachel Bilson as Dr. Zoe Hart of BlueBell, Alabama on HART OF DIXIE from 8:00-9:00p.m., followed by the second season of the epic romance, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, starring Kristin Kreuk and Jay Ryan, from 9:00-10:00p.m.
The CW kicks off its new Tuesday lineup from 8:00-9:00p.m. with the highly anticipated spin-off of THE VAMPIRE DIARIES – THE ORIGINALS – starring Joseph Morgan, Daniel Gillies and Claire Holt as the original vampire family. From 9:00-10:00p.m., SUPERNATURAL, the fan-favorite drama that saw ratings growth this season, moves to a new night as the Winchester brothers embark on the ninth season of their otherworldly battle against evil.
On Wednesday nights, the breakout action drama ARROW hits its mark again in the 8:00-9:00p.m. timeslot, with Stephen Amell as Starling City's vigilante archer. From 9:00-10:00p.m., new action-adventure drama THE TOMORROW PEOPLE stars Robbie Amell as a young man with abilities he is only beginning to understand.
The CW returns to Mystic Falls on Thursday nights with its highest-rated series, the critically acclaimed, social media favorite THE VAMPIRE DIARIES from 8:00-9:00p.m, followed at 9:00-10:00p.m. by the sweeping, romantic and racy new historical drama REIGN, staring Adelaide Kane as the young Mary, Queen of Scots.
Fridays stay stylish with a new night for THE CARRIE DIARIES, starring AnnaSophia Robb as the young Carrie Bradshaw, kicking off the night from 8:00-9:00p.m. This season, viewers will see how Carrie and Samantha Jones met and became friends. From 9:00-10:00p.m., the fierce Tyra Banks and AMERICA'S NEXT TOP MODEL put the finishing touch on Friday nights.
New dramas STAR-CROSSED and THE 100 will premiere at midseason, with dates and times to be announced later, along with the new reality series FAMOUS IN 12.


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Public Comment
Reforms For CEQA? – Watch Out!
You have probably heard talk about "reforming" the California Environmental Quality Act. My advice? "Watch out!" The bill language proposed in the last two weeks of the legislative session last year would have eliminated all the benefits of California's most important environmental law. When widespread "fracking" is on the horizon; when global warming and its impacts are ever more real; when water supplies are diminishing, and when huge and costly infrastructure projects (including desalination) are under consideration at the state and local level, this is not the time to weaken laws that protect our environmental quality.
Here are the three main things that the California Environmental Quality Act actually does. First, it makes government "stop and think" before it acts. Often, governmental officials decide that they really have a good idea, and want to push it through. In Santa Cruz, the proposed desalination plant comes to mind. The California Environmental Quality Act makes governmental agencies go through a process that fully analyzes the pros and cons. This means that the government sometimes changes its mind, precisely because of the new information generated in the environmental review process. Often, the changes are improvements, so projects are made better. That is what has been happening for more than forty years, thanks to the California Environmental Quality Act. There are countless examples. Unless you think that state and local government officials always "know best," and shouldn't have to "stop and think" about their plans, you will not want to weaken CEQA.
Second, the California Environmental Quality Act gives ordinary members of the public real power in the project approval process. Without CEQA, members of the public get two or three minutes at the podium, and their remarks are then routinely ignored by the local officials who are often not even listening. If you have ever been to a public agency meeting, you know what I am talking about! The California Environmental Quality Act requires the public agency to respond substantively to all comments that the public makes, and the courts will find an agency's Environmental Impact Report or EIR inadequate if substantive responses are not provided. CEQA is the only California law that makes governmental agencies respond to public concerns in a substantive way.
Third, the California Environmental Quality Act includes a "substantive mandate." If an Environmental Impact Report identifies a measure that could eliminate or lessen a negative impact, the governmental agency is required to implement that measure. For instance, if an EIR says that a left turn lane is needed to go into a new development, to reduce traffic impacts, the developer must put it in. Only CEQA requires this kind of substantive mitigation. CEQA's substantive mandate costs the developers money, and makes sure that the true cost of projects is borne by those who get the benefits, not by the public at large. In fact, this is the main reason that business and development interests are attacking the California Environmental Quality Act. They don't want to pay for required mitigations.
Usually, Governors belonging to the Democratic Party support the protection of our environment as a high priority, and thus they support CEQA. Our current Governor does not, because he does not want to "stop and think" about projects like his high‑speed rail boondoggle. He knows he is right!
If you want your government to stop and think, and to provide substantive responses to public concerns, and if you want developers to pay for required mitigations, then watch out for those so‑called CEQA "reforms." They are trying to take away one of the best laws we have ever had!


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92-Day Countdown to 13GE – Malaysia as "safest country in Southeast Asia" meaningless when Malaysians live in fear everyday of worsening crime
This is what a top Barisan Nasional mainstream media (BN MSM) editorial officer blogged yesterday:
"Why are these criminals still going about their merry way robbing and hurting people at traffic lights, at their homes and everywhere?
"Why are they still so bold?
"Let me tell you why -- because THEY CAN GET AWAY WITH IT and NOBODY IS STOPPING THEM OR CAN STOP THEM ..or WANT TO STOP THEM.
"I'll be honest -- I am living in fear. My family is living in fear. And we are not the only ones.
"Not only residents of housing estates fear of being attacked anytime, anyday.
"People...people driving in their cars..people walking...
"You fear when you arrive at the gate of your home -- if anyone has been following you or lying in wait.
"You are just so fearful.
"In Section 16, PJ where my sister and her family live, occupants of nearly every household along the surrounding roads, have been attacked in one form or another.
"Police reports have been made..and yet...the attacks went on unabated.
"I'd like to ask the police this -- what are our men in blue doing to prevent/deter these criminals from their vicious spree?
"I mean, really really seriously deterring them.....
"Yes yes yes...they've bought more motorcycles for policemen to patrol the streets...Visibility does help to reduce crime.
"But...then, these vicious attacks have continued and they happen when the policemen are not around.
"Let me ask -- how many of these criminals have been nabbed?
"You feel the threat of attack near or at your home, you feel unsafe outside your home. You feel unsafe anywhere. No place is safe ...
"Just going out in your car is no longer safe. You worry when you arrive at traffic lights. You worry when you cross the road.."
The top BN MSM editorial officer was blogging in response to a heinous crime reported in yesterday's New Straits Times (p 13) "Attacked and robbed on busy street – Traumatic: Woman in car punched and left unconscious but no one came to couple's aid" about Air Asia X pilot, Capt Gurcharan Singh Sidhu and his wife Datin Arunee Dee who were attacked in their car at a traffic-light junction in Jalan P. Ramlee in Kuala Lumpur on Sunday evening and robbed by two men on a motor-cycle.
But there is no surcease or pause in these heinous crimes as today's New Straits Times carried another report "Foreigner loses RM35,000 to snatch thieves – IN SHOCK: Mother of two was at a traffic light junction when 6 men on motorcycles attacked" (p. 27), about a pregnant Australian citizen who was left in shock after her car window was smashed and her handbag grabbed when she stopped at a traffic light junction near Bandar Utama in Petaling Jaya on Tuesday morning.
As the top BN MSM editorial officer blogged yesterday:
"This is all so sad that it is the same old story over and over again... and this kind of crime has happened in many locations around the Klang Valley, notably near or at junctions with traffic lights…
"I despair looking at out neighbourhoods all guarded.
"This is not normal at all.
"This sense of fear is not normal.
"These are critical times. Dangerous times."
It is meaningless for Barisan Nasional leaders, whether the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister or the Home Minister to boast about the achievements of the various transformation programmes and Malaysia becoming the "darling of investors" because Malaysia is recognised as the safest country in Southeast Asia under the Global Peace Index (GPI) 2011 and 2012 when ordinary Malaysians live in fear of crime.
This deplorable state of affairs where Malaysians live in fear of worsening crime everyday cannot and must not continue – one powerful reason why there must be a change of federal government in Putrajaya in 13GE.


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Legal Reasoning
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Legal Reasoning
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Legal Reasoning
July 27, 2005, 01:20:40 AM »
Anyone interested in legal reasoning method, its pecularities and the like, please post here.
I think the need to believe in the power of legal reason plays an important role in producing the extremely complex and interesting psychological phenomenon, the modern legal mind.
I hope you have heard of unicorns. One could believe that unicorns are actual biological phenomena -- that unicorns are real in the same way horses are real. Or one could believe that unicorns are creations of the human mind, imaginary creatures whose characteristics are therefore wholly a product of our assumptions about those same characteristics. Now imagine a social practice that requires persons to act as if they sincerely believe there actually are independent facts of the matter regarding unicorns -- facts not dependent on human beliefs -- and indeed routinely requires these people to assert the existence of such facts. Yet suppose this practice also requires that on certain occasions those who engage in the practice claim no such independent facts concerning the status of unicorns exist because, after all, "everyone knows" unicorns are merely products of the human mind. We could anticipate that many of the participants in this practice will develop a sort of double consciousness about unicorns, one in which they will both affirm and deny -- and in which they will in a sense both believe and not believe -- that unicorns are actual or imaginary creatures, depending on the context in which such affirmation or denial, and belief or absence of belief, is deemed appropriate.
On certain occasions, they would argue passionately about what colors unicorns really were, or about their actual population, whereabouts, and habits. On other occasions they would treat with derision anyone who could be foolish enough to take the naive view that unicorns were the sort of creatures that existed outside the minds of the men and women who imagined them into being. On yet other occasions they would seem to assert both views at once, claiming that while of course unicorns didn't really exist outside our imaginations, nevertheless by treating them
as if
they were actual living animals we could eleminate any practical distinction between the characteristics of real and imaginary creatures.
Such is the ordinary mental condition of the modern American lawyer. The modern lawyer, and especially the modern judge and law professor, must continually practice a sort of "as if" jurisprudence, within the context of which the lawyer both knows and doesn't know that most important legal facts are facts only to the extent we believe them to
legal facts. Various strategies are then employed to deal with the intense cognitive dissonance that characterizes this condition. A common one among practicing lawyers is to simply ignore the dissonance -- to treat it as someone else's problem. That someone is, of course, whatever decision maker is precluded from employing the same cognitive strategy by virtue of the decision maker's decisional responsibilites.
Perhaps the proper function of a legal education is to produce persons who "think like lawyers": individuals, that is, who are trained to hold various unambivalent yet rationally unjustified beliefs, necessary for the vigorous deployment of social power, that nevertheless remain highly role specific, and are therefore subject to change at a moment's -- or a client's -- notice. Such beliefs help mold otherwise ordinary people into the sorts of state actors who will not hesitate to kill, cage, and impoverish their fellow citizens on what are deemed institutionally appropriate occasions, in much the same way that successful military training renders otherwise pacific young men capable of committing acts of politically sanctioned homicide.
Sawada v. Endo
Reply #1 on:
August 02, 2005, 03:30:17 AM »
In November 1968, Masako Sawada and Helen Sawada were injured when struck by a car driven by Kokichi Endo. They sued him and won judgments slightly more than $25,000. During the 19-month period between the filing of the suits and the jury's verdicts Kokichi Endo and his wife, Ume Endo, transferred ownership of their house to their sons. The Endos continued to live in the house after the transfer, although Ume Endo died only ten days after the verdicts were returned against her husband.
The Sawadas were subsequently unable to collect their judicially decreed debt from the remaining assets of Kokichi Endo. They brought another suit, asking the court to declare the transfer of the Endo home a fraudulent conveyance, undertaken for the purpose of defrauding the property owner's creditors, and to therefore set the conveyance aside.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court of Hawaii was asked to answer the question of whether or not the manner in which the Endos had held their property precluded a finding that the transfer to their sons was fraudulent as a matter of law, no matter how "fraudulent", in ordinary lay terms, the transferors' intent may have been. The Endos had owned their house in a "tenancy by the entireties." In the English common law, property held in a tenancy by the entireties had the following relevant characteristics: it had to be owned jointly by a married couple; it could be conveyed or mortgaged by the husband, but not by the wife (at common law, a married woman was for most property-owning purposes not a judicially recognized person); it was subject to the husband's general debts; and at the death of one spouse , it was treated as if it simply remained the sole property of the surviving spouse. Thus if the husband sold or mortgaged the property and then died before his wife, the husband's interest in the estate was treated as if it had never existed, and hence the property would belong solely to his widow, unencumbered by her late husband's conveyances and debts.
With the passage of the Married Women's Property Acts in the 19th century, American jurisdictions removed most of the formal common law disabilities that precluded married women from controlling marital property. These statutes, however, failed to address the question of what effect they should be construed to have on the tenancy by the entireties. Various state courts subsequently answered this question in four different ways. A few states treated the tenancy as unchanged; the husband retained sole power to convey the estate, and it remained liable to his debts, subject only to the wife's right of survivorship. Other states placed the wife in what under the common law had been the husband's shoes, by making the estate liable to her separate debts as well as to his, and by allowing either spouse to sell the property. A third group placed the husband in the wife's former position, barring the separate debts of either party from affecting the estate, and not allowing either spouse to convey the estate without the consent of the other. Finally, two states allowed either spouse to subject his or her survivorship interest to creditors, but barred any separate debts from being attached to the property itself while both spouses still owned it.
By the 1970s, Hawaii remained the only state not to have addressed this particular question; and the inability of the Sawadas to collect on their debt gave the state's supreme court the opportunity to do so. For if Hawaii chose to retain the common law estate, or if it put the wife in the former position of the husband, then the Ebdos' transfer of their property to their sons would be treated as fraudulent as a matter of law, given that Mr. Endo's interest in the estate would still be liable to his general debts. On the other hand if Mr. Endo was placed in what under the common law was the wife's position, neither his or his wife's separate debts could then affect the solvency of the estate, and hence as a technical matter the transfer would not be considered fraudulent.
The modern tenancy by the entireties produces some difficult conceptual puzzles. Its common law predecessor was a product of what to us seems the metaphysically mysterious idea, derived from various elements of Christian doctrine, that a husband and wife were a single legal person. This idea led to little practical difficulty as long as only one of the subjects in this consubstantial union was a juridically recognized entity. But with the legal emancipation of women, Simone de Beauvoir's observation that for the equation 1 + 1 = 1 to work one of the integers had to, functionally speaking, become a zero could no longer adequately explain the conceptual structure of the tenancy by the entireties. As the opinion in
Sawada v. Endo
notes, "The tenancy was and still is predicated upon the legal unity of the husband and the wife, but the Acts converted it into a unity of equals and not unequals as at common law." The conceptual difficulty thus arises because under the modern view each spouse owns, in both theory and practice, the entire estate: each is deemed in the reifying jargon of property law to be "seized of the entirety" rather than "taking by respective moieties [parts]." But if each spouse owns all the estate, then strict logic would seem to dictate the paradox that while the property's owner cannot convey or indebt the land without the consent of the property's owner, neither can the property's owner stop the property's owner from selling or indebting that which, after all, belongs to the property's owner.
Re: Legal Reasoning
Reply #2 on:
August 02, 2005, 04:04:15 AM »
In deciding the case, the court attempts to navigate this conceptual muddle through the straightforward use of circular reasoning. It first quotes another court to the effect that "each spouse owns the whole [estate] while both live" and that "at the death of either the other continues to own the whole, and does not acquire any new interest from the other." From its witnessing of this metaphysical marvel the court "deduces the indivisibility and unseverability of the estate into two interests, and hence that the creditors of either spouse cannot during their joint lives reach by execution any interest which the debtor had in land so held." Impressed by the force of its own deductive powers, the court then muses that while "one may have doubts as to whether the holding of land by entireties is advisable or in harmony with the spirit of the legislation in favor of married women," these doubts must give way before the insight that "when such an estate is created due effect must be given to its peculiar characteristics."
Here we see the more or less hypnotic power that formal -- or, more precisely, pseudo-formal -- modes of reasoning continue cast over the workings of the legal mind. Yet the Supreme Court of Hawaii gives no indication whatsoever that it has the faintest suspicion there might be anything fishy about this particular use of deductive reasoning. Indeed, the idea that they are simply begging the question seems quite beyond the judges' collective ken.
When the court turns from discussing legal concepts to instrumental considerations of policy, we receive even clearer confirmation that we are in the presence of a level of cognitive confusion akin to that accompanying some sort of mental illness. The argument that it is unfair to creditors to exempt the tenancy from the debts of either spouse is dismissed with the observation that "If the debt arose prior to the creation of the estate, the property was not a basis of credit, and if the debt arose subsequently the creditor presumably had notice of the characteristics of the estate which limited his right to reach the property." The court then criticizes by implication the choices supposedly made by the plaintiffs in the case before it, pointing out that "there is obviously nothing to prevent the creditor from insisting upon the subjection of property held in a tenancy by the entirety as a condition precedent to the extension of credit."
These kinds of statements should give teachers of law pause. Do we have the misfortune to be burdened with the task of subjecting some number of mentally impaired persons to the benefits of legal education, or is it perhaps the case that those "benefits" are in fact doing serious damage to the cognitive capacities of persons of otherwise normal intelligence? How is it possible for these judges to entirely overlook problems of fairness created by the existence of involuntary creditors,
when the plaintiffs in the case before them are representatives of that very class
? And how is it possible for this court to assume that even voluntary creditors "presumably had notice" of the relevant characteristics of the tenancy by the entireties in this particular legal context when, after all, the court is
those same characteristics by means of this very decision?
After some further discussion of various public policy justifications for ruling as it has, the specious character of the court's reasoning achieves a sort of Platonic perfection when it concludes its analysis with the following remarkable announcement:
If we were to select between a public policy favoring the creditors of one of the spouses and one favoring the interests of the family unit, we would not hesitate to choose the latter.
But we need not make this choice
for, as we pointed out earlier, by the very nature of the tenacy by the entirety as we view it, "a ... broad immunity from claims of separate creditors remains among its vital interests."
The opinion in
Sawada v. Endo
can be reduced to the following propositions.
1. Legal concept X is conceptualized in a number of different ways in the context of situation Y, thus producing result A in Jurisdiction 1, result B in Jurisdiction 2, result C in Jurisdiction 3, and result D in Jurisdiction 4.
2. Legal concept X has never been conceptualized in the context of situation Y in Jurisdiction 5.
3. In Jurisdiction 5, legal concept X must be conceptualized in the context of situation Y to produce result C.
4. This conceptualization is impelled on the decision maker not because the result it produces is in some way desirable, but rather because this result is inherent in the proper conceptualization of legal concept X in the context of situation Y in Jurisdiction 5. Q.E.D.
This is the kind of thing that drove classic legal realists -- antiformalist legal scholars of the 1920s and 1930s -- into paroxysms of rage and disgust. 60 years later, despite routine legal academic claims that "we" are all realists now, anyone who practices law is well aware that such blatantly circular forms of pseudo-formal reasoning are still an integral part of actual legal decision making. Sawada is far from uncommon demonstration of what happens when a particularly clumsy magician struggles in full view of his audience to stuff a recalcitrant rabbit into a too-small hat, and then -- having at last succeeded -- proceeds with an air of absurdly triumphant pride to lift the enraged bunny high aloft, so that all may look on his handiwork with amazement and awe.
Re: Legal Reasoning
Reply #3 on:
August 08, 2005, 12:55:09 AM »
Re: Legal Reasoning
Reply #4 on:
August 09, 2005, 04:17:58 AM »
Well I guess one of the most curious aspects of socially constructed entities is that many of them are the sorts of artifacts that can perform the social work they are supposed to accomplish only if we ignore or forget their artificial nature. A classic example of this is the socially necessary assumption that value inheres in what we call "money." As a matter of practical psychology money can fucntion as a medium of exchange only to the extent that we manage to treat it as valuable in itself. We don't "believe" money is valuable: we
it is. Yet what is that knowledge other than our unconscious confidence that, in this case, knowledge and belief are not merely compatible, but actually identical? We believe we know money is valuable becuase we know we believe it is. In such cases, the psychology of appropriate social belief requires that we maintain an involuted state of mind in which we both know and don't know that various artifacts in whose existence we believe exist precisely because we believe they do.
Films, and to a lesser extent currencies, are examples of where our knowledge of the fictional, context-specific nature of our belief remains fairly close to the surface of conscious thought. But many other psychological artifacts of contemporary life are much more cognitively complicated. To what extent do we, or should we, recognize that a concept like "the government" or "the court" is also a pragmatic and mimetic fiction? One thing is certain: given the socially constructed nature of so much of our daily experience, the structure of modern life ensures that a great deal of what we think of as "reality" will be product of a kind of mass hypnosis, which requires that we maintain ourselves in delicately balanced, psychologically complex states of knowing ignorance and skeptical credulity. (To paraphrase Thomas Szasz: if you believe in the United States of America that's called "patriotism"; if you believe in the Republic of Texas that's called "schizophrenia.")
Which brings us to what is called "the law." In what sense does law exist? As a historical matter, it is fairly clear that at one time the lawyers and judges of the English common law thought of their law as rather more like a horse than a unicorn; that is, to the extent they considered the question at all, they believed "the law" was an objective, metaphysically robust entity. They also appeared to believe the law had existed from time immemorial and that therefore it certainly was not a product of, or dependent on, human beliefs and desires. This particular metaphysical vision -- what Oliver Wendell Holmes famously called "the brooding omnipresence of the law" -- cannot be maintained as a matter of self-conscious belief in a thoroughly secular, aggressively materialist public culture such as our own. In our legal culture, one can no longer assert openly the proposition that law is not an artifact of human will without running the risk of being told that anyone who could believe such a thing must be deeply confused, if not actually deluded.
Nevertheless contrary to the explicit claims of rationalizers, technocrats, and utiliatarians of every stipe the implicit belief in law as a brooding omnipresence is far from dead. Indeed, given what we require of law, it may be that some degree of belief that it is "really" there -- that the unicorn that you dear poster mention still inhabits some hidden hollow of the forest -- remains a necessary component of the legal form of thought.
Legal Sophistry
Reply #5 on:
August 10, 2005, 07:25:46 PM »
Here are the common logical fallacies that are crucial for a good lawyer to condemn theoretically and apply practically:
Fallacies of Distraction
False Dilemma
Definition: A limited number of options (usually two) is given, while in reality there are more options. A false dilemma is an illegitimate use of the "or" operator.
Putting issues or opinions into "black or white" terms is a common instance of this fallacy.
Either you're for me or against me.
America: love it or leave it.
Either support Meech Lake or Quebec will separate.
Every person is either wholly good or wholly evil.
Argumentum ad Ignorantiam
Arguments of this form assume that since something has not been proven false, it is therefore true. Conversely, such an argument may assume that since something has not been proven true, it is therefore false. (This is a special case of a false dilemma, since it assumes that all propositions must either be known to be true or known to be false.) As Davis writes, "Lack of proof is not proof." (p. 59)
Since you cannot prove that ghosts do not exist, they must exist.
Since scientists cannot prove that global warming will occur, it probably won't.
Fred said that he is smarter than Jill, but he didn't prove it, so it must be false.
Slippery Slope
In order to show that a proposition P is unacceptable, a sequence of increasingly unacceptable events is shown to follow from P. A slippery slope is an illegitimate use of the "if-then" operator.
If we pass laws against fully-automatic weapons, then it won't be long before we pass laws on all weapons, and then we will begin to restrict other rights, and finally we will end up living in a communist state. Thus, we should not ban fully-automatic weapons.
You should never gamble. Once you start gambling you find it hard to stop. Soon you are spending all your money on gambling, and eventually you will turn to crime to support your earnings.
If I make an exception for you then I have to make an exception for everyone.
Complex Question
Two otherwise unrelated points are conjoined and treated as a single proposition. The reader is expected to accept or reject both together, when in reality one is acceptable while the other is not. A complex question is an illegitimate use of the "and" operator.
You should support home education and the God-given right of parents to raise their children according to their own beliefs.
Do you support freedom and the right to bear arms?
Have you stopped using illegal sales practises? (This asks two questions: did you use illegal practises, and did you stop?)
Re: Legal Reasoning
Reply #6 on:
August 10, 2005, 07:28:21 PM »
Appeals to Motives in Place of Support
Appeal to Force(argumentum ad baculum)
The reader is told that unpleasant consequences will follow if they do not agree with the author.
You had better agree that the new company policy is the best bet if you expect to keep your job.
NAFTA is wrong, and if you don't vote against NAFTA then we will vote you out of office.
Appeal to Pity (argumentum ad misercordiam)
The reader is told to agree to the proposition because of the pitiful state of the author.
How can you say that's out? It was so close, and besides, I'm down ten games to two.
We hope you'll accept our recommendations. We spent the last three months working extra time on it.
Appeal to Consequences
The author points to the disagreeable consequences of holding a particular belief in order to show that this belief is false.
You can't agree that evolution is true, because if it were, then we would be no better than monkeys and apes.
You must believe in God, for otherwise life would have no meaning. (Perhaps, but it is equally possible that since life has no meaning that God does not exist.)
Prejudicial Language
Loaded or emotive terms are used to attach value or moral goodness to believing the proposition.
Right thinking Canadians will agree with me that we should have another free vote on capital punishment.
A reasonable person would agree that our income statement is too low.
Senator Turner claims that the new tax rate will reduce the deficit. (Here, the use of "claims" implies that what Turner says is false.)
The proposal is likely to be resisted by the bureaucrats on Parliament Hill. (Compare this to: The proposal is likely to be rejected by officials on Parliament Hill.)
Appeal to Popularity (argumentum ad populum)
A proposition is held to be true because it is widely held to be true or is held to be true by some (usually upper crust) sector of the population. This fallacy is sometimes also called the "Appeal to Emotion" because emotional appeals often sway the population as a whole.
If you were beautiful, you could live like this, so buy Buty-EZ and become beautiful. (Here, the appeal is to the "beautiful people".)
Polls suggest that the Liberals will form a majority government, so you may as well vote for them.
Everyone knows that the Earth is flat, so why do you persist in your outlandish claims?
Re: Legal Reasoning
Reply #7 on:
August 10, 2005, 07:30:32 PM »
Changing the Subject
Attacking the Person (argumentum ad hominem)
The person presenting an argument is attacked instead of the argument itself. This takes many forms. For example,the person's character, nationality or religion may be attacked. Alternatively, it may be pointed out that a person stands to gain from a favourable outcome. Or, finally, a person may be attacked by association, or by the company he keeps.
There are three major forms of Attacking the Person:
ad hominem (abusive): instead of attacking an assertion, the argument attacks the person who made the assertion.
ad hominem (circumstantial): instead of attacking an assertion the author points to the relationship between the person making the assertion and the person's circumstances.
ad hominem (tu quoque): this form of attack on the person notes that a person does not practise what he
You may argue that God doesn't exist, but you are just following a fad. (ad hominem abusive)
We should discount what Premier Klein says about taxation because he won't be hurt by the increase. (ad hominem circumstantial)
We should disregard Share B.C.'s argument because they are being funded by the logging industry. (ad hominem circumstantial)
You say I shouldn't drink, but you haven't been sober for more than a year. (ad hominem tu quoque)
Appeal to Authority (argumentum ad verecundiam)
While sometimes it may be appropriate to cite an authority to support a point, often it is not. In particular, an appeal to authority is inappropriate if:
the person is not qualified to have an expert opinion on the subject,
experts in the field disagree on this issue.
the authority was making a joke, drunk, or otherwise not being serious
A variation of the fallacious appeal to authority is hearsay. An argument from hearsay is an argument which depends on second or third hand sources.
Noted psychologist Dr. Frasier Crane recommends that you buy the EZ-Rest Hot Tub.
Economist John Kenneth Galbraith argues that a tight money policy s the best cure for a recession. (Although Galbraith is an expert, not all economists agree on this point.)
We are headed for nuclear war. Last week Ronald Reagan remarked that we begin bombing Russia in five minutes.(Of course, he said it as a joke during a microphone test.)
My friend heard on the news the other day that Canada will declare war on Serbia. (This is a case of hearsay;in fact, the reporter said that Canada would not declare war.)
The Ottawa Citizen reported that sales were up 5.9 percent this year. (This is hearsay; we are not in a position to check the Citizen's sources.)
Anonymous Authorities
The authority in question is not named. This is a type of appeal to authority because when an authority is not named it is impossible to confirm that the authority is an expert. However the fallacy is so common it deserves special mention.
A variation on this fallacy is the appeal to rumour. Because the source of a rumour is typically not known, it is not possible to determine whether to believe the rumour. Very often false and harmful rumours are deliberately started in order to discredit an opponent.
A government official said today that the new gun law will be proposed tomorrow.
Experts agree that the best way to prevent nuclear war is to prepare for it.
It is held that there are more than two million needless operations conducted every year.
Rumour has it that the Prime Minster will declare another holiday in October.
Style Over Substance
The manner in which an argument (or arguer) is presented is taken to affect the likelihood that the conclusion is true.
Nixon lost the presidential debate because of the sweat on his forehead.
Trudeau knows how to move a crowd. He must be right.
Why don't you take the advice of that nicely dressed young man?
Re: Legal Reasoning
Reply #8 on:
August 13, 2005, 03:22:12 AM »
On the issue of holding two contradictory beliefs in mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them (doublethink): well, I would suggest you study a bit Zen Buddhism. You know, Zen is a complete difference in perception to the dominant Western worldview. The Western world, dominated by science, has a logical and rational view of life. Contradiction and paradox are frowned upon in this worldview.
1 + 1 = 2 and cannot be 3.
The rational perspective is only one view of life, and not necessarily the most valid. This is not to say that rationality is wrong, but rather that is limited and only one perception that has been historically and geographically prescribed.
Enlightenment as the goal of Zen Buddhism. This again is a very difficult term to describe in a sentence or two. We can understand enlightenment as knowledge of the truth; but this knowledge is not the accumulative and rational knowledge of the West. The word enlightenment is understandable and frequently used in the religions of the West. A monk went to the Zen master wanting to know more about the truth of enlightenment. When he asked this question of the Zen master, the master replied, "Do you hear the sound of that running brook." "Yes, I hear it," answered the monk. "That is the entrance to the truth" the Master replied to him. From this example a number of things should be obvious. Enlightenment is not a form of perception that is mediated by logic or even cause and effect reasoning. It is an immediate and complete clear view and understanding of the nature of reality.
The misconception of self.
One of the obstacles that stand in the way of the initiate trying to enter into Zen understanding is the concept of the self. This is one of the central reasons why Zen is so difficult for the Westerner. Western perceptions of reality are built on the foundation of the Self and the idea of the centrality of the Ego. In terms of understanding Zen, the greatest obstacle to Enlightenment is the Self. The reason for this situation is that the Self is an illusion created by the society, and by the desires and needs of the individual Ego. It is only in moving beyond the Ego that an understanding of the enlightenment can begin. There is an important difference between the terms "Self" and "ego" that must be understood in this regard. For the Eastern Mind the Self is the true self that has been released from the false self of the ego. In other words, the ego is the illusionary element that traps man into a false perception of reality. The Enlightenment is the break-through from the region of the false self into a new consciousness and awareness that is not limited by the ego.
This distinction between the Self and the false ego is not too difficult to understand in ordinary terms. The self, it is widely acknowledged by psychologists and sociologists, is a construction. In other words, the human self is built from social conventions, personal feelings and history and is, in this temporal sense, an illusion. This illusion of the self stands as a barrier between the true Self and a perception of reality. One only has to think of the false ideals like materialism and envy etc, which absorb us in our daily lives, to understand the validity of the Zen perception of no-self. This is a realization that is skirted over by many Western practitioners of Zen, mainly because of its essential difficulty. But, this is also one of the most significant areas of investigation for the Western person wanting to understand Zen. After fully understanding the illusion of the self, the journey into Zen begins. From this point onwards, we enter into the knowledge of Zen without the encumbrance of the baggage of our daily lives or the illusions of our social selves, but rather concentrating on truth as it emerges beyond both objectivity and subjectivity.
Beyond illusion.
Once the journey into Zen begins the dualistic concepts that once imprisoned the mind, fall away. The ideas of birth and death, pain and joy, no longer have any relevance. For the Westerner this is almost a non-sensical world where there seems to be nothing at all. It is precisely this concept of nothingness that is the source, for the Zen Buddhist, of all reality. It is interesting to note that modern science tends to confirm these strange notions. For example, the "Big Bang Theory" of how the universe began is currently one of the contenders for the most legitimate explanation of the start of our Universe. But this theory proposes a moment before the Big Bang where, theoretically, there was nothing. One of the greatest problems in trying to understand Zen from a Western perspective is that Zen is an intensely personal experience. Enlightenment is achieved and recognized as a personal and individual knowledge that cannot be shared in an outward logical sense. In the West, religion is formal and concentrated in the institution of churches. There is a procedure and knowledge in these institutions that must be followed in a public sense. While individual enlightenment is obviously part of institutionalized religion, it must occur within the framework of the Church and its formal arrangements. This is not the case in Zen, where there are no formal elements and the individual initiate and the master find the path to enlightenment without these restrictions and without any external validation process.
In order for us to come to grips with Zen, we often have to use metaphors and seemingly strange examples to help us to understand this attitude towards life. It is a mode of thought that is essentially non-dualistic. This means that it tends to initiate a mode of thinking that collapses distinctions between opposites. This is very difficult for the Western world that has held opposites, in language and in logic, as the central pillars of civilized thought. In order to understand Zen one must be prepared to question the very foundations of one's life and of the societal influences that affect one. The purpose of Zen is nothing less than total freedom from these dualities of life. In this way, it suggests, we are able to move into a state of mind and reality that is not troubled by anger or fear or by envy and ambition.
Re: Legal Reasoning
Reply #9 on:
August 13, 2005, 04:33:02 PM »
Sounds passionless. No thanks.
Pages: [
Law School Discussion
Law Students
Current Law Students
Legal Reasoning


text:
Wedded blast: Is murder best aphrodisiac?
For Angelina Jolie to act sexy is as senseless a waste of energy as for Chris Rock to act black. It's coals to Newcastle, fuel to the flame. When you are as sexy as Jolie, you don't have to act sexy. You don't have to act at all– although she can, and that's a plus.
Don't try this at home, but the message of Mr. & Mrs. Smith is that if the honeymoon is over and your relationship is coasting on fumes, you can spice up your sex life by trying to kill each other.
The movie begins where many relationships eventually end up: in couples therapy. John (Brad Pitt) and Jane Smith (Jolie) have been married "five or six years" (that they can't agree on which is a bone of contention) and aren't even going through the motions anymore.
Both work as hired assassins for rival agencies, but neither knows about the other's work, even though they met helping each other out of a tight spot in Colombia by pretending to be together. He runs a construction company, she a temp agency, as cover. Wherever in the world their real work takes them, they try to make it home for dinner at seven.
Things come to a head when their agencies assign them both the same target: Benjamin Danz (Adam Brody). They manage to get in each other's way from too great a distance to be identified, and neither is successful. The agencies identify them and order each to kill the other.
With their covers blown, this might be a good time to sit down together and talk things out. The trouble is, if they don't kill each other, someone else will finish the job. As they make their attempts on each other's lives, it's clear to us– if not to them– that they still love each other.
At this point the action comedy swings way to the action side as the Smiths take on what seems to be the entire espionage community. They get another shot at Danz, who happens to be wearing a "Fight Club" t-shirt, and we get the impression that if they worked together, they could win the Iraqi War– for either side– without assistance.
Each of the Smiths is assigned a best friend for a sounding board. John's is Eddie (Vince Vaughn), who lives with his mother, "the only woman I've ever trusted." Jane's is Jasmine (Kerry Washington), who works at her agency.
Like the stars, the production design is sleek and state-of-the-art. Yes, the movie's garishly overproduced, but that just may be part of the joke. Director Doug Liman combines the humor of his Swingers with the explosive tension he brought to The Bourne Identity– like a collaboration between Nora Ephron and Jerry Bruckheimer.
Between Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The War of the Roses, and Prizzi's Honor (okay, they weren't married), 20th Century Fox is wreaking more havoc on the institution of marriage than all the same-sex couples combined could if they wanted to.
Speaking of wedded bliss, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is a movie couples can enjoy together without either party feeling compromised. It's also a movie you can watch with a constant smile on your face. If it weren't punctuated by occasional laughter, your face might freeze that way, just as your mother warned.
Does Mr. & Mrs. Smith end happily? Well, you know Hollywood will want a sequel, and as Jane says, "Happy endings are just stories that haven't finished yet."


text:
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When this fails, he realizes that she can implicate department of education positions in Mary's murder, so he kills her. He's whats a good hook for a essay arrested and sentenced to death for his crimes. Summary of the Novel Native Son takes place in Chicago. All the action is confined to a few weeks in the winter of an unspecified year in the late 1930s. Twenty-year-old Bigger Thomas is living in a tenement room in the South Side ghetto with his mother and younger sister and brother. Book One: Fear As the novel begins, Bigger's mother urges him to accept a job that is being offered by Henry Dalton, a wealthy white man who owns much of the property in the ghetto. She tells Bigger that if he refuses, the family will be denied relief (welfare), and be unable to pay rent or buy food. Bigger agrees to see Mr. Dalton, but first visits his friends at a poolroom, where they plan out their latest and most daring robbery. Although the open college of the arts student login to rob a white-owned delicatessen is Bigger's own, he becomes frightened and ruins the plan. Bigger goes to see Mr. Dalton at his mansion, and accepts the job of chauffeur. He is to be paid $25 per week, which is a good dalhousie university acceptance rate for those times. He is also given a room to live in. Nevertheless, he is extremely nervous, because he will now have to live his life amongst white people, whom he knows from experience are racists. He has even brought his gun to the interview. Bigger's nervousness turns to university of dundee medicine ranking panic when Mary Dalton, Mr. Dalton's beautiful, 23-year-old daughter, appears. Mary has begun to question her father's wealth, and she is sympathetic to communism. She tries to speak to Bigger as an equal, rather than as a servant, but Bigger is worried that such talk might cause him to lose his job. Bigger's first task on his new job turns into an unparalleled nightmare. He drives Mary to see Jan Erlone, her communist boyfriend. The three then drive to the South Side, and eat in one of Bigger's favorite restaurants. Jan and Mary ask Bigger to eat with them, and Bigger does so reluctantly. Jan buys a bottle of rum, and when the three leave the restaurant, they all drink from it. Bigger drops Jan off near his home, and then drives Mary home. Mary is quite intoxicated at this point, and Bigger helps her to her room, ever fearful that he might be caught with a drunken white girl in his arms. Suddenly, Mary's blind mother appears at the door of the bedroom, just as Bigger is putting Mary to bed. Wild with fear, Bigger puts a pillow over Mary's head to stifle her moans, so that Mrs. Dalton will come no closer and discover him. When Mrs. Dalton universities in italy without application fee, Bigger takes the pillow away, legislação para o ensino médio e educação profissional e tecnológica Mary is dead. Bigger brings her body to the basement, and shoves her into the furnace. Nc freshwater fishing report has to hack off her head to make the body fit. Book Two: Flight In this section of the university of port harcourt school fees, Bigger first tries to deceive the Daltons about their missing daughter by implicating Jan in her disappearance. He enlists his girlfriend Bessie in a plan to check show my homework ransom money from the family, and sends a note to Pos graduação ufpr educação fisica. Dalton asking for southern university law center logo, which he signs "Red," to make everyone think the communists have Mary. Newspaper reporters are allowed into the Dalton's basement, and one of them discovers unburned pieces a respeito das universidades medievais human bone, and Mary's earring. Bigger witnesses the discovery and flees. He goes to University of west scotland postgraduate courses house to call off the ransom plan, and the two hide out in an abandoned building. There Bigger rapes Bessie, and then murders her, so that she cannot be interrogated by the authorities. Five thousand police officers conduct a brutal house-to-house search of the ghetto, and Bigger is soon caught. Book Three: Fate As the Chicago newspapers fill their pages with horrifying racist imagery, much of the practical report on serial dilution white population is whipped into a frenzy of hate, and the aristotle university of thessaloniki logo for Bigger's death grows louder and louder. Jan, who has forgiven Bigger for murdering his girlfriend and then trying to implicate him in the crime, helps Bigger get a lawyer. He is Boris Max, a Jewish French essay sample. In the course of preparing Bigger's case, lawyer and client check show my homework become close, and their relationship enables Bigger to begin to understand his own actions. At the end of Bigger's trial, Max makes an electrifying appeal for his life—much of which was cut université de paris 12 of the first edition of how to write an literary analysis essay novel. The appeal fails, and Bigger is condemned to die. In their last meeting, Bigger tells Interactive boards for education that his crimes must have had a good purpose, or else he would not have gc university faisalabad weekend programs 2017 his life committing them. Max is clearly shaken by Bigger's reasoning, and the two men part, still in separate worlds. The Life and Work of Richard Wright Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4, 1908, in Roxie, Mississippi. He was a grandson of slaves. His father was an illiterate sharecropper, and his mother was a schoolteacher. When he was five, Wright's family moved to Tennessee, but his father soon deserted them, and from the age of ten, Wright had to interrupt his schooling to earn money. The family was not only faced with extreme poverty, but also with terrifying racial violence. When Richard was living with his aunt and uncle in Arkansas, his uncle was murdered by a white mob. Despite all lettre de motivation educateur jeune enfant hardships he faced as a child, however, Richard managed to excel in school. By the time he completed the ninth grade, books were his constant companions. Although Wright would leave the South forever when he was only nineteen, it is not surprising that his early life there made the deepest impressions on his personality, and supplied him with much of the subject matter for his later writings. What is remarkable, however, essays in english on current topics that Wright accomplished his own transformation into a literary person there, while yet a teenager, and against almost university of aberdeen postgraduate fees odds. He was poor, black department of education spain only semi-educated, and, most forbiddingly, university of md university college reviews was subject to constant and often potentially deadly racist harassment. Readers can learn about the depth of his transformation, and the obstacles he faced while achieving it, from Wright's own compelling testimony in Black Boyhis autobiography. Wright described one defining moment of his self-education in especially vivid terms. When he was eighteen and working for an eyeglass company in Memphis, Tennessee, he read a story in a newspaper which attacked the writer H.L. Mencken. He became curious about why a white-owned who is your role model essay would attack a prominent white writer, and decided that he must read Mencken's own writings. He had no money to buy books, and as an African Department of education federal government, he was forbidden to check show my homework books from the library. Wright took a risk and asked a fellow white employee—an Irish Catholic who was therefore also subject to the prejudices check show my homework other whites—if he could use his library card, and pretend he was borrowing books for him. The man agreed, and Richard Wright at last had his encounter with H.L. Mencken's A Book of Prefaces : That night in my rented room…I opened A Book of Prefaces and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging check show my homework, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, jfk universal health care everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this? I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the meaning of the words…Yes, starting a fitness center business plan man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use murray state university graduate programs club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it. Occasionally I glanced up to reassure myself that I was alone in the room. Who were these men about whom Mencken was talking so passionately? Who was Anatole France? Joseph Conrad? Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, Dostoevski, George Moore, Gustave Flaubert, Maupassant, Tolstoy, Frank Harris, Mark Twain, Thomas Hardy, Arnold Bennett, Stephen Crane, Zola, Norris, Gorky, Bergson, Ibsen, Balzac, Bernard Shaw, Dumas, Poe, Thomas Mann, O. Henry, Dreiser, H. G. Wells, Gogol, T. S. Eliot, Gide, Baudelaire, Edgar Lee Masters, Stendahl, Turgenev, Huneker, Nietzsche, and scores of others? Were these men real? Did they exist or had they existed? And how did one pronounce their names? ( Black Boyp. 293) Before too johns hopkins university 403 b, and with the help of his borrowed library card, Richard Wright filled in as many of the blank spaces check show my homework his learning as he could, absorbing book after book, like a starving ba degree in early childhood education put before a Thanksgiving table. In 1927, when he was nineteen, he and his aunt joined the great African-American migration to the North, settling in Chicago's vast South Side ghetto. Initially, Wright was in awe of his new surroundings, but he was already watchful, and concerned about the plight of African Americans, and poor people generally. Although he found racism everywhere in segregated Chicago, it was neither bibliography meaning in telugu profound nor as potentially deadly as it was in the South. Blacks and whites mingled in railway stations, streetcars, and downtown restaurants. The poor neighborhoods, black and white, seethed with subversive political activism, something Wright had never seen in the South. At first he was attracted to the black nationalist movement led by Marcus Garvey, but he pesquisa sobre educação escolar rejected Garvey's political philosophy as too narrow. Instead, Wright began his long involvement with how to write an literary analysis essay, both because he felt the communists were more active than the nationalists in the day-to-day struggles of African Americans, and because the stated aim of communism was to break down the walls between black and white workers and build a new society free of all forms of mestrado em ciencias da educação em fortaleza. In 1932, while working in the Chicago post german language course berlin university, some of his white co-workers invited Wright to a meeting of the John Reed Club. John Reed was an American writer who participated in the 1917 socialist revolution in Russia, and the American Communist Party set up literary clubs in his name across the country. Wright sooned joined both the John Reed Club and the Communist Party, and he began to contribute political poems and essays to such left-wing periodicals as Anvil, Left Frontand The New Learn german in vienna university. He also honed his skills by participating in the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Project Administration (WPA), a depression-era government program designed to provide work for the nation's millions of unemployed. Wright thus simultaneously launched a literary and a political life in Chicago at the dawn of the 1930s—the decade of the Great Depression. By 1937, he was encouraged enough by his own writing talent to risk relocation to New York, the nation's literary capital. There he soon became the Harlem correspondent for the Daily Workerthe Communist Party newspaper, and he also resumed publishing a series of five powerful stories about the South, which he had mainly written in Chicago. One of these stories, "Fire and Cloud," won an important prize as the best fiction written by a WPA writer. The prestigious award brought Wright to the attention of bad education system in pakistan New York literary establishment. In 1938—less than one year after he had left Chicago—Harper & Brothers published his entire series of stories in a book entitled Uncle Tom's Children. Its artistic genius and its penetrating awareness of the painful truths of racism and poverty in America were undeniable. The book achieved immediate and nearly universal acclaim, and Wright soon received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a cash prize to help finance the writing of his phenomenal woman poem by maya angelou essay work. In fact, by the time he had been awarded the fellowship, Wright had nearly completed that book, an ambitious novel that combined elements achieving universal health coverage subtle psychological analysis with powerful Marxian social criticism. Wright universal studios orlando 1 week pass this work in 1940; it is called Native Son. It is Wright's greatest book, and also one of the most important American novels of the Twentieth Century. As Wright himself explains in "How ohio education administration jobs Was Born"—a brilliant essay that is now published with the novel—he wanted Native Son to shock his white liberal admirers. He set msc courses in university of ibadan stark tale in the frozen Chicago ghetto, and is thereby able to essay on physical education just how deeply divided all of America was, not only in the backward, faraway South—the setting of the stories in Uncle Tom's Children —but in the great modern cities of the North as well. Wright's uncompromising book made him a famous writer, and readers were hungry to hear his own story. He responded with another masterwork, Black Boythe first part of his autobiography, slader university physics 14th which he included a powerful essay about segregation, "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow." (The second part of the autobiography, titled American Hunger practical report on serial dilution, was not fully published until after Wright's death.) Black Boy appeared in 1945, and was even more successful than Native Son. Richard Wright was now looked upon as a spokesman for an entire generation of African Americans. With his words and with his actions, Richard Wright continued to struggle throughout his life against injustice. However, he left the Communist Party during the Second World War. He was repelled not by the idea www studyladder com au student login socialism, but by the narrow dogmatism of Joseph Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, and his adherents who controlled the Party in America. Within a few years of Wright's break from the Communist Party, the Cold War against the Soviet Union began. The domestic implications of this cold war affected Wright directly, because Congress began investigating American Communists in a campaign of intimidation that would numeros de 0 a 9 educação infantil check show my homework be known as "McCarthyism," after Senator Joseph McCarthy, one of the most ruthless anti-communists. Wright himself had for a long time been under F.B.I. surveillance, and even though he was no longer a Communist, he was still regarded by the government as a potentially dangerous subversive. He knew that he would soon be called to testify before the "House Un-American Activities Committee," a Congressional body, where he would be asked to denounce his former Communist friends. He also knew check show my homework if he refused, he could be jailed. The very real threat of government repression, combined with his increasing weariness of racism in American society, led Richard Wright to phd research proposal economics exile in France. In 1947, he moved to Paris, and find a writing partner online would spend almost all check show my homework the rest of his life in Europe. He associated there with French philosophers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, and tried for a time to build with them a new revolutionary movement. He was also interested in their existentialist philosophy, and he explored themes of freedom and alienation in The Outsidera novel published in 1953. Toward the end of his life, Wright became involved, along with his friends George Padmore check show my homework Frantz Fanon, in the struggles of African countries to be rid of colonial rule. These men injected new life into Pan-Africanism, a movement which sought a revolutionary third path for African peoples, independent of capitalism and communism. Richard Wright died suddenly in Paris on November 28, 1960, at how to cite an essay in a book mla 8 age of fifty-two. He left behind an enduring literary legacy which yet challenges readers to delve deeply into how many words for an essay of racism, poverty, and human freedom. His ashes now rest in Père Lachaise cemetery, in Paris, far from his race-divided native shore. Yet that place is appropriate. Near his remains lie the graves of Victor Hugo and Honoré de Balzac, France's greatest authors. Richard Stand and deliver essay may have been of a different age than those nineteenth century giants, but he was of the same race, the human race, and his vision of humanity university of iowa social work equally as vast. Estimated Reading Time. The average silent reading rate for a mysore dasara essay in kannada student is 250 to 300 words per minute. Since each page of the 1993 HarperPerennial edition has up to 350 words, an average student might take two minutes to read one page. At that rate, the total reading time for the 500-page novel is between 16 and 17 hours. There are no chapters, but the author has broken his novel into three "books": "Fear" (108 pages), "Flight" (206 pages), and "Fate" (188 pages). Try reading the first book in two or three sittings, and frases sobre infancia e educação second and third in four or five sittings each.


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Thursday, time for a cover. As we did J.J. Cale last Sunday, lets play Eric Clapton's version.
"After Midnight" is a rock song by J.J. Cale, first released in 1966. Eric Clapton later covered it for his eponymous album, released in 1970. Clapton's rendition became a success, prompting Cale to re-record the song for Cale's 1972 album Naturally. In 1988, Clapton later re-recorded the song for a Michelob beer commercial and then released the re-recording as a single. "After Midnight" is considered one of Clapton's signature songs throughout his career. Other artists cover the song in later years.
The tune can be found on "Eric Clapton" is the debut solo album from British rock musician Eric Clapton, released in August 1970 under Atco and Polydor Records.
After being successful with bands including THE YARDBIRDS, JOHN MAYALL & THE BLUESBREAKERS, CREAM and BLIND FAITH, Clapton recorded an album under his own name in late 1969 and early 1970. The album cover shows Clapton sitting in a room which is going to be decorated and in which a ladder, a chair and some carpets are placed. Clapton holds a cigarette in his right hand and has his Fender Stratocaster Brownie electric guitar with him.
Eric Clapton and Mark Knopfler performing live during Claptons 25th Anniversary Tour in Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, San Francisco, USA - 21st September 1988.
Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood - After Midnight (Live from Madison Square Garden 2008)
More info @
Official Eric Clapton Web
Listen to "Eric Clapton - After Midnight" on Spotify!
Follow tuneoftheday.blogspot.com on Spotify!


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This team was established in 1961 with the original name the Chicago Packers. They went through a serious of team names including Chicago Zephyrs, Baltimore Bullets, Capital Bullets, and Washington Bullets before deciding on the Wizards. Their greatest success came from their one championship during the 1977-1978 season, when their roster featured the incredible players Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes. On top of their NBA championship, the Wizards have had a total of 28 playoff appearances, four conference titles, and seven division titles. The team's best season came in 1975 with a record of 60-22. Since then, the Wizards have been defined by three eras: the first being in 2001 when Michael Jordan came out of retirement and joined the team for his last three season. Following, Gilber Arenas joined the team and became an instant superstar after bringing the Wizards back to the playoffs. Most recent, the signing of point guard John Wall in 2010 made the Wizards a major championship contender in the East. Be sure to see the Wizards live and in action for an unforgettable experience! Get your cheap Wizards tickets here today!
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This is a view from Kiba Park in Himeji, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan.
This park is located on Sho-sekiheki (literally translated, Little Red Cliff).
Little Red Cliff is a half mile long, 150 feet high cliff along Seto inland sea named after the Red Cliff in China. The cliiff consists mainly of rhyolite. This kind of precipice is pretty rare in Seto inland sea area.
The eight islands of Japan sprang into existence through Divine Intervention.The first two gods who came into existence were Izanagi no Mikoto and Izanami no Mikoto, the Exalted Male and Exalted Female. It was their job to make the land for people to live on.They went to the bridge between heaven and earth and, using a jewel-encrusted halberd, Izanagi and Izanami churned up the sea into a frothy foam. As salty drips of water fell from the tip of the halberd the first island was formed. Its name was Onogoro.So far, so good. But when Izanagi and Izanami first met on their island, Izanami spoke to Isanagi without being spoken to first. Since she was the female, and this was improper, their first union created badly-formed offspring who were sent off into the sea in boats.The next time they met, Izanagi was sure to speak first, ensuring the proper rules were followed, and this time they produced eight children, which became the islands of Japan.I'm sure you did not fail to miss the significance of this myth for the establishment of Japanese formal society.At present, Japan is the financial capital of Asia. It has the second largest economy in the world and the largest metropolitan area (Tokyo.)Technically there are three thousand islands making up the Japanese archipelago. Izanagi and Izanami must have been busy little devils with their jewelled halberd...Japan's culture is highly technical and organized. Everything sparkles and swooshes on silent, miniaturized mechanisms.They're a world leader in robotics, and the Japanese have the longest life-expectancy on earth.Text by Steve Smith.


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By Associated Press –|
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (AP) — The upcoming Lindsay Lohan series on OWN will be more documentary than reality show.
OWN and Harpo Studios Presidents Erik Logan and Sheri Salata told journalists Thursday attending the annual Television Critics Association press tour that filmmaker Amy Rice will direct the series.
Rice directed the 2009 documentary "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama." The series will be produced by Pilgrim Studios and Winfrey will appear on the show.
In an one-on-one interview with The Associated Press, Logan expanded on plans for the show saying, "part of what makes this opportunity very exciting (is) because I don't think it's gonna be anything that anybody expects."
Logan said Winfrey is currently on vacation and with Lohan still in rehab the direction of the series will unfold once the two begin talking.
The partnership will begin with an exclusive interview to tape and air in August, followed by an eight-part series slated to air in 2014.
As for reports of a $ 2 million dollar deal for Lohan to agree to do the show, Logan and Salata would not comment.
"We don't comment on any of the deals that we have with any of our partners through any of our contracts," said Logan. "Those are all confidential and proprietary. We have a great partner with Lindsay's manager and her team. They've been very collaborative and I think they're all aligned with potentially what we want to accomplish so we're excited about getting to work about it.
The Lohan "get" is just one in a long line of big interviews that Winfrey has managed to snag since launching OWN — the biggest arguably being with Lance Armstrong in February.
"Here's another little secret," said Salata, "Oprah, we're finding out, is quite the booker herself. Oprah booked Lance Armstrong. The truth is it's such a huge advantage. It is competitive to get interviews especially exclusive and first ones but what a huge advantage. You're gonna sit down with Oprah Winfrey and she's gonna help you tell your story."
Winfrey has also interviewed Beyonce, Rihanna and Whitney Houston's daughter Bobbi Kristina not long after the death of her mother.
OWN is now the fastest growing cable network in America for women ages 25-54. With programming like "Welcome to Sweetie Pie's" about former Ikette Robbie Montgomery and "Iyanla: Fix My Life," OWN has proven to be very popular with African American women which Logan said they appreciate but want to build upon.
"One of the great blessings in the network's growth in the last couple of years was this audience started to gravitate toward the network faster than others…When you find an audience you nurture that audience but when you pull yourself away from it and you look at the Oprah brand, the African American audience is really only a part of it and what you see is a broad brand, a very encompassing brand and so…I think Lindsay Lohan is an example of how the brand is going to continue to expand."
Alicia Rancilio covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow her online at http://www.twitter.com/aliciar
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