champerty

     Champerty is something you might have seen as part of the plot of a legal thriller. The lawyer or legal firm arguing a civil lawsuit may be paid with a share of the winnings. You may have seen an advertisement placed by a law firm, asking people who have taken a particular prescription drug to call.  If the firm wins a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the drug, each party to the suit--now a class action suit--will get one share of the money, and the law firm will get part of it. Champerty may mean that a law firm can "buy" someone's right to sue. For example, the law firm may pay each victim of a harmful pharmaceutical a sum of money. Then the law firm can sue the manufacturer of the drug that caused the injuries, and keep whatever it wins--all of it. Law firms who do this can make a lot of money with product liability awards.

luxury taxes

    Many states have sales taxes-a tax added to the price of goods or services that people purchase. Our sales taxes here in Pennsylvania are higher than they are in some states, but they are luxury taxes. A luxury tax is a tax on things that people don't need. For the purposes of state sales taxes, that doesn't mean yachts and private jets. It means things you don't need to eat, drink, or wear, mostly. A luxury tax is not added to groceries, most clothing, books used for school, tools needed for work, or other items deemed necessary by the state legislature. So our sales taxes are actually lower than they are in many states where the sales tax is collected on everything citizens buy.

a seat on the exchange

     A seat on the stock exchange allows the firm that owns it to trade--buy and sell-stock on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange--the NYSE. The firm buys the seat when one becomes available because someone is selling it. A seat on the exchange may cost millions--whatever the seller can get for it.
     The New York Stock Exchange is a famous building on Wall Street in New York. It's the "real" part of the movie Wall Street.

a state church

     While watching an old miniseries set in 19th-century England, I saw the combination of church and state as it affects the church--which cannot protest any government policy without being disloyal to its benefactor--and from the point of view of the government--which many believe to have religious authority, over souls as well as bodies. Will this set of beliefs ever unravel?

Memorial Day

     Memorial Day and Veteran's Day get confused sometimes. Memorial Day ( this weekend ) is to honor the American soldiers who have died in combat. Veteran's Day, in November,  is to honor the living veterans of America's wars.

public servants

     A public servant is someone who works for the government, which in the United States means the people, or the public. Politicians are public servants, when they are in office. Anyone you might come in contact with as a representative of a federal, state, or local government is a public servant--tax auditors, court clerks, sheriffs, judges, code enforcement officers, and, in a limited way, teachers and police officers. Teachers and police officers work for the government, but they do not provide services at the demand of the public.
     There are too many kinds of public servants to list--and they all work for you ( and me ). Check a government directory if you are interested.

read this aloud

There are several variations of this poem, with different titles, attributed to different authors. So here it is, without any title or author's name--

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird,
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead--
For goodness' sake don't call it "deed"!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)

A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor  both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and  fear for bear and  pear,
And then there's does and rose and lose--
Just look them up--and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart--
Come, come, I've hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive,
I'd mastered it when I was five.

a jury of one's peers

   The expression " convicted by a jury of his peers" doesn't have a legal meaning in the United States, where we are all political equals. Juries in the United States are drawn from the public at large--they are meant to be a "random" group of citizens. In a country that still has some citizens born with different rights and obligations, a "jury of his peers" has a literal, and a legal, meaning. In England ( the United Kingdom ), where some men are born "lords", who will later serve as members of the House of Lords, a "peer of the realm" is tried only by his peers--in the House of Lords.

transportation

     Transportation, historically , meant being sent to Australia or New Zealand instead of to jail. Both Australia and New Zealand were prison colonies--colonies of England, or Great Britain. When someone was convicted of a crime, the sentence might be transportation, for a number of years or for life. The convicts, who might be British or Irish,  worked on farms owned by British people. Many convicts stayed in Australia after serving their sentences. The trip back to England would have been expensive--they would have needed to work for years just to get home.

is that your final answer?

x x x x

How many times does the letter y appear on the line above?

tall skinny houses

     There are a lot of tall skinny houses here in Philadelphia. Many are three stories, but not even as big as an ordinary townhouse. They were built tall and skinny because property taxes were assessed according to the "frontage" of the lot--that is, how wide it was, or how much space it took up on the city street. So the taxes on a tall skinny house were lower than taxes on a wider house with fewer stories.

but is it real?

     The movies often do a good job of portraying historical events. The problem is, some of the audience may not  know when the events portrayed are real and when they are fictional. A useful way to think of dramatizations of history or current events is "levels" of reality.
   The first level, the most realistic, would be a portrayal of actual persons and events, as realistically done as possible.
     The second level would be a movie in which fictional characters are set against a background of real history and historical events, as when fictional characters are introduced to tell the story of a real war.
     The third level would be mainly fictional, but with accurate historical details to lend authenticity to the story.   
     The fourth level would be pure fiction.
      The fifth level would add historical details that are not necessarily correct. Some of these are reasonably harmless, such as modern makeup on medieval women. Others are more confusing, and might give viewers a distorted view of history. Perhaps we could institute a system of rating movies for historical authenticity.
     

American places

     The gazetteer of an American atlas is a fascinating thing to read. The whole world seems to be in it. Rome. Paris. London. Dublin. Berlin. Moscow. Odessa. Memphis. Alexandria. Cairo. Londonderry. Canton. Naples. Frankfort. There are many others. Some day I'd like to visit these towns and find out the stories of how they got their names.

the catch-22

    People claim to have read Catch-22 without "getting" what the catch was. Joseph Heller explains it plainly--perhaps the people who missed the meaning thought that he was joking, or having his character joke for him. The main character in the novel wants to get out of the army, so he tries to pretend that he is insane. The army will discharge him ( let him go ) if it finds that he is crazy. The problem is, the army psychiatrists tell the character that it would be crazy to want to be in the army. So since he obviously wants to get out of the army, he must be perfectly okay, mentally. So you can't get out of the army by claiming to be crazy, because it's perfectly rational to want to get out of the army--you might get shot, after all.

right and left

     In the United States and in many other countries, driving is done on the right side of the road. Walking is done on the right side of a sidewalk, aisle, or  hall. In some countries, such as England, driving is done on the left. Walking is also done on the left. "Right" and "left" countries seem to be scattered around the globe at random. While driving from a left country into a right country, or from a right to a left, there is a checkpoint where cars have to stop and change sides of the road, like a little traffic circle.
     Someone used to driving on the right may have trouble adjusting to driving on the left. Every time the new driver turns a corner, he may wind up in the wrong lane. Many visitors to foreign countries where driving is on the opposite side never attempt to drive--they just take cabs or trains.
      Walking may even be awkward. We are used to giving way to the right, but in countries where they drive on the left, they walk on the left as well, and give way to an oncoming person to the left.
     We also look for the driver on the right side of the road when we cross a street. In a country where they drive on the left, a visitor has to look in that direction before stepping into the street.
     If you think this sounds easy, get out some old toys, or print some paper cars and try it. 
    

they don't make good pets

     You may have run into someone who has a "pet theory". A pet theory may be anything from seeing international conspiracies everywhere, to explaining all human behavior away with the label "psychology".  A "pet theory" tends to stick in the face of all evidence to that might refute it. Once someone has latched onto a "pet theory", it can be hard to let go. I suppose this is partly ego--having once thought up the theory, the holder of the theory would have to admit that he or she had been wrong, in order to let go of it. The alternative would be to cling to the theory, and to the idea that it is correct, discounting all evidence that might serve to prove it false--a very bad mental habit. We all have a harder time changing our minds than we do making them up to begin with--so begin carefully, without any theory in mind, and decide based on what you see and hear--not on the basis of an idea with no evidence to support it.

lots of Kennedys

    One form of ignorance believes in things that don't exist, like magic and clairvoyance. Another form of ignorance claims that things that really happened are fictional. The Kennedys are one example of this. People see the assassination of Robert Kennedy in an old movie, and assume that it is an error or a fictionalization of the assassination of John Kennedy. Wrong--both assassinations really happened. John Kennedy was shot while he was president, in 1963. Robert Kennedy, his brother, was killed while running for president in 1968. Another Kennedy brother,  Ted ( Edward ) had a car accident in which a young woman was killed. Ted Kennedy survived the accident and served in the U.S. Senate for many years. The Kennedys were a large family, and many of them were involved in politics. One of the reasons movies show "clips" of famous events is to tell the audience the year.  If you're not sure whether an event portrayed in a movie is real or fictional, try searching it on the internet.

a common tautology

     A "tautology" is a classic error of logic--one on the list students were once taught to recognize and avoid. Someone using a tautology defines the thing or idea in question by defining the thing or idea in question--"it is what it is" is a tautology. A definition can make a sound  basis for an argument, but it is not a substitute for an explanation. A common tautology, or set of tautologies, that you can hear on TV crime shows sounds like this--
Question--"why did the suspect do these crazy things?"
Answer--"because he's crazy."--or "because he's a psychopath."
The "why" part of the question has not been answered.
Illogical.

The "argument by definition", in the case of the TV psychopath, would not be particularly useful, but would run like this--
A psychopath is defined as someone who commits violent crime for no discernible motive. He has no motive of profit, and no motive of protecting his reputation, two of the most common criminal motives. This criminal commits violent crime without any discernible motive, therefore this criminal is a psychopath.
 Logical, but not particularly useful.

# the world according to TV

     The world according to TV, Part 1--
90% of the employed people work as police officers, hookers, and serial killers. A few people have other jobs, but they are often vague when questioned about them. These may be undercover cops, hookers lying about how they make money, or serial killers on the lam.

whose picture is on the money?

     In the United States, we put the pictures of famous people from the American past on the money--and only pictures of dead people appear on the money.  If you look at different currency ( paper money ) from around the world, you will see some that has a picture of the reigning monarch ( king or queen ) on it. The king or queen is on every bill and usually on every coin. The image of the king or queen is what makes the money "real" or "good". British money is a good example. Queen Elizabeth's picture is on all of the money.    
      Some countries around the world use the same system for their money that monarchists use--the picture on the money is of the current president or national political leader. Other countries use a system of only showing historical figures on the money, as we do in America. Most Americans would not be comfortable with the idea that one person backs up the value of our money, or that the money is in some way connected to one supreme person. Britons may be finding that they are uncomfortable spending currency--the new Euros-- that doesn't have their queen's picture on it.

the harrowing of hell

     The "Harrowing of Hell" is the title of a sort of standard morality play put on in medieval Europe. Harrowing means raking up, as with a large farm implement that looks like a rake. Each year when the play was put on, different groups would present their own version of  "there ought to be a special place in hell for..."  To the bakers, there ought to be a special place in hell for people who bake bad bread. To the brewers, there ought to be a special place in hell for people who give short measure of ale. A "Harrowing of Hell " play might have dozens of "acts", each put on by a different trade group or guild, each sure that there ought to be a special place in hell for someone who practiced their own trade badly.  If anyone would consider reviving this custom, I think it might be quite popular.

the temperance movement

   The "temperance movement" refers, in a general way,  to the campaign to ban alcohol in the United States, in the late 19th and early 20th century ( late 1800's and early 1900's ). The "Anti-Saloon League" was a part of this campaign, as was Carrie Nation--the woman who reportedly walked into saloons with an axe, meaning to chop up the bar. Proponents of temperance were sure that banning alcohol would solve a lot of the problems of poverty, as it seemed to them that too many breadwinners spent their weekly pay in saloons, instead of on rent and groceries. The appeals for relief of their destitute wives and children inspired the  movement for temperance.
     The temperance movement succeeded in banning alcohol, in 1918, with the famous "Volstead Act", and an amendment to the constitution. The years, sometimes called "dry years" when alcohol was illegal are called "prohibition", for the prohibition of alcohol. Prohibition is also called the "Noble Experiment", meaning it had good intentions. The experiment didn't work. We need the consent of 3/4 of the states to amend the constitution, so we might assume that the law had a lot of popular support, but the majority of the population ignored or flouted it. Anyone who had been spending his paycheck at a saloon now spent it at a speakeasy.       
     Worse than failing to improve conditions among the poor, illegal distribution of alcohol supposedly gave organized crime a boost that made it something of a national institution. The prohibition of alcohol was repealed ( with another constitutional amendment ) in 1932--the "Happy Days Are Here Again" year.

you sue me, I sue you

    Today is "Law and Order" day, according to an email I received from your government and mine. Law and order, including civil law and order, is the American way, in a way. Our famous pilgrims, for example, landed on Plymouth Rock and then sued each other frequently. Reading their court records makes them seem like an obnoxious bunch of people who couldn't settle their differences without going to court. The most outrageous example was the two men who sued each other over a foot and a half of land for thirty-five years. But when you consider the alternatives to going to court--starting fights, making trouble to get your way, suing people starts to look like the civilized way to go.