Horse 3090 - Trois Mille Quatre-Vingt-Dix... Quatre-Vingt-Dix?!

"What?! FRANCE, why do you do numbers so weird?! I hope they could hear me. They need to know."

- via Facebook, 26th Oct 2022.

Anyone who has ever tried to learn French, including native speakers, must have at some point realised that the French method for naming numbers is madder than a March hare. 

It makes some sort of sense that right across Europe, that numbers beyond 12 cease to have individual names. We have ten digits on our hands plus to feet is twelve. It also helps that twelve is a nice composite number with many factors.

Like English, French has words for small numbers:

11 - Eleven: Onze

12 - Twelve: Douze

Unlike English though, French has words for small numbers which English does not:

13 - Thirteen: Treize

14 - Fourteen: Quatorze

15 - Fifteen: Quinze

16 - Sixteen: Seize

At seventeen, French finally runs out of names for its numbers:

17 - Seventeen: Dix-sept

At some point, languages just run out of words for its numbers. The most extreme example I can think of this is Hindi. Hindi does have rules and a pattern for naming its numbers up to one hundred but the forms are so weird and irregular and they change so very much that you basically have to learn a hundred different word. I am not even going try to explain Hindi.

French is so Être à l'ouest that it rattles my beans. French numbers are crazy-bonkers-hatstand. Historically, this has to do with the fact that French is just the language which happened to win, in the giant multi-millennial melee in the battle of the tongues. As I understand it, French is likely derived from Frankish. The Franks kind of smashed everyone in the whole region between the rivers Loire and Rhine, before Charlemagne from about 800 onwards, decided that he was going to have fun and smash everyone else in l'hexagone as well.  As language is malleable and changing, it absorbs things which are useful, ejects things which are not, and sometimes hard encodes weirdsies from the past.

This aspect of the French language isn't French at all but a feature of Gallic which shared a lot in common with the Celtic languages. Probably Gallic used a sexagesimal system, either because numbers beyond 60 weren't useful or because 60 is a far more sensible system to use.

100 has only 7 factors - 100, 50, 25, 10, 4, 2, 1

60 of the other hand has 10 factors - 60, 30, 20, 15, 12, 10, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

More factors means that there are more ways to divide and share the amount; which is incredibly useful for a number system. I personally think that the world would have been better off if we had decided to use twelve and not ten because 12, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 are more useful than 10, 5, 2, 1 as factors, as halves, quarters, and thirds (and maybe sixths), are sensible factors for normal life. 5 is only a thing because 10 is a thing. If twelve was the base, then dec and el (X and E) would have been just smallish numbers and 10 would have still been the headline for the system. 60 as a number base, retains all of the goodness of 12 but with some other fun stuff for free.

I could be generous and suggest that Gallic used a sexagesimal system because it was thinking about maths and wanted to divide stuff up fairly and equitably and that is in fact true for ancient nations like Egypt, Sumeria, Babylon et cetera who were doing astronomy. It is probably for that reason that a circle is divided into 360 degrees, with 60 minutes, 60 seconds, 60 thirds, 60 fourths... ad nauseum. I'm not going to be generous though. My suspicion is that Gallic, which was spoken by a bunch of peasant farmers, who were more concerned with making turnips and carrots and wheat and beefs and bacons grow, stopped at sixty because there wasn't really any need for much beyond that.

I live in a world where science has standardised weights, measures, distances, speeds, and currencies. The tyranny of 10 washes through so much of modern life that it isn't funny. The Gauls however, who are pre-Industrial Revolution, pre-French, and even pre-Arabic numerals, have a language which might even be pre-Roman and pre-practical maths. The Romans certainly did not help. 

The Romans may have been amazing engineers and had an amazing army buy they conquered Southern Europe, Northern Africa and the Middle East, with a very silly language and a very silly number system. The Roman Language has a Nominative, Genitive, Dative, Accusative, Ablative, Vocative, and Locative cases ; which all makes for a very silly language. Sure, they counted in tens but Roman numerals are unwieldy and daft. When you have a silly language and a silly number system, then you're not likely to influence a tribal/regional language on a technical point of order like maths.

All of this leads towards the rather obvious question of "why bother?" Why bother inventing words for something which you're never ever going to need on any kind of regular basis at all. If you are a Gaul, then when are you ever likely to have 73 of anything? Okay, maybe at harvest season when you have 73 turnips but in any practical real world sense, why would you even need to know that you have 73 turnips? The human mind nominally can hold about 23 things in a register before they cease to be individual things and just become a clump. What's 24? It's two dozen, that's what it is. Gallic never needed to bother to invent any words beyond sixty because why would it ever need to? Even now, French's words for 100 (cent) and 1000 (mille) are likely to be imports which are Roman derived. There is an Egyptian hieroglyph for the number 1,000,000 which shows a man with his hands up in the air in abject astonishment as if to say "What is this? I can't even!"

Getting back to French:

50 - cinquante: Fifty. This is sensible.

60 - soixante: sixty. That's where for all practical intents and purposes, most people's need for a number ends. Why bother inventing anything beyond that? Your average Gaul is sitting in a house where the roof leaks and hoping to get into a state of turnip based inebriation, to fend of the discomfort of raging cholera before the destroying angel comes at last to steal the light out of their eyes.

61- soixante-et-un: sixty and one. This is sensible.

70 - soixante-dix: sixty and ten. This is crazy.

71- soixante-et-onze: sixty and eleven. This is more crazy.

76 - soixante-et-seize: sixty and sixteen.

77 - soixante-et-dix-sept: sixty and ten seven. What's going on here?

French, having been derived from a Romance language and after overlaying on top of a Celtic peoples, has ended up with a weird pseudo-vigesimal number system. Of itself that's not ridiculous because a lot of languages used to be this way; even English. Remember "four score and seven years ago"? A "score" in English, is just another name for twenty.

Beyond eighty, French just counts four twenties with the appendix that it used beyond sixty.

80 - quatre-vingt: four twenties.

90 - quatre-vingt-dix: four twenties ten.

96 - quatre-vingt-et-seize: four twenties and sixteen.

97 - quatre-vingt-et-dix-sept: four twenties and ten seven.

To wit, traditional Scottish Gaelic uses a full vigesimal (vigesmus - 1/20th) system, hence based on twenty and its multiples, rather than on ten and its multiple.

10 - deich: ten

20 - fichead: twenty

30 - deich air fhichead: ten on twenty

40 - dà fhichead: two twenties

50 - leth-cheud: half hundred

60 - trì fichead: three twenties

90 - ceithir fichead ’s a deich: four twenties and ten

120 - sia fichead: six twenties

180 - naoi fichead: nine twenties

However Modern Scottish Gaelic has adopted a regular decimal system because that is what everyone else uses.

60 – seasgad: sixty

70 – seachdad: seventy

80 – ochdad: eighty

90 – naochad: ninety

While we're at it, Swiss French speakers, Belgian French speakers, and Canadian French speakers, have also adopted a regular decimal system because that is what everyone else uses.

60 – soixante: sixty

70 – septante: seventy

80 – huitante: eighty

90 – nonante: ninety

In Liège, Geneva or Montréal, it is probably more common to hear nonante-sept (ninety-seven) instead of quatre-vingt-dix-sept (four-twenty-ten-seven).

Danish has also retained a crazy-bonkers-hatstand number system; to the point where a simple number like 58, needs complex fractions. 58 is "otteoghalvtreds" and it literally reads eight-two-and-a-half-times-twenty. If we do the maths 8 + (½ x 20) = 8 + 50 = 58.

What is to be done about this? Why if the French people know that other French speakers use more sensible language do they persist? The Délégation générale à la langue française et aux langues de France (DGLFLF) is not exactly the French language police but they at least try to keep English words which are creeping into French, out. The DGLFLF will suggest new French derived terms for the French civil service but ultimately, they can't keep the tide out forever.

The truth is that France probably will adopt soixante, septante, huitante and nonante into the language at some point in the future but that time is not yet. 

They need to know. They do know. They just don't care, yet.

Horse 3089 - 3 = ? - Oh yes, it does.

Hank Green of Vlogbrothers, Crash Course, podcasting and novels fame, posted a video working through his complaint about the following maths problem.

It will take about four minutes for you to run through the video; so please take the time to do that before I move on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBJVyCYuu78

The big takeaway from this video is that a maths problem like this, which is deliberately vague, is designed like so much else on the internet, to be an outrage generator which then gets people arguing and thus drives clicks and advert revenues. I have no problem with this as a summary for what is going on in the maths problem. 

Even if we set that aside though and even if we ignore the fact that 9 does not equal 90, 8 does not equal 72, and 8 does not equal 56 et cetera, there's still yet another fundamental thing about this which Hank did not discuss. Let me rewrite this problem so that it makes better sense and is parsed better.

Given the points:

(9,90), (8,72), (7,56) (6,42), what should the y value be for the x value of 3.

Most people answer:

3 = 12 or,

3 = 18

This is a better written maths question and it nominally appears to be solvable. The solution of y=x(x+1) is a good fit for these points and the answer of (3,12) looks to be about right but is it the only answer? No. Here in fact is the fundamental problem with the question and why people like to answer the question so vociferously.

When you see the notation in maths of y=f(x), then this means that y is the result of doing something, that is performing some function on x. A function in maths is kind of like a set of instructions to get you from one place to another. The problem is that with such a small set of points, the function is actually unknowable. Granted that if we already know what the function is, then we can produce an infinite amount of answers according to the rules of the function but in this maths problem we are not given the function. We have a guess. We can make a good localised guess but it is still a guess. 

By only giving us a a few points, we run hard up against one of the most annoying general rules in maths; which is:

Any given set of points can be solved with f(x) such that there is at least one polynomial, linear or transcendental equation.

The statement that:

3 = ?

Is true because, yes, it does. 

3 = ?

We can make a good guess about the existing points; however 'good' is not exhaustively true. This unknown point of 3 = ? might very well be extrapolated to simple answers but what if it is not? 

y=x(x+1) will give you a parabolic shape but what if the points lie on some other curve, like a really big oval, or a strange multi-additional scribble, or some exponential function? Then what? Four points of order on an infinitely big plane, is not really all that helpful. 

Consider the following:

1, 6, 28. What comes next? The answer isn't even intuitive¹.

30, 34, 38. What comes next? If you said 42, then you would be wrong. What comes next in this series is 50². 

I'm not going to tell you what the functions actually are and I will leave that for you to find out but it illustrates the point.

Even after setting aside that  9 does not equal 90, 8 does not equal 72, and 8 does not equal 56, it is actually impossible to know what 3 is paired with in this sequence without knowing what the function is. 

Since I am a maniacal mathematical monster who is currently in charge of the numbers then I get to decide whatever answer I jolly well like. Muah ha ha ha!³

I will answer... 

3 = 42

Why? Because I know that there will be at least some function will will make that true. I have no idea what that function actually is but I am confident that it must exists because ANY given set of points can be solved with f(x) such that there is at least one polynomial, linear or transcendental equation.

Why else? Because I am feeling in a parabola mood today and I am good at solving for functions with parabolas.

If 42 is my answer, then f(x) is sort of: y = 2.49137x² - 21.6531x + 84.2229

It looks like this:

"Oh ho ho" you might say, and point at me while you accuse me of cheating. At the same time, in arriving at your answer of 12, you must have decided that the function was something else and then solved for that function. It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to seek a high-born emperor in a low down tea shop. You can not make an appeal to authority and ignore the fundamental flaw in the question while someone else has exploited the fundamental flaw in the question and has made an appeal to authority. 

This takes me back to a quip which I once read on a poster in a classroom oh so many years ago. "Not knowing the question, it was easy to give an answer." What makes this even more fun is that when you have something that looks a bit mathsy, suddenly you get people making appeals to authority everywhere; without actually arriving at the fundamental flaw in the question. 

¹ The next number is 496 - these are the perfect numbers.

² 50 is the next number in the series because these are actually FIFA World Cup dates and there was no World Cup in 42 or 46 because a war got in the way.

³Count Von Count as a vampire can easily be distracted by throwing a handful of rice on the ground because one of the things about vampire legend is that they actually do have arithmomania and will be compelled 

Horse 3088 - King Charles Should Appoint The Prime Minister

The news came overnight Sydney time that Liz Truss has resigned as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after just 44 days in the job. This has come after a period of time where Boris Johnson was forced to resign after a series of indiscretions, a cabinet that has seen more people enter and exit than a Wimpy's, the Pound Sterling tanking faster than the HMS Colander and a Conservative Party in complete disarray. Lis Truss' only major achievement apart from a mini-budget when sent financial markets into panic, was that she just happened to be the resident of Number Ten Downing Street when Queen Elizabeth The Second died. This kind of parliamentary insanity kind of makes you wish for "Chaos with Ed Milliband" that David Cameron said would happen. If we would have had chaos under Ed Milliband, then what is this exactly?

I live in Australia and ten thousand miles away from Blighty. Looking at Britain's Festival Of The Thirsty Knife looks very similar to our own periodic premiership pugilism. We are quite happy to yell "Spill!" in the morning and find that in the afternoon that we have a new Prime Minister. Yet being an Australian makes me more acutely aware of the vissitudes of parliamentary democracies; namely that we the public do not elect Prime Ministers. Prime Ministers are installed in the same way that you might get an electrician to install a new water heater; which also means that when they go bang and fail, they can be removed quite easily. Indeed, Australia has had four Prime Ministers who have all served for shorter periods than Liz Truss with Arthur "Floody" Fadden reigning for 40 days and 40 nights, John McEwen for 22 days, Sir Earle Page for 19 days, and Frankie Forde who was Prime Minister for only 7 days. There may have been one other; which I will touch one later.

The office of the Prime Minister is not explicitly mentioned in the Australian Constitution. Furthermore, it is not immediately obvious as to whether or not there even needs to be one. It could be for instance that if someone were to imagine another system for organising executive cabinet, with a duumvirate or triumvirate or a cabinet of actual equals, that the functions of the cabinet could happen quite easily. It could be for instance that there is no explicit head of the executive cabinet, save for someone who has been appointed immediately for the purposes of chairing the meeting. Remember how I said that there may have been a Prime Minister for a short period than Forde? Billy Hughes may have been Prime Minister for the morning of 28th August 1941, for the purposes of chairing the meeting to decide who would replace Menzies. I do not know if he was or was not but he may have been if there was a writ of commission which was given to him by the Governor-General, for the express purpose of having the United Australia Party and Country Party to decide in caucus who would be the Prime Minister.

Herein lies an interesting point of order. Ultimately in Australia, political parties do not actually decide who the Prime Minister is. Convention would usually dictate that the Prime Minister is the leader of the party with the most members on the floor of the House of Representatives because that is where the supply and control of appropriation of monies of the Crown is decided. However, as we saw with the premiership of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the Governor-General can make and unmake Ministers at a whim and the only limitation is that the person appointed as a Minister of the Crown then obtains a seat in Parliament within 90 days.

His Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has no written constitution. This means that there is even less direction at law on the King than there is on the  Governor-General of Australia. Previous Kings and Queens have appointed Members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords to the office in the building with the famous black door on Downing Street. Given that there is no written constitution in the United Kingdom and that the Conservative Party is in more confusion than a herd of Meowths after Psyduck has used Confuse on them (it's super effective), then I can think of an easy solution which presents itself and which doesn't involve herding cats who want to chase money.

The King should appoint the Prime Minister.

King Charles III is the current officer of the person that is the Crown. The Crown is distinct from the monarch, as the Crown is corporation sole, with one indissoluble share, which exists in perpetuity, under someone like Cromwell comes along again and decides that the head and corpus of the monarch should part company. As King Charles III is the current officer of the person that is the Crown, he is in fact the sole officer of the functions and powers of the Crown. It is also fact that the Crown owns parliament. Legally speaking it is His Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, His Majesty's Cabinet, and His Majesty's Loyal Opposition. Just like in Australia, political parties do not actually decide who the Prime Minister is. It is the King who makes and unmakes Ministers; including the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

King Charles III should just bypass the entire of the Conservative Party and do the job of appointing a Prime Minister; which they are incapable of doing. This would look different to the King–Byng affair and the 1975 Australian Constitutional Crisis because instead of the Crown interfering in parliament, parliament is already so much of a rabble that it needs some stability given to it. 

The Conservative Party is obviously and demonstrably so bereft of any real leadership, commonsense, and stability at the moment, that if I were King, I'd install Nicholas True, Baron True, who is the current Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, as the Prime Minister. If the Commons can't get its act together, then the Cabinet should be chaired by someone who is above the rough and tumble and stuff and nonsense of all that. A Prime Minister appointed by the King would in all likelihood give the job more seriousness and gravity than what has been shown recently. 

Horse 3087 - Eudaimonia - Element VII - Excellence And Praise

It would be remiss of me of me if I was to write a series of blog posts on the elements of eudemonia and not have seven of them. Seven appears to be a thing in western consciousness, with seven deadly sins, seven days in a week, seven dwarves and it appears on the list of the most favourite lucky number whatever that means. If you ever find "Thursday, the sneezy dwarf of superbia", you will know why.

The seventh of seven is not really one thing but two parts which combine together; they are arete (ἀρετὴ) and epainos (ἔπαινος). Arete is in its broadest sense, a thing that is excellent. Epainos in its broadest sense, is praise or accolade of that which is excellent.

The Greek concept of arete was that a thing should fulfil the function for which it was intended, to its highest ability. A table should be good at being a table. A cat should be good at being a cat. A person should be good at being a person. Plato particularly thinks that everything has its own unique highest form of excellence; that a bull which is particularly good for breeding is the best bull, which is going to be different from the best kind of person and even then, the best slave is different to the best aristocrat who are already presumed to be the exemplary of arete. In fact the root of the word for 'arate' is the same as 'aristos', which describes superlatives, superiority, and in plural the 'aristocrats' who are the nobility.

The idea of arate is not necessarily limited to the usual masculine traits of strength and bravery either. In the Odyssey, while Odysseus is off doing his quite frankly stupid things, it is his wife Penelope who is at home who is waiting for him and also has to manage the household and property, who is seen as best expressing arate. Not only does she do so with humility and wit, but also economy as she has to hold off frequent attempts by idle suitors who want to marry her and thus claim the estate and who are literally eating her out of house and home.

Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" includes the virtues such as bravery, wit, strength and the quieter virtues of patience, justice, self-control, self-restraint, and even knowledge itself as included as arate. This is likely because as a philosopher, there's probably a degree of superbia going on, where of course someone engaged in the theoretical study of human knowledge is going to be considered among the virtues of highest human ability and happiness. Probably Aristotle's own name is derived from that same root word which 'arate' and 'aristos' are.

How does one be the best thing that they can be? Certainly education in the sciences, literature, the arts, languages and grammar will hopefully build someone suited to living in a society, which is why we have education in the first place but when it comes to arate, not only would we find violent disagreement between people who think that it is built up of different things but we'd also have violent disagreement about what kind of training should be done to build and acquire it. You might very well be able to say that there are common traits such as goodness, kindness, bravery, patience, the ability to take instruction, some kind of reverence for kin, kith and country, self-discipline and self-respect, but you definitely will not find agreement on the best ways to build and obtain arate in a person.

It is also something of a paradox, that not only do we not really know the best ways to build arate or even agree as to what those ways are, there isn't even a common agreement on deciding on what is praiseworthy. We can all agree that when training someone, some amount of praise or epainos is useful in encouraging the results and behaviour that we would like to see but again, what exactly those results and behaviours are is up for dispute.

We have very limited means of displaying public epainos for people. We have medals and trophies, rings and pennants for champions in sport. We have trophies for film, radio, television, painting, theatre, sculpture, journalism and writing. We have medals for valour. We even have titles which may appear before someone's name or after, such as Sir, Doctor, Professor, Dame, Lord, Lady, KC, OAM, LLB, B.Sc. B.A. et cetera. 

The problem is that for the vast multitude of people, there is mostly nothing. You usually do not get a reward for displaying any virtue save for the immediate gratitude which someone might express. Granted that there are some kinds of rewards for people working in organisations and firms which may include increased rates of pay but that is because those organisations and firms mostly see this as a transactional set of conditions, where the issue of rewards is in expectation of future reciprocal benefits for those organisations and firms (which in a corporate sense is almost always with the expectation of future profits).

So where does this leave arate and epainos? If they are reduced to mere transactional tokens, which are based on the performance of action, then what is the inherent good of them at all? I do not think that arate and epainos are mere transactional tokens which are the moral equivalents of rent, profit, dividends or wages. I rather think that the expression of rate and epainos are themselves, inherently good in themselves.

The best expression of arate is to be brave, to be kind, to be self-controlled, to be curious and know and learn, to practice and fight for justice and perhaps most important of all, to be patient with everyone else because we are all little selfish idiots who are blinkered and very much think only of ourselves and what is in front of us.

The best expression of arate in community is when people work together to do a thing. This is why corporations exist, why partnerships exist, why marriages exist, why teams exist, why republics and commonwealths exist. We all sort of know that a thing built in community is bigger and better than things which are built by individuals because of things like specialisation and efficiencies due to economies of scale. We know that people have different abilities and strengths and weaknesses and the point of being brave and kind and self-controlled and curious and fighting for justice and being patient, is that working together, we share the surpluses together.

The best expression of epainos is when people are temporarily rewarded for being their best selves and then driven onwards to be better still. The best expression of epainos in community is when the group is driven together to be its best self. I think that this is the reason why when nations go to war and win, they are collectively relieved that it is over; why when national sporting teams win, the whole nation rejoices; when teams win, their legions of fans are also joyful.

But again, being brave, kind, self-controlled, curious, fighting for justice and being patient with people, and working hard at doing those things, is not only a good thing but a good thing to do because it is good.

Horse 3086 - When George Harrison Whinged About Paying Tax

Last week I was alerted to a video on the Beatles official YouTube channel. The Beatles (or Apple Corps Ltd) have recently posted a film clip for their 1966 song "Taxman", written by George Harrison:

The Beatles didn't do a whole heap of explicit protest songs, which makes this something of a rarity in the canon, and it is even more of a rarity in popular music generally in that it name checks Wilson and Heath. There just aren't a lot of popular songs which mention Prime Ministers, Presidents, Treasurers and Chancellors, or Leaders Of The Opposition. 

As a protest song, this song ends up in the weeds of taxation policy. The song is a complaint about the then new Wilson Labour Government's set of Income Tax rates for the 1966/67 income tax year; which fixed the general rate of taxation at 8/3 in the pound¹ and thence a progressive surtax on incomes²; starting at 11% on amounts of more than £2000, going up to 55% on amounts of more than £15,000. We can find these rates in the Finance Act 1966¹ and the corresponding notes from HM Revenue and Customs. 

Since the base rate of Income Tax of 8/3 in the pound is 41.25%, then the effective rate of Income Tax on amounts of more than £15,000 is 41.25% + 55% or 96.25%.

"Let me tell you how it will be

There's one for you, nineteen for me

'Cause I'm the taxman

Yeah, I'm the taxman"

Thus the top rate of taxation of 96.25% was 19/3 in the pound. This means that Mr Harrison's complaint of "one for you, nineteen for me" was actually slightly short to the tun of 3d. In comparison, the top rate of Income Tax in Australia for the year 1966/67 was 15/4 in the pound or 76.66%. 

Essentially this is a complaint about the marginal rate of taxation on a fantastic amount of income. For incomes of less than £2000, the standard rate of 8/3 in the pound, likely covered at least 95% of the population. The average wage in the United Kingdom in 1966 was only £891. Even at twice the average wage at the time, the marginal rate of Income Tax was still only 8/3 in the pound.

It is worth remembering that Mr Harrison's complaint, actually only refers to every pound of income beyond £15,000. Marginal rates of taxation have to do with that last unit of income. Those Surtax rates are purely marginal rates of taxation which are over and above the base rate of tax; in this case the Surtax rate of 55% on amounts over £15,000 is 11/- in the pound but only starting at that 15,001st pound. At bare minimum, Mr Harrison would have had to be earning at least £15,001 for that 11/- in the pound rate to apply.

For George Harrison to pay income tax at the top marginal rate; which is 41.25% plus 55% which gives you 96.25% or 19/3 in the pound, he was on 16.835x of the average wage. (£15,000 / £891). If we put this into a modern context, Average Weekly Ordinary Time Earnings (AWOTE) in Australia as at Oct 2022 is $92,344 and 16.835x is $1,554,621 minimum. If we then accept that the average is way way skewed upwards by people on fantastic amounts of income, the median wage is probably a truer central measure of incomes and that is only about $60,000.

Here's the rub. Quite obviously income tax rates well above 50% are increasingly confiscatory in nature and since superstars like football players, movie actors, musicians et cetera are likely to have a brief yet stellar career, then then best strategy quite apart from taxation minisation, is to have that income directed into a Discretionary Trust of some kind. That way, incomes can be paid out of the Trust over a longer time frame; which is far more sensible from a life and estate planning perspective.

Also,

"Don't ask me what I want it for,

if you don't want to pay some more."

There is an whole other argument about the nature of taxation and government spending but for the purposes of this, we're going to assume the convenient lie that taxation pays for government services.

Later on in the song Mr. Harrison actually goes on to explain some of the things that government does/did.

"If you drive a car, I'll tax the street." - Well yes, Road Tax is a thing and in 1966 the UK was still in the middle of a building phase in which the Highways Agency would build some very lovely Motorways. As it is, ordinary roads need maintenance anyway.

"If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat." - This is probably a convenient rhyme however, as it currently stands, seats are taxed in the form of VAT. Again, the discussion of a consumption tax and whom the burden of taxation actually falls on, is a discussion beyond the scope of this post.

"If you get too cold, I'll tax the heat." - Given that Britain is a cold little sceptered isle, then some kind of heating tax; especially for the energy generated in order to make that heat (be it gas or electric) seems fair and reasonable to me.

"If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet." -In an urban environment, footpaths don't just build themselves. See the above argument for road tax. In a rural/natural environment, toepaths, land care, and preserving national parks is actually surprisingly cheap. I have no objections to par usage fees if it means that a national park is going to outlive all of us. If Mr Harrison meant a tax on shoes, then see above re VAT and a consumption tax.

It is like Mr Harrison forgot his own song while he was writing the song. HM Revenue and Customs wants taxation for the purposes of suring up the pound so that government services can be provided. Taxation in principle is the method which citizens in Commonwealth come together, right now, over purchases of the accoutrements of civilisation in a collective purchasing arrangement. That's what the Taxman wants it for. 

As for Mr Harrison himself, whining about the fact that you have to pay a lot of tax on the kinds of incomes per year that most of the people who bought the record would likely never even see until the cumulative effect of 20 years, is rather a bit cruel.

Let me tell you how it was, in that one year of income, you earned more money than the average teenager sitting in their bedroom spinning the disc would earn, of all the years put together until they were 36. It would take until halfway through the Thatcher Premiership before that would happen. The Beatles may very well have been the greatest rock band thus far but a protest song complaining about taxation because you are fantastically rich, is silly. 

¹https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1966/18/pdfs/ukpga_19660018_en.pdf

²https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1086429/Table-a2-SURTAX.ods

²https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rates-of-surtax-1948-to-1973

Horse 3085 - When The Appendix Was Better Than The Novel

I recently had the somewhat dubious privilege of sitting in one of the private bars frequented by the KCs and other silks (no longer QCs, thanks to the Acts Interpretation Act 1901), while waiting for a packet of documents to be delivered to me (after being sent there to wait); so that I could take it back to our offices.

Having been on the inside of the courts system, I am well aware of the fact that the powdered wig, silk and velvet gown class, look upon the rest of us as scum. I was also aware that as I sat in the bar in my black Crombie Coat and Cheescutter, that I am clad in the armor of the working class north of Blighty as a sort of polite defence against what His Majesty's most well read can throw at me. 

While sat sitting, I was reading my copy of "Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes, when I was asked by an elderly gentleman, who looked like he could have come out of the century before last (the Col. Mustard/Maj. Bloodnok type of mustachioed person), what I thought of the book that I was reading and if I agreed with the general sentiment that order was not a natural tendency of the human condition. We had a neat little discussion about the nature of the monopoly of violence which is wielded by the state and I think that I might have impressed him, due to the fact that an apparent ruffian and barbarian like myself can match swords whilst not being in possession of any letters of note after my name.

This invariably led to me asking about the book which he was carrying; which I recognised as the same imprint of Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" which I had read in high school. I explained that of all of Dickens' work, I found this uncharacteristically tedious but that the discussion in the appendix about the 1834 Poor Law was fascinating. He was surprised when lo and behold, this appendix was exactly as I had described.

Long ago in the mists of time, when Godzilla still roamed the holy mountain and during the recession that Australia had to have, I was but a lad of 12 years old. Back then, the Soviet Union had not yet collapsed and the teachers at my high school thought it interesting to call a 10-minute non-period during the school day "Uninterrupted Sustained Silent Reading" or USSR; which was likely a way of giving teachers 10 minutes of quiet after lunch before they would once again have to face a pack of hellbeasts.

These periods were different from the usual in Year 7, as they decided to split us all up instead of sending us around as a 30 member hoard from one class to the next. By my calculations now, dropping kids into classes of 20 which were different from the usual, meant that there was exactly 0.6 kids from every roll call class. This was ten minutes of respite for me, who spent most of the day wishing komm süßer tod and dreaming of ivy covered walls and smoky French cafes once my allotted six-year sentence was over.

I remember my copy of Oliver Twist well. I got the general impression that the reading lists that high school teachers assign are because they think that we will either enjoy them or aught to have read as part of the functioning cultural commonwealth but that what is actually happening is that they're inflicting on us the same kinds of pain inflicted upon them when they were in high school.

It should be said that Charles Dickens would have been very well versed in the poverty of early-Victorian, Industrial London. His own father had been sent to a debtors’ prison; so he experienced first hand what it would have been like to be a highly impoverished citizen with no say in his own fate; presumably he would have only gained the franchise with the Reform Act of 1830.

I get the impression that with novels like 'Oliver Twist', 'Bleak House', and even 'A Tale Of Two Cities' that the hardships that he faced as a child would have stayed in the back of his mind as an adult, while he churned out novels and other works of journalism.

Oliver Twist was begun after the passage of Poor Law of 1834, which made life worse for a great many people by halting government payments to the maintenance of able-bodied poor people unless they entered workhouses. Oliver Twist despite its reasonably happy ending (for the idiots who like that sort of thing), is more a piece of social satire which is like a flintlock aimed directly at the problem of poverty in London in the 1830s.

Probably because it depicts open crimes and murder without trying to sugar-coat it or wrap it in florid excuse, which in the 1830s was quite scandalous, it rapidly sold a heap of copies. I think that it is properly what is known as a "Newgate Novel", which is named after Newgate Prison. Presumably the character of Fagin was based on a genuine pickpocket named Ikey Solomon, however Dickens never openly made the connection. Actually, Fagin seems quite pleasant next to all the ruffians, barbarians and ne-er-do-wells of the rest of the novel.

But as far as I was concerned in 1991, the whole front of the book was but a shadow of the appendix at the back. My personal copy (number 35/120) had not been broken in by the student before me but after I was done with it, had gained a weird crack at the back.

The appendices contained notes and background to the novel; which included a possibly 20,000 word essay on the amendments to the Poor Laws in 1834. I thought that they were more interesting than the novel itself.

The broad summary of those 1834 amendment are that different classes of paupers should be segregated and that the local parishes should specialise and swap paupers. This even included the separation of husbands and wives, so that "proper regulation of workhouses" would "serve the whole of the union".

In reality, poorhouses became de facto prisons whose actual purpose was to securely confine large numbers of the lower classes at low cost. Mothers of illegitimate children received less support and there wasn't really any attempt to identify the fathers of illegitimate children. This in turn meant that there were far more children who belonged to nobody and of whom no-one would mind if they were ill-treated and went missing or died. Plus, they became practically free labour; which was useful given the Slave Trade Act 1804 and the Abolition Of Slavery Act 1830.

What I find disturbing is that the Royal Commission into the Operation of the Poor Laws 1832 was led by Edwin Chadwick, who being a Benthamite, wanted to enact changes to the 1832 on the principle of utilitarianism; which were mostly Poor Law Amendment Act 1834.

What also may be of note is that Malthus' "An Essay on the Principle of Population" instilled fear in lawmakers, who read that because population growth was geometric and that without due measures, the population would increase faster than the ability of a nation to feed it, that England was in trouble.

Thus, the existence of poverty, which was also theologically explained as the result of just punishment that God might inflict on someone, rendered any and all assistance to the poor under the 1832 laws as self-defeating. Any and all assistance to poor people should be removed; which would hopefully lead to a decrease in the number of poor people as they all died out.

I do not want to speculate why this mustachioed person (probably KC) was reading Oliver Twist, however I can not help but wonder what a person who reads law for a living, would make of the appendix at the back (assuming that it is still included in modern imprints).

Do the powdered wig, silk and velvet gown class, look upon the rest of us as things to be improved or ignored? Do they see the great many of us as a problem which should be discouraged from breeding and existing or do they not in fact see us at all?

Horse 3084 - Eudaimonia - Element VI - Admirable

The word εὔφημος (Euphemos) is like a pack of Araldite in that it comes in two parts. 'Eu' generally is signifier that something is good and 'phemos' is the report about something. In various Greek texts 'euphemos' means anything from the mere the utterance of good or auspicious words, such as a good report, or praise; to the crystallisation of the quality onto something or someone who is then said to be either very important and/or delicate or something that needs protected at all costs.

The English reception of Greek words, particles, and components, is somewhat problematic.  Consider 'euphemism' (good report) which generally means a nicer word standing in for a bad thing; or 'eugenics' (good genes) which has included policies of sterilisation and extermination of people; or 'euthanasia' (good death) which implies a calm method of either assisted suicide or veiled murder. 

The word euphemism which means a good word standing in for a bad word, also can describe a whole line of things which have stood in for the previous word in the euphemism chain; so much so that 'Eu' has itself come to stand in at the beginning of words for concepts which are unpleasant. I want you to throw all of your existing cultural assumptions about 'Eu' away because euphemos is actually genuinely good.

The thing which most people consider as admirable are generally those products of moral formation which have been expensive to produce. One doesn't usually think about things like bravery and valour, patience and long-suffering, or perseverance and determination, as being things which are made and produced but they don't just appear from nowhere. Those qualities which we tend to see in other people and maybe ourselves which are worth celebrating, are generally the result of some kind of serious work in quiet places. Sometimes these qualities are forged and work-hardened as the result of someone moving through bad and hard times. I do not think it a coincidence that the trente-glorieuses immediately followed a twice unpleasantness and the destruction of a hundred million people. 

Bravery and valour are the qualities of facing a dangerous or scary thing and then steeling one's self to do some task or work in the face of that dangerous or scary thing. We hand out medals for valour on the battlefield, where the dangerous and scary thing is the possibility of sudden and imminent death in the face of the enemy but bravery is very often not rewarded nor visible. Bravery might entail acting calmly in the face of unfriendliness which results in racism, sexism, ableism et cetera. Bravery might entail overcoming one's fear of performing a task in the face of physical danger or in the face of loss of face. It has been said that if given the job of performing a eulogy at a funeral, that most people would prefer to be in the casket than standing on the podium.

Qualities to do with standing in the face of unpleasantness, such as something which is boring, or tiring, or difficult; which leads to the moral products of patience, longsuffering, calmness, levelheadedness et cetera, are also all aspects of euphemos. 

It is the quiet and unheralded things such as going above and beyond what's expected, or offering to take on  additional duties and tasks to free up someone else, or simply as an act of kindness, are often expensive in time and effort to the person doing those things. Whether it is by offering an extra hand when you know that someone is overburdened and laid down with work, or uplifting them and making them look better, then this is when euphemos plays out in practice.

When it comes to doing work, the art of euphemos is also important. One can speak about the skill and talent which someone wields in doing a job and also the craftsmanship of that job once completed. This used to be more evident in the manual arts, such as painting, woodworking, cabinetry, pottery and ceramics, needlework and tapestry, and is positively celebrated on the sporting field when sportsball players, runners, swimmers, motor racing drivers et cetera, perform feats of skill. The "beautiful game" is not called that accidentally, for compared with the other football codes such as the two rugbys which are pugilistic, there is an amazing amount of skill in placing a well directed cross from out on the wing, onto the head of a striker at 17 yards away and having them defeat a keeper. We do not appreciate this now but Olympic medals were awarded in the past for things like sculpture, painting, and weirdly to us, town planning.

Euphemos can also involve knowing how to say something which is useful but with tact. Sometimes an opinion is extremely valuable and indeed necessary but should be offered appropriately and kindly and not bluntly or with rudeness or meanness; even though someone should rightly be told that they are doing a really silly thing in a really silly way.

By the same token, refraining from complaining about things and handling feelings of negativity in a much more constructive manner, is far more useful. Granted that life and work is often stupid, obnoxious and daft and filled with stupid, obnoxious and daft, which includes those most stupid, obnoxious and daft of all people, you and I.

Complaining is perhaps unjustly maligned as being a toxic behaviour, which can inhibit people from raising serious objections to things but serial complainers don't exactly develop the most kindly of reputations as they tend to bring everyone else down and ruin positive environments. It might be helpful to stop, get a cup of tea and come back to a thing before developing solutions or taking a different outlook.

Generally those things which display euphemos are those things which are deserving of respect and approval. None of those things just spontaneously happen and are the result of quiet work, practice, and maybe even repeated failure; which ironically is itself a display of euphemos as repeated failure and finally being able to achieve or do a thing is the result of hard work and an outworking of determination.

Horse 3083 - Constitutional Survey - VII

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Chapter III. The Judicature.

71. Judicial power and Courts

The judicial power of the Commonwealth shall be vested in a Federal Supreme Court, to be called the High Court of Australia, and in such other federal courts as the Parliament creates, and in such other courts as it invests with federal jurisdiction. The High Court shall consist of a Chief Justice, and so many other Justices, not less than two, as the Parliament prescribes.

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Yah well, hey now... here's a thought... ya know, let's have some judges eh; in a Federal Supreme Court, to be called the High Court of Australia, and other federal courts.

Of all of the sections of the Australian Constitution, this is the one that seems the most like they were just phoning it in.

Although having said this, there might have been a reason for naming the highest court in the land the "High Court" of Australia for it was the High Court at Westminster Hall which tried King Charles I and found him guilty of tyranny. If parliament is meant to have an independent bent then having sent job job its meant to sit in judgement, at least recalls this event of history.

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72. Judges' appointment, tenure and remuneration

The Justices of the High Court and of the other courts created by the Parliament:

- shall be appointed by the Governor-General in Council;

- shall not be removed except by the Governor-General in Council, on an address from both Houses of the Parliament in the same session, praying for such removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity;

- shall receive such remuneration as the Parliament may fix; but the remuneration shall not be diminished during their continuance in office.

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Misbehaviour in Section 72 is pretty limited. Basically it amounts to things like non-attendance, neglect of or refusal to perform duties, or an outrageous breach civil or criminal law of such a quality as to indicate that the incumbent is unfit to exercise the office.

It is really really hard to remove judges due to an outrage of good behaviour. I do not think that a matter of parking fines, drunkenness, petty theft et cetera, would be enough to remove a judge. An outrage of good behaviour would have to be so serious that it would have to be found by proof, in appropriate manner, to the Parliament, and in formal proceedings where the offender has been given proper notice and opportunity to defend themself. 

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The appointment of a Justice of the High Court shall be for a term expiring upon his attaining the age of seventy years, and a person shall not be appointed as a Justice of the High Court if he has attained that age.

The appointment of a Justice of a court created by the Parliament shall be for a term expiring upon his attaining the age that is, at the time of his appointment, the maximum age for Justices of that court and a person shall not be appointed as a Justice of such a court if he has attained the age that is for the time being the maximum age for Justices of that court.

Subject to this section, the maximum age for Justices of any court created by the Parliament is seventy years.

The Parliament may make a law fixing an age that is less than seventy years as the maximum age for Justices of a court created by the Parliament and may at any time repeal or amend such a law, but any such repeal or amendment does not affect the term of office of a Justice under an appointment made before the repeal or amendment.

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Unlike the United States where the empanelment of a Supreme Court Justice is for life, the Australian Constitution was altered by referendum in 1977 to impose a limit on absolute dodderiness. 

To put this in context, when the old age pension was introduced in 1911, it was assumed that most people would die before they got to the age of 65 and hence, not be eligible to receive it. 70 years old, therefore, was at the time, positively ancient. Even now with better health care, most people will retire from work in their 60s or 70s, though that may change in future.

Since High Court decisions outlive Justices, it makes sense that they should at least be young enough to experience some degree of the effects of the decisions that they hand down and hopefully, this should be enough to temper those decisions.

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A Justice of the High Court or of a court created by the Parliament may resign his office by writing under his hand delivered to the Governor-General.

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It may seem strange as to why a resignation notice of a Justice of the High Court would need to be hand delivered to the Governor-General but I think that I understand the rationale. The rest of Section 72 is at pains to separate the legislative and judicial power of the Commonwealth and it makes sense that the structure of the Constitution itself, which not only explains a direct limitation upon the power of judicial removal, should also create a difficulty of the judiciary to remove themselves.

Remember, the desire of Section 72 is to protect and ringfence the judiciary as the interpreters of the Constitution; so in order to do that, it creates a deliberately difficult mechanism of self-removal to reflect the gravity of the situation.

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Nothing in the provisions added to this section by the Constitution Alteration (Retirement of Judges) 1977 affects the continuance of a person in office as a Justice of a court under an appointment made before the commencement of those provisions.

A reference in this section to the appointment of a Justice of the High Court or of a court created by the Parliament shall be read as including a reference to the appointment of a person who holds office as a Justice of the High Court or of a court created by the Parliament to another office of Justice of the same court having a different status or designation.

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Hooray. We have a grandfather clause and an equivalence clause. This is because unless a law says a thing (which includes the Constitution) then is it really a thing at law?

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73. Appellate jurisdiction of High Court

The High Court shall have jurisdiction, with such exceptions and subject to such regulations as the Parliament prescribes, to hear and determine appeals from all judgments, decrees, orders, and sentences:

- of any Justice or Justices exercising the original jurisdiction of the High Court;

- of any other federal court, or court exercising federal jurisdiction; or of the Supreme Court of any State, or 

- of any other court of any State from which at the establishment of the Commonwealth an appeal lies to the Queen in Council;

- of the Inter-State Commission, but as to questions of law only;

- and the judgment of the High Court in all such cases shall be final and conclusive.

But no exception or regulation prescribed by the Parliament shall prevent the High Court from hearing and determining any appeal from the Supreme Court of a State in any matter in which at the establishment of the Commonwealth an appeal lies from such Supreme Court to the Queen in Council.

Until the Parliament otherwise provides, the conditions of and restrictions on appeals to the Queen in Council from the Supreme Courts of the several States shall be applicable to appeals from them to the High Court.

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Up until the Australia Act 1986, the High Court of Australia was the second to last appellate jurisdiction of the nation. Section 73 provides that it can hear appeals from lesser courts from any other court in the country. If you have a parking fine which you would like to dispute and you have infinitely deep pockets and you can fight the matter on matters of law, then you can take your parking fine dispute all the way to the High Court of Australia. Though at that point, you may as well have just paid the fine. 

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74. Appeal to Queen in Council

No appeal shall be permitted to the Queen in Council from a decision of the High Court upon any question, howsoever arising, as to the limits inter se of the Constitutional powers of the Commonwealth and those of any State or States, or as to the limits inter se of the Constitutional powers of any two or more States, unless the High Court shall certify that the question is one which ought to be determined by Her Majesty in Council.

The High Court may so certify if satisfied that for any special reason the certificate should be granted, and thereupon an appeal shall lie to Her Majesty in Council on the question without further leave.

Except as provided in this section, this Constitution shall not impair any right which the Queen may be pleased to exercise by virtue of Her Royal prerogative to grant special leave of appeal from the High Court to Her Majesty in Council. The Parliament may make laws limiting the matters in which such leave may be asked, but proposed laws containing any such limitation shall be reserved by the Governor-General for Her Majesty's pleasure.

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As far as I am aware, the last vestiges of Australian citizens being able to appeal the decisions of courts in Australia, was extinguished with the passage of the Australia Act:

http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/cth/num_act/aa1986114/s11.html

Termination of appeals to Her Majesty in Council

11. (1) Subject to subsection (4) below, no appeal to Her Majesty in Council lies or shall be brought, whether by leave or special leave of any court or of Her Majesty in Council or otherwise, and whether by virtue of any Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Royal Prerogative or otherwise, from or in respect of any decision of an Australian court.

- Section 11, Australia Act 1986

Although this act can be amended, it does by operation strike off Section 74 of the Constitution.

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75. Original jurisdiction of High Court

In all matters:

- arising under any treaty;

- affecting consuls or other representatives of other countries;

- in which the Commonwealth, or a person suing or being sued on behalf of the Commonwealth, is a party;

- between States, or between residents of different States, or between a State and a resident of another State;

- in which a writ of Mandamus or prohibition or an injunction is sought against an officer of the Commonwealth;

the High Court shall have original jurisdiction.

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Section 75 and Section 76 are taken together for the purposes of this discussion.

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76. Additional original jurisdiction

The Parliament may make laws conferring original jurisdiction on the High Court in any matter:

- arising under this Constitution, or involving its interpretation;

- arising under any laws made by the Parliament;

- of Admiralty and maritime jurisdiction;

- relating to the same subject-matter claimed under the laws of different States.

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One of the most famous cases in the Supreme Court of the United States is the case of Marbury v Madison [1803] in which...

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/5/137/

It is emphatically the duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases must, of necessity, expound and interpret the rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the Court must decide on the operation of each.

- Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803)

In practice this is one of those occasions where the constitutional arrangements of the United States is not contained within the Constitution. The American legal system is awash with cases, especially dealing with civic and civil rights, where it is the court that has decided what the state of play is and what those rights are. However, Marbury v Madison (1803) is one of the few cases where the court claimed a right for itself. It has to be said that this was a very very bootstrappy decision; which has echoed down through the ages as not only being accepted but also as useful.

The sweaty men confined in the basements of Town Halls in Australia, arguing about what should go into the Australian Constitution some 90 years later, not only saw the utility in having the High Court have original jurisdiction to say "what the law is" but also thought to codify it such that it couldn't be attacked unless through referendum. 

In America, this right of the court to say what the law is could in theory be overturned by another sitting of that same court. In Australia, that's impossible.

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77. Power to define jurisdiction

With respect to any of the matters mentioned in the last two sections the Parliament may make laws:

- defining the jurisdiction of any federal court other than the High Court;

- defining the extent to which the jurisdiction of any federal court shall be exclusive of that which belongs to or is invested in the courts of the States;

- investing any court of a State with federal jurisdiction.

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In 1901 the Commonwealth of Australia started off with exactly one court - the High Court. It stands to reason that eventually the Commonwealth would think about specialist court to deal with specific branches of law. Family law, Industrial Relations disputes and arbitration, the differences between civil and criminal law, appeals at law with regards the interpretation of law, taxation law and the law of contracts. The list goes on and on.

There is also the tension that the newly minted Commonwealth of Australia would have to fight disputes between what its responsibilities and jurisdictions were, as well as having to be the default arbiter between the states within the Commonwealth, for at the time of federation the six states were frenemies and arguably they still are.

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78. Proceedings against Commonwealth or State

The Parliament may make laws conferring rights to proceed against the Commonwealth or a State in respect of matters within the limits of the judicial power.

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It makes sense that if the Parliament has the power to define the jurisdiction of the Courts which are created, then it also has the power to confer rights to proceed against the Commonwealth or a State in respect of matters within the limits of said judicial power. 

The most obvious reading of this says that a person who has been brought before the courts, should have some legal rights in the proceedings. It would be ridiculous if someone brought before a court had no legal right to proceed against the Commonwealth or State which brought them there. 

However since 1901, the march of technology is such that there have been things invented which were not yet thought of. Would an audio recording of someone be admissible as evidence? What about a video recording? What about a recording made without someone's knowledge? What kind of documentation is allowable? Would a scanned copy be admissible as evidence? What about a document which never existed as a physical copy? Just the realm of what is and is not acceptable evidence, would need to be defined in the 121 years since the Constitution was written. 

In principle, this is why the Constitution does not have a Bill of Rights attached. The sweaty men in basements of Town Halls in the 1890s, obviously had the forethought that the world would change and perhaps beyond what they could even imagine. Electricity and the Automobile are barely a thing in 1901 but after the First World War, the world would change dramatically and change again and again.

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79. Number of judges

The federal jurisdiction of any court may be exercised by such number of judges as the Parliament prescribes.

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Does a thing need to by heard by one judge? A panel? The scary consequence which comes as a result of Section 79 is that Parliament has the power to prescribe that a case could be heard by zero judges. In principle, what this means is that it is possible and legal for the Commonwealth to invent an automatic court with no judge at all because zero judges is still a number of judges.

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80. Trial by jury

The trial on indictment of any offence against any law of the Commonwealth shall be by jury, and every such trial shall be held in the State where the offence was committed, and if the offence was not committed within any State the trial shall be held at such place or places as the Parliament prescribes.

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The 7th Amendment to the US Constitution specifies a trial by jury under certain conditions. The United States it would appear, thought of this as an afterthought; which is why it sits as an amendment which has been tack onto the end and is not part of the body of the document. The framers of the Australian Constitution, who did not have such a strange conception of rights (because an Englishman is free to do whatever he likes unless hedged in by law), did not include this as a right to be attached but rather, a specific regulation.

In practice, most of the courts which come about as a result of Sections 77-78, are not criminal cases and as such are not offences 'against' the law of the Commonwealth. Juries are not appointed to Family Law or Industrial Law cases most criminal cases are actually tried within the various state and territory courts and under the various Crimes Acts of those states and territories.

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Horse 3082 - Anatomy Of A Hacking

Please Unfriend my old Facebook account. Azu Ssb who is the current owner of that account (according to their email account) is not a nice person. 

I would like to say that last week my Facebook account was hacked. The problem with this is that 'hacked' is not exactly the right word for it. 'Hacked' would imply that the account was compromised. No, what happened was far more insidious. My Facebook account was outright stolen and the person who now operates it, no only has full control of it but then went to the effort of holding it to ransom and asking me to pay to regain control.

Earlier in the week, Optus customers had their accounts compromised when their details were stolen after hackers had got into the databases of the telco. Telstra customers found that there had been a breach of their details not long after. Vodafone customers were told that their accounts might also be under attack. In my case, my Facebook account was stolen not through any of the above avenues but probably by a similar method of attack, where they had got in through via the Virtual Private Network to the Australian Taxation Office.

I will admit to not being very tech savvy. Sure, if you give me a USB cable and a copy of the data dictionary necessary to diagnose problems in a motor car via OBD2, or ask me to set up a printer or other device within a LAN, then I can do those things. I can apparently do seemingly magical thing with SQL and write queries for databases which will generate useful reports which can then be exported to Microsoft Excel; which means that I am very useful in an office environment. I can even plug cameras, microphones, projectors, speakers and other devices into sound desks and video switchers, which is also useful for small scale video and audio production (and by inference edit audio and video). However none of those things were even the slightest bit useful in making sure that my Facebook account wouldn't be stolen.

When we use our software to lodge tax returns, it opens up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and from what I am led to believe, then for a short period of time sets up a temporary drive as a partition on both the server at the ATO and at our end; so that it can transmit and copy the necessary files to lodge said tax returns. Also as I am led to believe, last week when I was lodging a tax return, the nefarious actor who stole my Facebook account, was also able to gain access to my C: drive and have a rat around for Facebook login details. I have no idea how long it would have taken them to do this but I assume that the process was automated.

The earliest that I found out that my Facebook account was stolen, was when I got a phone call from someone if I was okay and why I was asking for money. I told them that I was fine, that I didn't need any money and that they should ignore my Facebook account.

After this, I tried logging in and found that not only had the primary email details changed but tha Facebook wouldn't accept any of the recovery details either. So after this and logging onto my email account, I found a series of emails from someone, who was demanding that I pay them $109¹ via a PayPal wallet or Bitcoin account, to unlock my Facebook account.

What this now means is that my old Facebook account is now owned by someone else, who wants to demand money from people and who should be ignored. 

Unfriend it.

Now obviously I find this annoying as this means that I have had to rebuild the world but more importantly, have I learnt anything from this:

1. Turn On Two-Factor Authentication.

2. If someone is going to ask you for your email address, do not give any confirmation codes.

3. Make sure that you are polite, even to people who mean to do you harm.

More than likely, the people who have decided that stealing Facebook accounts and trying to extort money from people have already crossed over lines of nicety and managed to quieten down the voices of their conscience to the point where any internal voice that says that they are doing wrong, has been ignored. People who act contrary to their conscience can rightfully said to be either brutes or animals but even so, they must have pretty awful lives if stealing Facebook details is their source of income. 

As someone who has had something stolen from them, I guess that I should feel violated in some way but apart from the inconvenience, I just feel disappointed. On the other side though, the number of people who showed concern and care and who have messaged, or phoned me to ask if I am okay, was lovely. To everyone who took the time however small, please know that you are appreciated. Yet again I am reminded that wrapped inside these electro-mechanical meatbags that we call humans, are both monsters and marvels. People contain multitudes².

Aside:

"Can you do me a help?"

After setting up a new Facebook account to replace the old one, several people have then reported that this is the message that they received from "Me" via Facebook Messenger. Rest assured, I find this request gauche for a number of reasons:

Firstly, even if I was in serious financial trouble, I would not be asking people on Facebook to help bail me out. There are other channels like Kofi, Patreon and GoFund Me which would be far more useful.

Secondly, while the English language has been verbing nouns and nouning verbs since before Arthur decided that securing weaponry from ladies in aquatic settings was a better idea than democracy, I just find this particular sentence construction weird. 

Yes, you can chair a meeting and just to hammer home the idea, you can table the points but "do me a help" sounds daft in my mind's ear. "Can you do me a favour?", "Can you please help me?"; "Help me, Obi Wan. You're my only hope³.", are all better requests. I like the economy of the words used but as someone who very obviously will use a thousand words and whose vociferousness knows no satiety, I am fairly confident that I would never utter anything like this in this way. 

¹ This is an oddly specific amount.

² If you have one quote from Walt Whitman, it is just a quote. If you have many quotes from Walt Whitman, it is a Whitman's Sampler.

³ At the time, Obi Wan was Leia's only hope. Then she found A New Hope.

⁴ No footnote 4⁴.

⁵ ...is right out.

Horse 3081 - Group A Bathurst 2022 - What Could Have Been?

This is the weekend of the Bathurst 1000 motor race and it will be 30 years since Jim Richard's now famous infamous speech from the podium in which he told the baying crowd what he thought of them after they had told him what they though of him, following his and Mark Skaife's win in the Nissan GTR R32. There was nothing wrong with the Nissan GTR R32; far from it. It was the best car to make use of the regulations; it's just that the very parochial crowd was annoyed that it had won everything and particularly on the day, it was declared the winner of the Bathurst 1000, after torrential rain had come down, after it had crashed into a wall, and the results were taken from two laps before. The crowd was miffed that a crashed car could win the race. However, that race win sits in a broader story.

By 1992 touring car racing had gotten way out of hand. The international category of FIA Group A Touring Cars had produced a bunch of homologation specials, which had become hideously expensive and ever since TWR had smashed all and sundry with their Jaguar XJR, Volvo with their 240T terror taxi, Ford with their Sierra Cosworth, there had been an arms race. Nissan was the last to step into the fray with their R32 Skyline GTR, after they'd carefully looked at the rules and produced an 2.6L turbo in-line 6, with four-wheel-drive, to go out and conquer the world.

Conquer, it did. It conquered everything to such an extent that it broke touring car racing in Europe and Australia and Japan. Germany had already killed off turbocharging by the time that it entered, Britain has adopted a smaller class; that left the Spa 24 Hours, the Bathurst 24 and the Suzuka 8 Hours as the available places to play. The 1992 Bathurst 1000 was the second last place that the Nissan GTR played in Australia and it won that edition in somewhat controversial circumstances.

The theory behind Group A was that you could take a road car and provided that 5000 examples of the standard road car had been build and 500 'evolution' examples had been built, then you could take what was in spirit as a normal road car and turn it into a racecar. Also, as Group A regulations were kind of the same for both road course and rally work, then in theory you could take a road car and put it in a rally and vice versa. In practice, this was only ever done with cars like the BMW M3, Ford Sierra Cosworth and smaller cars like the Toyota Corolla and Opel Astra.

If you draw the long line across time from the former FIA Group 2, through FIA Group A (and v8supercars which are an extension of Group 3A), then the place where you end up now is likely FIA GT3 and/or GT4 in Europe.

I have previously wondered what would have would have played with the Nissan GTR had the regulations stayed the same for 1993 and 1994 but in 2022, as the 5L V8 Group 3A regulations finally come to a close and the last of the Holden Commodores finally goes round, my thoughts turn to wondering about what we would have had in 2022 had Group A racing continued.

This is a series of speculations:

Nissan:

GTR - as a stand alone machine, I expect that they would have run the V6 2997cc turbocharged version. The 1.4x tariff for turbocharging kicks that up to 4195cc and that means that it would have been running at 1370kg; which given the march of technology would have been about where it was in 1992.

Nissan eventually spun the GTR out of the normal Skyline lineup and it is now a stand-alone sports car in its own right and has been for some time. The GTR currently does go racing in GT3 classes around the world; which is why I suspect that had Group A survived, it still would have been the weapon of choice.

Ford:

Ford has not one but two options which might be sensible.

Mustang - There aint no substitute for cubic inches and the 4951cc Coyote V8 Mustang is the obvious choice. In that trim, the car would be carrying 1470kg. If however the car ran the 5163cc Voodoo V8, it would be kicked up to 1560kg and likely not competitive at all.

The S650 Mustang is bigger than the Falcon, the Sierra, and the Foxbody Mustang which fared poorly in the mid 1980s. Bigness is both the blessing and the curse of this car; which makes it stable but unwieldy.

Puma - The other option would be the Ford Puma. The 1497cc turbocharged Ecoboost Dragon I-3, kicks it to 2096cc. That would be carrying a tiny 1030kg; which means that the Puma in Group A trim would basically be a wee little rocket bunny. 

Chevrolet:

Camaro - The Chevrolet Camaro has a 6162cc LT4 V8. Curiously as the car is already in the highest weight class, then a supercharged variant which kicks it out to 8626cc equivalent, means that it still would only be weighted at 1650kg. This is easily the heaviest car of the bunch but if we're talking about octoton horsepower, then 1650kg might not be an issue.

General Motors do not really sell cars outside of North America very much any more. Having shut down Holden because the Australian Government removed the subsidies and having sold off the Vauxhall/Opel Group, they didn't really see the point in making cars to comply with either Euro 6 emissions standards or Right-Hand-Drive cars.

Australian motor racing organisers would fall over themselves in trying to get the General to play in Australia as that is useful from a marketing perspective.

BMW:

Both the M2 and M3 run the 2993cc turbocharged I-6 engine. At an equivalvent of 4190cc this means that they'd be running at 1370kg. I have no way to predict what BMW what choose to run and it would probably come down what they wanted to market at the time but I would think that the M2 as a smaller car would be a better idea in principle.

In general, BMW have always been semi-ambivalent about going motor racing. As a luxury brand, they often appears to wax and wane with their support. 

Mazda:

Demonstrably the perfect formula for Group A racing was a 2L-3L turbocharged engined car, to take advantage of the weight adjustment. Mazda have in their Mazda 6 a 2488cc turbo V6, which equates to 3483cc under the rules and would carry 1200kg. A twin-turbo V6 could be made to scream its head off and at only 1200kg, Mazda's return to the mountain would have been amazing. 

Toyota:

I think it unlikely that Toyota would choose to run their GT-86 or Supra and the 3.5L Camry would carry too much weight to be competitive. This means that Toyota would have one real arrow in their quiver. The Toyota Corolla GR Gazoo with its 1618cc turbo I-4 would be rated to 2265cc and also run to 1030kg. 

Honda:

Honda might very well be tempted to run their Civic Type-R which in its current ilk of 1996cc turbo I-4 works out to 2794cc as rated and would carry 1150kg. Presumably a Group A Civic would take componentry from the BTCC Civic; which means that they wouldn't have to develop very many new components at all. 

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A theoretical Group A on paper looks pretty strong until you realise that the teams that run machinery are going to look at all of the available options and just pick the fastest. In the late 80s this was the Ford Sierra and then the Nissan GTR, or if you wanted a cheaper race car in Australia you would buy a Holden Commodore.

Therein lies the problem with the formula. It kind of already bakes in advantage to whomever can look at the rules and best exploit them. A 2022 Group A would fail for the same reason as a 1992 Group A did. A category like GT3 and GT4 attempts to equalise the field through balance of performance calculations and GT300 goes one step further with fuel restrictions. V8Supercars went the other way by clamping down and making more and more things spec components.

What's notably absent here is that apart from the Mazda 6 and depending on your definition of what the Honda Civic Type-R currently is, the rest are all coupes and hatchbacks. The market has generally moved away from sedans for the simple reason that there's more profits to be made in selling a similarly sppecificationed SUV. If a 2.5L V6 sedan can sell for $30K, then a a 2.5L V6 SUV can sell for $40K. It will sell less units but at 25% more profits, that's fine.

Horse 3080 - GOD ONLY KNOWS (Beach Boys) v YESTERDAY (Beatles) [2022] - Judgement

 The Fake Internet Court of Australia

GOD ONLY KNOWS (Beach Boys) v YESTERDAY (Beatles) [2022] - Judgement

H3080/1

Could you please have a look at this?

- Name Withheld.

https://twitter.com/RockNRoLL_85/status/1576006033319034882

Is “God Only Knows” by The Beach Boys a better song than “Yesterday” by The Beatles?

- @RockNRoLL_85 via Twitter, 1st Oct 2022.

Sometimes it is brought to this fake internet court's attention that there needs to be objective decisions made for subjective questions. While the general principle that "people like what they like" is a good one and as a result, this fake internet court does not want to impose its will upon people's likes and dislikes, the question posed is asking for an opinion of quality and not preference. As a self-appointed judge of a fake internet court, not only do I have the jurisdiction to make a definitive ruling on this but it would be churlish of me not to.

We shall examine the two songs from a technical perspective as well as making a purely subjective judgement on this subject. The unsaid puzzle that lies at the heart of the problem is an existential one; namely, can art actually be 'better' than other art?

Discovery:

"God Only Knows" is a song by American rock band the Beach Boys from their 1966 album Pet Sounds. The Beach Boys if they didn't invent the Surf Rock movement of the 1960s, are at least one of the genre's brightest lights.

"God Only Knows" was written by Brian Wilson and Tony Asher and I guess that you could call it as almost a  Baroque-style love song, which is strange given the kinds of songs which were on the radio at the time; which probably helped to add to its memorability. As is the want of people to superlatise everything, I found one review of this song which called it "one of the greatest songs ever written and on the Beach Boys' finest record".

I have no idea what key that this is supposed to be written in. I think that in some parts, the closest that it ever gets to a I chord of E major and in other parts, the closest that it gets to a I chord is A major. This is very confusing if you're trying to do any serious analysis on it; as the tonal centre of the song is rather weak (if indeed it has one at all).

Second to this, I suspect that all of the chords have been inverted. Assuming that one of the tonal centres is E major, then we should expect to find at least one E major triad with its bass note in the root. I do not think that we get that at all. I suspect that what we get are 6/4 triads. Thirdly, the song employs multiple contrapuntal vocal lines and a brass section; both of which add to the bigness of the sound.

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"Yesterday" on the other hand is the second last song on the album Help! by the Beatles. Outside of this particular question, the Beatles have been frequently put on lists as contenders for the greatest band of all time. 

"Yesterday" opens with F7, moving to Em7, then A7 and Dm. If you're going to try and do any kind of technical analysis, then this probably has Dm as the I chord; which is where the structure is trying to return to. The second part of the song starts Em7, then A, Dm, B♭, before resolving back to F major. This is a classic bait-and-switch from McCartney who very obviously wrote this even through it is credited as Lennon/McCartney.

Suddenly, it's not half the trick it used to be. We can now resolve the tonic key. Now "Yesterday" comes easily. What we have here is a song with tonic key of F major; with the added bonus of a string section and Paul McCartney playing chords as though the song was in G but with his guitar tuned down a whole step.

The addition of a string section which happens in a lot of pop music, just like the brass section in "God Only Knows" add to the bigness of the sound because it is employed as a tonal drone.

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These are the facts as this court sees them: These two songs being different in character, are by proof of their longevity, memorable. They are also technically brilliant; which is arguably one of the reasons why they have both been remembered as fondly as they are. Having said that, not being technically brilliant is not an impedance to being memorable and neither is being technically brilliant an indicator that a song will be memorable. Music which survives and is remembered is ultimately because people like it.

Neither of these songs rock particularly hard and in fact it is very difficult to argue that "Yesterday" for instance, is a rock song at all. It is a guitar song which is being played with string accompaniment. This is important as this hints at what both of these songs are in fact trying to do.

By employing relatively weak tonal centres, both "God Only Knows" and "Yesterday" are trying to establish a general feeling of ambiguity and more importantly, the fragility of life, love and loss. If this is in fact a point of the songs, then we're closer to arriving at which is 'better'.

Judgement:

Objectively this court can not make any other ruling than "God Only Knows" is technically a better song. Whilst it is true that McCartney does throw us a fake I chord, it is Wilson who gives a song without a centre. As far as trying to establish the fragility and vulnerability of the singer, then this level of musical doubt, is brilliant.

However, since this court is trying to make an objective decision for a subjective question then "Yesterday" will have to win. The reason for this is that if we harken back to that general principle that "people like what they like", then we have to employ a general test. This court suspects that if both of these songs were being played on a jukebox or by a band at a pub, or being played at a party at someone's house, then it is "Yesterday" which will be sung by more people. Yes it will be sung loudly and badly and flat and with less sense of melody but that is the point of the 'pop' in a pop song. 'Pop' means that it is popular and while being popular is not necessarily a measure of which is 'better', this court has to imagine that the man on the Croydon omnibus, the lady on the Bondi tram, Joe Bloggs and Betty Brown from Sydney Town, would all arrive at this conclusion.

This court hereby decides that "Yesterday" is better than "God Only Knows" but that people are still free to like what they like.

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3080/1 - Ed)

Horse 3079 - Completely Unknowable Fudge Figure

One of the things that you learn very very quickly when working adjacent to the law (I work in a forensic accounting office and have worked on the inside as a court recorder and internal accountant for the Commonwealth Law Courts), is that the legal profession is almost entirely populated by snakes, lions, tigers, and bears (oh my). Although it is true that some people do enter the legal profession because they genuinely want to help people, the system is so adversarial that even the most noble of intentions are soon quelled in favour of fighting for their clients at any and all costs.

To be sure, a profession which is steeped in ceremony, silliness, pomp, circumstance, tradition, class awareness, theatre, and language, is going to develop both witty and witless protagonists, who being paid many many thousands of dollarpounds are going to be gloriously aware of all of the above and will play with all of it. If Santa Claus came to Legal Town and was making his list and checking it twice, he would find that members of the legal profession would not only appear on both lists simultaneously but argue vociferously about the definitions of both 'naughty' and 'nice'.

Also as you might expect, a profession dealing with language and its implications as its stock and trade, is going to develop all kinds of its own cant, where words are made to twist on their own axes until they no longer mean what they aught to. When a member of the legal profession talk about their 'learned friends' they actually mean that they consider the person standing opposite them as both irretrievably stupid and borderline enemies in a blood feud. As for the rest of use who stare inwards like horrified observers to what is often the slowest metaphorical car crash in town, we are consistently made to feel lower than a snake's belly and smaller than a spider's spectacles.

Last week though, I was given a phone call which was a kind of congratulation; because of a line of text that I'd inserted into a report which has gone rogue.

By way of background, the case where I'd inserted this particular note into a set of accounts was particularly heated and nasty. In order to protect the names of the parties, I shall refer to this case as Thunderbolt v Lightning [2018] ("very very frightening" - R). Thunderbolt and Lightning were a married couple going through divorce proceedings and Lightning had kept a set of accounts that can be best described as fanciful. There were so utterly terrible that the Profit & Loss Statements and Balance Sheets didn't even obey the basic rules of arithmetic, much less any accounting standards. If you get a column of figures that do not add up, then it might be considered kindly as a typo.  If you get multiple columns of figures that do not add up, then this looks very much like obfuscation and we have to consider that some or all of the entries are either incompetent or untrustworthy.

My note of a "Completely Unknowable Fudge Figure" which was in a Balance Sheet was to indicate to my boss that the thing didn't add up and that in order to make it fit some kind of arithmetic sense, that I had to insert numbers to make the balances balance. In other words, I had to fudge the figures. 

Unless you have some kind of synesthesia, numbers themselves do not have any personality and so if you want to convey some kind of impression about the information which you have, you need to insert commentary. Most of the notes that I leave in sets of accounts and dividend spreadsheets have to do with the technical information itself such as "No Div Since Listing - Mar 1997", or "Expect Deferred Tax Ben Notice". This was different.

I thought at the time that this would be as far as the notes would go, that is that I thought that this note would only be used for internal consumption. BUT (and never start a sentence with a conjunction) my boss liked this so much that he'd kept several of mu snide asides in the final report and that instead of a complete mess, the figures were so terrible that they were an incomplete mess. For who could hate or bear a grudge against a luscious bit of fudge?

The report for Thunderbolt v Lightning [2018] was submitted with my notes intact and the term 'Completely Unknowable Fudge Figure' not only stayed in the report but was referred to throughout the case; almost as though this were symbolic of the sheer audaciousness of the shenaniganry going on within the accounts. 

This may have been just another fun little entry within the annals of the Family Court of Australia but I got a phone court from a clerk of the court who specifically wanted to speak to me. Their phone call was to inform me that the term "Completely Unknowable Fudge Figure" has now appeared not once, not twice but thrice in other unconnected cases. It would appear that my incendiary aside, has exploded and has started to have minor echoes and ripples through the court.

Now work is heat and heat is work and work's a curse, and all the heat in the universe is gonna cool down 'cause that's entropy man but at least this little blob of work has warmed the hearts of a few. I rather like that not only have I set off my own little skerrick of silliness into the world but it's gone off and had a life of its own.

Horse 3078 - Eudaimonia - Element V - Lovely

It never really occurred to me as an Australian that there are some perfectly ordinary words which we use differently to the rest of the world. That's only to be expected when you have an isolated prison island hidden in the summer for a million years; which although was outward looking, up until recently was still quite culturally backwards.

One of those words is 'lovely'; which is mostly used in the United Kingdom in a sarcastic tone, and underused in the United States, where having used it in normal conversation I was accused of sounding old-fashioned for using it. In Australia though, 'lovely' is a perfectly normal word which is used to describe something which is pleasing, pleasant, and agreeable. 

Again, probably due to the fact that we live in a summer paradise for at least half of the year, it follows that as we have the environmental enemy of the weather trying either to freeze you to death or thrash you with rain, being mostly absent, that what follows is a higher degree of friendliness. Having said that, there still are very racist elements in the country and it does not help that we have a pretty dominant right-wing trashmedia controlling most of common discourse. The art of being lovely is practiced far more by the general public than the political and popular press would have you believe.

In thinking through the fifth element of eudaimonia, we find what the Greeks sort of called Prosfile (προσφιλῆ); which comes from the two components from 'pros' (the preposition which means 'for') and 'phileó' which is one of the four general categories of love; which we might consider friendship, both between people and between people and the state.

There is kind of a preemptive sense of manners about this. The point of manners and etiquette is not as is sometimes presumed meant to regulate a set of behaviour for the mere sake of doing so but rather, to draw down the minor barriers for other people. Virtues like patience and kindness aren't just inherently virtuous but actually useful. If we think of other people as having some kind of intrinsic value, even if they may actively want to harm us, then this tends to promote of more peace-motivating set of conditions. If we then in principle attempt to deliberately forget any record of wrong committed against us, what we are left with is a sense of hope which tends to endure through hard circumstance. 

To reclaim a term used by the right-wing trashmedia, 'virtue signalling' is actually a good thing that aught to be done. Signalling in both the economic and psychology sense, means that an actor has indicated either through words but mostly through action that these are the things that they would like to receive and/or purchase. Since the biggest set of signals which exist in economics are the rational decisions that people make in buying and selling goods and services, then signalling is the end point indication that the various actors and the market generally would like more of a thing. Or perhaps metaphorically, putting your money where your mouth is because money talks. More generally, virtue should be signalled and even better practiced and demonstrated, if we want more of it to occur.

This sounds suspiciously like the very old saw 'do to others what you would have them do to you'; for good reason. In general, the great moral philosophers, by they Hammurabi, Aristotle, Plato, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, et cetera, are all going to arrive at roughly the same conclusion because that would indicate that at least some kind of common and general morality exists and to be perfectly honest, no new general morality is likely to be discovered or invented beyond 'be nice to people' and 'don't be a knave' because no moral philosopher ever invents a new kind of morality ever, do they?

If you are patient with other people, then what cause do they have really to be impatient with you? If you are kind to other people, then what cause do they have really to be unkind to you? To actually reach the point where it is justified to be impatient and unkind to someone, must mean that you have already crossed some boundary where a bond is severed and you have decided to unperson them. The state of being indecent, unlovely, and unpleasant, is at best disagreeable and and worst a state of war. Competition for riches, power, honour, and position, are in fact the most likely causes which places competitors into a probable position of indecent, unlovely, and unpleasant, because the prize of winning those things is calculated in the minds of the competitors as being worth entering a state of disagreement and of war. 

Prosfile as practiced, assumes that the other person is valuable enough to be considered as being a person; which means that even if there are things such as riches, power, honour, and position, that they should either be shared for the mutual benefit of all, or that one thinks so highly of the other that one is willing to surrender one's claim in preference to the other.

Prosfile in the secondary sense which is used far less in ancient Greek, is in the consideration of that which is aesthetically pleasant, what is beautiful, what is nice. Plato's suggestion of "the forms" which says that there is a theoretical perfect version of a thing somewhere at least hints at the idea that prosfile is a concept which can be obtained. I would like to think though, that in addition to the physical beauty of objects, places, and people, that the intangible beauty of things such as a pleasant afternoon, those fleeting moments of absolute joy, and those temporary moments of glory, if they are not included in prosfile are at least adjacent to the concept. 

It is lovely to be lovely.