[lbo-talk] etymology/dirt is good

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Mon Jul 4 12:42:53 PDT 2005


Who needs intellectual firepower when you have lots of money?

Mind you, the old land law was one of the most arcane subject matters ever concocted by the human mind. Brian Whatsisname, prof now at U of Mich who has written wonderfully entertaining sociologically informed, highly accessible and extremely witty books like Cannibalism and the Common Law, about a famous case where shipwrecked sailors ate the cabin boy, and Leading Cases In The Common Law --a blast to read despite the title, really! -- made his bones with a book on The Land Law; Maitland and Pollack (the classic history of the early common law) is about 80% about the land law,and of course Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice under James I until he pissed off the king by suggesting he was subject to the law, made his intellectual fame with his Commentaries On Littleton, a 14th century treatiseon the Land Law. Now it's all statutory and contractual and not nearly as complicated as tax law or M&A. But there's still real $$ in that there dirt.

--- Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:


>
> On Fri, 1 Jul 2005, andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> > "Dirt" was really good, actually. In my biz, we
> call it "real" estate,
> > actual weath, as opposed to mere personal property
> like gold and jewels
> > and stocks and bonds.
>
> True, although occasionally tax lawyers and
> corporate lawyers mock and
> demean real estate law as "dirt law," implying that
> it takes no intellectual
> firepower to master it.
>
> > "Spacious in the possession of dirt," Hamlet
> dismisses Oscric -- but he's
> > insulting Osric's syncophancy and stupidity, not
> his wealth.
>
> Hamlet also deliver's one of Western literature's
> most wonderful expressions
> of the idea that we are dirt, as part of his "Alas
> dear Yorick" soliloquy:
>
> URL:
>
http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/hamlet/hamlet.5.1.html
>
> HAMLET
>
> To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why
> may
> not imagination trace the noble dust of
> Alexander,
> till he find it stopping a bung-hole?
>
> HORATIO
>
> 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider
> so.
>
> HAMLET
>
> No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him
> thither with
> modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as
> thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried,
> Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is
> earth; of
> earth we make loam; and why of that loam,
> whereto he
> was converted, might they not stop a
> beer-barrel?
> Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay,
> Might stop a hole to keep the wind away:
> O, that that earth, which kept the world in
> awe,
> Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw!
> But soft! but soft! aside: here comes the
> king.
>
> <end quote>
>
> So when you look at it that way, the idea that we
> become dirt is really
> irrefutable. Even if we get burned or buried at
> sea, we still become
> species of dirt, ash and mud respectively.
>
> And the idea that we are made out of dirt is hard to
> avoid even today if we
> accept that "being made out of chemicals" is just a
> fancy way of saying
> "being made out of things you find in the earth."
>
> The more you think about it, the more the recurrence
> of this idea of
> autochthonous creation in primitive myths all over
> the world seems basically
> explicable as the obvious conclusion that anyone who
> sat down back then and
> thought about it would reach -- as much the begining
> of science and
> philosophy as the beginning of religion.
>
> Michael
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

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