Why so silent on the huge elephant in the room?

[zangtang]

thats Jordan Maxwelll getting carried away with himself, & just in that bit (the greater part being about maritime admiralty law)
turdefecating all over his own punchbowl............

[stefano]

thats Jordan Maxwelll getting carried away with himself, & just in that bit (the greater part being about maritime admiralty law)
turdefecating all over his own punchbowl............

Yeah, about that whole theory: has there ever been an instance of person being regarded as a 'maritime admiralty product' in an actual court? And I can assure you that admiralty law has nothing to say about ships' sex.

Although I have, in a few dealings with US money people, seen it written into contracts that disputes were to be judged under English law (meaning civil law, not common law - what these people call admiralty law), because neither party wanted technical points to be evaluated by randomly picked juries of American citizens. That seems sensible.

[zangtang]

eminently, m'lud....

[coffin_dodger]

stefano:

That's all made-up crap, but, as a language nerd, the bit I found offensively, aggressively stupid was this:

...What's the idea of going to court? It's a game, like basketball, the whole idea in a court is to put the ball in the other guys court... and consequently it's a ball game and the judge is wearing a black robe, so he is the referee... the judge is a referee between two teams. The judge rules from the bench. "Bench" in Latin is a bank, therefore, the judge rules for the bank. Where do you find banks? You find banks on both sides of a river and what does a river bank do? It controls the direction of the current-sea…, the juice.

As a language non-nerd myself, (i.e. I haven't studied the origins of words in depth, including their specific meaning in the context of differing subjects), I'm struggling to see the 'aggressively stupid' reasoning behind this line of thought. It strikes me as intellectually deductive.

Rather than ask you to explain the correct significance and origin of the words attributed to court dealings, (e.g. court, dock, bench, the bar, the well, etc) I spent 10mins googling 'origins of the court system' and 'court bench bar dock origins' - finding no easily accessible explanation of what the terms mean in relation to one another.

Incidentally, the first hit for 'origins of the court system' returned this hit: https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/about-the-judiciary/history-of-the-judiciary/
The article starts thus:

When you see a judge or magistrate sitting in court, you are actually looking at the result of 1,000 years of legal evolution.

It’s doubtful that anyone asked to design a justice system would choose to copy the English and Welsh model. It’s contradictory in places, and rather confusing.

And that is the official, sanctioned website of the English Judiciary.

Being the pedantic little shit that I am, I'd really appreciate it if you could point to me the source of the absolute knowledge regarding the origins and inter-relating terminology of the court system.

** jesus, I'm beginning to think I like the sound of my own voice too much. My entire post could easily have been distilled into:

stefano:

That's all made-up crap, but, as a language nerd, the bit I found offensively, aggressively stupid was this:

Based on what? Please link to correct explanation.

[brainpanhandler]

That's all made-up crap, but, as a language nerd, the bit I found offensively, aggressively stupid was this:

You go to court because you play basketball and tennis on a court. You play with a racket, why, because that's what it is - it's a racket. They do not pick words by chance. These words are very serious. They do not use words and terms with no avail. These words are very important. What's the idea of going to court? It's a game, like basketball, the whole idea in a court is to put the ball in the other guys court... and consequently it's a ball game and the judge is wearing a black robe, so he is the referee... the judge is a referee between two teams. The judge rules from the bench. "Bench" in Latin is a bank, therefore, the judge rules for the bank. Where do you find banks? You find banks on both sides of a river and what does a river bank do? It controls the direction of the current-sea…, the juice.

I particularly liked this bit though:

"It controls the direction of the current-sea…, the juice."

You think it's a coincidence that Fred (Gopher) Grandy played the purser on The Love Boat and then went on to serve in congress?

[seemslikeadream]

That's all made-up crap, but, as a language nerd, the bit I found offensively, aggressively stupid was this:

You go to court because you play basketball and tennis on a court. You play with a racket, why, because that's what it is - it's a racket. They do not pick words by chance. These words are very serious. They do not use words and terms with no avail. These words are very important. What's the idea of going to court? It's a game, like basketball, the whole idea in a court is to put the ball in the other guys court... and consequently it's a ball game and the judge is wearing a black robe, so he is the referee... the judge is a referee between two teams. The judge rules from the bench. "Bench" in Latin is a bank, therefore, the judge rules for the bank. Where do you find banks? You find banks on both sides of a river and what does a river bank do? It controls the direction of the current-sea…, the juice.

I particularly liked this bit though:

"It controls the direction of the current-sea…, the juice."

You think it's a coincidence that Fred (Gopher) Grandy played the purser on The Love Boat and then went on to serve in congress?

You think it's a coincidence that a person who holds first place trophy for the most mean vicious obnoxious personal attack at RI should still be taking any chance he can get to poke a stick?

[brainpanhandler]

You must be joking. I thought I was making fun of Jordan Maxwell. You posted Maxwell in earnest?

[IanEye]

I mean the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR)! It's the pink, polka-dotted elephant...the biggest open secret that almost never comes up in discussion.

I like the title of this thread, seems like an homage to fruhmenschen.

So far, what little research I have done on CAFR's seems to mostly turn up web postings from the late 90's/2000.

Which of course was the last time the U.S. was paying down the national debt.

It would be interesting to see data across a span of say 20 years on both the Federal CAFR and each of the individual 50 state's CAFR's.

Start with 1992, and go all the way to 2012.
Perhaps overlay data from Wall Street's overall performance on the same chart/timeline.



.

[seemslikeadream]

You must be joking. I thought I was making fun of Jordan Maxwell. You posted Maxwell in earnest?

oh...ok... sure...whatever you say bph ....past means nothing ..I take it your personal hatred towards me is over? Nice to know and now we can move on? Since I never got a semblance of an apology from you I was just going by ancient history...honest mistake

mean is disturbing

quirky is just fun

[PufPuf93]

In my rambling verbiage I was trying to make the point that the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report is an artifact of the elephant rather than the elephant, think elephant poo.

An artifact being defined as :

"1.an object made by a human being, typically an item of cultural or historical interest:
"gold and silver artifacts"

2.something observed in a scientific investigation or experiment that is not naturally present but occurs as a result of the preparative or investigative procedure."

My verbiage jumped off of Wombaticus Rex using ecological terms for animal population dynamics.

The problem is not our political system or economic system or other human construct but humanity's dysfunctional relationship to nature.

[stefano]

Based on what? Please link to correct explanation.

Is that how you think this place ought to run? Someone posts a delusional, unsourced bit of rubbish from one of the internet's less intelligent corners, someone else comes along and says 'hey, this is delusional and unsourced', then it's up to the challenger to do actual homework? Why not ask Maxwell what the fuck he's talking about? There are a few forums you could look to to see where that will take you. I don't mind all that much - I'm not involved enough here any more to feel more than a residual and nostalgic sense of ownership - but I do think it would be a shame for RI to turn into one of those places.

Whatever, though. It's the weekend, I'm nicely buzzed on cheap red, I'll bite.

You go to court because you play basketball and tennis on a court.

Court means, most basically, a bit of space with walls all around. Like a court of law, but also a courtyard, or (in other Romance languages) a chicken run. It was the obvious word to use for the place where you played tennis, in the days when tennis was an indoor game. From there it went to outdoor tennis courts, and when basketball was invented, what other word would make sense? It's stupid to see some sort of relation between litigation and basketball on etymological grounds.

You play with a racket, why, because that's what it is - it's a racket.

Racket in the sense of scam comes from racket as in noise, because pickpockets used to make a noise to distract people while they rifled their pockets. It's probably onomatopoeic, and possibly Gaelic. By contrast racquet - to give it its proper spelling - is the same root as a rack for clothes or a shelf. Not the same thing. And it didn't sound the same in English for centuries.

They do not pick words by chance. These words are very serious. They do not use words and terms with no avail.

This is especially annoying. The implication here, although Maxwell the utter fucking tit does not spell it out, is that slang is directed by the ominous them, that they have made racquet sound like racket which means scam to send us a message. Revelation of the method! What balls.

the whole idea in a court is to put the ball in the other guys court

No it isn't. The expression this bloody fool is thinking about refers to a situation where it's not up to you but up to someone else to do something. In an actual tennis game the idea is to deliver an unplayable ball, in basketball you want to keep possession from the opposing team, and in a court of law you want to present an unbeatable argument. When the 'ball is in someone else's court', that is a less than optimal situation, where you have nothing to do but wait.

the judge is wearing a black robe, so he is the referee...

Huh? What connection, on planet Earth, is there between refereeing and the colour black?

The judge rules from the bench. "Bench" in Latin is a bank, therefore, the judge rules for the bank. Where do you find banks? You find banks on both sides of a river and what does a river bank do?

Bench and bank are actually the same word, so he got this one right. It was probably by accident though. Bench doesn't come from bank; bank comes from bench, because usurers in the old days used to do business from wooden benches in marketplaces. And bank as in a river bank is a completely different word - it's Germanic, not Latin, and is the root in cloudbank, mudbank, sandbank and so on. Unrelated.

Any of these links are easily found by googling one of the words and 'etymology' after it. If you're interested I recommend the Inky Fool, Mark Forsyth, whose Etymologicon is an especially great book.

[coffin_dodger]

Thanks for the reply, Stefano.

[km artlu]

Maxwell is the steamy muggy day.
Stefano is the cool refreshing breeze.

[KUAN]

What about when you go to a ball, you know, dancing.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Although this thread will surely be a disappointment to future RI users searching for information on what Elephants were like, back when they still existed...

...I think we've done a bang-up job of demonstrating why the CAFR issue doesn't get discussed more! Performance art, really.

It's impressive how much the Sovereign Citizen community has been able to co-opt and subsume. (There's more than enough laments about the Conspiratainment Complex here at RI already, so permit me to just skip that whole rant.) This, though:

It would be interesting to see data across a span of say 20 years on both the Federal CAFR and each of the individual 50 state's CAFR's.

Start with 1992, and go all the way to 2012.
Perhaps overlay data from Wall Street's overall performance on the same chart/timeline.

I like it. Gonna rap with some data nerd friends about how to do it. Meanwhile, here's a contemporary overview from George Mason:
http://mercatus.org/statefiscalrankings

...and here's a curious piece about how difficult CAFR is to understand, even for experts:
http://www.governing.com/topics/finance ... eless.html

The argument that CAFR should enable bureaucrats to understand the risk in their investments, though, is a bit specious. Not even banks can really do that!