Incorrélées mais pas sans cause: 2ème

Random thoughts.

• Forgot to mention it, but another difference between my felinoids' "birds" (that are actually members of the same mammal-analogue class as them) and our birds, is that rather than having their sternum modified into a keelbone, it's modified like the vertebrae of a number of animals—each sternebra has a big crest on it, for muscles to attach to.
  
  Also on the "RE: previously discussed" front, the ane-ue mentioned in the comments that she worried about the side-to-side strength of those honeycomb tires, for power slides. But I don't think that'd be much of an issue; tube-shapes tend to be at their strongest along their length, and the honeycomb shape converts a tire from a flat cylinder into a number of tall thin ones packed together.


• This season's shaping up to be pretty good now, anime wise; Sacred Seven has another decent episode under its belt, Mayo Chiki is so far so good, the second season of Baka Test is chock full of everything we loved from the first one (if you don't love Shouko, there is something wrong with your thinky bits). I'd completely forgotten about Itsuka Tenma no Kuro Usagi ('Sometimes the Devil's Black Rabbit'), but I had read the manga, and the anime actually looks a bit better. Kamisama Dolls' anime is a lot faster than the manga was, and the added little touch of the eponymous mecha singing whenever they move more than makes up for the fact at least one of them looks like an elongated rice-cooker with arms.
  
  Mawaru Penguin Drum is...odd. Some of the plot things (the one dude kissing the girl, who is at least ostensibly his sister, on the mouth: icky!) are in questionable taste, the philosophical noodling is believable but fallacious, and the basic premise is like something Phil Dick would write if he wanted to get really weird. On the other hand, sultry swaggering avatar-girl in angry-eyed Rock-Hopper Penguin hat. You see, it's a tossup!


• You know Suits, the new show on USA, with the lawyers? What I think is interesting is, it's all the feudal politicking you could ever need, and without the deliberately sordid gutter-wallowing and unhistorical slanders from jackrags like George R. R. Martin.
  
  And yes, the dynamic in play in the law-firm in Suits is, quite completely, feudal. It's actually sort of funny, to me; because the exact sort of person who frequently says nasty things about the feudal era, is the sort that wants to minimize the only alternative to feudalism, namely the professional state. A rational society, of course, uses both in different spheres; currently we have government and military be professional, and business be feudal. Other eras have had everything be feudal, though business was less so than government in several major eras in western history.
  
  One recalls that Ann Coulter said something about so many of the people on some Worst Person in History list working for the state...but including Vlad the Impaler. Uh, no. Basarab Vlad III the Impaler, son of Vlad II the Dragon, lived in a society that had no state, except possibly the Orthodox Church, and a dim sense of being a part of Byzantium.


• Speaking of, I don't remember who it was, but some right-wing ass was saying something about the Pledge of Allegiance being bad, because of allegiance's meaning of "the obligations of a vassal to a lord". And then this titan of intellect, this staggering paragon of learning, says something about serfs.
  
  Hah. Hey idiot, mouths also close, did you know? 'Cause 'vassal' is a term that only applied to nobles. You know that thing we currently call chivalry? In the older chansons de geste, it was known as vassalage. Allegiance is the duty sworn by one lord to another lord, in exchange for cession of land; the lord who receives the land and takes on the duty is the vassal, while the one who cedes the land and receives the duty is the liege. Of course, most lieges were themselves vassals, and in the Middle Ages (since monarchy barely existed), the only difference between a king and a baron was the king was "sovereign", that is, he had no liege.
  
  While I'm on the subject, you know how you'll frequently hear that such-and-such a politician or executive "treated his department like his own private fief", or similar? Yeah, well, private fief is a questionable term. The tenor attaching to fiefs (the land ceded in the above arrangement, and the origin of the word "feudal") is complicated—our Roman-derived property concepts are ill-equipped to deal with it. The holder of a fief had the right to use it and modify it other than destructively, but not the right to alienate it; and they only held it as long as they continued to carry out obligations.
  
  What's funny is, all political posts actually are fiefs: they are held in feudal gift from the constituency, and they carry with them obligations, dereliction of which results in the loss of the fief. Feudalism actually supplies a much simpler and more direct vocabulary for discussing our politics than the Classical terms we largely restrict ourselves to. That's probably why High Medieval France had pretty much everything Americans flatter themselves they invented, and without the accompanying morass of bullshit.


• 'Nother example of how every salutary development in American politics is just a half-assed reinvention of the medieval wheel, ever hear of the Taxpayers' Bill of Rights movement? Though there are stupid extremist forms of it, its moderate, non-retard version usually restricts the amount and number of times taxes can be increased in a given legislative term, and also often requires putting tax increases to a popular vote before they can be passed.
  
  And thus does the American Republic lay claim to a right every dirt-pushing serf in 11th century France took for granted. No really, a lord couldn't raise his tenants' customary dues—essentially an income tax, though actually a set proportion of the harvest—without their consent. Oh, and property and sales taxes were always temporary ad hoc measures, don't let's forget that.