What Are You Reading

[Harp]

but my experience has been that while you can find a person here or there whose word is their bond, in general, we are a litigious, over-documented, culture.

Commercial obligation in excess of $1k or a year are generally prescribed written form; although promissory estoppel can be used to force agreed compliance.

 

[Fading Fast]

Commercial obligation in excess of $1k or a year are generally prescribed written form; although promissory estoppel can be used to force agreed compliance.

After Googling "promissory estoppel" and reading your post a few times, I think it understand it. I have lived in two worlds.

The handshake or (I guess) promissory-estoppel world and, in that world, no enforcement is necessary as everyone honors their word or the violator quickly gets a reputation that ruins his or her chance of success in the community. The other world is the document, "write contracts, argue each line and word in the contract and then watch people twist and torture the meaning of those contracts and documents to their own demands" world.

In that world, while you, I am sure, are right technically, nobody goes to court to sue about a verbal promise (the lawyers laugh if you say, but he / she promised), but they all "lawyer up" over the written documents. That's just been my experience.

I could shake the hand of the local body shop guy growing up and not worry at all about what he would charge me when done as we agreed to the price ahead of time and shook on it (and if the paint bubbled or something 3 months later - he'd fix it, without any discussion about a warranty, if there was or wasn't one).

When dealing with larger companies - my landlord, who owns several large buildings in NYC, or in Corporate America, - the handshake is a joke (it works when everything goes according to plan which means it works when it isn't needed) and all that matters for dispute resolution is whose lawyer can out lawyer the other. Or, with some large companies, they will just drag out the suit and win by financial attrition.

 

[Harp]

In that world, while you, I am sure, are right technically, nobody goes to court to sue about a verbal promise (the lawyers laugh if you say, but he / she promised), but they all "lawyer up" over the written documents. That's just been my experience.

Promissory estoppel evolves from the mens rea of the actus that follows agreement or implied understanding. (crim law usage here) A favorite law school case involved
two Wyoming ranchers and an agreement to sell particular acreage, and a court order directed promissory estoppel after the renege.
The law adheres contracting parties and establishes a certain societal discipline, so said serves useful purpose.

The evolution of law is quite majestic and while foolishness-especially opined by the highest bench-can aggrieve patience, history often stands in awe.

 

[ChiTownScion]

The Statute of Frauds was enacted by Parliament in 1677. It states that an agreement in writing signed by the party to be charged must evidence any contract which involves:

1. Marriage;
2. Performance capability in a period greater than a year;
3. An interest in land;
4. Contracts by the executor of a will to pay a debt of the estate;
5. Contract for the sale of goods exceeding ten pounds sterling;
6. Contracts in which one party becomes a surety for another party's debt or other obligation.

(Law students learn the mnemonic, MY LEGS.)

In other words, the Colonel had nearly a three hundred year heads up to follow the advice that any good lawyer tells his client, and which any businessman with common sense should know: get it in writing. It isn't that a gentleman doesn't keep his word: it's that gentlemen die, or become incapacitated, and less- than- gentlemanly survivors try to put the pieces together after the fact, and that some of those same survivors (horrors!) get mercenary.

The Boys are far from innocent in all of this of course, but even in closely held family corporations, the bloodletting can get very gruesome- as anyone who has ever read a casebook on corporate law will tell you.

 

[Harp]

Found The Chicago Maroon-"The Independent Student Newspaper of The University of Chicago" on the train last night.
Halloween costumes, cultural appropriation, the UChicago free speech policy, sophomoric essays, and a Spectre review.
Daniel Craig seems an ok Bond, but I think Pierce Brosnan could have done 007 best with better scripting.
It takes an Irishman to play Bond. wink.

 

[Fading Fast]

Found The Chicago Maroon-"The Independent Student Newspaper of The University of Chicago" on the train last night.
Halloween costumes, cultural appropriation, the UChicago free speech policy, sophomoric essays, and a Spectre review.
Daniel Craig seems an ok Bond, but I think Pierce Brosnan could have done 007 best with better scripting.
It takes an Irishman to play Bond. wink.

You allude to an interesting point. Many - myself included - love Craig in the Bond role and credit him for reinvigorating the series, but in truth, timing worked to his advantage as the series owners / producers seemed to finally realize they had played out the old formula for far too long and really did a rethink and relaunch of the entire construct when they made "Casino Royale."

Brosnan and, IMHO, especially Dalton would have come over better had they been given the "Casino Royale" script versus the junk they got. That said, I think "Casino Royale" was a product of the "man-moment-machine" phenomenon when all three of the right parts come together at the right time. Craig was the right man for the role at moment when the series was being relaunched with the right machine (producers, scripts, director) driving it.

 

[cw3pa]

"Churchill in the Trenches" (2015) by Peter Apps. Exiled to the political wilderness after the Dardanelles Churchill rejoined the Army, and takes command of the 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. He only served on the western front for six months, near Ypres. A nasty place where sagging morale, mud and constant danger was the norm.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Hemingway and Paris: still relevant.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-memoir-flies-off-shelves-in-show-of-defiance

 

[Dirk Wainscotting]

The Big Short by Matthew Lewis.

 

[Harp]

Hemingway and Paris: still relevant.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...-memoir-flies-off-shelves-in-show-of-defiance

Good pix of Papa.
...bet Foucault's Paris university lectures tome stays on shelf.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Am reading "Goldeneye. Where James Bond was born: Ian Fleming 's Jamaica." By Mathew Parker.

Mainly I am amazed at how debauched, boozy, chain-smoking, philandering, over-sexed, gossipy, and loose the expat British upper class in Jamaica were during the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. It is a vicarious hoot.

 

[Fading Fast]

Am reading "Goldeneye. Where James Bond was born: Ian Fleming 's Jamaica." By Mathew Parker.

Mainly I am amazed at how debauched, boozy, chain-smoking, philandering, over-sexed, gossipy, and loose the expat British upper class in Jamaica were during the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. It is a vicarious hoot.

You'll notice a similar cultural "dynamic" amongst the British upper class in Africa during its Empire days.

 

[Harp]

Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Roads to Modernity; The British, French, and American Enlightenments

An historian's revisionist perspective that gives primacy to the British Enlightenment,
which nicely dovetails Paul Hazard's classic The Crisis of the European Mind 1680-1715.
Rationalism as preface to the French Enlightenment of Voltaire and Rousseau.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You'll notice a similar cultural "dynamic" amongst the British upper class in Africa during its Empire days.

In any era, aristocracy is doomed to collapse under the weight of its own decadence.

 

[Harp]

In any era, aristocracy is doomed to collapse under the weight of its own decadence.

Sin travels across societal bound.

 

[Fading Fast]

Finished "Come Hell or Highball," by Maia Chance a light novel written a bit in the style of the dime-store-detective fiction of the early 20th Century but with the modern twist of female protagonists. Overall, I was disappointed as it never rises above a surface story that is telegraphed all along. There is some fun, set-in-the-'20s period stuff for FL fans, but not really enough to justify the read. The chemistry between the two women "detectives" (a former society lady and her cook who stumble into being detectives) is the best part of the book - they call each other out on their BS in a fun way - but again, there isn't enough of it to carry the book.

 

[Harp]

Am reading "Goldeneye. Where James Bond was born: Ian Fleming 's Jamaica." By Mathew Parker.

Mainly I am amazed at how debauched, boozy, chain-smoking, philandering, over-sexed, gossipy, and loose the expat British upper class in Jamaica were during the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. It is a vicarious hoot.

Just pulled Jennifer Senior's review of The Man With the Golden Typewriter off the New York Times web site.
I like the bit about Bond's discontinued use of the .25 Beretta and preference for the Walther PPK.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Reconnecting with a childhood favorite, Robert McCloskey's "Homer Price." My childrens-librarian friend gave me a copy as an early Christmas present, after I mentioned that I'd read and enjoyed it as a kid, and it's just as entertaining in its own way now as it was then. Published in 1943, it's the story of an industrious pre-teen who lives with his working-class parents and his pet skunk "Aroma" in a small town populated by colorful eccentrics, a town not at all unlike the one where I grew up. Homer also loves to experiment with radio, which is an element I always found endearing. Another notable element is the book's depiction of African-American characters, who are presented in a very matter-of-fact, non-caricatured manner as everyday residents of the town.

McCloskey is best known for his pictures books for small children, but his "young adult" work is less well known. It's very much in the same vein as Beverly Cleary's work, and Homer may well have inspired Cleary's "Henry Huggins." The book is illustrated in the same style of richly-detailed cartoony drawings as McCloskey's picture books, and is as much enjoyable for them as for the text. If you have kids from 8 to 80, they'll enjoy this book.

 

[DNO]

At a thrift shop today, I found a spectacular copy of Steven Leacock's Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, illustrated by the Canadian artist, Seth. I may have to revisit the quirky folk that inhabit Mariposa.

 

[Harp]

Law's conscience, Justin Zaremby; The New Criterion May 2014, a review of Lord Mansfield: Justice in the Age of Reason by Norman S. Poser

Interesting study of English jurisprudence and a philosophical attempt to bridge equity and common law.