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Yesterday, November 28, 2004, Scotland abolished the last vestiges of feudalism.

Age-old Scots property rights end: Laws abolishing 800 years of feudal property rights have come into force in Scotland.

[The legislation] effectively brings to an end a system where feudal superiors had control over what could be done with land and property - even when it was owned by someone else.

J. & H. Mitchell, W.S., a Scottish firm of solicitors and estate agents explains the Abolition of Feudal Tenure (Scotland) Act 2000:

The Scottish system of land ownership has been based on the feudal system since the Middle Ages, the feudal theory being that all land belongs to the Crown who would originally grant feu charters to noblemen in exchange for promises of military service etc. These nobles in turn would grant feu charters of areas of land to vassals in exchange for services or payment of feuduty. ...

[A]ll the remaining aspects of the feudal system [are abolished] as at 28th November 2004. On that date the feuar as owner of the dominium utile of the feu becomes the absolute owner, equivalent to the English freehold system. The feudal superiority and concept of feudal superior will simply cease to exist.

Hence the twist on the line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail spoofing the relation of lord to vassal.

Many things come to mind hearing of this: how property rights interact with social relationships, hierarchy and authority, and change as organic versus upheaval.

Apropos the last, I was reminded of a quote from Chesterton:

There exists a certain institution or a law; let us call it, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gayly up to it and says: 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.' [in The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic]

The New York Times today has an article by Robert F. Worth entitled 'Marines in Falluja Find Rebel Leader's Arsenal' that is surprisingly, for me, favorable in its treatment of the discovery of

Abdullah Janabi['s], the insurgent leader of this city's mujahedeen council, and his bomb-laden mosque, where they found a massive supply of weapons that dwarfed any of the hundreds of caches yet found  .  .  .

As they comb through the city's houses, search teams of American and Iraqi soldiers have discovered much larger supplies of weapons than they expected, and the need to detonate them safely could delay initial reconstruction efforts under way here, officials said. Explosions can be heard throughout the day as munitions teams detonate the weapons in a quarry north of the city, but some are too dangerous and must be blown up in place.  .  .  .

Just inside the mosque compound was an aluminum shed full of mortars and TNT. Like many weapons depots in Falluja, it had been wired to explode, and had to be carefully dismantled by an American explosives team.

I haven't seen any interviews of the disposal team members. That would be interesting.

Also found in the house were files showing the names of people who had been tortured and executed for cooperating with the Americans and their allies,  .  .  ..

There were also more than 500 letters from the families of insurgents who had been killed or wounded, asking for compensation from Mr. Janabi  .  .  .

Valuable intelligence that.

The Pelican File aggregates articles from Worth.

New information on the Florida psychologist treating Kerry supporters for Post Election Selection Trauma: he's cured all his patients.

'A licensed Florida psychologist who treated 20 John Kerry supporters for "post-election trauma" after their candidate's loss to President Bush said Monday that the Ohio recount had cheered up Democrats and left him without any patients. .  .  .  .  [Douglas Schooler] said last week's Ohio recount announcement and reshuffling of the president's cabinet gave Democrats an emotional outlet for their frustrations. As a result, he said Kerry supporters had stopped contacting him for election therapy.'

Psychologist: Ohio recount relieves traumatized Kerry supporters

The fellow treated his patients with hypnosis.

Hypnotizing Kerry voters: how shrewd can Rove get? The man keeps surpassing himself.

From Four New Resources Added to NAAcess to Archival Databases Collection:

Records of Awards and Decorations of Honor During the Vietnam Conflict, 10/1968 - 12/1972

I haven't looked up Senator Kerry's paperwork, but am curious.

Some fellow named John Sylvester has the morning show on Madison, Wisconsin's WTDY, broadcasting off the top of the dial on 1670.

The day before yesterday, he called Condoleezza Rice an 'Aunt Jemima' and Colin Powell an 'Uncle Tom'.

He must be conservative. After all, everyone knows only conservatives think of African-Americans as 'Aunt Jemimas' or 'Uncle Toms'.

No word on the effect this had on the show's ratings, but I suppose listeners were surprised to hear conservative talk radio return to the station. O'Reilly and Hannity used to be there in the afternoons, but recently they switched to a double dose of Ed Schultz, who's on from 1 pm to 4 pm.

I'm still trying to figure out, though, how Karl Rove is connected with this. Cronkite is unavailable for comment.

The Washington Post dropped Ted Rall's cartoons, after he showed a 'drooling, mentally handicapped student taking over a classroom' on November 4, 2004.

That must have been the one he drew the day after Kerry lost, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the 'deeper' meaning.

The camouflage temporarily was gone, and the leftists can get back to piecing together their masquerades.

I found nanoblogger today on sourceforge. I wanted a simple blog (no php, no mysql) and after trying some bash scripts to create blogs, decided on this one.

chattr +a -V is running on a linode server in Tennessee. linode servers run user mode linux, and the company allows me true root access and total configurability over my box. Several different distributions are available. I'm using Debian 3.0r1.

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