scholarly journals A Taoist Study of Magic in The Earthsea Cycle

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 144
Author(s):  
Yini Huang ◽  
Hongbin Dai

The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula. K. Le Guin is a fantasy work in Western literature that shines with ostentatiously idiosyncratic sparks of Taoist philosophies. Resorting to Taoism (also translated as Daoism) and its representative work Tao Te Ching, this article aims at exploring the Earthsea magic, a ubiquitous motif in fantasy, with Taoist thoughts and theories including the law of relativity, harmonious dialectics, and equilibrium. This article reconstructs the magical Earthsea world within a Taoist framework and reveals the Taoist connotations of magic. Finally, this article concludes that, radically distinct from its traditional image, magic in Earthsea serves to heal the physical, mental, and spiritual wound of separation; set up harmony of the opposites in binaries; and preserve the delicate equilibrium insusceptible to the ravages of time. Magic in The Earthsea Cycle works miracles in a Taoist manner.

Author(s):  
Carlos FERNÁNDEZ DE CASADEVANTE ROMANÍ

LABURPENA: Lan honek Bidasoan eta Higerreko badian arrantzatzeari buruzko 1959ko uztailaren 14ko Espainiaren eta Frantziaren arteko hitzarmenaren konstituzio-kontrakotasuna aztertzen du, Espainiari dagokionez. Hitzarmen horrek, hain zuzen ere, espazio horietako ibai-arrantza, itsaski-bilketa eta akuikultura arautzen ditu, bai eta horietan egindako arau-hausteen ikuskapena eta zehapena ere, eta konstituzioa onartu eta ia berrogei urtera, ez du zuzenketarik izan araudi berrira egokitzeko. Hau da, alor horietan eta ur horietan Euskal Autonomia Erkidegoak duen eskumen esklusibora egokitu gabe dago oraindik. Arazo hori konpontzeko, bi aukera proposatzen dira: Euskal Autonomia Erkidegoaren organo eskudunek konstituzio-kontrakotasuneko errekurtsoa jartzea, edo Estatuko Gobernuari Hitzarmena eguneratzeko eskatzea, hitzarmenei eta nazioarteko beste akordio batzuei buruzko azaroaren 27ko 25/2014 Legearen 49., 50. eta 51. artikuluetan xedatutako prozedurak erabiliz. Izan ere, prozedura horietan autonomien parte-hartzea aurreikusten da. RESUMEN: El trabajo aborda la inconstitucionalidad, en lo que a España se refiere, del Convenio hispano-francés de 14 de julio de 1959, relativo a la pesca en el Bidasoa y Bahía de Higuer; tratado que regula la pesca fluvial, el marisqueo y la acuicultura en esos espacios, así como la inspección y sanción de las infracciones al mismo, pero que casi cuarenta años después del vigente bloque de constitucionalidad no ha sido enmendado para adaptarlo al mismo. Esto es, a la competencia exclusiva de la Comunidad Autónoma Vasca en esas materias y en esas aguas. Para corregir esta anomalía se propone que los órganos competentes de la Comunidad Autónoma Vasca soliciten al Gobierno del Estado la enmienda del Convenio en el marco de los procedimientos instaurados por los arts. 49, 50 y 51 de la Ley 25/2014, de 27 de noviembre, de Tratados y otros acuerdos internacionales; procedimientos que contemplan la participación autonómica. ABSTRACT: The article deals with the unconstitutionality, as far as Spain is concerned, of the Spanish-French Convention of July 14, 1959, concerning fishing in the Bidasoa and Higuer Bay; treaty ruling river fishing, shellfish and aquaculture in these waters as well as inspection and punishment of violations of it. Nevertheless, nearly forty years after the current block of constitutionality it has not been adapted to it; this is the exclusive competence of the Basque Autonomous Community in these areas and in those waters. To correct this anomaly the request by the competent bodies of the Basque Autonomous Community for the amendment of the Convention to the Government of the State in the framework of the procedures set up buy articles 49, 50 and 51 of the Law 27/2014, of 27 November, of treaties and other international agreements; procedures including regional participation, is proposed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fang Wang

Digital preservation activities among law libraries have largely been limited by a lack of funding, staffing and expertise. Most law school libraries that have already implemented an Institutional Repository (IR) chose proprietary platforms because they are easy to set up, customize, and maintain with the technical and development support they provide. The Texas Tech University School of Law Digital Repository is one of the few law school repositories in the nation that is built on the DSpace open source platform.1 The repository is the law school’s first institutional repository in history. It was designed to collect, preserve, share and promote the law school’s digital materials, including research and scholarship of the law faculty and students, institutional history, and law-related resources. In addition, the repository also serves as a dark archive to house internal records.


1983 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 412-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. G. McC. Brown

‘Menander has set up a confrontation between this law [the law about epikleroi] and love… He wants the audience to regard the law as stupid and wrong… Surely one of Menander's purposes in writing this play was to make the Athenians consider seriously whether the law ought to be changed.’ Thus Professor D. M. MacDowell in the concluding paragraph of his article ‘Love versus the Law: an Essay on Menander's Aspis’. A similar view was already implicit in E. Karabelias' treatment of the play as indicative of the general attitude to this law in Athens in Menander's day: ‘A n'en point douter, l'épiclérat est ressenti, á l'epoque de Ménandre, comme une anomalie intolérable pour les mceurs de la societe athénienne à la fin du ive s.av.n.è L'épiclérat est odieux et ridicule… L'hostilité envers l'épiclérat est done un signe des temps’. And Professor E. G. Turner has written: ‘it is hard to imagine that the institution of the epiclerate emerged in good standing from this derisory treatment’.


Author(s):  
Gürsel Özkan

In terms of administrative sanctions, application of the more favorable law means that when the law in force the time an act was committed and a law subsequently brought into force is different, the law which is more favorable should be applied. EHRC states that applying more stringent punishment to an offender on the grounds that more stringent punishment was in force when the time criminal offence was committed. Misdemeanors have been considered within the scope of criminal law by the Constitutional Court and the Constitutional Court accepts that the principle of the application of the more favorable law should be applied to misdemeanors. Danıştay (the Turkish Council of State) decides that “it should be take into account in terms of administrative sanctions, when a law which is the ground of punishment is set aside or more favorable law is brought into force”. Since administrative acts are reviewed during annulment cases, a law brought into force after an administrative act cannot affect the act retrospect. A law which is enters into force after an administrative act established, could set up a rule which has retrospective affect only if the rule clearly is an amnesty. After an administrative fine is imposed, applying criminal law principals to administrative law and administrative sanctions, in other words, rendering decision of annulment on the ground of the principle of the more favorable law betrays the trust on judicial bodies and law.


1970 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-13
Author(s):  
Andrzej Zoll

The changes brought about in Poland and elsewhere in Europe by the fall of Communism have given rise to hopes for the establishment of a political system differing from the one which had been the fate of these countries. In place of totalitarianism, a new political system is to be created based on the democratic principles of a state under the rule of law. The transformation from totalitarianism to democracy is a process which has not yet been completed in Poland and still requires many efforts to be made before this goal may be achieved. One may also enumerate various pitfalls jeopardising this process even now. The dangers cannot be avoided if their sources and nature are not identified. Attempts to pervert the law and the political system may only be counteracted by legal means if the system based on the abuse of the law has not yet succeeded in establishing itself. Resistance by means of the law only has any real chance of success provided it is directed against attempts to set up a totalitarian system. Once the powers which are hostile to the state bound by the rule of law take over the institutions of the state, such resistance is doomed to failure.


reports described him as ‘emotionally unstable’ and in a ‘grossly elevated neurotic state’. The judge refused to admit the evidence, and on appeal following conviction it was contended that he was wrong. The primary contention was that the appellant’s pre-existing mental condition made him vulnerable to threats. Held, dismissing the appeal, the duress relied upon was duress by threats, but in some cases a defendant might be able to rely on ‘duress by circumstances’ (see Conway [1989] QB 290; Martin [1989] 1 All ER 652), and although not argued in this way it was proposed to consider whether the medical evidence could have been introduced on the basis that Hegarty might have been able to set up such a defence. Duress by threats provided a defence to a charge of any offence other than murder (see Howe [1987] AC 417), attempted murder (see Gotts [1982] 2 AC 412) and some forms of treason. It was founded on public policy considerations (see AG v Whelan [1934] IR 518). The fact that the defendant’s mind had been ‘overborne’ by the threats did not mean that he lacked the requisite intent to commit the crime (see DPP for Northern Ireland v Lynch [1975] AC 653, 703B). It followed that the law might have developed on the lines that, when considering duress, a purely subjective test should be applied, and it might well develop in this way in the future (see Law Com 218, para 29.14, November 1993, Cmnd 2370 and draft Criminal Law Bill, cl 25(2)). As the law stood however the test was not purely subjective but required an objective test to be satisfied (Howe). The jury had to consider the response of a sober person of reasonable firmness ‘sharing the characteristics of the defendant’. They could take account of age, sex and physical health, but it was open to consideration whether the shared characteristics could include a personality disorder of the kind suffered by the appellant. His counsel argued that the expert evidence was relevant to explain the reaction of a man like him to threats of violence to himself and his family, and admissible because the pathological aspects of his personality and the effect of his disorder on his behaviour were matters which lay outside the knowledge and experience of a judge and jury. Counsel referred to a passage in Emery (1993) 14 Cr App R (S) 394, 398 where Lord Taylor CJ said that: ‘... The question for the doctors was whether a woman of reasonable firmness with the characteristics of [the appellant], if abused in the manner which she said, would have had her will crushed so that she could not have protected her child.’ It was accepted that for the purposes of the subjective test medical evidence was admissible if the mental condition or abnormality was relevant and its effects lay outside the knowledge and experience of laymen. In the present case, the reports before the judge did not go that far, and the judge had to decide on the material before him. There were no grounds for disturbing his decision. As the evidence was not admissible to explain the reaction of the appellant himself, it was clearly not admissible on the objective test. The passage cited could not be read in isolation,

1996 ◽  
pp. 568-568

Worldview ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
Ross K. Baker

In 1913, when Woodrow Wilson was assuming the duties of President of the United States, Joseph Stalin was in exile in Siberia and Lenin in Galicia. When Union and Confederate veterans were meeting to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg and Henry Ford was about to set up the first modern assembly line, the newly established Union of South Africa promulgated the Natives Land Act. A world preoccupied with the decay of great empires and apprehensive about the onset of world conflict was only dimly aware of this law enacted in a distant corner of a remote continent. The law prescribed the apportionment of territory of the Union into areas of exclusive settlement by whites and blacks.


2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN FISHER

AbstractIn January 1729 a paper written by James Bradley was read at two meetings of the Royal Society. On a newly discovered motion of the fixed stars, later described as the theory of the aberration of light, it was to transform the science of astrometry. The paper appeared as a narrative of a programme of observation first begun at Kew and finalized at Wanstead, but it was, in reality, a careful reconstruction devised to enhance his reputation in response to a recognition that the programme was initially conducted in terms that were inimical to what he conceived to be his interest. The planned attempt to repeat Robert Hooke's celebrated experiment by James Pound, Samuel Molyneux and George Graham was set up at Molyneux's residence in Kew with James Bradley replacing Pound after his untimely and sudden demise. The unexpected and counterintuitive behaviour of the object star γ Draconis and the eradication of any suspicion of instrumental or systemic error led to the abandonment of the attempt to measure annual parallax and the initiation of new conjectures. An annual nutation was proposed but after the observation of a control star, 35 Camelopardalis, this conjecture was abandoned. Unknown to Bradley and Graham a premature approach was made by Molyneux to Newton claiming that the ‘nutation’ negated the whole of Newton's system. In the abandonment of the nutation yet another conjecture opposed to Newtonian theory was proposed and abandoned. Bradley determined to use his own instrument designed on different principles by Graham to observe the phenomenon in Wanstead. At Wanstead Bradley observed many stars to determine the parameters of the phenomenon. With the law of the motion described, Bradley proposed a hypothesis to explain it. Drawn from his earlier work on the ephemerides of Jupiter's satellites his hypothesis of the ‘new-discovered motion’ was quickly presented to the Royal Society as Bradley was working on a later and more definitive version of his paper. It is this later, third, unpublished version that is commonly referred to throughout this essay. It issued a challenge to ‘anti-Copernicans’ to offer an explanation of the observed phenomenon in geostatic terms. One such astronomer, Eustachio Manfredi, had examined the phenomenon of ‘aberrations’ in detail, the term being his. It was Bradley who first applied the term to the ‘new-discovered motion’ and within a short time ‘aberration’ was being applied by astronomers in the reduction of their observations. Annual aberration was widely accepted as evidence of the motion of the Earth. The paper enhanced Bradley's reputation and projected him into the forefront of European astronomers.


2011 ◽  
Vol 383-390 ◽  
pp. 6210-6214
Author(s):  
Kun Can Zheng ◽  
Zhi Wen ◽  
Xun Liang Liu ◽  
Wen Fei Wu ◽  
Xia Lan Huang ◽  
...  

On the basis of wholly analyzing the mechanism of the heat transfer in the 1880 regenerative furnace, the physical and mathematical 3-D model was set up to describe the heat transfer and combustion in the furnace, and the CFD software was used to simulate the whole combusting process in detail. From this, the law of the flow affected by four classical switching modes was studied in emphasis. The conclusions in the study were helpful to the reasonably design and optimization controlling of such furnaces.


1997 ◽  
Vol 37 (319) ◽  
pp. 451-454
Author(s):  
Giorgio Blais

There are few institutions in the world which are able to assemble officers from all the countries of the globe, who wear their own uniforms and live and work together for two weeks. One of these is the International Institute of Humanitarian Law in San Remo, Italy.This non-governmental organization was set up in 1970 for the purpose of promoting the dissemination and development of international humanitarian law. The choice of the Italian seaside resort of San Remo was not accidental. It was there that Alfred Nobel spent the last years of his life, and he left all his property to the humanitarian cause. The villa he occupied until his death became the headquarters of the International Institute of Humanitarian Law.


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