If a hospital makes a fortune off products derived from blood samples you gave while they were treating you, should you get a share? Or are bodies special?
If we believe in redistribution of wealth to help the poorest, should we also do that for surplus organs like second kidneys? Or are bodies special?
etc.
The most important lecture you will hear this week.
«The court said we were organised. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganised crime.»
«This wasn't a criminal trial, it was a political trial. It is just gross beyond description that you can jail four people for providing infrastructure.»
—BBC
Zensursula
In other news, I stood and was counted at the German Presseamt earlier today. Demo against censorship, and calling out the government's bullshit reasoning: That censorship is needed to fight child pornograpy. Interestingly, most child-porn servers are in European countries where they're highly illegal, so a handful of activists armed with the block-list called the providers, and the providers switched off most of those sites within the day. This means they did more against child porn within the existing framework within one day than the government have accomplished within a year; either our overlords and -ladies are hideously incompetent, or they're lying to us about what they're trying to do. In either case, they've got to go.
And that's not even going into how problematic it seems to make that good porn/bad porn distinction.
… but I love the world!
She's "almost 48." She's unemployed. She's not conventionally pretty. But she has a dream …
You show 'em!
Anyway, they won't let me embed the actual video, so this entry gets a splash image (haha, splash, get it?) instead, and you'll have to go to u-tube to watch it. Like right now.
Also check out how in love the judge looks four minutes in. : )
«Typical permit requirements include residency, minimum age, submitting fingerprints, passing a background check, attending a certified handgun/firearms safety class, participating in a range check/qualification before a certified trainer (for demonstrating safe firearms handling and practical proficiency), and paying the required fee (if any).
Requirements also include certification that a person has never been diagnosed with a "mental illness," which include any condition which interferes with "normal life--" including trauma from being victim of prior crimes» —Wikipedia
Oh joy, once a victim, always a victim! It's almost like, say, how those who were abused as children often end up with abusive partners later on. Phrased like that, it's very much like those ancient laws where you get out of a rape charge by marrying the victim: Victimize someone, know they'll never (phrasing Wikipedia's) get the means to defend themself now, and know they're yours to victimize for the rest of their life now.
The bit above is Għana; essentially, ancient Maltesebattlerap. I'm posting this video partially because Malta hasn't been British for quite a while, so using my usual "limeyCat" icon might give offense.
Now, Malta. It's nice and it's warm and most people there speak English. (And Maltese. And a host of other languages.) For all I know, it's not as overrun by yucky and/or lethal critters as Oz. But, there is no divorce legislation and abortion in Malta is illegal., Wikipedia says.
241. (1) Whosoever, by any food, drink, medicine, or by violence, or by any other means whatsoever, shall cause the miscarriage of any woman with child, whether the woman be consenting or not, shall, on conviction, be liable to imprisonment for a term from eighteen months to three years.
(2) The same punishment shall be awarded against any woman who shall procure her own miscarriage, or who shall have consented to the use of the means by which the miscarriage is procured.
So, they'll even prosecute the woman (not just the abortion-provider), if not for murder outright. Fear not though, they also dig into the providers especially in articles 243, 243A.
This bears further investigation as it's a sad fact that usually, characteristics of women-hating usually travel in droves. The legal texts show us, aside from such peculiarities as the White Slave Traffic (Suppression) Ordinance being followed by the Potato (Cultivation) Ordinance, this:
I bet you thought they made stuff up for Yes, Minister.
«The pelican crossing was the first definitive light controlled crossing in the UK, introduced in 1969, after the earlier failed experiment of the panda crossing. Previously only zebra crossings had been used, which have warning signals (Belisha beacons), but no control signals. The pedestrian lights are situated on the far side of the road to the pedestrian. A puffin crossing has the lights on the same side as the pedestrian; a toucan crossing is a crossing for pedestrians and bicycles; a pegasus crossing allows horse-riders to cross as well. A HAWK beacon, used experimentally in the USA with a standard pedestrian crossing signal, stops traffic when a pedestrian pushes a button to cross, but goes dark unless activated.» —Wikipedia
Love, love, love this video! (via) She's the rockingest! (Also, I can't be the only person to think she's damn hot?? Not that that's a requirement for respect or, you know, being a person.)
Some people are big. Some people are skinny. Some people are white. Some people are black. Some people are female, some people are male. Can we leave that behind already? And then, can we keep on walking?
I had a good laugh when I found this cartoon. Because a) haha, funny, b) ooooooh, fruitbats!¹, and c) haha, Carmen Miranda hat!
And then I thought, wait, what do I really know about Carmen, anyway?
Famous for promoting Brazil all over the world, she was a Broadway star, the highest paid artist in Hollywood and the highest paid woman in the USA.
—Wikipedia
And apparently, she more or less died on Durante's show. I never knew.
This of course is from Vicious Lips, a movie so obscure that I had to write my own synopsis and (1st) comment. It's the sound of the '80s in one long hairotica music video. In a trashy scifi setting. Honestly, who cares at that point about it having no plot? : ) And yes, I'd still really, really like to be able to buy the soundtrack!
I bet you thought they made stuff up for Yes, Minister.
«The Secretary of State for the Colonies or Colonial Secretary was the British Cabinet official in charge of managing the various British colonies. The position was first created in 1768 to deal with the increasingly troublesome North American colonies. Previously those responsibilities had fallen to the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, who was responsible for Southern England, Wales, Ireland, the American colonies, and relations with the Catholic and Muslim states of Europe. […] In 1782, following the loss of the American colonies, the office was abolished, and its duties given to the Home Secretary […]. In 1794 a new office was created […] — the Secretary of State for War, which now took responsibility for the Colonies, and was renamed the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in 1801. In 1854, military reforms led to the Colonial and Military responsibilities of this secretary of state being split into two separate offices. [… Among the holders of the office were Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton ("It was a Dark and Stormy Knight …") and Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos as well as of course Winston Churchill.] Until 1925, when the office of Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs was created, the Colonial Office had responsibility for all British colonies and dominions besides India, which had its own Secretary of State. In 1966, with most of the colonies gone, the office was merged with that of the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations to create the new office of Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs. In 1968 the Commonwealth Office was subsumed into the Foreign Office, which became known as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.»
adapted from Wikipedia
2 sur 2 The Nine Mile Walk is a famous short story that introduces Harry Kemelman's armchair detective Nicky Welt. Kemelman also wrote the popular rabbi series (Friday the rabbi slept late etc.) a few of which I chanced upon as audio dramas. These had been produced in German for some German station and were not very good I'm afraid, but they reminded me to check whether I could get a lock on the Nicky Welt stories which had been hard to come by for a while and, I'm happy to say, this time Amazon used & new did provide. Trying to hype the stories to others, I first tried youtube and to my surprise, somebody had actually turned 9 mile walk into a short almost word for word (see above). The result, while not blow-away like, say, Batman: Dead End, still serves quite nicely. In the story, the line A nine-mile walk is no joke, especially in the rain is accidentally overheard by two men who then proceed to show that a murder had happened, and when, and where, and in what context. So to wit, while this is a fun linguistist exercise, the story has no action and is all dialogue. Not every attempt at turning that sort of source material into a movie can turn out to be Glengarry Glenn Ross. To make the short visually appealing, they offer some nice shots of Toledo to where the story has been relocated; they also made Welt more physically attractive than he is in the book. On the whole, it serves.
For my German readers: The German translation's called Ein Fußmarsch von neun Meilen; if you search for that, google helpfully offers to substitute this with Ein Fußmarsch von neuen Medien.
Markus Fisch must really love pie-menus. Not only did he give us the excellent PieDock, he also has a JavaScript in-browser demo for it! : ) Naturally, I couldn't resist anotherpie-menu, especially not such a good-looking one, so of course I installed it — and hacked it up!
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