I just got back from a weekend in Paris, and it was the first real cold weather that I have experienced in a long time. It was kind of a strange sensation, especially considering that we haven’t even reached Thankgiving yet, but my body was trying to tell me something. Continue reading
Filed under Digressions
Besides our foriegn policy, gun laws, capital punishment, punitive damages (which I support), obesity, and a host of other things, the U.S. is often ridiculed abroad for many of its absurd and antiquated laws. Many of these silly laws (generally civil causes of action) continue to exist, such as Alienation of Affection. Although they are no longer taken seriously by the courts they survive as vestiges of the Common Law. Some were codified and others were not, but many have simply remained as outdated, although not overturned, jurisprudence or statutory law and have essentially been rendered too ludicrous to be enforceable or actionable.
Today on Yahoo, I came across a list of the Most Ridiculous British Laws. It makes you feel a little better about being American. Here are the Top 10 (as voted by Brits): Continue reading
Filed under Digressions
Last week, a Spanish penal court finally gave its verdict in the “Mass Trial” of 28 criminal defendants accused of partaking, in greater or lesser part, in the March 11, 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain. The outcome of the verdict was that 22 of the 28 were found guilty.
Now, I am no criminal law or criminal procedure expert, but tyring 28 people in the same single criminal proceeding seems very unjust to me. Mass trials are not unheard of, as was the case with the Camden 28, but if I were a lawyer for any one of the 28 defendants, I would have certainly asked for a seperate trial. And if I were the judge in the case, I would certainly have made it very clear to the public that the trial was not about what happened on March 11, 2007, but about whether each defendant had committed the crimes they had been charged with. Continue reading
On Thursday, I bought two lottery tickets and was pyschologically transported to that dangerous world of hope. In my mind, I wasn’t going to work on Monday or ever again. I was planning, relocating, and making a better future for everyone in this world by first thinking about número uno — myself. Yet on Friday evening when I checked those lucky numbers, I was violently deported back from my fantasy. As Calderón de la Barca wrote, “la vida es sueño y los sueños, sueños son“.
This all took me back to an earlier time when I liked to play to win, which is the only way to play the lottery. So with all of this in mind (and to avoid repeating myself again), I dedicate this Recycled Post of the Week to a May 2006 post entitled “The Lottery: It’s about winning, not about how you play the game“.
Filed under Digressions
My friend, Fadi, just emailed me the following article from the AFP on how Lebanon has become THE PLACE for plastic surgery in the Middle East. I have already referenced the stereotype in the region of the Lebanese Mona Lisa, and with altered stars like Haifa Wehbe and Nancy Ajram, Lebanon is getting quite a reputation. What the Western press doesn’t want us to know is that the Middle East is not all burkas and hijabs.
Here’s the AFP article: Continue reading
Filed under Digressions, Essays
ReWrite is about to move to Brooklyn across from Prospect Park, near the corner of Flatbush. It’s too late to stop the genetrification now!
Filed under Friends / Family
Grave Error 