I was frankly astonished at the gall of this man. Lynching would have been too good for him.
According to CNN, a Spanish businessman *cough arsehole* in Haro, Spain, withdrew a controversial lawsuit on Wednesday against the family of a teenage boy he had hit with his luxury car.
This charming individual by the name of Tomas Delgado indignantly filed a lawsuit demanding damages of 20,000 Euros (USD29,400) for his marred Audi A-8.
Oh, by the way, the boy died.
In August 2004, 17-year-old Enaitz Iriondo Trinidad was riding his bicycle, from a neighbouring village to the campground where his family was vacationing, when Delgado ran over him like a bat out of hell.
"A traffic report said Delgado was traveling 113 km per hour (70 mph) in an area where the speed limit is 90 km (55 mph). An independent expert hired by Trinidad's family said Delgado was going 173 km per hour (107 mph)."
It must have been a pretty hard collision (obviously since the boy is dead) because the boy's father heard the screech of the car from the campgrounds, and the teen was "dragged 106 meters (347 feet) along the rural highway".
Oh, the boy was also hit from behind.
But Delgado insisted that he was a victim too. And the judge presiding over the collision case agreed as he ruled that Delgado had committed no criminal infraction. Yes, obviously hitting someone from behind while driving above the speed limit and committing manslaughter is a natural, blameless occurrence.
After the collision, Delgado's insurance company paid out 33,000 Euros (USD48,500) to the Trinidad family. But two weeks later, stewing over the injustice of it all, this gent of the highest calibre countersued them for damages to his fragile little Audi. And for car rental costs.
According to Rosa Trinidad, the victim's (the boy, not Delgado) mother, said they were given only three days to appeal the ruling but understandably were too distraught to pursue it. Their lawyer (I wonder if his surname is Delgado too) also advised them not to pursue criminal charges.
When news of the case appeared in the media, it sparked a mass outrage from every clear thinking person with half a heart in Spain. Hundreds of people descended on the courthouse in support of the beleaguered Trinidads. Delgado did not attend the hearing as his lawyer informed the court his client felt the media persecution was tantamount to a public lynching.
Media persecution does not kill, mate. Well, except for Princess Diana. But being hit from behind by a big ass car does.
The pressure must have gotten to Delgado because his lawyer announced that they were dropping the case. To the loud applause of the crowd.
But he really should have known when to leave it alone as Senor Trinidad is now contemplating filing the criminal charges against Delgado that they were bamboozled out of.
A local prosecutor is also revisiting the case to see whether authorities can file fresh charges against Delgado.
So Audi ya like that, Senor Delgado?
Story adapted from CNN's Al Goodman article
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
The Blame in Spain Falls Mainly On The ...
The Rules
A little boy went down for brekkie one morning and was told that he was old enough now to help with some chores. So until he fed the animals, he was not going to get breakfast.
Terribly upset at this blatant abuse of child labour, he took it out on the animals. Glaring at the chicken, he said, "I don't feel like feeding you today", kicked it and walked off in a huff.
He did the same to the cow. And the pig. And finally, feeling a lot better, the petulant little boy went back to the house and lief to his mother that he had finished his chores.
Now his mother was no fool and said, "I saw what you did. Here are the rules, my little man. You kicked the chicken so no eggs for you today. You kicked the cow so no milk for you today. You kicked the pig so no bacon for you today."
Just then the boy's father tripped over the cat while going down the stairs. Cussing, he kicked the cat and the boy said,
"Mom shall I tell him the rules?"
Painting Nuns
Continuing on the theme of "what on earth were they thinking", is another inappropriate ad which got the Catholic church all impassioned.
I really do not get the ad and I was in agency for donkey years. But I must say ... nice butt.
Naked-Man Ad Riles Hub Catholics
Fitness Company Says Human Body Is Art
POSTED: 1 January 30, 2008
BOSTON -- A fitness club ad running in Boston magazine that depicts nuns sketching a naked man has triggered protests among some members of the Bay State's Catholic community.
The ad for the Equinox Fitness Club is running in this month's issue and two Catholic organizations blasted the photo Tuesday, the Boston Herald reported, saying the Catholic League, the Archdiocese of Boston and the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts all decried the ad as offensive.
C.J. Doyle of the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts told the Herald the ad “portrays a callous contempt for the sensibility of Catholics.
The fitness company responded with a written statement saying, "Our ad campaigns are based on personal motivation and fantasy and throughout history the body has been considered a form of art."
The company only has one gym in Boston.
Copyright 2008 by TheBostonChannel.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Anonymous Has An Address
Apparently, the rebel rousers Anonymous now have a blog address where they have positioned their mission statements, videos and call to actions.
Fashion Faux Pas 3
Continuing my watch over some ridiculous fashion ...
Clear Media, Muddy Agendas
I just listened to the most fascinating radio show from Gliossip with Ian Halperin about Scientology. The kicker was the unexpected call-in from infamous, anti-Scientologist Arne Lerma.
Lil Apricot
I can totally understand this father's shocked concern when his son came home to show him this:
I pretty much had the same reaction as his teacher.
I haven't had time to do an in-depth interview with him, but we did discuss it briefly and I'm happy and relieved to report the two sentences are not dependent on each other.
He wrote sentence #1 because I'm "nice".
He wrote sentence #2 because I'm "mostly white. And a little apricot."
He then confirmed that these were completely separate thoughts, and that he does not like me BECAUSE I'm mostly white or even a little apricot.
As far as the drawing goes, it's not even of me, it's of him looking at a boat. Which is bullshit, given that I was the star of both sentences.
It's fine, at least I have my new hip-hop name: Li'l Apricot.
Red
I really like this photo by Katya aka Slight Clutter. Beautiful composition, use of colour and filters. The girl has talent.
Hallyu So Ignorant
I really like the ladies at Go Fug Yourself but sometimes they are just so ... so ... American.
Classy Babes
This was soooooo cute.
The Replacement
Considering that I have spent as much time on farms as a karaoke lounge, I am wondering why I am suddenly writing so many farm-based jokes today. Oh well ...
A man was driving along a quiet country road when suddenly a rooster flew out of nowhere right into his path.
He was unable to brake in time and the rooster was suddenly roadkill. Shaken and contrite, the man pulled over at the nearest farmhouse where the rooster undoubtedly came from and knocked on the door.
The farmer appeared at the door.
"Yes?'
"I'm ... I'm terribly sorry but there was an accident ... and I'm afraid I killed your rooster. Please allow me to replace him."
The farmer said, "Suit yourself. The hens are round the back."
The Ventriloquist
I'm in the moods for jokes today so you'll see a series of lame ones today. You were warned.
The farmer was rather suspicious of him and so he thought he could break the ice by telling that he could talk to animals.
Highly diverted but dubious, the farmer pointed at his dog and asked, "OK, ask him how he is."
So the ventriloquist asks the dog, "How you doing, mate? The master treating you well?"
And he began to throw his voice and replied, "Not too bad, really. He feeds me regular and lets me help around the farm. He's alright."
Delighted, the farmer points at his prized rooster. "OK, ok, what about him?"
The ventriloquist again asks the rooster how he was doing and if the master treated him well.
Throwing his voice again, he answered, "I'm a doing quite well, phwack. He feeds me regularly and lets me shag the chickens. Life is good."
They continue walking around the farm. Spotting the farmer's horse grazing quietly, the ventriloquist goes to the horse and asks him the same question without hesitation.
Again he throws his voice to answer that the master was a good man who feeds him regularly and lets him run free all over the farmstead.
Spotting a sheep in the corner, the ventriloquist turns to it and directs the same question to it.
At which, the farmer hurriedly shouts, "The sheep lies!"
Monday, January 28, 2008
Catfight on the Catwalk
If you are going to piss people off, what better time to do it than before you leave the industry to retire to some small island or village where, hopefully, they cannot find you?
Miuccia Prada was described as “stupefying" which I am not sure is a good thing or a bad thing and Donatella Versace was awarded “gritty and determined". Dolce & Gabbana were obviously stung by his criticism and rose to defend their £700 million-worth label. Stefano Gabbana, 46, one half of the labe,l retorted that while Valentino had been throwing unending goodbye parties left and right since last July, they had been working hard and pretty much consigned him to the devil, saying, “To be quite honest, I don’t care what Valentino says about us.” In true decadent Roman orgy-style, Valentino has been hosting a series of lavish events to mark his retirement. He's had a party at the Imperial Forum in Rome with a plastic resin replica of an ancient temple and an exhibition at the Ara Pacis museum. Valentino did not limit his verbal outpourings to just the designers. He also speculated on supermodel, Naomi Campbell's alleged affair with Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela after her interview with him, which I posted earlier. He decisively said bollocks to that as he did not think "he is her type, or vice versa", adding that they have different tastes. It's a good thing he is retiring as that is the only thing retiring about him at the moment. |
Eye'll Be Back
I always thought it would be fun to be the Terminator. Not the lame female one but the one from the first sequel.
Contact lenses with Terminator vision
By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
An electronic contact lens has been developed that will enable maps and videos to be beamed before the wearer's eyes. The bionic lens has microscopic circuits fixed to a flexible plastic. The scientists who created the device say the lenses could eventually provide computer-aided vision similar to that of Arnold Schwarzenegger's robotic character in the Terminator films.
Drivers and pilots would have essential information - their speed and direction, for example - superimposed in front of their eyes, in a massive advance on the kind of "wearable displays" now available, which are spectacles that have images displayed on the lenses. A prototype of the lens has been built, with light-emitting diodes - LEDs - embedded in it to flash up information. Its built-in antenna will use wireless technology, similar to that used in the home, to beam information to the lens, allowing wearers to surf the internet without taking their eyes off the world around them. Babak Parviz, the electrical engineer behind the project at the University of Washington, said: "We have demonstrated some of the key technologies required to make a sophisticated functional contact lens. We hope to hook up a wireless link… for updating images and reporting the state of the lens." Microscopic electrical circuits link up the LEDs and the antenna harvests energy from radio waves to power the lens. Holes which are each 1,000 times thinner than a human hair are etched on to the lens. |
Honk if You Luuurrrrve Me
Treed
This was such an interesting article. Not only because of the scientific angle of human evolution but also a study of how transient and superficial love can be.
Tree man 'who grew roots' may be curedBy Matthew Moore Last Updated: 2:49am GMT 13/01/2008
|
The welts spread across his body unchecked and soon he was left unable to carry out everyday household tasks.
Sacked from his job and deserted by his wife, Dede has been raising his two children - now in their late teens - in poverty, resigned to the fact that local doctors had no cure for his condition.
To make ends meet he even joined a local "freak show", parading in front of a paying audience alongside victims of other peculiar diseases.
Although supported by his extended family, he was often a target of abuse and ridicule in his rural fishing village.
But now an American dermatology expert who flew out to Dede's home village south of the capital Jakarta claims to have identified his condition, and proposed a treatment that could transform his life.
After testing samples of the lesions and Dede's blood, Dr Anthony Gaspari of theUniversity of Maryland concluded that his affliction is caused by the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), a fairly common infection that usually causes small warts to develop on sufferers.
 |
Dede's problem is that he has a rare genetic fault that impedes his immune system, meaning his body is unable to contain the warts.
The virus was therefore able to "hijack the cellular machinery of his skin cells", ordering them to produce massive amounts of the substance that caused the tree-like growths known as "cutaneous horns" on his hands and feet.
Dede's counts of a key type of white blood cell are so low that Dr Gaspari initially suspected he may have the Aids virus.
But tests showed he did not, and it became clear that Dede's immune condition was something far rarer and more mysterious.
Warts aside, he had enjoyed remarkable good health throughout his life - which would not be expected of someone with a suppressed immune system - and neither his parents nor his siblings have shown signs of developing lesions.
"The likelihood of having his deficiency is less than one in a million," Dr Gaspari told the Telegraph.
Dr Gaspari, who became involved in the case through a Discovery Channel documentary, believes that Dede's condition can be largely cleared up by a daily doses of a synthetic form of Vitamin A, which has been shown to arrest the growth of warts in severe cases of HPV.
 |
"He won't have a perfectly normal body but the warts should reduce in size to the point where he could use his hands," Dr Gaspari said. "Over the course of three to six months the warts should be come smaller and fewer in number. He will be living a more normal life." The most resilient warts could then be frozen off and the growths on his hands and feet surgically removed. Dr Gaspari hopes to get the necessary drugs free of charge from pharmaceutical firms. They would then be administered by Indonesian doctors under his supervision. Still intrigued by the origins of Dede's peculiar immune condition, the doctor would like to fly him to the United States for further examination, but fears the financial and bureaucratic barriers would prove too difficult to overcome. "I would like to bring him to the US to run tests on where his immune condition has come from, but I would need funding and to get him a visa as well as someone to cover the costs of the tests," he said. "I've never seen anything like this in my entire career." |
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright
Fame Costs And We Are Not Willing To Pay
It' s strange how people deal with fame. Actually, I passionately dislike the word "fame". I always think fame and power corrupts and even the slightest hint of it can be a heady concoction that will turn your head. Like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
It's not often so many of us can gather at the same place and same time for more than a few hours. This was one of those rare occasions. The four of us had not seen each other for years.
So, we played hooky from yet another dreary industry event. It's rather hard for the four of us to disappear at the same time without drawing attention from the minders. So it was with much giggling subterfuge, plotting, out-and-out lying and cloak and dagger activities that we slipped out of our respective hotels to meet clandestinely.
Alas, the island was too small. We arrived at what we thought was a quiet, out-of-the-way cafe for light snacks and drinks, only to be seated next to a table of young dancers.
It curtailed our conversation, sending us into our usual circumspect & "media" mode. But our relative reticence enabled us to eavesdrop on the next table. Not that it was hard as they were the typical squeally, high-pitched, self-important, attention-seeking dancers in their early 20s.
We were much amused to hear some of them boasting of being "advanced" dancers at a local school, owned by a woman we had all taught at some point or other, and being in videos and such. At some point, one of them semi-recognised us. She immediately drew the others' attention and they started studying us.
At last they came to the conclusion we must be their peers as one of them asked C next to me, if we were student of Y, their teacher. It was incredibly hard to hold our mirth in. As C choked out a negative response, we could see the girls wracking their poor little brains.
I decided at that point to adjoin to another cafe as I did not want to spend the night being gracious and in "media" mode. Tacitly, we all agreed to leave.
However, one of the brighter sparks had cottoned on. As we left the cafe, we heard the excited murmurs and the unmistakable sound of greed. They had realised who we were and even had the cheek to try to follow us. Finally, I turned and announced to the young prima donnas.
"My dears ... We're old women who need our peace. Thank you for your kind invitation to join you but if you want free advice, autographs, pictures and such, you may come to the workshops next week. But tonight is ours. Let 4 old friends be able to sit and talk together alone for we might not see each other again for a long time. One day, you too would understand. Happy dancing and be well."
A student once asked me why we were so notoriously low profile and elusive. Was it a gimmick? Did we want to be women of mystery? Are we so self-important we do not see the point of marketing?
No, because someone once remarked that even in death a person could get no peace because he/she is a celebrity. Everyone thinks they are entitled to a piece of you. I told her that we were of the old school trained in the old ways. And we were nonentities who were fairly determined to stay that way. We also do not believe in being legends in our own lunch-times.
It's not fame but artistry we seek. A few, rare number of us do what we do for ourselves. Someone once argued we do what we do to be seen by other so is that not fame- & glory-seeking too?
No, because our definition of glory is different. I place very clear distinction between artists and performers. If no one ever saw me dance, I do not care. Glory is in reaching what I know is in me before I die. I know I have one to two more masterpieces before it is time to go. The moment I reach that I will know true glory. Whether anyone sees it is immaterial and irrelevant.
Why then perform on stage? Because you feel and receive a vibe from the stage. The lights, the heat, the wide expanse of space, the freedom, the shutting out of the audience till all you hear is a vacuum of applause muffled yet deafening at the same time. The sea of blurred faces. The energy. Even the floor has its own vibe.
Sometimes dancing on an empty stage all on your own is the most wonderful experience. An audience is a distraction and intrusion that is not always welcomed. My most truly creative moments have been just me alone in a darkened theatre. OK, with stagelights on as I am terribly clumsy when not dancing.
I feel sorry for the young ladies of last night. Because fame is fleeting and never enough. Your soul cannot feed on it and therefore you go hungry all the time. It changes you from a tangible sprout of promise into an incorporeal twist of desperation and superficiality. Fame once lost festers like a barnacle upon your psyche. The memory of it is bitter and avaricious.
Self fulfillment is another form of hunger but it is one that fuels your soul. Once you have tasted it, you want more but the memory of it is sustaining and enriching.
I wanted to tell them to seek the latter rather than the former for the sake of their own peace of mind. But I knew they would not believe me and the best lesson learnt is not one that is taught.
It was with much pleasure the 4 of us retired that night to our individual thoughts and memories, sharing the same journey on different paths.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Anonymously Yours
Anonymous, the loose group of Internet users known for harassing strangers online, is continuing its declared war on Scientology by protesting at 3 PM at the Church of Scientology branch in Harlem. The protest is presumably open to all who oppose the Church or want to fool around on a Sunday afternoon; the scant instructions are in the original e-mail below.
From: "Anon Ymous"
Date: January 26, 2008 5:33:56 PM EST
To: tips@gawker.com
Subject: Church of Scientology Raid - Harlem - TOMORROW - 3PM
Church of Scientology Harlem
2250 3rd Ave
New York, NY
10035
Tel: 212-828-1825
3PM
We will raid the CoS in Harlem tomorrow at 3PM.
Wear a mask of your choosing.
Bring a boombox.
Rickroll them into submission.
We will make headlinez LOL.
(The masks will mostly be Guy Fawkes masks; Anon is obsessed with "V For Vendetta" and they don't go for subtlety. As for what they'll do once everyone shows up, likely just hang around being loud.)
Since Anon declared war on Scientology, they've intermittently overloadedScientology.org and unearthed hidden Scientology documents.
If anyone shows up to the protest, this could demonstrate that Anonymous can do more than hack a web site, raise more media interest, and encourage a worldwide string of demonstrations. A similar protest is planned in London on February 10.Here's the poster.
Headed to Harlem? Take pics and send to tips@gawker.com.
Keeping It Cooped Up
I swear I did not want to be a liar and do more than one post about Heath Ledger's post-mortem media frenzy. But this post is more about the media so I rationalise to myself.
CNN host Anderson Cooper set his foot down last night, refusing to cover the death of Heath Ledger until hard facts and new evidence turns up. Here’s what he had to say on the 360 blog:
“For the last two nights we have reported on actor Heath Ledger. His shocking death is clearly a story a lot of people are interested in, but tonight we will not be reporting more on it. The truth is there is not really anything new to report.
The full results of the various tests done on Mr. Ledger will not be ready for perhaps a few weeks and there is very little new information. I have no doubt other networks will spend a lot of time tonight discussing his death and the various rumors about what might have caused it, but I am not a fan of speculation, so unless there is something really new to discuss we probably won’t be covering it anymore anytime soon.”
Star Jones also wrote a similar piece about Heath on HuffingtonPost.com.
Says Star, “Might I suggest that we in the media, instead of reporting on the dead based on gossip, rumor, innuendo and anonymous sources, choose to honor this man’s memory based on his talent and the good taste we all should be exercising. My heart goes out to the family of Heath Ledger.”
