No, honestly, one thinks that one has heard it all concerning bizarre things that judges do and say, but, really:
Student who stabbed boyfriend may avoid jail as it would ‘damage her career’.
That would be a career in which the practitioner is exhorted 'first, do no harm'.
And honestly, would you want to be in the hands of a heart surgeon who had ( Read more... )

Yet another case in which a bloke who has committed significant violence against a woman, of which there is no possible doubt, walks free (well, suspended sentence) apparently on the basis that it would ruin a promising career if he went to jail. (Which it does turn out he was somewhat less than truthful about.)
And okay, I have been seeing these ( Read more... )

Mixed martial arts is the fastest-growing sport on Earth.... what does this bloody spectacle say about the world we live in?
I don't know what, if anything, it says about the world we live in, but that article suggests to me someone who does not know a great deal about the history of sport/popular entertainment - I am like, o tempora, o mores, what ( Read more... )

While I daresay the young woman who wrote this piece - I’ve come of age in the porn generation. Here are some of the problems we face - may have some reasonable points, she, as they say, does her argument no favours by saying: Sex is now referred to, among other things, as “beating” and “boning”. These brutal terms reflect the depiction of sex in ( Read more... )

Spotted on somebody's post and catching at me: apparently Kafka once said something to the effect that I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for?.... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
Which would be a ( Read more... )

Quinoa, espresso and bruschetta: the foods getting your tongue in a twist:
Has nobody else ever come across the little rhyme 'I asked the girl, in dulcet tone/to order me a buttered scone./The silly fool has been and gone/and ordered me a buttered scone.'?
Also, this piece on Jilly Cooper and changing fashion in bonkbusting, reminds me that in her ( Read more... )

Because I do think Joan Smith has a point about the movie of Gone Girl, Gone Girl’s recycling of rape myths is a disgusting distortion, I'm not sure I go 100% with her reading -
(Saw the movie at the weekend: I gave up on the book, though did the flip-to-the-end to check out my suspicions thing, but thought it might work better as a movie, which ( Read more... )

[H]e claimed he sent the messages to exercise his right to freedom of speech and to “satirise” the issue of online trolling.
Labour MP says Peter Nunn, who was jailed for 18 weeks for threatening her on social media, led her to install panic button
And he's claiming that it was what, some kind of performance art?
Or classic case of 'That Word, I Do ( Read more... )

Man with gun at Kalamazoo library event raises open-carry concerns;
The most recent incident occurred mid-afternoon Saturday, June 8, in the parking lot of the downtown Kalamazoo library during a children's event kicking off its summer reading program, according to Rohrbaugh ( Read more... )

Dept of, reviewers clearly don't read:
- Review of The Road to Middlemarch: My Life with George Eliot in which reviewer describes Fred Vincy as a marginal character. That would be, a marginal character whose trajectory from feckless waiting for something to turn up to responsibility and marriage is a major strand within the novel.
- review of a ( Read more... )