As they say, turnabout is fair play. I love the turnabout in this short British video. Yes, female victims ARE still being judged on these questions–mentally, at least, in the best of settings.
(Wait for the video to load, then right-click to “unmute” to get the sound.)
Thanks to Mark O’Donnell for this one.
Go ahead and let other people tell you what to do and run your life. No? Don’t want to? A whole bunch of people are doing just that. Look at these figures:
If you fall into one of those two groups, you are letting others make big decisions for you–like taxes, healthcare, housing, citizenship, transportation costs, and who represents (or fails to represent) you.
Every vote does matter, because each one adds to another which adds to another…. Coming up shortly, SOMEONE will decide many major issues. There are 435 House seats and 35 Senate seats to be decided, plus governors, school boards, city councils, district attorneys, and judges in YOUR state and city.
I ask Are you registered and will you vote? If not, you can’t complain when people are elected and laws enacted that make your life miserable.
Think about it.
Can a comma be worth $10 million? Yes.
Over the years, I’ve been teased about being the “Comma Queen.” That’s because of my belief that a little comma can REALLY make a difference. And a judge has sided with me.
I won’t paraphrase the story. I’ll just start it here and let you go to http://abcnews.go.com/Weird/wireStory/court-decision-dairy-drivers-lawsuit-hung-comma-46204469 to read the whole thing, titled “Lack of comma sense ignites debate after ruling in $10M suit.”
Here’s the beginning of the story:
It all came down to a missing comma, and not just any one. And it’s reignited a longstanding debate over whether the punctuation is necessary.
A federal appeals court decided this week to keep alive a lawsuit by dairy drivers seeking more than $10 million in an overtime pay dispute.
It concerned Maine’s overtime law, which doesn’t apply to the “canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of” foods.
Here’s one for the gamblers. I haven’t inflicted one of my interesting (to me) word/phrase origins on you for some time. So, here goes.
“No dice” — what a person says when he refuses to accept a proposition or course of action.
In the early 1900s in many states, dice-gambling was popular but illegal. How to get around the law? Hide the dice when the cops came, of course. That way, the main evidence against you—the dice—couldn’t be produced in court, leading to your case being dismissed. So that’s what gamblers did: hid the dice, and sometimes even swallowed them!
A reporter for The Port Arthur Daily News (Texas) wrote a story in 1921 about when an officer testified at trial and admitted that he could not find any dice when he arrested the defendants. The judge ruled that the defendants could not be convicted because there were “no dice.”
It is considered highly probable that the “no dice = no conviction” decision is the origin of today’s use of “no dice” to mean “nothing doing.”
I’m not sure what I’m more livid about–Brock Turner’s 6-month sentence for 3 felony sex-count convictions or his father’s attitude toward the situation.
Ex-Stanford swimmer Turner viciously attacked a young woman, changing her life forever. (Yes. The violence of rape sticks with you the rest of your life.) Her impact statement in court poignantly and intelligently explains what she went through, how she’s feeling now, and what she expects her future to be like. The judge heard that–and still gave Turner only 6 months in jail plus probation.
His father’s reaction? That a long prison sentence for his son was not appropriate for “20 minutes of action.” To be honest, I don’t know if, as many people feel, he was saying that his son “got a little action,” thus minimizing the violence to the level of a consenting sex-game. I don’t know, either, if Mr. Turner thinks that all sentences should be based on the length of time they took (let’s see, a man takes 10 seconds to aim and shoot the gun that kills another man…). Or if he’s even using his brain at all.
I don’t wonder where Brock got his attitudes from. I do wonder if maybe the dad should serve a long stretch in prison for the 20 years of child-raising that led to this woman’s being raped.
In today’s Thursday Thought, a little girl teaches us n important lesson.
The Thursday Thought for today comes from a man whose philosophy and achievements are celebrated today, Cesar Chavez:
“History will judge societies and governments — and their institutions — not by how big they are or how well they serve the rich and the powerful, but by how effectively they respond to the needs of the poor and the helpless.”