Tag: news from the stupid

Coach driver set fire to Germans' towels for 'bagging' all the sunbeds. Glyn Bowden twice took the towels away and left them on the side of the pool – but on the third day set fire to them.

A coach driver became so fed up with German tourists bagging every sunbed that he set fire to all their towels. Glyn Bowden, 55, was locked up by police in Italy after his early morning raid.

Mr Bowden was coach driver for a party of 55 British holidaymakers at Viana Marina near San Remo on the Italian Riviera. He told yesterday how the German tourists put their towels on the best sunbeds on the private beach and by a nearby pool. He twice took the towels away and left them on the side of the pool – but on the third day set fire to them.

Mr Bowden spent two hours in the cells at a local police station before hotel bosses persuaded officers to release him without charge. The first time the group from South Wales complained to him, he said “Leave it to me” and dumped all of the towels at the end of the pool. Mr Bowden said: “The following morning the Germans put them down even earlier so I did the same – with them shaking their fists at me from their windows.

“The next morning about 20 towels were there again so I collected them up, put them on a pile on the beach – and lit them. All the British tourists were cheering. But just a few minutes afterwards three police officers turned up and arrested me. “They were going to charge me with criminal damage but the hotel – which owned the towels -intervened on my behalf.”

Mr Bowden, from Tonyrefail, near Rhondda, added: “The Germans thought they owned the private beach but I wanted to make sure my tourists got a crack of the whip.” His extreme action seemed to have worked – the Germans' towels did not reappear for the rest of the holiday.

Source: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,2078667,00.html

British Asians are role models, says Cameron

British asians provide a model for the rest of the country, David Cameron declares today, as he argues that many Asians cannot be blamed for failing to integrate.

'Many British Asians see a society that hardly inspires them to integrate. Indeed, they see aspects of modern Britain which are a threat to the values they hold dear. Not for the first time, I found myself thinking that it is mainstream Britain which needs to integrate more with the British Asian way of life, not the other way around.'

And this dude is the leader of the Tories??

There are a few things lawmakers have decided really ought to be handled with the “care and oversight” that only the government can provide: e.g., tax collection, radioactive materials, biohazards, guns, and CDs. CDs? No, I'm not talking about financial Certificates of Deposit, though that might make more sense. I'm talking about Compact Discs.

New “pawn shop” laws are springing up across the United States that will make selling your used CDs at the local record shop something akin to getting arrested. No, you won't spend any time in jail, but you'll certainly feel like a criminal once the local record shop makes copies of all of your identifying information and even collects your fingerprints. Such is the state of affairs in Florida, which now has the dubious distinction of being so anal about the sale of used music CDs that record shops there are starting to get out of the business of dealing with used content because they don't want to pay a $10,000 bond for the “right” to treat their customers like criminals.

The legislation is supposed to stop the sale of counterfeit and/or stolen music CDs, despite the fact that there has been no proof that this is a particularly pressing problem for record shops in general. Yet John Mitchell, outside counsel for the National Association of Recording Merchandisers, told Billboard that this is part of “some sort of a new trend among states to support second-hand-goods legislation.” And he expects it to grow.

In Florida, Utah, and soon in Rhode Island and Wisconsin, selling your used CDs to the local record joint will be more scrutinized than then getting a driver's license in those states. For retailers in Florida, for instance, there's a “waiting period” statue that prohibits them from selling used CDs that they've acquired until 30 days have passed. Furthermore, the Florida law disallows stores from providing anything but store credit for used CDs. It looks like college students will need to stick to blood plasma donations for beer money.

Why this trend, and why now? It's difficult to say, but to be sure, there is no love lost between retailers who sell used CDs and the music industry. The Federal Trade Commission has scrutinized the music industry for putting unfair pressures on retailers who sell used CDs, following a long battle between the music industry and retailers in the mid 90s. The music industry dislikes used CD sales because they don't get a cut of subsequent sales after the first. Now, via the specter of piracy, new legislation is cropping up that will make it even less desirable to sell second-hand goods. Can laws targeting used DVDs be far behind?

The music industry has never been a big fan of the Doctrine of First Sale, and the rise of digital music sales will only exacerbate the tension between consumers who believe that they “own” what they pay for, and the music industry. As more and more content-oriented goods transition to digital formats that are distributed free of physical formats, this issue is going to get tricky because it will be harder to spot the counterfeits from the authentic products, and consumers will still expect to exercise robust rights with the content that they've paid for with their hard-earned cash.

God Bless The Land Of The Free…

Source: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070507-record-shops-used-cds-ihre-papieren-bitte.html

You know that horrible remix I was talking about? The latino-rap version of Oye Como Va?

And it's even more horrible that I remembered it. You just know they're using a cheap little electronic keyboard they bought from Radio Shack.

I have found it.

Click to listen at your own risk :)

I fear for the current generation.

BBC NEWS
Cradles plan for unwanted girls
The Indian government is planning to set up a network of cradles around the country where parents can leave unwanted baby girls.

The minister for women and child development, Renuka Chowdhury, told BBC News the cradles would be “everywhere”. It is the latest initiative to try to wipe out the practice of female foeticide and female infanticide.

A girl child is often viewed as inferior to a boy. A bride's dowry can also cripple a family financially. Research for the year 2001 showed that for every 1,000 male babies born in India, there were just 933 girls.

Research published last year estimating that the number of female abortions was as high as 500,000 a year was disputed by the Indian Medical Association.

“We will have cradles strategically placed all over the place so that people who don't want their babies can leave them there,” Ms Chowdhury told the BBC News website. The cradles could be in places as diverse as the local tax collector's office, or where local councils meet. Ms Chowdhury said parents would be able to leave their babies secretly. The important thing was to save their lives.

She said she assumed that most of the babies left under the “cradle scheme” would be girls. “They will be collected and put into homes,” she said. “There are plenty of existing homes and we will be adding some more also.”

In 1994, India banned the use of technology to determine the sex of unborn children and the termination of pregnancies on the basis of gender. However, campaigners say many clinics still offer a seemingly legitimate facade for a multi-billion pound racket and that gender determination is a highly profitable business.

Experts say female foeticide is mostly linked to socio-economic factors. It is an idea that many say carries over from the time India was a predominantly agrarian society where boys were considered an extra pair of hands on the farm. In a separate development, police in the central state of Madhya Pradesh say they have recovered some 390 bones of babies or foetuses from the grounds of a Christian missionary hospital in the town of Ratlam after a tip off.

“The question of female foeticide and infanticide is part of our investigation, as is illegal abortions,” Superintendent of Police Satish Saxena said, Reuters news agency reports.

Last November a Japanese hospital announced plans to set up a “baby hatch” allowing mothers to anonymously drop off their newborns so they could be put up for adoption. The drop-off at Jikei Hospital in southern Japan will consist of a small window in an outside wall, which opens on to an incubator bed, officials say. Once a baby has been placed inside, an alarm bell will alert staff.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/south_asia/6373043.stm

I guess the plan is better than the alternative, but still, this saddens/angers me.