Are We Too Litigious?

Was in fact Mr Bumble, the beadle in Charles Dicken's 'Oliver Twist', right when he said 'the law is a ass ... a idiot'?

The following are either examples of 'great urban myths' (possibly!) or the current excess in litigiousness.

Example 1

Ms Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, purchased new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home from a football game, she drove on to the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and left the driver's seat to go to the back of the Winnebago to make herself a sandwich. The motor home left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mrs. Grazinski sued Winnebago for not putting in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually leave the driver's seat while the cruise control was set. The Oklahoma jury awarded her $1,750,000 plus a new motor home. Winnebago actually changed their manuals as a result of this suit, just in case Mrs. Grazinski has any relatives who might also buy a motor home.

Example 2

Kara Walton of Claremont, Delaware, sued the owner of a night club because she fell from the bathroom window to the floor, knocking out her two front teeth. Even though Ms. Walton was trying to sneak through the ladies room window to avoid paying the $3.50 cover charge, the jury said the night club had to pay her $12,000 plus dental expenses.

Example 3
A jury ordered Amber Carson of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to be paid $113,500 by a Philadelphia restaurant after she slipped on spilled soft drink and broke her tail bone. The reason the soft drink was on the floor - Ms. Carson had thrown it at her boyfriend 30 seconds earlier during an argument.

Example 4
Jerry Williams of Little Rock, Arkansas, was awarded $14,500 plus medical expenses after being bitten on the butt by his next door neighbour's beagle - even though the beagle was on a chain in its owner's fenced yard. Williams did not get as much as he asked for because the jury believed the beagle might have been provoked at the time of the butt bite because Williams had climbed over the fence into the yard and repeatedly shot the dog with a pellet gun.

Example 6

Terrence Dickson of Bristol, Pennsylvania was leaving a house he had just burgled by way of the garage when the automatic garage door opener malfunctioned and he could not get the door to open. He couldn't re-enter the house because the door connecting the garage to the house locked when Dickson pulled it shut. Forced to sit for eight days and survive on a case of Pepsi and a large bag of dry dog food, he sued the home owner's insurance company claiming undue mental anguish. The jury said the insurance company must pay Dickson $500,000 for his anguish.

Example 6

Carl Truman of Los Angeles , California won $74,000 plus medical expenses when his neighbour ran over his hand with a Honda Accord. Truman apparently didn't notice there was someone at the wheel of the car when he was trying to steal his neighbour's hubcaps.

Example 7

Kathleen Robertson of Austin, Texas was awarded $80,000 by a jury of her peers after breaking her ankle tripping over a toddler who was running inside a furniture store. The store owners were understandably surprised by the verdict, considering the running toddler was her own son.


Do any (or all) of these strike you as just a tad excessive?

And which one/s really took your fancy?

Reversing Empathy Fatigue

We all know it's easy enough to fall into empathy fatigue with respect to world poverty - but every now and then you see something that re-sensitizes you - perhaps through a specific situation.

Like this set of photos of school buses - with the initial three in first world Asia ...




... and the last in New Delhi, India ...


Of course it easy enough to respond to the lack of opportunities for kids but such re-sensitizing can be the way into something more general.

In fact, I had a double exposure this week.

Pressing my dentist for an explanation for the difficulty in getting an appointment with him, he confessed he spent part of each year in Central America giving free dental care to those who could not other-wise afford it.

Mmm ... .

Socially Constructed Medicines

Lloyd's Cocaine Toothache Drops (c1885)

Part of the folk-law you pick up as a teenager, and often at university if you go, is that Coca Cola originally and up to 1906 contained small (I guess) amounts of cocaine - no surprises it gave a nice little lift to your day!

And, like probably most of us, I knew that cocaine and opium had been systematically included as ingredients in the large-scale manufacture of medicines since the C18 (and of course probably long before the industrial revolution). One medicine that jumped out at me in late C18 and early C19 novels is as the opium-based laudanum, used as a painkiller.

But I was not aware of the spectrum of uses to which these remedies were put - till today when I was browsing the website of the Addiction Research Unit at the Department of Psychology, University of Buffalo.

Cocaine was used in three distinct ways.

Firstly, as a topical anesthetic such in toothache powders (above) and sore throat lozenges ...

A Belguim Pharmacy's Throat Lozenge (c1900)

... as a catarrh medicine for relieving head and chest congestion - and in this context even for sea sickness, as claimed by Bullard and Shedd for their coca wine ...

Bullard and Shedd, Coca Wine

... and as a medicinal 'tonic' with numerous and wide-ranging benefits ....


With such products attracting rather august endorsement, like this one by Pope Leo XIII ...


Opium and heroin were even more widely used than cocaine in medicines.

As well as being useful in the treatment of dysentery and the relief of pain, these were given for sleeplessness and restlessness, even in children ...

Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup (1887)

... for asthma ...

... and even for coughs ...

While not wanting to get bogged down in a tedious debate about why certain substances are constructed at particular times as 'medicines' and at others as 'drugs', it's just interesting to observe that these categories are not as absolute and fixed as we would like have to have them.

Soon they'll be telling us the smoking and alcohol are not beneficial for our health!

Spin Meisters Extraordinaire

Congressman Harry Reid

Perhaps this is not exactly the right moment to be cynical about our politicians, Barack Obama in his honeymoon period an' all, but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to post this true story.

It happens that genealogist Judy Wallman was researching her own family tree, in particular a C19 ancestor - Remus Reid. And she thought of enlisting the help of a family relation, the politician Harry Reid, about their mutual antecedent.

She currently knew that Remus Reid had been hanged in 1889 in Montana for horse stealing and robbery.

Remus Reid's Execution, 1889

Harry Reid, old pollie spin meister that he is, sent her the biographical 'information' he had in his possession:

'Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory. His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency.
In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honour when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed.

LOL !!!

If You Think You've Got It Real Hard ...

If you imagine your life is tough, then this video will give you pause to think and re-consider. It did me.

Cos there's hard and then there's ... HARD!

Leni Riefenstal (1902-2003) - Aesthetics and Politics - and Constructing Identity

Like the architect Albert Spier, the film-maker Leni Riefenstal imagined she could engage in art without reference to politics. Both worked within the German Third Reich and one could argue further compromised appreciation of their work in friendships with Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels.

First I looked at her 'Olympia', an official record of the Berlin Games of 1936, with its extraordinarily innovative filming techniques ...


... and then I browsed some of the film's promotional stills, images that hark back to our imaginings of the first Olympics.


I could enjoy her use of slow motion to fully appreciate rapid action. And close-up to see detail of physical effort and athletes' emotion. New angles on action, such as the in-the-action view from trenches the film-maker had dug beside track and field events. And the close upshot for the diving:

But it was difficult to disassociate Riefenstal from the Nazi Regime, particularly in her earlier films, with titles such as 'Triumph of the Will' and its resonances with national socialist philosophy.

So I turned to the book of her (later) photographs of the Nuba tribe in Sudan (1975).

These are images which Susan Sontag has claimed still smack of 'fascist aesthetics'.






And I was about to proceed along this line but then I realized there was a more interesting approach to Riefenstal's work: considering how Africans viewed her vision of the Sudan. So I searched around and found the anthology 'Beautiful Ugly: African and Diaspora Aesthetics' by African artists and scholars in the 'Thought Leader - Mail and Guardian Online'.

In his review of the book and with particular reference to a chapter on Riefenstal's photo essay of the Nuba, Yazeed Zamaldien considers the issues of the 'oppressive misrepresentation [of Africans] during the colonial period and its redefinition during post-colonial restructuring'. In particular, the conceptualizing of beauty and uglyness.

With respect to the colonial period, Zamaldien identifies the outsider mechanisms of exoticisation and grotesquing. Riefenstal's images now begin to take on another hue.






With respect to redefining notions of beauty and ugliness in post-colonial restructuring, Zamaldien speaks of attending a festival in the Nuba Mountains last year and being confronted by an other-than-colonial construction of its people. He continued, to say:

Eight Nuba tribes had gathered for the three-day festival and among them were Muslim, Christian and animist believers practising their collective cultural heritage alongside each other. It raised again the question of perceptions of Africa: who sees what and how.

The book does not seem to be providing solutions as much as raising the interesting and core issues to be addressed.

And to all these issues is added the complication of the internationalization of beauty and ugliness and identity, through, among other sources, the juggernaut of the fashion industry.

Here in Australia we have a related (pseudo?) problem - of imagining we have to develop a national identity. Such an identity would need to take account of all the feeds from indigenous Australia and Britain, and all the countries from which newer migrants originated.

But such identities tend to work against diversity. Diversity like being in the gay community. So difference within unity. A tough (but necessary) one!

Confronting Having and Not Having

Often I hear various kinds of facts and figures to make sense of affluence and poverty at the international level. But this series of photographs of families in a variety of countries, along with their weekly food intake and its cost, makes the comparison more real than most. These images capture not only size of the intake but also its nutritional value.

For Aussies reading this, the dollar amounts are American. Currently $US1 = $A1.136 or $A1 = $US0.88.

Italy : The Manzo family of Sicily - Food Expenditure for one week is 214.36 Euros or $260.11


Germany : The Melander family of Bargteheide - Food Expenditure for one week is 375.39 Euros or $500.97


US : The Revis family of North Carolina - Food Expenditure for one week is $341.98


Mexico : The Casales family of Cuernavaca - Food Expenditure for one week is 1,862.78 Pesos or $189.09


Poland : The Sobczynscy family of Konstancin-Jeriorna - Food Expenditure for one week is 582 Zlotys or $151.27


Egypt : The Ahmed family of Cairo - Food Expenditure for one week is 387.85 Pounds or $68.53


Ecuador : The Ayme family of Tingo - Food Expenditure for one week is $31.55


Butan : The Namgay family of Shingkhey Village- Food Expenditure for one week is 224.93 Ngultrum or $5.03


Chad : The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp - Food Expenditure for one week is 685 CFA Francs or $1.23

That a family in Chad is only able to spend $1.23 a week on food is quite shattering!

Pictures of people, particularly in the context of their families, make such inequities of wealth real and palpable!

They are watching you from space!

I don't wanna fuel anyone's already over-active paranoia about conspiracy theories, but I was playing with Google Earth Plus today and found the updated version now offers photographs like this one showing individual people. And it's from space!


And this is only the free 'el cheapo' version of the software. Just imagine what you'll get if dollars are involved. Or if you are a government agency with mega bucks to spend. A clarity that'd let you count the freckles on a face. In real time and with movement. This is not the future guys - this must be now. Privacy is a myth that we don't realize is as extinct as the dinosaurs. I guess 2007 is after '1984'!

Sergeant Willsun Mock - A Salute

We've probably all watched a fair amount of stuff on TV about the fighting in Iraq and are, perhaps, experiencing a certain degree of emotional burn-out. But yesterday, I turned on CNN towards the end of a piece involving an interview a young soldier, Sgt. Willsun Mock, from Harper, Kansas.

A fresh young good-looking bloke - auburn hair, chestnut-coloured eyes, freckles - you could still see the boy in the man. He was a certain classic American type, something of a Huck Finn. But also everyman.

Though quietly spoken, he seemed clear and articulate. He understood his point of view, but with no trace of arrogance. There was also a sensitivity and trauma that did not suggest weakness. Just the unspeakable all around him. He said the war had changed him and, though he didn't elaborate much, I understood it had allowed him to connect with the inner self truth, in a clear and direct way. It's the thing we usually spend a life-time trying to achieve. The horror of war had accelerated this process for Will.

When asked why he was going to stay in the army, he said without self-aggrandising calculation:

It would break my heart to see one of my brothers in the military serving in a place like this. I would much rather myself suffer than one of them, and they have kids to think about, and I'm a little young for that right now.

He was posted in Iraq in 2004 and involved in the Falluja offensive, and been redeployed in August 2006. He was being interviewed during this second tour of duty.

Will Mock was killed by a roadside bomb on the 22 October, in eastern Bagdad.

I burst into tears.

The event has affected me more than any other of the war. And in a more general way. Like that photo of the young girl running naked down a dirt road in Vietnam, her clothes and skin burnt off. So I'm not interested in how this may be used in the debate about US or Australian involvement. It just tells me about the vile fucking insane waste of war. And that not much has been learned by anyone since the monstrocities of World War One, and the pronouncements around the time of the Versailles Treaty about 'The War to End All Wars'.

The Senator Mark Foley Scandal

My irritation has been mounting over the Mark Foley scandal in which the senator has resigned amid reports that he had sent sexually explicit internet messages to male pages. I put this photo here to give the senator a face:

Now, in no way do I condon sexual approaches to under-age people. However, in much of the media coverage (and I am sure in the wider community) I sense a disguised attack on the gay community. Let me explain.

In item after item, news services condemn Foley for emailing 'children as young as 16'! And by the way, there is no reporting that he actually met up with anyone he messaged.

What I find annoying and suspicious is that 16 year olds are characterised as children. This false definition seems to emotively and dishonestly to draw in pedaphilia to unreasonably damn the senator. As some Democrats are saying, this characterisation would not be used if the pages were 16 year old girls.

In all states of the US but two, people may legally marry at 16 with parental consent (otherwise, without parental consent it is 18). In New Hampshire, 'A female between the age of 13 and 17 years and a male between the age of 14 and 17 years can be married only with the permission of their parent (guardian) and a waiver' (Ibid). In a number of states and with circuit or probate court permission, the age is 15.

At 14, I was sexually active, and this seems in accord with the spirit of these laws of marriage. I am not buying into the debate about the age of concent here.

Now, to characterise potentially married people as children seems absurd! Is the US really saying that it is ok/legal for 'children' to marry and have sex!

As I was saying at the outset, this is to not defend approaches to the under-aged. Or buy into the age of consent debate. What I am saying that there is something disingenuous about the way the participants in this event are being defined - and this has the odor of discrimination. The issue should be addressed but honestly and without an unspoken agenda.

Political Incorrectness

I was traveling in Spain 2003, and the Afgan war overtook me in the sense that the protest movement in the Iberian Peninsular spilled out more than is usual into the public arena - there were the tens of thousands of placards, marches, ... in the streets - a bit like the 'demos' around the world in the 1960's and 1970's, that were one outcome of the counter culture.

The public protest of 2003 took many forms, one being street performance pieces, like this one in Seville:



My usual knee-jerk politically-correct reaction took an unexpected direction when I saw this photo in a local newspaper:


It purported to show an act of compassion but there was something more. And then my own private reaction.

I realized I was reading in a parallel sexual dimension - entirely imposed by myself as a gay guy. It seemed in part to be to do with the water overflowing from the captive's mouth and dribbling down and off his square jaw. I wanted to explore this, rather than self-censor in the approved manner. There were the obvious similarities between the newspaper pic and my second pic - faceless soldiers, armilites, armed ready and trained, army boots and so on.

But I also saw the parallels with a certain sexual practice that often doesn't dare speak it's name. Pissing can share some of the same dimensions: power and domination, the giving of fluid, and eagar receptivity. In the piss pic below, dominance is reinforced by the receiver being pinned down by the boot.


I guess there can be a vigorous debate about whether we should censor (unexpressed) fantasizes or be able to do what we like in the privacy of our own head-rooms.

How To Look After Your Husband

And now for something completely different! Times have changed ... most places. Genuine article from 'Home Economics', 1950.