Daily Office:
Wednesday
¶ Matins: The Nation, Thailand’s English-language newspaper, runs a Web site that holds its own as a contemporary news site. Here, for example, is the page of business leaders. It’s better than what one might expect of a South Asian kingdom where English is not really the second language that it is in, say, India.
And here is its capsule report of the king’s exhortation to the newly sworn-in government of Abhisit Vejjajiva. Did I say “capsule”? It’s the entire story. No comment, no color, no links to related stories. Just the royal admonition. I give it entire:
In his speech given before Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his Cabinet, HM the King said: “If you work well, the country will be in good order and it will be a blessing. If you can ensure happiness and public order, the country will go ahead as wished by all Thais.”
¶ Tierce: The shooting death of a police officer is always a hot-button crime, so it’s especially heartening to see juries pulling back from felony murder convictions in connection with the deaths of Daniel Enchautegui and Russel Timoshenko, two policemen who were shot last year while trying to deter criminal activity. The doctrine of felony murder, which holds individuals to be guilty of any murder committed in the course of a crime to which they are accessories, is a blot on our system of justice.
¶ Sext: Read about the Ultimate Paper Airplane, at Brainiac. It is rocket science!
Oremus…
§ Matins. Brevity is the soul of prudence, at least in a country where the crime of lèse-majesté is punished very seriously.
If you’re going to have a king at all, then of course you want him to be given special treatment. At the same time, you musn’t forget that he is still a mere mortal, subject to the same accidents and contingencies as the rest of us, and therefore just as prone to burp on occasion. The present unrest in Thailand appears to owe — paradoxically to Western minds, perhaps — to a local unwillingness to recognize the monarch’s humanity, in all the senses of that word. The royal family could do worse than appraise the achievement of Elizabeth II. If anyone threw a pair of shoes at her, he (or she) would never mak it out of the room in one piece.
§ Tierce. The classic felony-murder defendant is the driver of a getaway car, not present during the killing and conceivably unaware of it.
According to Kareem Fahim’s report, at least three states — Hawaii, Kentucky, and Michigan — have abolished this barbaric polyp of vicarious liability.
Everybody in the following paragraph needs to spend some time in serious ethical rehab:
Public officials and relatives of the police officers expressed frustration and anger. The mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, captured some of the feelings about the Brancato verdict on Tuesday. “It’s just beyond me,” he said, “how the jury could come to that conclusion.”
§ Sext. Imagine how much these babies will worth if they do make it through the atmosphere and onto more or less dry land. Somehow, though, having tested the paper to a mere 400º doesn’t seem quite serious. Hasn’t anyone read or seen Fahrenheit 451?
I’m loving the new still-lifes against the blue satin cloth! I fantasize that someday you’ll do a cash-register book of your DB photos. They’re really special. Really!
Hi Martyn, I can’t really offer you any pcctairal advice on affiliate programmes. What I will say is that if you keep on pushing you will get to where you want to go. I do believe that we can all achieve our dreams, but we have to keep pushing even if we seem to be going nowhere sometimes. I don’t know if you have ever seen the ‘last lecture’ by Randy Pausch? He suggested that the road to any type of success is hard but that this is not to stop us reaching the goal; it is only to stop does who don’t really want it I’m convinced this is true. I only launched my new website a couple of months ago. I decided not to monetize it or have any type of donate button. The original purpose of this website was to help promote my book ‘Dead Drunk’ and as a venue to talk about my life in recovery from addiction. Of course the fact that I live in Thailand means that I’m going to be talking about that as well. I decided that if people wanted to support the website they can buy the book; not directly from me though. The site is slowly pulling in more visitors each week and maybe one day I’ll regret not monetizing it – at the moment though it just feels like the right thing to do. I really do hope that these websites work out for you. You do sound like you know what you are doing. Keep the faith and start packing for 2012.Paul recently posted..