Bugs and Beasts Before the Law - "Murderous pigs sent to the gallows, sparrows prosecuted for chattering in Church, a gang of thieving rats let off on a wholly technical acquittal – theoretical psychologist and author Nicholas Humphrey explores the strange world of medieval animal trials." More on the theme of barnyard scapegoats from the BBC podcast documentary:
Animals on Trial.
posted by madamjujujive
on Jan 5, 2012 -
22 comments
Shared social responsibility -
When customers could pay what they wanted in the knowledge that half of that would go to charity, sales and profits went through the roof ... Gneezy describes the combination of charitable donations and paying what you like as 'shared social responsibility', where businesses and customers work together for the public good. (via
mr) [also see
1,
2,
3]
posted by kliuless
on Jul 28, 2010 -
19 comments
Sacco & Vanzetti. Two anarchists executed in Massachusetts in 1927. Their guilt was and is widely disputed.
'Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23, 1927, a date that became a watershed in twentieth-century American history. It became the last of a long train of events that had driven any sense of utopian vision out of American life. The workings of American democracy now seemed to many Americans as flawed and unjust as many of the older societies of the world, no longer embodying any bright ideal, but once again serving the interests of the rich and the powerful. '
posted by plep
on Jun 19, 2005 -
67 comments
It's the equivalent of "You can play the CD on three designated CD players that support the DRM. Like,
it will play ONLY on xyz brand cd player and only three of those that you pick. Yes, you have to stick to that brand of cd player (the iTunes player, the supported OS of iTunes, no unix support in sight) and too bad if you have a fourth one in the bedroom. It's not gonna play in your second car's player either. Nor in the kitchen. Nor on your neighbor's player. Nor can you trade it on the used market when you're tired of listening to it. "
"They finally found a way to sell you some wind. Even better, they will restrict the direction and force in wich the wind will blow, how often and where it will happen..."
As "DVD-Jon" Johansen goes to
retrial, a
backlash is rising in the media & community towards Apple's DRM (digital rights management), a week after this same kid created an open-source
program that lets users copy the songs that they bought onto other sources.
posted by omidius
on Dec 2, 2003 -
28 comments
Killer Dog Trial... ...continues to get weirder and weirder. The longer this story goes on, the stranger it gets. 3-way sex with a convicted felon, who belongs to a white supremacy group. The dogs are for protecting Meth labs for the group. The couple adopts "Cornfed" Schneider (the convict) as their son (he is 39 years old) because they can't marry him (polygamy). Add on to it charges of Bestiality between the female defendant and the male dog "Bane," and the story just gets more and more interesting. The story so far will be coming out in this week's
Rolling Stone Magazine.
posted by da5id
on Feb 8, 2002 -
16 comments
Terror trials by military is president Bush's plan for speedy wartime tribunals. He enacted this without the need for congress' approval, and the sole purpose is to process terrorists faster and in a more secretive setting than a standard civil trial. Is this too much or does it sound fair, considering this is wartime?
posted by mathowie
on Nov 13, 2001 -
50 comments
The Trial of Unit 731 "is the forgotten war-crimes prosecution of the 20th century." In 1949, Soviet courts tried a unit of the Japanese Imperial Army for wartime biological weapons experimentation on human subjects.
This article contains some gruesome descriptions.
posted by dfowler
on Jun 6, 2001 -
8 comments
