the drugs did it

Lawyer Using Robitussin-induced Insanity Defense in Robbery Case

A 19-year-old former National Honor Society member has been accused of robbing a gas station and leading police on a high-speed chase.

Karl Leonard's attorney says his client's recreational use of an over-the-counter cold medicine made him temporarily insane.

Leonard's father also blamed his son's actions on his use of dextromethorphan, a cough suppressant found in Robitussin DM.

[...] In a motion filed in Grand Traverse County Circuit Court, defense attorney William Rasmussen wrote, "Continued excessive usage of these drugs causes a zombie-like stage that allows individuals to function but affects the normal decision-making process."

( my response )

someone else's wisdom

A year ago around this time, I was reading A Poetry of Two Minds by Sherod Santos, and The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. Here's some of what stood out to me.

A Poetry of Two Minds

In discussing a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, Randall Jarrell once observed that poetry, the best poetry anyway, communicates by a kind of reticence, by something the poem doesn't say that a reader still manages to get (p. 2).

[Poets'] meanings are carried in the effects of their words and not in their concepts. And since words are less mutable than ideas, what endures in a poem is a privilege of its language (as pleasure, not signification), just as what endures in music is a privilege of its sounds (as pleasure, not signification) (p. 4).

( Read more... )

The Poet's Companion

Good writing comes from a simple premise: your experience is not yours alone, but in some sense a metaphor for everyone's (p. 21)

In developing your own figurative images, don't worry if your language is clumsy or confusing at first. Just have patience and keep digging (p. 101).

It's impossible to reproduce the nuances of the human voice on the page. That's why it's especially important to pay attention to the tools we do have, to become aware of the sounds of language and begin to work with them--both in your choice of words, and how you organize those words into lines that are meaningful--not only in what they say, but how they say it (p. 106).

( Read more... )

let's break you up and make you more dependent upon the state

British Government Considers Dismantling BBC: Report

Britain's government is considering a plan to break up the BBC and remove its independent status in the wake of a bitter row with the state-funded broadcaster over the Iraq war, a report said.

Government papers detailing possible changes to the BBC's structure proposed breaking it into separate regional entities for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, The Sunday Times said.

The documents, which the newspaper said had been drawn up by "senior civil servants", also suggested that the job of ensuring the BBC's impartiality could be taken away from the corporation's board of governors.

[...] Plans being considered include giving a government media watchdog greater control over the BBC's output, closing BBC outlets which are not considered "public service" and even forcing the corporation to share some of its licence fee revenue with other broadcasters.

Such a move would most likely prompt public concern, given that the BBC is still generally revered in Britain for being impartial and accurate.

Opinion polls after the Hutton inquiry was published showed that many people considered its verdict a "whitewash", and that they trusted the BBC far more than they did Blair and his ministers.

(no subject)

Commentary: Inventing the "Clinton Recession"