Follow up to: Sex in America

Some time ago, I wrote about Genarlow Wilson, an America teenager (age 17) sent to jail for receiving oral sex from a soon to be 16 year old girl.

She even had stated, that the sex wa consensual, but because she was only 15 years old, she legally could not consent to sex. He was therefore not convicted to rape but to aggravated child molestation.

Three days ago, he was released.

Although society has a significant interest in protecting children from premature sexual activity, we must acknowledge that Wilson’s crime does not rise to the level of culpability of adults who prey on children and that, for the law to punish Wilson as it would an adult, with the extraordinarily harsh punishment of ten years in prison without the possibility of probation or parole, appears to be grossly disproportionate to his crime.

But the release was also a bit by chance as the court ruled 4 vs 3 and that three judges thought:

the General Assembly expressly stated that in no event was the 2006 amendment to affect or abate the status as a crime of any act or omission which occurred prior to its effective date,” the dissent says. Wilson’s sentence cannot be deemed cruel and unusual “because the General Assembly made the express decision that he cannot benefit from the subsequent legislative determination to reduce the sentence for commission of that crime from felony to misdemeanor status.

Three out of seven judges believe, following the law, even if it is stupid and wrong, is the right thing to do. How can they sleep at night?

Private Update

I start a new post for this last week. I still had some trouble this week with Hellgate: London, almost keeping me to got to des Arts for tilllate. I went there on Tuesday and took some pictures which you can see here.

Yesterday I worked at Swiss Indoors for DHL. The party was OK, but a lot of people smoked cigars at it is Davidoff Swiss Indoors.

I am a bit drawn. I don't want a ban on advertisement for cigarettes and cigars (or alcohol) but on the other hand, don't like to work in a cigar-smoke filled room.

Sometimes, I believe that politicians just like to tell other people how they should live and I'd rather live in a freer society.

Even though it is already 19:00, I am not sure, what I am going to do with the rest of this day. Not much I think. You'll know soon enough.

Private Update

Almost two weeks since my last update.

Nothing much has hap pend.

I could leave it at this, but won't.

After my last post, I installed a beta of Tabula Rasa, Richard Garriott his newest creation. He is most famous for his Ultima series, a then ground breaking group of games which I really liked to play.

Tabula Rasa is set in a not too distant future, Earth has been overrun by aliens and the players have to save the world. Sounds familiar? Yeah, I know.

Never having been a big fan of massively multi player online role-playing games (MMORPGs for short), Tabula Rasa does not really please me. The graphics are not what I want to play and the story, I have found little trace of in the hours I have been playing. MMORPGs just seem too much work for too little reward.

I also tried to install a beta of Hellgate: London, but failed three times to download the files. As the files are 5 GB and the game will be out in less than a week, I stopped my attempts. I am not too sure if I will like Hellgate: London, but I think I'll buy it anyway. Fighting demons in an apocalyptic London, sounds just too appealing.

On Wednesday, directly after work, I took a train to Zurich where my trip to Prague started. It was a trip by bus and was less stressing than I had feared. Our group consisted of 25 men and 6 females and was organised by two DJs. We arrived early in the morning and after a short visit to the town center, could go to our rooms.

The hotel was located outside of Prague, I had a nice room on the tenth floor with three beds, all for myself. But still, I just used one...

In the evening, we went to a Pizzeria which I liked but most thought the food was bad. I probalby was the only one not eating Italian and what I had was OK.

Afterwarts we went to a small disco which was really nice, location-wise but just a bit too small for my taste. There was an old man, responsable for hanging the coats, but man, was he slow. I am sure, there are still now, people waiting to get their stuff back....

There were some Go-Go dancers which we were not allowed to take pictures of. They attacted a bit a strange crowd, people you'd usually don't find in a disco, drooling at them. The dancers had nice bodies, dancing seems to be good for keeping fit and I talked a bit to one of them. She was the only one, who seemed to like what she was doing. A lot of men talk bad about Go-Go dancers, but I wouldn't mind to have one as my girl-friend. I might even be proud, that people pay for seeing her half naked...

I also met a couple from Valencia, Spain, who knew tilllate from back home. That is one thing I like about tilllate, that it is becoming more and more international.

Next day, we went shopping, to a town about an hour away from Prague. I don't know its name which is no loss, because it (sorry) sucked. The weather was too cold and windy just to stroll around and the shops were not worth visiting. Therefore we took a bus to some shopping malls near the highway. Some of us bought some clothes there, I didn't feel like shopping.

In the evening we went to an other disco which was bigger but had too little people. I didn't stay there for too long.

After a brief tour of Prague on Saturday, we went to the third and last disco of our trip, the Karlovy Lazne. Their own hompage you can find here.

We arrived here quite early. And there were few people. I thought, boy, an other boring night. But the club filled up quickly.

It is located in a rather little building.



There were five dance-floors, each one for a different type of music. And there was even enough space to chill. The building might once have been used as a public baths, as the dance floors sometimes were still tiled. It was the lest shiny location of all discos I went to in Prague, but there were just so many people there.

I met a tilllate-photographer from Leeds, UK, and a lot of people who knew tilllate from Switzerland, Germany, UK and Italy. About half of the crowd were foreigners. I also talked to Russians, Danes, therefore, this was probably an even more international party as those I have been to in Ibiza.

I thing a lot of the visitors came, like myself, by car to Prague. At our hotel, we had some groups from Italy and Germany and probably one more car from Switzerland.

In this club, I had the best party since a long time. Some parties last year in Ibiza would be the only ones to top this experiances.

Partly because I met a girl from Moscau who I've been mailing since. I really love her freckles. Probalby I will spend some more time in Russia than I had planned.

Some new pictures

I was cooking today and took a few pictures, to brighten up my blog.



I really like my kitchen and invested (or rather spent) a lot of money for it. Girls, could you have bought a lot of shoes....



Just some beans, Risotto and meat.

wcities.com

I want to write for wcities.com.

They don't seem to be up to date with their information of Basel. So I'll try to help them a bit.

Logitech G3

In my post of Sunday, 26th August 2007, I wrote about my problems with the G7 mouse by Logitech.

Logitech does still sell the mouse in the US, here for example by amazon.

But there seems still to be a lot of problems, just read the reviews. The mouse works fine for about a year, then suddenly problems appear. Many have the same problems like I, the batteries seem to need constant reloading. Mine, I have to change ever two hours. Then there is also a lot of talk of defective buttons, resulting in constant double-clicking even though the button is just pressed once.

What I do not understand is why they continue to sell a product in the US when they are not willing to sell it in Europe. Do they have less quality orientated customers in the US? I doubt this very much.

I talked (or mailed) a lot with Logitech and they are unwilling / unable to replace the G7 with the new G9 (with a cord) or the G7 (from the US). Instead they are sending me the MX™ Revolution. But I have to return the batteries of the G7 and the USB sender.

It seems, I'll have to let go and try the MX Revolution because the constant battery-changes are more than just annoying. You'll hear more as soon as I get my hands on it.

But I am still thinking of either buying the G7 again in the US, even if it is a error-prone bitch, but I love her nonetheless. I'll also might buy the G9. Seams you'll get some product reviews in the coming weeks.

If I had Logitech shares, I would think about selling them. The last few products I had, did not always meet my expectations.

The G7 is hardly usable after 18 months.

The G3 is not as they write, a perfect mouse for right- and left-handers but impractically for all due to the position of its buttons. Wasted money.

At the office, our keyboards are also not what you would expect from a Swiss company.

But on the other hand, the G7 is my favourite mouse ever from a haptic point of view and the G15 Keyboard rocks especially if you like to play in the dark.

On the plus side, the customer support was good. Even though I did not get what I wanted, they answered fast, even called twice, good work there.

Private Update

Almost a week since my last Privat post.

Yeah, weeks pass fast...

That I didn't do much intelligent is the fault of Medieval 2. I've been trying hard to win this game. I started a large campaign with the British, the Spanish, yesterday with Venice and today with France.

Why do I keep starting again and again? I succeed the early parts of the game and am able to expand my empire quite well. Better than all the other surrounding countries. But then suddenly, ever country surrounding me is attacking me, I am left with no friends and as I might have overexpanded my borders, I start to loose provinces and towns. To stop loosing to many towns, I cheat, which does help in the beginning, but does not make me feel any better.

So I stop playing the campaign and select an other country. I am getting better though, I survive longer and cheat less than I used to and I am confindent, I will be able to win the game with no cheats.

Probably I'll retry the English as their strong archers, cavalery and Hobilars suit my style of playing best.

But I do hate the Pope... Because somewhere in the game, you'll run out of Pagan enemies and have to fight your Christian 'brothers' (those pahtetic French for example) which often leeds to excommunication and thus giving all other countries the right to invade you...

I have also started to play Bioshock again and had my first fight with a Big Brother. Man, do they deal out pain. Soon the Orange Box with Half Life Episode 2, Portal and Team Fortress 2 hits the shelves so I will spend more time fighting virtual enemies.

The next weekend I'll be in Prag with Weekend2Dance. Three nights, three parties. Hope it will be fun. I am just a bit too old for the trip by bus. I would have taken a flight, but easyjet was sold out when I got the OK for the trip. I'll survive.

This Tuesday, I'll be back in desArts for the Afterwork Party. Got a bit mixed feelings.

Little Miss Sunshine

This is my first Movie Review and DVD Review. Movie Review first.

Little Miss Sunshine is a movie I myself would most probably not have chosen to watch. My coworker recommended it to me and even though we do have some different opinions, I usually can trust her advice about movies.

I just had bought enough DVDs so I didn't want to buy it for myself. Therefore, I bought it for a friend and lent to watch it myself. Nice friend I am.

But no more nagging and back to the movie.

Little Miss Sunshine is the movie about a six (?) year old overweight girl from a dysfunctional family. The grandpa is a drug addict, her brother has made a vow of silence, her gay uncle (from her mother's side) has unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide. Her father wants to promote his "Nine steps to success" with no success.

It is a road trip movie with some of the usual suspects. I would not call it a really great movie but it won two Oscars, Alan Arkin, the cocaine snorting grandpa won "Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role" and Michael Arndt won his for "Best Writing, Original Screenplay".

I liked the performance of Steve Carell best. He is staring in Evan Almighty, which I jet have not seen.

Even if I repeat myself. I'd give it an 8/10. Eight might be a bit high, but at least the ending is not as cheesy as I had feared.

***************

After I slept over my decision, I do not feel comfordable with 8/10 points. Therefore I reduce my verdict to 7/10 points.

***************

I review this version. I link to amazon even though I do not get paid for. Feel free to browse for the cheapest offer.

There is not much Bonus Content. There are three or four alternate endings, none of which are any good as well as an directors commentary (which I am not going to check out) as well as some trailers. The trailers you can not access from the menu. Why, I don't know. And there is also an Anti-Piracy trailer, which I do not want on my DVDs.

There is German and English Version 5.1 Dolby Digital, not that I heard a lot of Dolby nor 5.1. Not this type of movie. There are Turkish subtitles as well as German and English. That's about it.

For the DVD I'll give 3/10 points. There is so little reason you'd really want to own this DVD. And the Anti-Piracy trailer reduces the rating below 5.

Ratatouille

Not having expected much from the Ratatouile, mainly because of Pixar's last Movie, Cars, which I didn't like at all. I wasn't able to laugh once.

But having some cash to spend and an evening off, I went to a Saturday's Cinema Night with Ratatouille.

And I must admit, it was more fun than I had thought it would be. The voices I didn't know, which is a good thing because I don't want to be too distracted by them. Ian Holm, a.k.a. as Bilbo Baggins plays Skinner, the evil Sous-Chef and Peter O'Toole, probably most famous for his appearance as Lawrence of Arabia in the 1963 blockbuster with the same title lends his voice to Anton Ego, the food critic.

The first half hour is very pleasant. Which is not very common for any movie. But the last half hour is great. There are some great designs in the movie and some memorabel effects.

Taking all this in perspective, I'd rank it about as high as Ice Age II, but still a bit lower than Hot Fuzz, which I have reviewed here.

Therefore 8/10.

Axe a.k.a. Lynx

produces bad antiperspirants but knows how to advertise.

Check their Australian campaigns here and here.

Have fun.

Private Update

Last week, not much happened. An other weekend with no tilllate. On Friday, I went to town with some friends. But as I came directly from work, I got tired soon and left before midnight. I was even too tired to play Medieval II. Saturday was not much more fun. Sunday was Scuba Diving again and I finished the Padi Open Water.

Hope I can write more soon.

Private Update

After work, I took some pictures at an After-Work Party in desArts. I used to like to go to that bar. I have spent a lot of money there already.

I am not sure, why I didn’t go there any more, but there are just some places, I used to visit, but do so no more. But James begged me to go and he bitched a lot, therefore I went. You always seem to meet the same people there. I am sure, some of them, I see every time.

The music is nice, but as soon as the party starts, there is no room to move. Dancing is completely out of the question. I took about forty pictures which is OK, but not great.

After the last two weeks occupied with scuba diving, I was happy for a break. I don’t think I did a lot the rest of the evenings. I took some more pictures at a second party. I was a bit underdressed, as I came directly from work. At least I wore a nice black shirt.

The party was nice. There were some large photos of Salma Hayek, who looked great. There was also free food and free drinks, which I did not take too much advantage of. Stupid Weight Watchers…. But if I want to loose those pounds, there can’t be too many exceptions. I left about at midnight. Even though I had met some people I knew, the party was no success, personally. I did wonder, why I wasn’t invited to such an event…

I have to do something about that!

I had planned to play some Medieval II for the rest of the night, but went to bed after uploading the pictures. But at least on Saturday, I stood up early and played Medieval II. After some shopping and cooking, I went to bed early, as I had to go diving in the Lake Lucerne.

The alarm clock rang at 7:30 am and I took off soon afterwards. But I took the wrong road in Lucerne and arrived some minutes late.

The diving could have went better. I had some problems with the pressure but in the end, I saw one very large Esox and a smaller one. The smaller one was about 30 cm long, difficult to tell underwater. It swam in the bridge of a boat which was sunk some years ago. According to the dive-master, this was the first time, the Esox didn’t flee the divers.

We saw a lot of other fish, mostly too small to eat. And a lot of junk. There are only a few plants and after six meters, there is hardly anything alive. 15 meters was about the deepest we went in the two dives.

Chanthaburi Restaurant Sairung

Last week I went to Chanthaburi Restaurant Sairung. Honestly, I don’t know the right name. I guess it is Chanthaburi and Sairung seems to be the name of the cook.

It is located on Feldbergstrasse 57, in 4057 Basel, which is not the place you would seek a good restaurant, even though the before mentioned Da Grazialla is a stone’s throw away.

From the outside, the restaurant looks not too inviting. There isn’t even a menu outside, which was one of the reasons, I didn’t go in the last time.

The front part of the restaurant has some simple benches and two to three tables. Looks a bit like Ikea. Past the kitchen, which has a window to look into, and the stairs to the restrooms, there posterior restaurant is divided in a non-smoker and a smoker part.

There are not too many tables, so to make a reservation on Friday and Saturday would be a good idea. You can reach them here ++41/61/683.22.23. They don’t seem to have an internet site.

The food was good. Some was even great, nothing disappointing, most just good.

We had two starters, a Tofu-soup and Fish-balls, followed by a Lamb-curry, some Shrimps with rice noodles (please use peeled shrimps!!!) and a duck-dish, kind of a soup.

The Tofu-soup was OK, not bad, but not really special. The Fish-balls were per se great, but there was far too much sweet-chilli sauce on top of it. The Lamb curry was very good. Hot but not too hot.

I didn’t like the unpeeled shrimps and there was too much ginger in the rice noodles. I prefer ginger paste to the pieces of ginger you get there.

The duck was ok, but the soup or sauce was great.

We didn’t have room for dessert which left us with a CHF 140.00 bill. Which was not a bargain but OK. Still, if you have the money, you could do a lot worse.

Albanian claims towards Greece

Alba Çela writes in his blog about Albania and how the Balkan produces more history than it can consume.

He writes about the Tschams, a group of ethnical Albanians who used to live in the northern part of Greece and were forcefully removed from their villages after WWII. Wikipedia quotes that they had collaborated with the Nazis. Not having the facts on this topic the question still stands, if collaboration with the enemy really gives the right to oust a group of people even though not every single one has participated in such behaviour and if they were compensated for expropriation. Fear of the Communist Albanians might have also played a role.

He also writes about the Cameria Liberation Army, an other Albanian Terrorist group which has some minor cover on the internet. It seems at least, that they have made no high-scale attacks.

Their major aim seems to be, at least for the time given, to get financial compensation for their plight. Their terrorist organisation and the use of the word Genocide does not help them a lot.

Especially as most of the west is to some extent saturated with Albanian claims for land, money and more money.

The ethnic Greek mayor Vasil Bollano on the other hand, wants his community to join Greek and was even supported by the Greek ambassador in Tirana.

He writes:

The discussion is very much reflected in the popular daily discourse. Albanian blogs swelter with debates, comments, pseudo-analyses, allegations and counter-allegations on the issue, often expressing nationalistic aspirations that give out the wrong message to the Greek side.

Looking at the recent Balkan history, which message should we get?

There are further threats from the Albanian side. “There will be no peace in the Balkans as long as the Tcham problem is solved” writes Miranda Vicker. Do Albanians really want to go to war again?

I posted:

I think you miss the real question even though you put it in the first article of your article. Why does the Balkan produce more history than it can consume?

I do not care that much, what problems Albanians produce in the Balkans, but 100’000 Albanians living in Switzerland, constant talk about Albanian terrorist groups does not make me sleep any safer.

Do we allow the same problems that you have on the Balkan to happen here in Switzerland, as more and more Albanians live here?