The public prosecutor’s department in Bielefeld explains how to phone the right extension.

(via Udo Vetter’s law blog)

I thought the TLS was above typos:

bq. It would be possible to have a system of criminal law which merely prescribed all “anti-social conduct”, of whatever label we felt it appropriate to identify behaviour meriting state punishment, and left it to the courts to decide both what counted as “anti-social conduct” and what if any punishment should be imposed. In such a system there would be only one crime.

(On Louis Blom-Cooper and Terence Morris, With Malice Aforethought. TLS November 18 2005)

Still, a subscription often tempts me, with the possibility of having access to the whole online archive… but when would one have time to read it?)

Try entering www.bundeskanzler.de in the browser and see what happens.

(From PapaScott)

Lawfinder, about which I know not enough, is now largely open to free browsing.

More information on the Infolaw Weblog.

This blog is semi-closed for flu, but I must mention this. The term murder board is apparently entrenched in the USA. From Encarta:

bq. 1. communication rehearsal for press conference: a rehearsal to prepare a public figure for a press conference during which staff members put difficult questions to him or her in a rapid-fire manner

bq. 2. military military selection board: a military selection, examination, or promotion board

It’s been used particularly for the grilling of Supreme Court nominees.

But it seems unlikely to have come from the German term Mordkommission (murder squad), apparently, according to William Safire, once so translated:

bq. The phrase has a literal base in German criminology: In 1916, The Fitchburg Daily Sentinel in Massachusetts reported, “Germany’s Police: How the ‘Murder Board’ Works to Solve a Mystery.” The current Justice Ministry in Berlin confirms that the term used was Mordkommission.

(Thanks to Derek)

Hours of harmless fun with Merriam-Webster’s online Open Dictionary:

Welcome to Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary where you can 1) submit and share entries that aren’t already in our Online Dictionary, and 2) browse entries submitted by other members of the Merriam-Webster Online community.

Most recent additions at the time of posting this are Sith, Jedi, snipid, deambigulate and fencil. Deambigulate is curiously similar to disambiguate. Snipid (‘the smell of the autumn air – My it sure is snipid outside’) and fencil seem based on one unattributed quote each. This, I believe, is really true (readers, don’t try this at home, as they say):

stiffy (noun) : A 3.5″ floppy computer disk. Term used primarily & widely in South Africa, where the term ‘floppy’ refers mainly to the older, larger 5.25″ disks (as they where floppy, while the smaller, current ones are stiff).
Please insert the stiffy into the A: drive of the PC.

At least that illustration helps. Some illustrative sentences could refer to almost anything: ‘Have you scrubbed the Dunny yet Tim?’ (Sure enough, the big MW has two dunny entries, but not for this meaning).

We used to collect effle – English that no-one would ever use except in a book teaching foreign languages or English as a foreign language. Now I wonder if one could collect iffle – illustrative material that doesn’t.

(Posted by Mike on pt at Yahoo groups)