Monthly Archives: October 2007

Birth certificate by laptop / Geburtsurkunde schon im Krankenhaus

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I came across Birthtype birth certificate software because a colleague was wondering what ‘screen consent’ and ‘program consent’ on a Florida birth certificate meant. This may apply:

If you have a PC/Tablet you take it with you to the Mother’s bedside by signing on to your Wi-Fi you pull up the birth certificate you want and collect signatures. The parents, witnesses, and or notary can sign the data screen or the PDF form on the (PC/Tablet) computer. The signatures then become attached to the data. Since your TABLET IS A COMPUTER you can send the data with the signatures from the Mother’s bedside. If you are not using a signature pad, or PC/Tablet for signing you still can print out the forms and have them signed as you do now.

It sounds like ambulance chasers are being followed by birth certificate chasers. But then, the American hospital birth certificate, with prints of the baby’s feet, has been around for some time.

(The solution to the colleague’s query turned out to be something completely different: consent to the baby being screened by the Healthy Start Postnatal Risk Screening Instrument)

Necessity / Notstand

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The Vancouver Sun reports on the case of a homeless man who fasted for sixty days to attain spiritual perfection and then broke into a house, where the least of his criminal actions was that he ‘pigged out on cups of tea’.

He opened the presents looking for chocolates, raided the fridge and cupboards searching for delicacies, pigged out on cups of tea, chili, cream cheese and tortillas. He then puked and defecated in plastic bags before slipping into a stupor and curling up on the floor.

Still, Nelson convinced North Vancouver Provincial Court Judge Douglas Moss the foul behaviour was necessary or he would have died of cold and hunger.

Judge Moss acknowledged Nelson’s quest to reach spiritual perfection through fasting was “bizarre, to say the least” and noted the defence of necessity is rarely heard in Canadian courts.

Yet he acquitted Nelson.

The appeal court has now called for a retrial. Whether Jim Nelson attained spiritual perfection is not recorded.

I won’t go into the details of rechtfertigender Notstand and entschuldigender Notstand in German law. Here is something on it.

(Thanks to Legal Juice)

Machine translation for weblogs / Maschinelle Übersetzung für Weblogs

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At Real Lawyers Have Blogs, Kevin O’Keefe asks ‘Is automatic translation for law blogs useful?‘ and comes up with the answer ‘No’.

He refers to Des Walsh’s entry ‘Is Automatic Translation for Business Blogs Useful?‘.

I would just let people use their own automatic translation system, on Google for example, to get the gist. I think using the little flags on your site invites trouble. I remember jurabilis had this once and it translated Alexander Hartmann as Alexander hard man. Well, I suppose it could have been worse.

Thanks to Ed. at Blawg Review.

Franglish: le poolish

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I am not getting round to blogging a whole list of topics because I have too much else to do. Here is a sop: I was looking at a baking glossary (DE, EN, IT, FR, NL, ES) that Christiane recommended to see if it looked reliable – it does – and I was struck by the French word for sponge (Vorteig), le poolish. I was even more surprised to discover its origin, from the English word Polish. Yet it refers to the sort of sponge made with baker’s yeast (sourdough is levain). Perhaps this ‘via Vienna’ is the answer:

Ce mode de fabrication a son origine en Pologne, et ce sont les boulangers viennois qui l’introduisirent en France pour Marie Antoinette.

(Before she told them to eat cake). I still don’t see where the ‘English’ came from.