Author Archives: MMarks

German juror in hot water

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Miklas Scholz, professor of civil engineering at Salford University, caused a trial in which he was a juror to collapse because he researched the defendant on the internet. He claims that when the judge told the jurors they would be ‘in hot water’ if they did this, he did not understand what was meant.

The Independent writes (with mugshot):

“I just did not understand what the phrase ‘in hot water’ meant in this context. It just seems meaningless,” he told the Daily Telegraph.

“I have written many journals so I am used to writing in proper English and proper sentences and wouldn’t use words and phrases like being ‘in hot water’ to describe being in trouble because it is not correct.

“They don’t mean anything, definitely not in the context of looking on the internet.

“You would say someone is ‘in trouble’ and the judge should have said that.”

Sharon Byrd

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I was sorry to hear that Sharon Byrd died last year – in March 2014 in fact. She was only a couple of weeks younger than me. I completely missed it but I hadn’t been in touch for years. I copy below her bio on the Beck Verlag website. (By the way, you can see forthcoming publications there and I see that new editions of Dietl Lorenz in both DE>EN and EN>DE are announced for 2016).

When I was teaching various classes on English law, legal English and translation at the Instit für Fremdsprachen und Auslandskunde in Erlangen, Sharon was teaching legal English and US law at the university there, and she let my students come to her classes. I sat in once and watched her technique of getting the law students to argue about whether it was acceptable to throw out evidence because it had been gathered in an unreliable way. Although she was particularly interested in criminal law – she taught everything – her greatest interest was Kant. I was impressed and envious of her knowledge of philosophy, and quite incapable of understanding what she and her husband wrote on Kant and criminal law. Her first degree was in philosophy.

Sharon also taught at Augsburg and later for some years at Jena, where she helped her students to great success in moot court competitions.

There’s an obituary (PDF) by Heather M. Roff in the Newsletter of the North American Kant Society.

Prof. Dr. B. Sharon Byrd

Tätigkeitsschwerpunkte

• Angloamerican Jurisprudenc
• Angloamerican law
• Rechtsenglisch (USA)

Weitere Tätigkeiten

1996 Hon.-Prof. Univ. Erlangen

Studium

Studium Rechtswissenschaft, Philosophie

Beruflicher Werdegang

• 1969 B. A. Smith College-Department of Philosophy Northhampton Massachusetts/USA
• 1972 J. D. Univ. of California Los Angeles
• 1987 LL. M., 1991 J. S. D. Columbia Univ. New York
• Prof. Univ. Jena
• Leiterin Law & Language Center Univ. Jena

Veröffentlichungen

• Einführung in die anglo-amerikanische Rechtssprache 1997, 2. A. 2001
• Anglo-Amerikanisches Vertrags- und Deliktsrecht 1998
• Romain Alfred/Bader Hans Anton/Byrd Sharon B. Wörterbuch der Rechts- und Wirtschaftssprache Teil 1 Englisch-Deutsch, 5. A. 2000
• Romain Alfred/Byrd Sharon B./Thielecke Carola Wörterbuch der Rechts- und Wirtschaftssprache Teil 2 Deutsch-Englisch, 4. A. 2002

Right-side cryptorchidism

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The story that Hitler had only one testicle has been in the news again, following the publication of a book by Peter Fleischmann. I thought this had long been confirmed, but it seems that publications during the Cold War may have been suspect.

German historian Professor Peter Fleischmann claims to have discovered the results of a medical examination on Hitler after his arrest in 1923. The reports confirm that Hitler suffered from a birth defect known as “right-side cryptorchidism” – an undescended right testicle.

The records were thought to have been lost but resurfaced at an auction in Bavaria in 2010. They were quickly confiscated by the Bavarian government before being studied at Erlangen-Nuremberg University.

This would disprove reports that it was blown off in the First World War.

Hydrophobic in Hackney

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It’s ‘peeback’ time in Shoreditch and Dalston reports the use of paint that urinates back at you. Who first had the idea that Ultra-Ever Dry paint would work like this? Apparently Hamburg beat San Francisco to it.

San Francisco is not the first city to implement urine-repelling paint. The city of Hamburg, Germany has also used the paint and saw a decrease in people who use the streets as a bathroom.

“Based on Hamburg, we know this pilot program is going to work,” Nuru said. “It will reduce the number of people using the walls. I really think it will deter them.”