Best wishes to all those celebrating Burns Night, and even those who aren’t.

Yahoo Answers dealt with the question of whether it is safe and ethical to eat road-kill haggis, and Mostly Eating recommends a haggis and winter tzatziki wrap for the leftovers. Winter tzatziki is apparently identical to summer tzatziki (via the Guardian).

Incidentally, the OED says the derivation of ‘haggis’ is unknown, but until the beginning of the 18th century it was equally common in England.

This is a story from May 2007 that has only just reached Legal Juice (and me). I’ll just note this for translation purposes:

Netzeitung, German:

Mit einem lebensgefährlichen Atemalkoholwert von 5,08 Promille hat die Polizei in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern einen Rollstuhlfahrer aus dem Verkehr gezogen. Der 31-Jährige sei am Samstagabend einer Streifenwagenbesatzung in Ventschow aufgefallen, weil er mitten auf der Straße fuhr, teilte die Polizei am Montag mit.

Der Spiegel, English:

When he was given a breathalyzer test, they were stunned to find that he was a whopping ten times over the legal limit for drivers. He had a 0.5 percent blood alcohol content (BAC) — the legal limit in Germany is 0.05 percent.

Comparable UK text from the Guardian:

Mr Paul had 176 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood; the legal limit in the UK is 80 milligrams while it is 50 milligrams in France, the hearing was told.

Explanation from a UK drink-driving site:

The UK legal limit for drivers is 80 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood, often referred to as a BAC or blood-alcohol concentration. In US terms this would be expressed as 0.08%. This is alternatively expressed in terms of breath alcohol – 35 礸 (microgrammes) per 100 ml (which is now the usual official measure in the UK), or alcohol in the urine – 107 mg per 100 ml.

This is often reckoned to be equivalent to two pints of ordinary strength beer which, for a man of average weight, is broadly true, but should not be used as a general rule – see Drink-Driving Guidelines. It is impossible to draw an accurate correlation between the amount of alcohol consumed and the resulting peak BAC, and anyone trying to “drink up to the limit” runs a serious risk of exceeding it.

Yesterday’s Latin fable of the day at Laura Gibbs’ eLatin eGreek eLearn site was a very old lawyer joke about a farmer and a goat.

Rusticus quidam, gravi lite implicitus, ad quendam iurisconsultum accesserat, ut eo patrono sese explicaret.

Main page of the site.

(Thanks to Trevor)

I suppose that like the verb table, continue has diametrically opposed meanings in AmE and BE.

Here’s an original Unopposed Motion to Continue Trial due to Conflict with the LSU Tiger’s [sic] National Championship Game.

It was successful, what’s more, and so were the Tigers. Maybe the latter is not so surprising, given that, according to a footnote, the Ohio team are also known as the Slowhios.

(Via Legal Juice)

Matthew Allen at swissinfo reports on problems for German and Swiss sausages now that the EU has banned Brazilian sausage skins.

The cervelat was facing extinction from the national menu following an import ban on Brazilian cow intestines used to wrap the iconic sausage. Switzerland was compelled to adhere to European Union regulations safeguarding against the risk of Mad Cow disease.

But the versatile Brazilian product is a tough act to follow, both allowing the sausage to curve pleasantly when grilled and being easy to peel when eaten cold. The skin retains an aesthetically appealing colour and tastes good.

This kind of outcry has not been heard in Germany, so do the Swiss care more about their sausages than the Germans?

Liselotte Steffen of the Swiss consumers’ forum agreed that the Swiss take more pride in their sausages than the Germans.
“The real expert does not eat sausages with mustard. In Germany they eat curry sausages with mustard which shows that they do not appreciate tastes in the right way,” she told swissinfo.

Hmm. I think those words may be actionable.

Spiegel online has more:

Cervelat is made with beef, pork, bacon, ice water, salt, fresh onions and spices, but without casing made from the bowels of Zebu cows, the Swiss argue it can’t be made at all. Büttiker’s colleague at the Swiss Meat Association, Balz Horber summed up the problem: The Brazilian cow intestines are the only ones that are as “polyvalent as the Swiss Air Force” — an apparent reference to its versatility.

Here’s the original:

Rindfleisch, Schweinefleisch, Wurstspeck, Schwarte, Eis-Wasser, Salz, Frischzwiebeln und Gewürze – das steckt drin, in der Wurst, aber ohne brasilianischen Darm vom Zebu-Rind geht gar nichts. Büttikers Fleischverband-Kollege Balz Horber drückt sich so aus: Nur dieser Darm sei “so polyvalent wie die Schweizer Luftwaffe”.

I’m not totally convinced by Pillipp‘s marzipan version, but it tasted OK.