McDonald’s was just ordered by a Kentucky jury to pay 6.1 Million Dollars in a case involving a hoax call to a local McDonald’s restaurant. The caller identified himself as a police officer and ordered a McDonald’s assistant manager and her fiance to strip search and to subsequently sexually assault 18-year old Louise Ogborn, an employee. The assistant manager was fired, charged with unlawful imprisonment and received one year of probation. Her fiance received five years in prison for sexual assault. The caller, after it had been determined that this incident was just one in a sequence of hoax calls to fast-food restaurants, was tried for solicitation of sodomy and impersonating a police officer. However he was acquitted of all charges! The victim sued McDonald’s for 200 Million Dollars.
McDonald’s’ basic defense was that it had warned employees of the hoax calls and also had general policy statements in place regarding the legitimacy of strip searches. Their duty should have ended there, emphasizing that McDonald’s as a corporate entity cannot be held liable for the failure of individual restaurant managers to exercise good judgment. But unfortunately, according to ABC’s 20/20, McDonald’s’ lawyers topped off their defense with an assessment of the victim’s psychological trauma, which in my opinion had nothing to do with the question of whether McDonald’s as a corporate entity is to be held liable:
In one of the most explosive moments from the trial, a psychologist hired by McDonald’s testified that Ogborn had “grown in some way” from the horrific incident. Forensic psychologist Alan Friedman, who was paid more than $50,000 by the fast food company, acknowledged that [Ogborn] experienced post-traumatic stress, but asserted that she has grown from the experience and is more assertive and self-reliant than she was before the 3½-hour humiliating ordeal. Friedman reportedly stated that after interviewing Ogborn and performing a number of tests on her, “It’s not the ideal way to come to new growth, but some people grow through their trauma.”
USA Today reports that the assistant manager “who led the search…[asked] for $50 million, saying she was convicted of unlawfully detaining Ogborn because of the company’s failure to warn.” The jury awarded the assistant manager 1 Million Dollars! She was also not held liable in a suit the victim brought against her and other McDonalds managers. Apparently lack of common sense, downright stupidity and, of course, blaming big corporations makes money these days.
John Stossel comments on the Wisconsin’s State Legislature passing “Healthy Wisconsin” which will give “free” health care to everyone in the state. As usual, he is right on the money. Although I am not sure if the progressives (btw, what a contradiction in term) will learn the right lesson from this example, since they have not learned the lesson from other countries’ failed experiments with socialized medicine. Perhaps, they do not want to learn? Perhaps for some of them everyone having the same and equal access to health care (even if bad, and it will be worse than what we have now and definitely worse than what we could have in a truly market driven system) is more important than the life saving and improving innovations, and the cost reductions a free market health care system brings. But, on the other hand, could one really suppose them to be that misguided?
I am proud to say that my translation of Stephen Hicks’ essay “Ayn Rand and Contemporary Business Ethics” is now available online on his website. We are putting the word out to German sites as well.
The movement there is pretty small. Ayn Rand is not a well known name. The German translation of Atlas Shrugged ranks #18.227 on Amazon.de (#771 on Amazon.com, paperback) and the one of the Fountainhead ranks #47.245 (#6,503 on Amazon.com, Centennial Edition paperback). Her non-fiction seems not to be available in translation at all.
I recently finished the last installment of the Harry Potter series. I read the first four books in German, the American version of the 5th and 7th and the UK version of the 6th book. It was interesting to compare the UK to the American version. Although not the same books, I could clearly tell that the American editors had changed some of the British slang that Americans may not be familiar with. It got me thinking if there is not some treasure to be found in the editing, for some innocent British English phrases may be not so innocent in American English. And some may just be hilarious phrases in general. And sure enough, below are some of my favorites, courtesy of the Harry Potter Lexicon:
3rd Book
UK: “pop my clogs” (85); US: “kick the bucket” (110)
UK: “cracker hats” (170); US: “party hats” (230)
UK: “do his nut” (189); US: “go ballistic” (255)
4th Book
UK: “peckers up” (205); US: “spirits up” (227)
5th book
UK: “I got off with McLaggen” (264); US: “I hooked up with McLaggen” (282)
Apparently my emigration to the U.S. has caused some problems over in the eastern parts of my native Germany. As educated young women are leaving the area to seek opportunities in the western parts of the country (and presumably elsewhere on the globe), young men are left behind without partners or jobs in the eastern parts, a recent study found. The proposed solution: money from the government to raise the education levels of the affected demographic. Note though that the article also points out that young women are more ambitious in their studies than young men thus making more out of their education. How do governmental financial efforts to raise education levels fix that problem?
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