Couple win right to name son Lego
A Swedish couple have won the right to name their baby son Lego after a legal battle.
Couples in Sweden have previously run into trouble with officials over the names Ikea, Veranda, Metallica and the use of Elvis for a girl.
But the Swedish Administrative Court of Appeals has now overruled an earlier decision to stop a couple naming their child after the brightly coloured plastic building blocks.
From the BBC:
America is, I think, the only country in the world which permits advertising of drugs which are available only through your doctor.
The insidious message is simple; if your doctor is not offering you this drug, maybe you should be asking for it.
Americans do accept advertising in areas where it does not tend to appear elsewhere.
It is not uncommon here for a sports presenter to be required to break away from the main business in hand to draw your attention to the succulence of a sausage or the ruggedness of a truck.
Prescription drugs though are surely different. After all, the whole point of them is that it is not considered safe to let us simply buy them over the counter.
They are so strong or so habit forming that it is up to the doctor to decide that we really need them.
Advertising subtly changes that relationship by sending us in to see the doctor filled with nameless dreads about the symptoms of diseases we might have, and a detailed knowledge of the drugs that might help us.
The TV spots in other words insidiously furnish us with the tools to torture ourselves.
And then there’s this:
UK likely to reject TV product placement
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain has indicated it will reject proposals from the European Union that would allow broadcasters to raise money from product placements in television.
In a speech on Wednesday, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham said he could understand why the industry wanted to move towards having branded products on the screen — which is increasingly common in the United States — but he could also see the risk.
Excess consumption is practically an American religion. But as anyone with a filled-to-the-gills closet knows, the things we accumulate can become oppressive. With all this stuff piling up and never quite getting put away, we’re no longer huddled masses yearning to breathe free; we’re huddled masses yearning to free up space on a countertop. Which is why people are so intrigued by the 100 Thing Challenge, a grass-roots movement in which otherwise seemingly normal folks are pledging to whittle down their possessions to a mere 100 items.
Billionaire former presidential candidate Ross Perot is starting a Web site to highlight the “economic crisis” facing the country because of deficit spending.
The Web site announced Monday is PerotCharts.com, a play on Perot’s use of economic charts in political advertisements during his 1992 and 1996 presidential campaigns.
In a statement Monday, Perot said the nation’s debt reached $9.4 trillion in April and is rising more than $1 billion a day. “We are leaving our children and grandchildren with debt they cannot possibly pay,” he said.
The Web site, which Perot said is nonpartisan, includes a video of Perot, a blog and a chart presentation explaining the nation’s economic problems.
The site was praised by David Walker, former U.S. comptroller, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and former U.S. Sen. and Oklahoma Gov. David Boren.
Perot, 77, founded Electronic Data Systems Corp. and later Perot Systems Corp., both of which provide technology services to other companies and government agencies. Last year, Forbes magazine estimated his personal wealth at $4.4 billion.
