Eideard

A popular transsexual Turkish singer went on trial charged with trying to turn the public against military service.

Bulent Ersoy could face more than two years in prison for saying during a live television show that if she had children, she would not want them to join the army to fight Kurdish rebels.

Military service is obligatory for men over the age of 20 in Turkey, and it is a crime to speak against it.

In an indictment against Ersoy, prosecutor Ali Cakir accused the singer of “alienating the public toward military service” and of affecting the morale of the soldiers and their families. He asked that the singer be punished with between nine and 30 months in prison.

Turkey thinks they’re modernizing their legal system well enough to be welcomed aboard the EU. Europeans remember the warlovers in their own not-so-distant past.

It’s official. Hungry foreign hordes craving a fix of diced chicken fried with chili and peanuts during the Beijing Olympics will be able to shout “kung pao chicken!” and have some hope of getting just that.

As it readies for an influx of visitors for the August Games, the Chinese capital has offered restaurants an official English translation of local dishes whose exotic names and alarming translations can leave foreign visitors frustrated and famished.

If officials have their way, local newspapers reported on Wednesday, English-speaking visitors will be able to order “beef and ox tripe in chili sauce,” an appetizer, rather than “husband and wife’s lung slice.”

“Bean curd made by a pock-marked woman,” as the Beijing Youth Daily rendered the spicy Sichuanese dish, is now “Mapo tofu.” And “chicken without sexual life” becomes mere “steamed pullet.”

I well remember the Bitter Tea of General Yen.

Since we offtimes have a predictable number of Freedom-Lovers Who Support Censorship clustered like a miniature lynch mob around the concept of Free Speech, one of our cast suggested we include a Stage 2 Alert for the videogame world:

Another day, another British tabloid finding something in a videogame that has outraged the “great” UK public. This one is an absolute classic, too. In GTA IV, there is a spoof Web site called littlelacysurprisepageant.com, which can be accessed on Liberty City’s Internet service. The site is “closed down” by the LCPD, and if you access it, you instantly achieve a five-star wanted level. The Sun has, naturally, found some people that are hilariously over-reacting.

“I was looking on the Internet for cheats and the name of this caught my eye as my daughter is called Lacey,” bellowed Jason Deschoolmeester, while steam possibly shot out from his ears. “This crosses the line. The makers have obviously sat around and discussed putting this in, and it’s not on. What will they do next?”

“It’s disgusting. It could lead people to indulge in things like that. It is totally sick. I won’t play it again.”

It looks like I can never play Grand Theft Auto again, lest children everywhere face the wrath of my almighty donking vadgehammer. So, how many children have you all raped since playing GTA IV?

Thanks, Mister Justin

The Associated Press took a grandiose Facebook-style faceplant…when it attempted to impose strict guidelines on the blogosphere.

Now, just like Facebook’s initial unapologetic enthusiasm for its privacy-violating Beacon program followed by Facebook’s effusive apology for its privacy-violating Beacon program, the AP is bowing to the will of the angry Internet masses and backing off. Sort of.

As part of the big mea culpa, the AP’s Jim Kennedy pledged to meet this week with Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association (which is, you know, kind of like meeting with the United Organization of Anarchists), and work up some sort of AP/Blogger Accord.

So mark the date kids, this is yet another moment in Internet history we’ll someday look back on in Wikipedia when we scratch our heads and try and figure out how cyber rights and responsibilities got to wherever this whole World Wide Web thing is going.

It all started with a letter from AP…to the Drudge Retort. AP requested that the Drudge Retort remove seven posts featuring quotes from AP stories. From there, it blew up into yet another full-on Internet conflict between Big Business and the Little Guys…

So – RTFA.

Southwest Cove is on public land that isn’t visible from the highway. In the summertime, the beach offers a different view: naked sunbathers. Southwest Cove is one of the most famous nude beaches in the country, but there’s a move under way to make people put their suits back on.

For decades, people have come to visit the beach, which is listed in nudist guides and on Web sites. All are welcome, naked or not, while cameras without permission and sexual behavior are forbidden.

The beach is on public land that isn’t visible from the highway. The state — which has no laws banning public nudity — advises visitors with a sign at a trail head leading to the beach that warns “be advised, you may encounter nude bathers.”

But some Westmore residents want to be able to use the beach without having to worry they or their kids will confront a naked person. They’re pushing the town to pass an anti-nudity ordinance

Tony Strange said, “All we’re looking for, you know, is no nudity on the public beach,” he said. “You want to be naked in private, fine. … I just don’t want you to prance around like a puffed up chicken in front of my kids and think it’s OK.”

Yeah, yeah – it’s for the children. Right. But, the fracking nude beach was there when you moved in, Tony.

There are two kinds of incomers. Those who find a lovely place, move in and don’t change a thing. And those who find a lovely place, move in – and try to turn it into their own private Disneyland.

They should get a Clio Award for this one.

Thanks, K B