In last week’s Weekly Checklist of federal government publications, the 2006 annual report by Justice Canada on applications for ministerial review in cases of possible miscarriages of justice is listed:

“Under Canadian law, the Minister of Justice has the legal authority to review a criminal conviction on the basis that there may have been a miscarriage of justice (…)”

“If the Minister is satisfied that those matters provide a reasonable basis to conclude that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred, the Minister may grant the convicted person a remedy – a referral of the case to the court of appeal

The B.C. People’s Law School has been around for over 30 years. I should have known. Thanks to Stan Rule’s Rule of Law I’m finally clued in. He points us to a recent brochure “A Death in Your Family: Practical Considerations on the Death of a Loved One.” There are a dozen and a half other publications available on the website, and a list of planned talks on various legal topics. Brochures are available in an impressive variety of languages. . . . [more]

There’s an enjoyable, short article on Edward Tufte in this week’s New York Magazine: “The Minister of Information” by Christopher Bonanos. Tufte’s latest book, Beautiful Evidence, was (self)published in 2006. His work is interesting for us, I think, because, in the words of the article, “Pretty much anyone who writes or presents can learn from Tufte,” and my guess is that we’ve been know to do both.

This is the book that talks about “sparklines,”There’s a fairly extensive discussion and a draft of the sparklines chapter on Tufte’s website. I used this site to create the . . . [more]

Two months ago (to the day, as it happens) I noticed that in CanLII‘s new system when a search brought up a case there was no easy way to capture a tidy URL for it. Daniel Poulin took the time out of his undoubtedly busy schedule of road-testing the renovated facility to tell us that the matter would be fixed and a “human readable” URL, as he put it, made available. I’m happy, but not surprised, to report that it has indeed been fixed.

As before, my test search term was Hamilton v. Open Window Bakery, entered into . . . [more]

I have increasingly had the feeling of frustration with Microsoft Word as software for research and scholarship and I recall that in the 90’s, Bob Franson from UBC hosted at least one conference where he introduced a software programme called Nota Bene. I have played around with this somewhat. It can be quite complicated, but looks like a very powerful tool if you can master it. Does anyone else have experience using Nota Bene or more knowledge of its use in law and legal research that they can share? . . . [more]

Seeing all of the attention, I have just downloaded a new browser, Safari which is supposed to be lightning fast and a quantum improvement over IE and MF. Simon F will likely tell us that he’s been using it for years, but this is the first time that those of us in the Microsoft Windows and Vista worlds have had a chance to see what it looks like.

It downloaded quickly, and I’ve played with it for an hour or so. It has some useful features, though I prefer the look, feel and speed of Mozilla Firefox.

I don’t know . . . [more]

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates have a great podcast over at the D5 Conference which is available at the Itunes store.

The rivalry is friendly – and the war seems to have been a media hype. Don’t miss the initial video-clips from the early 1980s, with Gates looking about 28.

And it’s also revealing about the shape of the future. . . . [more]

Some time back I subscribed to the Canadian law blogs that Slawyer and Vancouver Law Librarian Steven Matthews so helpfully listed on his VLL site. Of the 60 or so, many have fallen by the wayside. My feed reader let’s me find “dinosaurs” — those blawgs that haven’t kept up with developments in whatever period of time I choose. Here’s my list of those that haven’t had a post within the last 30 days or more:

A few others are on my watch list; for me, it has to be an extraordinarily good blog for me to hang in there . . . [more]

A new Punjabi search engine, Aflatoon, launched a few days ago. It clearly aims to tap into a regional market, and, according to interviews given to the papers, particularly that involving cell-phone users seeking quick, locally useful information. Its limited scope and teething pains (it doesn’t seem able to handle more than one word in the search box, and when it finds nothing you simply get… nothing) mean it likely won’t be useful in our work — however it might be something you’d use as a last check to see if you’ve missed some Indian reference you wanted. Still, . . . [more]

Which is how the Educational Testing Service makes its money — though no profit. And the big test hereabouts is the LSAT, of course. Some of you won’t want to go within ten feet of the LSAT again, and I understand completely; but others of you may never have seen the beast and, so, may be interested in discovering what all the fuss is about. You can do that by examining an online version — a test of the test, so to speak — that contains the kinds of questions the answers to which can make or break a . . . [more]

I’m sure some/many Slaw-ers have seen this, but for those you who have not, I think this is a great summary (especially for those of you who are visual learners) of Web 2.0 (in about 4.5 minutes).

The Machine is Us/ing Us…

Credits at the end of the clip. . . . [more]

My day to praise websites. And while I could colour The New Yorker website with a vaguely lawyerly hue, this one is definitely something else altogether: Rouxbe is a brand new Canadian “how-to” cooking website. With food the new porn, there is a plethora of cooking sites out there, most of them okay and a lot of them very much sub par. Rouxbe (pronounced “ruby” I imagine) is simply excellent in almost every respect.

You’re presented with a list of recipes on video; you can watch a brief preview or the full recipe. The full recipe takes you step by . . . [more]