The interesting blog, Computational Legal Studies, has a recent post on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s posts to the Islamic forum, Gawaher. (Abdulmutallab is the person who tried to blow up a plane on Christmas day.) All of his 310 posts have been downloaded by NEFA, which has made them available online in a zip file. (I have no idea what NEFA stands for and I’ve been unable to find out. There’s a… creepy element to this “anti-terrorism” site, though, I have to say.)

Some very basic analysis of the content of the posts has been done at . . . [more]

With the controversial prorogation of Parliament last week comes a new grassroots movement, Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament. Started only a few days ago by University of Alberta student Christopher White, this group is organized via a Facebook group and currently boasts over 30,000 members.

The idea behind the group is to ask Members of Parliament to return to Parliament despite the prorogation. The precedent being cited is the so-called Long Parliament that, according to Wikipedia, took place in England in the 1600s after the English Civil War. The Facebook group includes a sample letter to MPs inviting them to . . . [more]

Check out The Globe and Mail’s list of technology that you didn’t know existed ten years ago but you now can’t live without. Its a hoot. The tech on the list that I personally need to survive:

• the iPod
• Text-messaging
• Wi-Fi
• the BlackBerry

. . . [more]

Title etiology: I took a week off Slaw posting while on vacation, “This Fortnight’s Biotech Highlights” sounds lame, and I saw Avatar*, so I thought “go big, or go home.” Voilà. Plus, it was a week of retrospection at The Cross-Border Biotech Blog. So, if your New Year’s resolution is “learn more about biotech,” here’s the place to start:

Several trends were key to business planning in biotech in 2009, but four stood out as the highlights because of reader interest and news volume: follow-on biologics; comparative effectiveness and personalized medicine; shifting IP constituencies and electronic . . . [more]

Robert J. Ambrogi is telling tales. This one involves a soldier supposedly dishonorably discharged for gang rape, a critical blawger, and a whole slew of unsuspecting lawyers participating online – myself included. . . . [more]

I know it’s a long way till Friday, but this gag deserves a Monday mini-fillip:

Google is honouring the birthdate of Isaac Newton today. They’ve got a special doodle for the purpose. Give yourself a treat and go to the Google home page, and once there, roll the cursor over the doodle.

  . . . [more]

It’s been a little while since I wrote about The Law Librarian podcast created by Richard Leiter and available over at BlogTalkRadio and iTunes. I am one of several regular panelists; panelists now take turns participating in the shows depending on the topics. Richard has also expanded the schedule from once a month to once a month plus frequent updates, which will hopefully mean a new show every couple of weeks.

In case you missed them, the last two shows are:

Google Scholar Legal Opinions and Journals: A Conversation with Anurag Acharya (Dec. 4/09)
– Anurag Acharya is a . . . [more]

Back in November I wrote about the Holiday Law Firm Challenge for the Toronto Daily Bread Food Bank running from November 23 to December 11, 2009. The final tally is in!

According to Kristin Thomas, Development Officer at the Daily Bread:

…the law firm challenge raised $255,131.10 in food and funds for Daily Bread Food Bank. A big thank you goes out to Blakes for organizing the challenge.

The winner overall was Bennett Jones LLP, and the winner per capita was Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP.

Congratulations and thanks to all the firms who participated and firm members . . . [more]

Simon Chester previously mentioned the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) move towards Internationalised Domain Names.

One of the unanticipated consequences is how words in non-Latin scripts convert within browsers in unicode.

Nigel Kendall of the Times Online explains,

The problem for Western users is that the internet addresses of many well-known companies, such as Apple, Yahoo, Google and PayPal, can also be rendered to look identical in Cyrillic scripts, such as Russian.

To a Roman-reading eye, an e-mail containing a link to any one of these sites might appear genuine,

. . . [more]

I’m listening to Spark on CBC. Nora Young just wrapped an interview with Seth Godin. The main topic of discussion was Godin’s new e-book What Matters Now , and his forthcoming book-book Linchpin: Are you Indispensable?

What Matters Now is an interesting call to action (or at least call to thought). In the interview, Godin explains his motive in giving information away through his blog and other free e-publishing projects. If you haven’t heard the interview, it’s well worth a listen.

At the end of the talk, Nora Young asked Godin for a “homework” assignment for listeners. I was . . . [more]

With the arrival of 2010, the new Rules of Civil Procedure came into effect in Ontario, as announced on the website of the Ministry of the Attorney General. Rules were substantially reformed in an effort to achieve Honourable Coulter A. Osborne's goal to “make the civil justice system more accessible and affordable." The reforms include changes to Summary Judgment, Mediation, Third Party Claim, Discovery, and dozens of other rules. Of particular interest to Slaw readers, the changes related to discovery represent a positive step towards control over the time and expense associated with civil proceedings in this new era of e-discovery.

I am currently looking at a variety of e-book readers and may indulge in one in the near future. Perhaps similar to choosing countertops for our kitchen, no e-reader is perfect and offers all the features one may want. If you have selected one you love, please let me know. At the current time, I am using the Barnes & Nobles e-book software on my iphone and it’s pretty good, but the iphone screen is small for reading for a lengthy amount of time.
On a related point, I am interested in publishing an e-book. I would like to hear . . . [more]