As we sit down, in Canada, to honour the Great Turkey in the sky, and we recall Columbo’s place in the litany, let us not forget the distinction between the butterball turkey, the wild turkey and Wild Turkey, and let us intone, in unison, the immortal words of WKRP’s Athur Carlson:

“As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”

For the play-by-play, listen to Les Nessman‘s “Not since the Hindenberg” (follow the Real Audio link). Video clips are no longer available on YouTube on account of copyright. . . . [more]

This is Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada, and so posting may not resume in full strength until Tuesday. In the meantime, because, after all, the ‘r’ in Slaw stands for research, I thought we Canadians might like to know something about what we’re about to eat or have already eaten or regret having eaten… I’m speaking, of course, about that seasonal food, turkey.

As if by plan, StatsCan’s Daily for Friday points us to Health Canada’s Canadian Nutrient File which in turn has a table of the nutrient value in some common foods, available in PDF. The full story . . . [more]

Librarianship as a career choice was a remarkable fit for me, because I like to know everything about everything or at least how to find it (don’t call it nosiness!). My undergraduate studies may have prepared me for playing Jeopardy but it was my library degree that made it possible for me to get that rarest of all things — a Perfect Job! As a librarian I get paid for following my passion — finding information, organizing information, getting information out to end users. In order to do my job correctly, I get to talk to people. By asking questions . . . [more]

Slaw is proud to appear, along with five other great blogs, in Binary Law’s list of “6 top legal info and legal web marketing blogs.” Tagged in one of those “top ten xxx” memes, Nick Holmes, the doyen of Binary Law, chose half a dozen blogs from his blogroll:

• Information Overlord
• LI Issues
• lo fi librarian
• Slaw (Canada)
• Lexblog (USA)
• Stem Legal (Canada)

Thanks, Nick. It’s good company you’ve put us in. . . . [more]

A few quick hits today as I’ve ushered 174 law students, mostly first years, through database training this week, and I’m nearing the end of my brain being productive.

I always find it interesting to observe the students during these training sessions to see how they relate to the technology. This year I noticed two interesting things. Firstly, in our training area the students can open either Firefox or Explorer and for the last few years when asked to open a browser Firefox has more often than not been their browser of choice. Not so this year, this year I . . . [more]

I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but in Ontario it’s still summer — and it looks like a gorgeous day pretty much all across this land according to the weather map. This means that it’s going to be hard to work this afternoon, harder than usual on a Friday, that is. Ever thoughtful, I’ve got just the solution: a Friday Fillip that will keep on giving for perhaps three or four hours. Here’s the deal.

One of my favourite sites is that of Coudal Partners, a graphics and advertising firm in Chicago. And my current favourite . . . [more]

I got my Buzzword invitation yesterday. Buzzword is the new online word processor that’s recently been acquired by Adobe. I have to tell you: it’s remarkable — unlike any other online word processor. The reason is Flash, that much maligned yet ubiquitous source of magic, which gives the application a fluid feel with almost no latency at all. The layout is beautiful and the functionality, even at this stage of development, is sufficient for most purposes.

It is simply one of the best online applications I’ve ever tried.

You should be able to go as a reader to this document . . . [more]

Some links to a podcast discussion of how the speed and collaborative nature of blogs is a real challenge to the traditional model of law journals.

In Santa Clara, a debate on Blogging, Scholarship, and the Bench and Bar Video: The event can be viewed by visiting this link.

Event login info: Username: aals, Password: scu2007

And a good discussion at Law.com, in a thoughtful posting and a further provocation, the debate continues. . . . [more]

A few days ago I posted about forensic linguistics and the unreliability of some witness statements. So I thought it might be interesting, though a stretch for Slaw I admit, to show you how photos are becoming even less reliable pictures of the truth than you thought they were, and incidentally introduce you to a set of graphics tools in the making that are going to be very hot.

What I want you to see in action is a “smart image resizer.” This exists now, thanks to Dr. Ariel Shamir, who now works for Adobe, and his technique known . . . [more]

The University of California, Berkeley announced today that it is posting the lectures from courses on YouTube.

“YouTube’s ongoing innovations create a great environment in which students and lifelong learners alike can discover, watch and share educational videos,” said Ben Hubbard, ETS co-manager of webcast.berkeley. “We are excited to make UC Berkeley videos available to the world on YouTube and will continue to expand our offerings.”

At the moment the offerings on the Berkeley Channel are mostly science courses, and there’s no law yet. A couple of the more accessible offerings include PACS 164A: Introduction to Nonviolence – Fall 2006 . . . [more]

Captus Press has notified customers today that it is discontinuing its Index to Federal and Ontario Statutes Online. Although the online version had a slightly clunky interface, it was reasonably priced and sometimes a useful trigger to identify possibly relevant Ontario or federal legislation on a given topic.

At the time Carswell stopped publishing the convenient print edition of this title back in 2000 or thereabout, I recall being surveyed by someone (likely Captus) about demand for the product and preferred format, etc. I always liked (and preferred) the print edition and wonder if there are plans to somehow . . . [more]

Today, any book bought online in England, even one published exclusively in another country, can ostensibly be subject to English libel law.