Eideard

An Islamic court in Nigeria has banned a rights group from hosting debates on the Twitter and Facebook websites on the use of amputations as a punishment.

The court, in the northern city of Kaduna, backed a case brought by a pro-Sharia group arguing that the forums would mock the Sharia system. The rights group, the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, said it would appeal against the ruling.

Sharia judges can order amputations of limbs for petty crimes in some states…

The newspaper ThisDay quoted the judge’s ruling as saying:”An order is hereby given restraining the respondents either by themselves or their agents from opening a chat forum on Facebook, Twitter, or any blog for the purpose of the debate on the amputation of Malam Buba Bello Jangebe.”

In 2000, Jangebe made history as the first person in Nigeria to have an amputation carried out under Islamic law after being found guilty of stealing a cow.

The Civil Rights Congress said it had started a Twitter feed, blog and Facebook debate on Jangebe so “Nigerians could air their opinions on Sharia law as a whole”…

The Sharia code runs alongside the secular state system in 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states, and citizens can choose which system they deal with.

You might think I’d tire of outrage after a half-century of political activism. Between the jingoism, deceit and corruption of the land I live in – and the hypocrisy and greed parceled among political flunkies in the rest of the world, I’ve had enough to be concerned with.

Still, nothing trips my trigger like some backwards bugger with a special hat on his head making life and death decisions founded upon ignorance from several centuries in the dimly-lit past. And whole chunks of the world nodding their heads in agreement.

A suspected pirate has been shot dead as private guards repelled an attack on a cargo ship off Somalia, in what may have been the first such incident. Guards aboard the Panamanian-flagged MV Almezaan returned fire after the ship was attacked – the third time in a year that pirates had targeted the ship.

The EU naval force (Navfor) said a team from an EU warship found the dead man after responding to a distress call. Six other suspected pirates were detained by a Spanish Navfor ship…

The ESPS Navarra found one pirate mother ship and two skiffs. The mother ship was destroyed after the suspects were taken into custody, Navfor said.

Bullet-holes were found in the skiffs in which they were found, he added…

The Navarra received a distress signal early on Tuesday from a merchant ship off the Somali coast and sped to the area, Navfor said in a statement…

Pirates had launched an attack on the MV Almezaan. This was successfully repelled by members of an “armed private vessel protection detachment” on board the ship, who returned fire.

A second attack was also repelled and the pirates fled the area, Navfor said.

A helicopter from the Navarra sighted the suspected pirates’ boats and ordered them to stop, firing warning shots when they refused to do so. When a team from the Navarra boarded the vessels, they found three suspected pirates in one skiff and three in the second, along with the body of a fourth man…

Somalia has not had a functioning government for nearly two decades and analysts believe that attacks on shipping will continue as long as there is no central government capable of taking on the pirate gangs.

Bravo! One less to worry about.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Nearly half of Americans believe the health care reform bill signed by President Barack Obama on Tuesday was a “good thing,” according to a new Gallup poll.

Forty-nine percent of the 1,005 adults polled nationwide Monday said health reform was a “good thing,” compared with 40 percent who said it was bad…

“Passage of health care reform was a clear political victory for President Obama and his allies in Congress,” Gallup’s Lydia Saad wrote in her analysis of the survey, released Tuesday. “While it also pleases most of his Democratic base nationwide, it is met with greater ambivalence among independents and with considerable antipathy among Republicans.”

I’m a second generation poll/survey student. I don’t know anyone in the business who doesn’t consider Gallup’s history as anything other than conservative – for decades.

I’m not certain that I’d include Obama’s allies in Congress as getting much of the credit.

Congressional Democrats were damned with faint praise, with 32 percent of respondents saying they did well in addressing healthcare. Twenty percent judged Democrats’ efforts only fair and 33 percent said they did poorly, results indicated.

Republicans earned high marks from 26 percent of respondents; 34 percent said the congressional GOP did fair and 34 percent said the minority party did a poor job on healthcare.

Reads to me like the Democrats suck! And the Republicans suck more!

A tiny island claimed for years by India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal has disappeared beneath the rising seas, scientists in India say.

The uninhabited territory south of the Hariabhanga river was known as New Moore Island to the Indians and South Talpatti Island to the Bangladeshis.

Recent satellites images show the whole island under water, says the School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta. Its scientists say other nearby islands could also vanish as sea levels rise.

The BBC’s Chris Morris in Delhi says there has never been a permanent settlement on the now-vanished island, which even in its heyday was never more than two metres (about six feet) above sea level…

In the past, however, the territorial dispute led to visits by Indian naval vessels and the temporary deployment of a contingent from the country’s Border Security Force.

“What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming,” said Professor Sugata Hazra…

Climate deniers will not take much heed of the reality.

After all, this is all talk coming from furriners. They don’t realize that the United States is not only immune from studies of evolution – geology and geography, oceanography, climatology are equally suspect in the eyes of True Believers and Real Patriots.

Americans are spending more time watching television and surfing the Internet simultaneously, and nearly 60 percent of TV viewers use the Web at the same time at least once a month…

“The initial fear was that Internet and mobile video and entertainment would slowly cannibalize traditional TV viewing, but the steady trend of increased TV viewership alongside expanded simultaneous usage argues something quite different,” said Nielsen Co media product leader Matt O’Grady.

The report for 2009′s fourth quarter, which tracked viewing across TV, the Internet and mobile phones, found a 35 percent rise in the amount of time Americans used the TV and Internet simultaneously compared with the same quarter in 2008.

It found Americans now spend 3.5 hours per month watching TV while on the Internet.

Active mobile video users grew by 57 percent over the year to 17.6 million from 11.2 million people, with much of the increase attributed to the growth of smartphones.

The report found that Americans now watch about 35 hours of TV per week and two hours of time-shifted TV via video recorders (DVR), with 25 to 34-year-olds making more use of time-shifting than any other age group.

DVRs are now found in 35 percent of American households, the report said…

“We seem to have an almost insatiable appetite for media, with online and mobile programing only adding to it,” he said.

Our household certainly doesn’t match the stats. Fewer hours of TV with 90% either running through a DirecTV HD-DVR whether the feed is satellite or download-on-demand plus content downloaded from the Web via iTunes and fed through an AppleTV.

We keep at least one of our laptops in the living room and it’s in use probably 5-10% of the time that the TV is on – especially if we’re watching proper football or Formula One. It will be replaced by an iPad sometime in the next month or so.

A proposal to put the legalization of marijuana in California to a vote this November is causing some growers of the plant in the state to worry about a sharp drop in the value of their crop if the measure succeeds.

As The Los Angeles Times explained in January, when supporters…turned in more than enough signatures to get the measure on the ballot, the initiative “would make it legal for anyone 21 and older to possess an ounce of marijuana and grow plants in an area no larger than 25 square feet for personal use. It would also allow cities and counties to permit marijuana to be grown and sold, and to impose taxes on marijuana production and sales…”

Local business people, officials and those involved in the marijuana industry are planning to meet Tuesday night and break a long-standing silence to talk about what supposedly is the backbone of Humboldt County’s economy — pot. More specifically, the meeting will focus on the potential economic effects of the legalization of marijuana…

Anna Hamilton told the local newspaper that if the county’s marijuana industry prepares for legalization, there could be some positives for the area: “We have to embrace marijuana tourism, marijuana products and services — and marijuana has to become a part of the Humboldt County brand,” she said…

A campaign Web site, Taxcannabis.org, prominently features the results of a 2009 Field poll that found that “legalizing marijuana and taxing its proceeds” was supported by 56 percent of those surveyed in California.

Most of the big American tobacco companies maintain private vacation resorts around the country for their honchos. I recall a chef I knew – he was on year-round on retainer for one of the firms – who told me they always brought the best weed he ever smoked in his life when they arrived on holiday.

He said they all had “test fields” that the Feds knew were there – just “in case” of legalization.

The ancient stone spheres of Costa Rica were made world-famous by the opening sequence of “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” when a mockup of one of the mysterious relics nearly crushed Indiana Jones. So perhaps John Hoopes is the closest thing at the University of Kansas to the movie action hero.

Hoopes, associate professor of anthropology and director of the Global Indigenous Nations Studies Program, recently returned from a trip to Costa Rica where he and colleagues evaluated the stone balls for UNESCO, the United Nations cultural organization that might grant the spheres World Heritage Status…

Hoopes, who researches ancient cultures of Central and South America, is one of the world’s foremost experts on the Costa Rican spheres. He explained that although the stone spheres are very old, international interest in them is still growing.

“The earliest reports of the stones come from the late 19th century, but they weren’t really reported scientifically until the 1930s — so they’re a relatively recent discovery,” Hoopes said. “They remained unknown until the United Fruit Company began clearing land for banana plantations in southern Costa Rica.”

According to Hoopes, around 300 balls are known to exist, with the largest weighing 16 tons and measuring eight feet in diameter. Many of these are clustered in Costa Rica’s Diquis Delta region. Some remain pristine in the original places of discovery, but many others have been relocated or damaged due to erosion, fires and vandalism.

The KU researcher said that scientists believe the stones were first created around 600 A.D., with most dating to after 1,000 A.D. but before the Spanish conquest…

Speculation and pseudoscience have plagued general understanding of the stone spheres. For instance, publications have claimed that the balls are associated with the “lost” continent of Atlantis. Others have asserted that the balls are navigational aids or relics related to Stonehenge or the massive heads on Easter Island.

“Myths are really based on a lot of very rampant speculation about imaginary ancient civilizations or visits from extraterrestrials,” Hoopes said.

John Hoopes maintains a website to disseminate the realities of the stone balls – and to dispel some of the myths. As well as he can.

Google Euro Street View camera cars
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Europe’s highest court ruled Google did not infringe trademark law by selling keywords to trigger ads after Louis Vuitton and others said the practice undermined their brands.

The Court of Justice of the European Union said advertisers were free to buy keywords identical to trademarks of rivals as long as consumers were not confused on the provenance of goods and services by the way ads were displayed online.

The court said that in cases where ads could confuse consumers, brand owners should invoke their rights against the advertisers concerned, not against Google — unless Google failed to act on a complaint or actively manipulated keywords.

Cripes. This part is a surprise. Sounds like the priorities of responsibility in the Robinson-Patman act in the U.S..

The ruling validates the AdWords paid-search business at the core of Google’s $23 billion online advertising operations, as well as the way competitors like Yahoo! sell ads, and gives brand owners a way to protect their trademarks.

“It’s a good decision in large parts,” said Fabian Ziegenaus, an intellectual property lawyer at Linklaters.

“It does not forbid Google per se to sell trademark keywords, so the business model is not at stake, and brand owners are also protected through the decision…”

Google used to block advertisers from buying others’ brand names as keywords but changed its policy in North America in 2004 and four years later extended that to Britain and Ireland.

It says it will honor valid complaints from brand owners and prevent their rivals from using a trademarked keyword in their ad text.

Well done. I don’t always expect this level of understanding in Euro courts. Mostly because their assignment of priorities starts with protecting competitors rather than consumers.

Why is this man smiling?
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The Nintendo DS family of game devices will soon have a successor, and its name is the 3DS.

According to Nintendo’s announcement, today, the 3DS will boast 3D gaming capability without requiring users to wear “any special glasses” to play titles.

The company said that the 3DS will “succeed [the] ‘Nintendo DS series.’” Perhaps most importantly, the 3DS will boast backward compatibility, allowing users to play games originally built for the Nintendo DS or DSi.

Nintendo was stingy with details. It didn’t indicate how the 3D functionality would work with the 3DS. It also failed to mention how much the console would cost or what games would ship with it. Nintendo plans to offer full details on the 3DS at the E3 show in June…

Nintendo’s decision to offer a 3D gaming device will be controversial. Although the industry is seemingly doubling down on 3D technology, some are skeptical of its true appeal. And whether gamers will want to consistently view 3D games is decidedly up for debate.

Then again, Nintendo has spent the last few years taking routes that were initially scoffed at. When it first announced the Wii game console, critics were doubtful about its broader market appeal. Nearly four years later, the Wii is the world’s most popular video game console.

Will Nintendo do it to everyone, again? Their competitors are still trundling along trying to promote mediocre knockoffs of Wii tech.

We’ve been overeating our way through ever-larger portions over the past 1,000 years, a U.S. study revealed after studying more than 50 paintings of the Biblical Last Supper.

The study, by a Cornell University professor and his brother who is a Presbyterian minister and a religious studies professor, showed that the sizes of the portions and plates in the artworks, which were painted over the past millennium, have gradually grown by between 23 and 69 percent.

This finding suggests that the phenomenon of serving bigger portions on bigger plates, which pushes people to overeat, has also occurred gradually over the same time period, said Brian Wansink, director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab.

“The last thousand years have witnessed dramatic increases in the production, availability, safety, abundance and affordability of food,” Wansink, author of “Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think,” said in a statement.

“We think that as art imitates life, these changes have been reflected in paintings of history’s most famous dinner…”

The study found that, over the past 1,000 years, the size of the main meal has progressively grown 69 percent; plate size has increased 66 percent and bread size by about 23 percent.

Har! I believe every calorie of it.