Eideard

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A Saudi court has sentenced a woman to 10 lashes for challenging a ban on women driving in the conservative Muslim kingdom…

The sentence was reported two days after Saudi King Abdullah granted women the right to vote and run in municipal elections. He also promised to include them in the next all-appointed consultative Shura Council in 2013.

“Flogging is a cruel punishment in all circumstances but it beggars belief that the authorities in Saudi Arabia have imposed lashes on a woman apparently for merely driving a car,” Philip Luther, an Amnesty regional deputy director, said in an emailed statement…

Under Saudi Arabia’s strict Islamic laws, women require a male guardian’s permission to work, travel abroad or even undergo some medical surgeries. They are not allowed to drive.

While there is no written law banning women from driving, Saudi law requires citizens to use locally issued licences while in the country. Such licences are not issued to women, making it effectively illegal for them to drive.

In May, as pro-democracy protests swept across the region, some women in Saudi Arabia called for their right to drive. A campaign called Women2Drive issued calls on social media such as Twitter and Facebook to challenge the ban.

Some women posted on twitter that they drove successfully in the streets of Jeddah, Riyadh and Khobar while others said they were stopped by police who later let them go after signing a pledge not to drive again.

Isn’t a boycott of such a backwards nation overdue? Retain the minimal contacts required for commerce and communications – but, suggest tourists avoid this theocracy like the plague.

UPDATE: The King evidently felt enough heat to force the court to withdraw the sentence.

The Supreme Court has ordered California to release tens of thousands of its prisoners to relieve overcrowding, saying that “needless suffering and death” had resulted from putting too many inmates into facilities that cannot hold them in decent conditions.

It is one of the largest prison release orders in the nation’s history, and it sharply split the high court.

Justices upheld an order from a three-judge panel in California that called for releasing 38,000 to 46,000 prisoners. Since then, the state has transferred about 9,000 state inmates to county jails. As a result, the total prison population is now about 32,000 more than the capacity limit set by the panel.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, speaking for the majority, said California’s prisons had “fallen short of minimum constitutional requirements” because of overcrowding. As many as 200 prisoners may live in gymnasium, he said, and as many as 54 prisoners share a single toilet…

In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia called the ruling “staggering” and “absurd.” He said the high court had repeatedly overruled the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for ordering the release of individual prisoners. Now, he said, the majority were ordering the release of “46,000 happy-go-lucky felons.” He added that “terrible things are sure to happen as a consequence of this outrageous order…”

In a separate dissent, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the ruling conflicted with a federal law intended to limit the power of federal judges to order a release of prisoners…

David Fathi, director of the ACLU national prison project, said “reducing the number of people in prison not only would save the state taxpayers half a billion annually, it would lead to the implementation of truly rehabilitative programs that lower recidivism rates and create safer communities.”

I know a few ex-cons who have rehabilitated. I know a larger number of ex-cons who scare the crap out of me. Either road, the safety of the general population should take precedence over housing conditions for convicts.

This is what a Real Man in Japan should look like

In feudal Japan, a beard was considered a symbol of power or a declaration of belligerent intent but bureaucrats in one town could find themselves sent to the bathroom, razor in hand, for sporting even the suggestion of a five o’clock shadow.

Authorities in Isesaki, Gunma prefecture, have ordered all male employees to shave off their facial hair, and banish all thoughts of growing any, following complaints from members of the public who said they found dealing with bearded bureaucrats “unpleasant”.

The ban, the first of its kind among Japanese public officials, applies to any manifestation of facial hair, from lovingly cultivated full beards to trendy goatees and designer stubble.

The only acceptable public face of Isesaki, the local government said, is a clean-shaven one. “Some citizens find bearded men unpleasant, so beards are banned,” an in-house notice warned this week…

The Isesaki ban is reminiscent of the strict rules on physical appearance enforced by conservative companies in the postwar period in the belief that Japan’s rise to economic superpower required absolute conformity.

But this was the first time that an absence of whiskers had been enforced among civil servants, the internal affairs and communications ministry said.

I have to smile in retrospect – thinking of the years I worked with Asian companies, especially Japanese.

I haven’t been without a beard since 1979. My system couldn’t stand the shock of shaving.

Information can be the bane of our lives. While the right kind of information at a given moment is extremely empowering, there is little doubt that we are drowning in the stuff.

Douglas Merrill knows this all too well. He is the former chief information officer of Google, the company that wants to take all that information and make it universally accessible. He was with the company for five years, from when it was a mere fledgling with a few hundred staff to when it hit the 19,000 mark…

Even though we have the web, and we have Google to “organise the world’s information” for us, our tendency to become overwhelmed is not our fault. No, says Mr Merrill, chalk that one up to Mother Nature:

“We are just not very good at remembering things, by and large. Our short-term memory can only hold between five and nine things at a time. And our brain weighs three pounds (1.4kg) and is just larger than the average chicken.

“Yet it is pretty fantastic. It can identify gender, how old someone is just by looking at a photograph of someone’s nose and even recognise a song after hearing just a few notes.”

Mr Merrill points out in his book Getting Organized in the Google Era that “your brain was developed eons ago primarily to prevent you from being eaten by carnivorous beasts – not to memorise lists or store facts.”

Interesting read – even though I diverge from the sentence above. After all, we were hunter-gatherers not just hunters [or hunted]. Someone had to remember where to look for apples and mushrooms.

RTFA. Nice piece of journalism and I guess I will get Merrill’s book.

The disadvantage of NYC’s Automat is that it required some standing and walking around.

A Hendersonville woman was arrested after virtually “poking” someone on the social networking site Facebook, police said.

Shannon D. Jackson, 36, was arrested Sept. 25 on charges of violating an order of protection.

According to the affidavit filed in Sumner County General Sessions Court, Jackson used the “poke” option on Facebook to contact another Hendersonville woman she had been ordered to stay away from.

That violated the terms of an order of protection which stipulates “no telephoning, contacting or otherwise communicating with the petitioner,” according to police.

Poking is a feature unique to Facebook that conveys no message other than informing a user they have been “poked” by another user…

Hendersonville police have made copies of the page in which the woman is shown to be “poked,” according to the affidavit.

Sounds pretty realistic to me. No different than some ill-mannered lout violating an order like this by phoning someone – and hanging up when answered.

Pleased to see these coppers in Tennessee figured it out? I know a few self-serving libertarians who would debate the topic for a week before doing anything.

Britain’s High Court has ordered its first injunction via Twitter, saying the social website and micro-blogging service was the best way to reach an anonymous Tweeter who had been impersonating someone.

Solicitors Griffin Law sought the injunction against the micro-blog page www.twitter.com/blaneysblarney arguing it was impersonating right-wing blogger Donal Blaney, the owner of Griffin Law.

The legal first could have widespread implications for the blogosphere.

“I think this is a landmark decision to issue a writ via Twitter,” said Dr Konstantinos Komaitis of Strathclyde University’s law faculty…

Andre Walker at Griffin Law said the anonymous Tweeter targeted by the writ will get a message from the High Court the next time they open their online account. “Whoever they are, they will be told to stop posting, to remove previous posts and to identify themselves to the High Court via a web link form,” he said.

Har!

How about listening to scientists instead of 14th-Century mystics?
Daylife/AP Photo by Riccardo de Luca

Thwarted by President George W. Bush in their efforts to expand federal spending on embryonic stem cell research, Democrats are now debating whether to overturn federal restrictions through executive order or by legislation when they assume full control of the government this month.

Both President-elect Barack Obama and Democratic congressional leaders have made repealing Bush administration restrictions announced in 2001 a top priority. But they have yet to determine if Obama should quickly put his stamp on the issue by way of presidential directive, or if Congress should write a permanent policy into statute.

The debate is not academic. Democrats who oppose abortion say such a legislative fight holds the potential to get the year off to a difficult beginning, even though the outcome is certain given solid majorities in both the House and the Senate for expanded embryonic stem cell research.

In addition, many of the Democratic gains in Congress, particularly in the House, have come in more conservative areas, with strategists estimating that up to 70 Democrats could find themselves in competitive races in 2010. Those potentially vulnerable lawmakers provide another consideration for leaders weighing whether to set an early test vote on what for some is a politically sensitive subject back home.

In other words, the same old crap reason – why I left the Republican Party when I was young. “The first task of an elected official is to be re-elected.” Bullshit!

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