Author: Eoin

Dr Eoin O'Dell is a Fellow and Associate Professor of Law at Trinity College Dublin.

I like Slaw

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| Law

SLAW header via slaw.ca




The title refers not to a salad of shredded brassica (though I like that too), but rather to slaw, which is one of my daily must-reads. It describes itself as a “co-operative weblog about Canadian legal research and IT, etc” (I especially like the “etc”), and it is a frequent source of many things I save to del.icio.us. But two recent posts are just crying out to be shared even more widely than that.

In the first post, Kim Nayer referred to two presentations at the SLA Legal Division 2007 Conference, one by Nathan Rosen on legal wikis, the other by Thomas Fleming on Legal Research for the Google Generation (warning: they’re both powerpoints, but well worth the effort). The other post, by Agnese Caruso, brought “What’s new on the legal web” to my attention (American focussed, but very useful).

Thanks to Kim and Agnese, and especially to slaw!

PS. As is always the way, ten minutes after I had published this post, it occurred to me that it really should have been called Slaw is del.icio.us!

SLAW header via slaw.ca



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This is ‘Say No to Ageism’ Week 2007 – II

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| Irish Society

Say No to Ageism week poster via Equality AuthoritySome updates to yesterday’s post.

First, yesterday did indeed see the Irish launch of the European Healthy Ageing Project 2004-2007‘s report on Healthy Ageing – a Challenge for Europe (pdf). According to a piece by Fiona Gartland in today’s Irish Times (sub req’d):

Irish people have a shorter life expectancy than people in other wealthy EU countries, a European report on healthy ageing has found. Healthy Ageing – A Challenge for Europe, launched in Dublin yesterday, said that countries with high gross domestic product (GDP) usually have longer life expectancy, but this was not the case in Ireland. …

Dr Paula Gilvarry, president of the Irish Medical Organisation, said Ireland has higher than EU-average death rates from circulatory diseases, cancer and respiratory diseases. “The figures show that we are still playing catch-up in terms of investment in health,” she said.

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This is ‘Say No to Ageism’ Week 2007

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| Irish Society

Say No to Ageism week poster via Equality Authority Today sees the Irish launch of the European Healthy Ageing Project 2004-2007‘s report on Healthy Ageing – a Challenge for Europe (pdf). The launch will be hosted by the National Council on Ageing and Older People (NCAOP) as part of ‘Say No to Ageism’ Week.

‘Say No to Ageism’ Week, 18-25 June (NCAOP press release here (pdf)), is a joint initiative of the National Council on Ageing and Older People, the Equality Authority and the Health Service Executive (HSE), and its aim is to promote awareness of ageism and an understanding of how ageism lies at the root of many of the barriers which older people encounter when accessing goods and services. More information from the NCAOP and the Equality Authority. As well as the launch of the Healthy Ageing report, this week will also see the launch of a report on an action plan to enhance age friendly service provision in public transport. …

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They are the university

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| Universities

Rabi book cover from Harvard UPJohn Naughton has published this here and here:

The physicist I.I. Rabi and General (later President) Dwight Eisenhower became friends after Eisenhower was appointed president of Columbia University soon after the end of WW2. When introduced to Rabi, Eisenhower said, “I am always very happy to see one of the employees of the university,� to which Rabi replied, “Mr. President, the faculty are not the employees of the university. They are the university.�

Quoted in J. S. Rigden, Rabi: Scientist and Citizen, Harvard University Press, 2000.

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Unpalatable – defamatory restaurant reviews

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| Defamation

The food critic orders dinner, from Trevor White's siteI’ve always quite fancied the idea of being a food critic: I like food, and I can be critical (just like the guy in the cartoon on the left ‘The Food Critic Orders Dinner’ – click on it to see it full size in its original context); so what’s not to like? Well, a flurry of litigation in various jurisdictions over the last few months has made me reconsider. The most recent is the decision of the High Court of Australia in John Fairfax Publications Pty Ltd v Gacic [2007] HCA 28 (14 June 2007) (hat tips: Steve Hedley (off-blog) and the indefatigable Peter Black’s Freedom to Differ) which is making news in Australia for its holding that a restuarant critic can be liable for a defamatory review. There have been reactions of horror, but this is not a remarkable holding at all, either in principle or in practice. …

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Google and Privacy redux

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| data retention, Media and Communications, Privacy

image via Battelle mediaFollowing on from my posts Who will google Google?, That was the week that was, and Watching your every move, come two articles from John Collins in today’s Irish Times (sub req’d), as well as some important developments by Google.

In Google classed as ‘hostile to privacy’, John writes:

How much information Google collects on its users and what it does with that information has once again become a burning topic for internet users.

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Finally, a university ranking table worth topping

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| Universities

THES logo via THES siteGiven the furore that often attends university rankings, here’s what ought to be an uncontroversial table in which every university ought to seek to do well. The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) and the people & planet campaign have come together to rank the UK’s universities according to their environment performance. In the light of our new government, I wonder how Irish universities might fare on a similar assessment (my employer, TCD, has its green pages here).

People & Planet logo via p&p siteFrom the THES story by Rebecca Attwood:

Leeds Met tops first UK green rankings

Universities are ranked according to their environmental performance for the first time in a new “green” league table.

Published exclusively in The Times Higher to coincide with World Environment Day, the Green League 2007 aims to applaud progress and expose inaction, according to the student campaign group People & Planet, which compiled the data in part by using the Freedom of Information Act.

The table, which ranks universities based on factors such as their record on recycling, CO2 emissions and in purchasing renewable energy, declares Leeds Metropolitan University the UK’s “greenest“.

A total of 15 universities gain a “first”, with a score of 40/50 or above.

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Watching Your Every Move

| 5 Comments
| advertising, Digital Rights, Privacy

New York Times logo, via the NYT siteI don’t usually do this, but an Editorial in yesterday’s New York Times (13 June 2007; sub req’d) is so important, and so perfectly reflects my views, that it’s worth reproducing in full (in fact, I wish I’d written it). The headline is the title to this post: “Watching Your Every Move”, and the strapline on the electronic front page makes the point perfectly:

Privacy is too important to leave up to the companies that benefit financially from collecting and retaining data.

The Editorial itself ran as follows:

Watching Your Every Move

Internet users are abuzz over Google’s new Street View feature, which displays ground-level photos of urban blocks that in some cases even look through the windows of homes. If that feels like Big Brother, consider the reams of private information that Google collects on its users every day through the search terms they enter on its site.

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