A companion to this earlier post:

Via GaS and shirt.woot!.

On his excellent Privacy Cartoons site, Chris Slane has added a new page featuring new and old cartoons relevant to Freedom of Information, with more cartoons to come:

A man showing a woman around a building has just unlocked and opened a door with the sign “Government Archives. File Room”, saying:

This is where we hide our public information.

In Ireland, the first day of February is the feast day of St Bridget, and it is traditionally regarded as the first day of Spring. For the day that’s in it, here’s an image of St Bridget’s Cross:

According to the font of all wisdom and knowledge, Wikipedia, on this day in

• 1552 – Edward Coke, English jurist and Member of Parliament, was born (d. 1634).
• 1709 – Alexander Selkirk is rescued after being shipwrecked on a desert island, inspiring the book Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe.
• 1790 – In New York City, the Supreme Court of the United States convenes for the first time.
• 1851 – Mary Shelley, English author, died (b. 1797)
• 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln signs the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude, though it was was not ratified by the states until later; as a consequence, today is National Freedom Day in the United States.
• 1884 – The first volume (A to Ant) of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
• 1904 – S. J. Perelman, American humorist, was born (d. 1979)
• 1976 – Werner Heisenberg, German physicist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1901) and George Whipple, American scientist, Nobel Prize Laureate (b. 1878) both died.
• 1996 – The Communications Decency Act is passed by the U.S. Congress.
• 2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, resulting in the death of all seven crew members.

Pink champagne cupcakes for the new year:

From the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company:

The text of the Legal Requirements of Christmas Cheer card pictured above provides: Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Wagner on UK Human Rights Blog takes up the perennial question of whether courtroom proceedings should be broadcast. Some extracts from his blogpost:

Should justice be televised?

The head of Sky News has argued in a new Guardian article that justice must be televised as allowing TV cameras in court would help restore public faith in criminal proceedings. …

The usual arguments in support are:

1. Television opens the court to public scrutiny
2. Televised hearings can educate the public about what happens in the justice system
3. Cameras have no negative impact on trials, according to U.S. research
4. The public have a right to see justice done, and the only proper way this can be accomplished is to allow them access to hearings through their TV sets

And the arguments against:

1. Televised justice leads to soundbites and sensationalism, and edited highlights of a case lose the subtlety of legal argument
2. Television fosters disrespect for the court
3. Cameras pervert the trial process as juries become star struck and lawyers grandstand
4. Victims and witnesses are intimidated an can be less safe as a result. …

The Lawtube age
The debate over cameras in court is as old as camera technology itself, but in the age of YouTube, 24-hour news and the iPlayer, it should be reopened. John Ryley is well placed to understand the power of TV coverage and expert editing, but will also know the dangers of sensationalising stories and issues. … There are good arguments for limiting such access, but these decisions should be taken from an informed perspective after testing the real effect which TV cameras would have on our judicial system. … It is often said that justice should not just be done, but should be seen to be done. As things stand, justice is very rarely seen and as a result our justice system continues to be poorly understood. Allowing TV cameras into court could provide the oxygen needed to ensure better and more interesting public access to the legal system.

Read more here. My earlier posts on the issue are here, here and here.

On Wikipedia’s Portraits of Shakespeare page, there is a painting called “The Chess Players” attributed to Dutch painter Karel van Mander (1548 – 1606):

Wikipedia says that this was identified in 1916 (New York Times, 12 March 1916) as an image of Ben Jonson (left; white) and William Shakespeare (right; black) playing chess. It seems that this claim that had been floating around in chess circles for a year or so, but most subsequent scholars seem to have considered this to be pure speculation. However, the claim was revived in 2004 by Jeffrey Netto, who argued that the chess game symbolises “the well known professional rivalry between these figures in terms of a battle of wits” (See Jeffrey Netto “Intertextuality and the Chess Motif: Shakespeare, Middleton, Greenaway” in Michele Marrapodi Shakespeare, Italy and Intertextuality (Manchester University Press, 2004) 218). As he puts it elsewhere:

This painting clearly evokes the theme of intellectual virtuosity. The two giants of British Renaissance literature are enmeshed in an intellectual contest that allegorically represents their well-known literary rivalry. Chess here iconographically depicts their battle of artistic wits, a battle before which the world can only marvel.

It looks as though Shakespeare is about to win the game, whatever about the artistic battle of wills.

I have recently discovered that one of the classic and elegant nineteenth century chess set designs is called the Dublin Pattern:

Bill Wall says the Dublin pattern was introduced about 1820. The pieces were made of ebony and boxwood with fine carved knights, and it was marketed by Jacques. Although Jacques is still going strong, they don’t seem to have the Dublin pattern in their current chess set listing – unfortunately. The House of Staunton says that original Dublin Pattern sets are extremely rare, with only a handful of complete sets in existence and securely in the hands of private collectors, but it has thoughtfully introduced an exact replica set, for a mere $695. I think I’ll still with my current set.