Wallace and Gromit have a movie coming out this fall, The Curse of the WereRabbit!
There's a trailer and also a short about the making of the movie accessible via clicking “video” at this site. The short is spoiled by some pretty dorky narration, but it will interest true fans.
Er, Helena Bonham Carter has a part? Well Gromet, that's almost as good as cheese.
(via Boing-Boing) The Times (UK): The smile that says where you’re from
While we British smile by pulling our lips back and upwards and exposing our lower teeth, Americans are more likely simply to part their lips and stretch the corners of their mouths.
So distinct is the difference that the scientist behind the research was able last week to pick out Britons from Americans from close-cropped pictures of their smiles alone, with an accuracy of more than 90%.
The study by Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California in Berkeley, near San Francisco, analysed the 43 facial muscles used by humans to charm, smirk and appease.
He found the British were also more likely to raise their cheeks when they smile, showing the crow’s feet at the corners of the eyes. This produces a more sincere, hard-to-fake smile.
But what happens when Irish eyes are smiling?
Updating ACLU & Human Rights First to File Torture Allegations Against 'High Ranking US Official' below: Reuters reports that the “high-ranking US official” being sued is indeed Rumsfeld.
Two human rights groups plan to file a lawsuit charging a high-ranking U.S. official with violation of the U.S. Constitution and international laws prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
According to their press release,
At a 10:30 a.m. news conference [in Washington later today], the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First (formerly Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), joined by former military and government officials, will announce a lawsuit against a high-ranking U.S. government official on behalf of eight men who were tortured and abused by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The lawsuit will charge that officials at the highest level bear ultimate responsibility for the physical and psychological injuries these men suffered. The men represented in the lawsuit were incarcerated in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they were subjected to torture and other cruel and degrading treatment, including severe and repeated beatings, cutting with knives, sexual humiliation and assault, mock executions, death threats, and restraint in contorted and excruciating positions. None of the men were ever charged with a crime.
Who is the official? I have no idea, although Rumsfeld would be my first guess, followed by Gonzales, followed by whoever Rumsfeld put in charge of the information extraction program (would that be Feith?)
The case could have everything – fights over discovery of classified information, claims of multifarious sorts of immunity, and (from the sound of it) maybe even debates over the scope of the alien tort statute. Oh, and the smell of justice. Don't forget the smell of justice. Even if the wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow.
Padilla wins—bigtime in the District Court in South Carolina (warning: court site may be overloaded…here is an alternate site).
The government is ordered to release him (or charge him)… but only in 45 days…. I would imagine there will be an appeal…
[updated:] Here's what the court has to say to the government's Yoo-ish argument that the President can order any citizen jailed for whatever reason he wants, even in the face of a Congressional enactment, 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a), that says, “No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.”
Accordingly, and limited to the facts of this case, the Court is of the firm opinion that it must reject the position posited by Respondent. To do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country’s constitutional tradition, but it would also be a betrayal of this Nation’s commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties.
For the Court to find for Respondent would also be to engage in judicial activism. This Court sits to interpret the law as it is and not as the Court might wish it to be. Pursuant to its interpretation, the Court finds that the President has no power, neither express nor implied, neither constitutional nor statutory, to hold Petitioner as an enemy combatant.
I could do without the suggestion that the Court “might wish” to see the President enjoy the arbitrary power of detention against any citizen, but however you slice it this is a stinging rebuke of the Administration's awful arguments.
Here's the sole fly in the ointment: “Of course, if appropriate, the Government can bring criminal charges against Petitioner or it can hold him as a material witness.” The material witness statute is itself routinely being abused.
This sounds both fun and useful: TaxProf Blog: Indiana To Host April 15 Symposium on The Next Generation of Law School Rankings
One of the many things that bugs me about US News's highly arbitrary law school rankings is the weight they put on graduates' starting salaries. One could well ask whether salaries are even relevant to rankings as the jobs that are hardest to get — public interest jobs — tend to pay the least. But even if one accepts the idea that money is relevant to ranking, it's weird to look only at nominal salary without any adjustment for cost of living. This is an enormous boost to the ranking of New York schools and a real downer for Miami's rankings. A very large fraction of our graduates fall in love with South Florida (or came here because they already love South Florida) and decide to stay. The large supply of entry-level lawyers — many Harvard grads seem to want to work here too — only worsens the historically low entry-level salaries in this town at all but the largest national firms. Yet, overall, with the exception of housing the cost of living isn't dire here, and there's no state income tax. None of that gets reflected in USN&WR's survey.
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