cearta.ie – Page 153 – the Irish for rights

On Thursday 7 February 2008, Aois agus Eolais – the Centre for Ageing, Neuroscience and the Humanities will host a charity premiere of the extraordinary movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in aid of Stroke Research in the Adelaide and Meath Hospital Dublin, incorporating the National Childrenâ€™s Hospital, Tallaght (AMNCH). It will begin with a reception at 6.30pm in the Atrium (map), Trinity College Dublin, followed by the screening at 8.00pm, Irish Film Institute (map), Eustace Street, Dublin 2. Subscription is â‚¬50, and further information and inviations are available from Catherine Talbot at 01 414 2432 or Marian Hughes at 087 286 4527.

The movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (official site | imdb | wikipedia) is based on the book Le scaphandre et le papillon by Jean-Dominique Bauby (amazon | NYT review | wikipedia), in which Bauby recounts the effects of a catastrophic stroke and weeks of deep coma from which he surfaced into “locked-in syndrome“, mentally alert but deprived of movement and speech, leaving the blinking of his left eyelid as his only means of communication. Directed by Julian Schnabel, the movie based on the book is shot from Bauby’s perspective, offering us views of his memories and imagination and his struggle to communicate and come to terms with his condition.…

So, you want to complain about a press story?

3 January, 200810 December, 2012

| 3 Comments

| Press Council

Well, now you can. The Press Ombudsman and Press Council of Ireland are now fully up and running. They launched a new website on New Year’s Day (it’s not just a new-look site, it’s a whole new website, with new urls for everything, which – annoyingly – meant that I have had to recode the links in my earlier posts on this topic). More to the point, the Ombudsman and Council are now ensconced in their new premises at 1, 2 & 3 Westmoreland Street, Dublin 2, and following yesterday’s formal launch (Blurred Keys | Irish Examiner | Irish Independent | Irish Times (sub req’d) here and here | Press Gazette) they are now (eventually! thankfully!!) open for business. So, if you think that a print publication has breached the Press Council’s Code of Practice for Newspapers and Periodicals, you can now make a complaint to the Ombudsman and thereafter to the Press Council.

The shiny new website comes complete with a shiny new slogan:

Time will tell whether this process really is a new Charter – the claim strikes me as a tad grandiloquent. However, after too much vacillation, it is now at least well begun; and, as my Irish teacher taught me:

tosach maith leath na h-oibre!

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“Predictions are difficult …”

1 January, 200823 November, 2010

| 2 Comments

| Media and Communications

as the great baseball player Yogi Berra is reputed to have observed, “… especially about the future”.

That hasn’t stopped John Naugton (Memex | Observer column), looking back at 2007 and looking forward to 2008 in his most recent Observer column “Apple and Google ruled a year to note in your Facebook”, which concludes:

What’s next? As usual, William Gibson‘s aphorism (‘The future’s already here, it’s just not evenly distributed’) provides the best guide. Apple will launch a 3G iPhone and cause even greater havoc in the mobile-phone business. It will also launch a micro-laptop using the new Intel 45-nanometre Silverthorne chip, and open more stores in upmarket locations. It will, however, feel the heat of European regulators as they focus on ‘interoperability’ issues, in particular the way songs purchased from Apple’s iTunes store will only play on iPods.

Next year will see mass outbreaks of a Facebook fatigue, as busy professionals realise they are wasting an hour or more a day on essentially mindless activities. By contrast, activity-based networking sites, such as Flickr.com, will continue to prosper, for the simple reason that they are not self-limiting in the way that ego-centric services are. It will also be the year when the world wakes up to what the bosses at Google already know; the computing industry has a colossal, and unacceptable, environmental footprint in terms of its consumption of electrical power and natural resources.

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BBC = FoE x 2

20 December, 2007

| 1 Comment

| Freedom of Expression

BBC = FoE, where BBC = British Broadcasting Corporation, FoE = Freedom of Expression, and x 2 = times two; because the BBC have two major freedom of expression events going on at the moment. First, Roy Greenslade (website | blog) is currently present an excellent four part radio series, Press for Freedom (article | news report | podcast) on the struggle for media freedom worldwide. It’s superb!

Second, as part of its celebrations for 75 years of the World Service, the free to speak initiative is an exciting blend of archives, radio, and interactivity (they encourage participation, especially via their blog: world have your say). In particular, today’s big link up, though a bit gimmicky, was a spectacular affirmation of the importance of radio (my favourite electronic medium) to and in the global conversation about and protection of freedom of expression. Wonderful stuff!

Do the sums. Follow the links.…

The Future of Legal Education – again

12 December, 20075 April, 2008

| 1 Comment

| Law, Legal Education, Universities

It never rains but it pours: no sooner have I learned about the international Conference on the Future of Legal Education on 20-23 February 2008 in Georgia State University College of Law (blogged about here), but I discover a European equivalent later that month.

The European Law Faculties Association (ELFA) – which was founded in 1995, publishes the European Journal of Legal Education, and currently focuses upon the reform of legal education in Europe – will host a conference on The role of law schools in continuing legal education (CLE) on 28 February-1 March 2008 in Bucerius Law School, Hamburg, Germany (the first private law school in Germany). The programme is here (pdf); in the absence of any Irish speakers that I can see, I am particularly interested in

Law schools facing the challenge of CLE â€“ the British perspective

by Prof John Bell (Cambridge)

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Law Students Take on the Coal Industry

12 December, 200712 December, 2007

| No Comments

| Universities

This post is simply some extracts from a story in this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education (sub req’d) about the Law School where I have spent this semester:

Law Students Take on the Coal Industry

By PETER MONAGHAN

Lexington, Va.

Noah Lauricella has seen a middle-aged man take several minutes to walk the 20 yards between his house and his mailbox, then spend several minutes more recovering from the exertion. … “It is heart wrenching,” says Mr. Lauricella, a second-year law student taking part in Washington and Lee University’s Black Lung Clinic….

According to United Mine Workers of America, about 1,400 miners die each year from black lung, or pneumoconiosis, which is caused by breathing coal dust, and whose onset is often delayed by 20 or more years. … Black-lung sufferers find themselves in what Andrew Wolfe McThenia, the law professor who was the driving force behind the formation of the clinic, in 1996, calls “Dickens’ worst idea of the law … Case files can be measured not by inches, but by feet” …

Since the clinic opened, more than 100 students have represented about 200 clients, and have achieved a success rate of 50 percent, in part by pressing only the claims most likely to succeed.

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Manhunt II again

11 December, 20077 November, 2010

| 2 Comments

| Censorship, IFCO, Media and Communications

Further to my post last June about various countries banning the controversial computer game Manhunt II, matters have not stood still. Soon after the various bans, Rockstar made some changes to the gameplay. In the US, these tweaks were sufficient to reduce its classification from an Adults Only (AO) rating to a Mature (M) rating, allowing it to be bought by anyone aged 17 or more. Then Rockstar reapplied to the BBFC in the UK, but, in October, they upheld their June decision not to certify (in effect, to ban) the game (see The Register).

But that has not proved to be the end of the story; this week, the BBFC’s Video Appeals Committee has allowed Rockstar’s appeal against the ban in the UK – by the slimmest of margins, on a vote of 4 to 3 (BBC | The Register | Daily Telegraph). The effect of the appeal is that the BBFC must consider the game again, and if it does nothing, then it will be released with an 18 certificate.

So far as Ireland goes, I’m not aware whether Rockstar has brought an appeal against IFCO‘s original ban on Manhunt II or whether they submitted the revised version of the game for classification, but if they succeed in releasing a version of the game in the UK, can Ireland be far behind?…

The Future of Legal Education

11 December, 20076 October, 2008

| 3 Comments

| Carneige, Law, Legal Education, Universities

Hot on the heels of the Legal Education Symposium blogged about yesterday comes news of an international Conference on the Future of Legal Education on 20-23 February 2008 in Georgia State University College of Law. Against the background of the Carneige Foundation‘s report on Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (which I have already discussed on this blog), this conference will ask two related questions:

First, if one were charged with starting a new law school, how would one implement the Carnegie recommendations? …

Second, how would an existing law school transform itself into the kind of law school envisioned by the Carnegie Report?

I have already blogged about the first question, and both will be discussed by a wide selection of exciting speakers, including Martin BÃ¶hmer (Founding Dean, Universidad de San Andres School of Law; CV (.doc)), Gary Davis (Flinders), Jeff Giddings (Griffith), Richard Johnstone (Griffith), Patrick Longan (Mercer), Sally Kift (QUT), Paul Maharg (Strathclyde) (author of the superb Transforming Legal Education), Lawrence C. Marshall (Stanford), David McQuoid-Mason (KwaZulu-Natal), N.R. Madhava Menon (National Law School of India), James E. Moliterno (William & Mary), M.R.K. Prasad (Salgaocar, India), Suellyn Scarnecchia (New Mexico), William Sullivan (Carnegie Foundation; lead author of Educating Lawyers) and David Weisbrot (ALRC, formerly Sydney).…