This past August a murder charge was dismissed against Nga Truong, a young mother who had confessed to Worcester, MA Police interrogators in 2008 that she had smothered and killed her 13 month-old baby, Khyle. A judge later concluded that confession was coerced -- extracted in part by police "deception," "trickery and implied promises" -- and the case was dropped.
(pdf). Her case raises questions: What coercive power do detectives have who are driven to extract confessions? Under what circumstances might someone admit to a crime they have not committed?
WBUR (Boston's NPR station) investigated Truong's case and has an extensive report, Anatomy of a Bad Confession: Part
One and
Two [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Dec 10, 2011 -
28 comments
"When legal teams need to prove or disprove the authorship of key texts, they call in the forensic linguists. Scholars in the field have tackled the disputed origins of some prestigious works, from Shakespearean sonnets to the Federalist Papers."
Decoding Your E-Mail Personality
Ben Zimmer, of Language Log discusses the Facebook case and
forensic linguistics in the NY Times.
[more inside]
posted by iamkimiam
on Aug 2, 2011 -
13 comments
Miriam Moskowitz is one of the last survivors of the McCarthy era trials. She was sent to prison after being convicted of obstruction of justice in a trial that Roy Cohn said was a "dry run" for the Rosenberg case. Indeed, Miriam was in jail with Ethel Rosenberg. Her newly published book, "Phantom Spies, Phantom Justice" is one of the only books on the period to write about Ethel as a woman not as a symbol. The gripping memoir of Miriam's trial, her imprisonment and its aftermath, is also the first thing Miriam has ever written. At 94, that's quite an achievement. The Talk of the Town section of the New Yorker has a piece on Miriam. Click on the link to read it.
posted by jeffisme
on Nov 23, 2010 -
12 comments
Albert Einstein once articulated what many scholars have felt in their own work:
The history of scientific and technical discovery teaches us the human race is poor in independent thinking and creative imagination. Even when the external and scientific requirements for the birth of an idea have long been there, it generally needs an external stimulus to make it actually happen; man has, so to speak, to stumble right up against the thing before the right idea comes.
The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University [html][pdf] [more inside]
posted by infinite intimation
on Oct 5, 2010 -
13 comments
The use of cardboard for things other than packaging is not new to the blue, from
detailed artwork to
furnature (and even
re-making the Tron light cycle scene), and now
computer cases.
Brenden Macaluso's design is not the first, with a
Japanese design from 2005 (the original site is down, but
Archive.org has a backup, with
more versions archived), and other
kludged fixes for an existing case missing parts.
Recompute wasn't the only cardboard case in the 2009
Greener Gadgets design competition. The other was
Cardboardcase, by Francesco Biasci and Martina Becattini, which is a more of a traditional computer case form. On the DIY side,
Instructables provides plans for a DIY cardboard laptop case.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Sep 17, 2009 -
13 comments
Amusing NPR interview with Ms. Case From the NPR show "Not My Job", a rambling and entertaining interview with alt-country, loud singing, red-haired songstress Neko Case. On an unrelated note, I know she's American, but we Canucks like to claim her as our own, what with her Canadian Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and her collaborations with Canadian bands.
posted by dbarefoot
on Jul 15, 2009 -
46 comments
The End of Porn? The Ashcroft/Gonzales Justice Department has made obscenity prosecutions a
top priority, with 60 prosecutions in the first four years of the Bush administration (compared to four for the entire eight years of the Clinton administration). Anti-porn advocates were dismayed in January when a federal judge in Pittsburgh, citing dicta on sexual liberty in the Supreme Court's
Lawrence v. Texas decision,
dismissed an indictment in a closely-watched case. Today, however, the
Third Circuit reversed, rejecting the defendant's arguments that (1)
Lawrence protected their liberty interest in distributing pornographic material, and (2) earlier Supreme Court obscenity precedent should be revisited in light of the increased prevalence of Internet transmission. The result, undoubtedly, will be a new wave of prosecutions not seen since the Supreme Court set limits on First-Amendment based protections in the 1970s.
posted by Saucy Intruder
on Dec 8, 2005 -
50 comments
"
R2 that seg fault is popping up again, see if you can lock
it down!"
posted by Witty
on Oct 26, 2005 -
20 comments
Best Case Ever. As in computer case, just in case you couldn't case it out. dig? anyways. like someone else said, this thing says 'geek pimp' all over it.
don't be a hater!
posted by jcterminal
on Apr 23, 2002 -
24 comments
Lost or broken CD case? Ripped a disc and now it's just floating around on your desk? Freewheeling
College students to the
rescue! You give 'em the lowdown and you get a formatted paper CD case as a .pdf file. Input your own song titles or run an
album search through their DB. They even
archive mixes for you to share with others.
posted by donkeysuck
on May 11, 2001 -
4 comments
