THE NIGERIAN MINISTRY OF JUSTICE has essentially declared Sharia law unconstitutional by stating that it violates the principle against discriminatory punishments in the Nigerian constitution. This will be very unpopular among the Saudi-backed Muslims in the north who have been pushing the strict Saudi Hanbali version of Sharia (source of the recent stoning-for-adultery sentences) at the Saudis’ behest. Stay tuned.
Not so happy in the North, still.
JIM TREACHER: Get Ready For Beer Summit 2. “Go ahead and say it, President Obama: The Hispanic guy acted stupidly.”
MANY AMERICANS FEEL THE SAME WAY: “Freedom, in Shin’s mind, was just another word for grilled meat.”
MYSTERIOUS CLOUD SPOTTED ON MARS.
HOW TO BE a living doll.
FOX PROJECTS a Santorum win in Louisiana.
UPDATE: A big roundup from Stacy McCain, who’s been there covering events.
DICK CHENEY is recovering from a heart transplant. I wish him a speedy recovery. And Obama should thank him.
CAN THE “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORK ONCE THE RUBES HAVE CAUGHT ON? Ah, hell, it’s not like it was working before. . . .
AT AMAZON, warehouse deals in Lawn & Garden.
NEW FROM JERRY POURNELLE, LARRY NIVEN, AND STEVEN BARNES: The Secret of Black Ship Island. A $2.99 Kindle book. I just bought it.
IS OBAMACARE WAGING A TAX WAR ON WOMEN? “Obamacare contains 20 new or higher taxes on American families and employers. Five are especially-harmful for women, be they Moms, singles, or retirees.”
TAR AND FEATHERS: NHTSA May Make In-Car Navigation Unusable.
Last month, the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency published a dense document with guidelines for automakers on how to minimize the distractions caused by in-vehicle electronics. Buried among equations for determining optimal display viewing angles and testing procedures is the recommendation that navigation devices should only show static or near-static images, which would essentially eliminate their usefulness. . . . Every current installed navigation system uses the car as a fixed point, and shows the map moving around it. NHTSA wants that changed so as to keep the map fixed. Even showing the position of the car moving on the map could be considered a dynamic image. The recommendation seems to suggest that the position of the car could only be updated every couple of seconds. Likewise, the map could be refreshed once the car has left the currently displayed area.
This recommendation would essentially make navigation unusable. The system could still give an auditory warning for the next turn, but without being able to glance down at the map and see how close the next street is would likely lead to a lot of missed turns and resultant frustration. And although NHTSA includes the results of driver distraction studies in the guidelines, it has no testing directly related to using a navigation system. Instead there are more general conclusions against any tasks that require looking at a device for periods of more than 2 seconds, or a series of glances that amount to more than 12 seconds at at time.
I would think that looking at a static map, and trying to find the particular street which you are on, would by much more time-consuming than seeing your exact position on a dynamic map.
The whole “distracted driving” thing is a fix in search of a problem. I have some related thoughts here.
ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS: “Silence and demonize.” “Independent researcher Vivian Krause unearthed more than $300-million of such eco-laundering, which has been used to campaign against B.C. fish farming and bring the Canadian forest industry to heel. Recently, both Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver fingered foreign funding in clogging up the regulatory process for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, the latest front in the green industry’s war against the oil sands.”
RANDY BARNETT: Dahlia Lithwick Distorts My Blog Post on Justice Scalia. I doubt the distortion was intentional. She probably just didn’t understand.
HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Tulane Prof. blasts music to drown out Newt speech.
UPDATE: Reader Barry Dauphin writes: “My cousin, a Tulane Law grad, plans to print that blog post from Legal Insurrection and send it to the school when they send out the next alumni request for funds.”
DOING BETTER AFTER HEART TRANSPLANTS by listening to classical music?
RED-LIGHT CAMERAS FACE pesky due-process problem. Surely such trivialities shouldn’t stand in the way of the state filling its coffers. . . .
UPDATE: A reader emails:
This, from the linked news article, about says it all, don’t you think?
“This is not the first court that has ruled it unconstitutional,” said Hillsborough County Sheriff’s spokesman Larry McKinnon. “We’re going to keep operating as we have been.”
Indeed.
SO IS THIS WHOLE ZIMMERMAN THING STARTING TO LOOK LIKE A CROSS BETWEEEN BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES and the Richard Jewell affair? Progressives, Spike Lee tweeting Zimmerman’s address, making death threats.
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in knives and camping tools.
MEMORIES OF communist Romania.
NOTHING IS SAFE FROM THE NANNIES: California Porn Condom Law Will Ruin More Than Porn.
What happened to “my body, my choice?”
IN RESPONSE TO YESTERDAY’S ENGINEERING POST, reader Jody Dorsett writes:
For the last ten years the National Association of Rocketry has been conducting a contest with the AIA. Our goal is to get kids interested in science and particularly in Aerospace sciences. Like Peter Kalogiannis, our hope is to bring more young adults into science tracks so we have a continuing supply of engineers and scientists for the Aerospace Industry. This year’s contest will end in May. But next year’s contest starts in September. If your readers have children in High School and they are interested in science and the future as a I suspect most are…they need to be asking their High School why their kids aren’t competing.
Very cool.
IN THE NEW YORK TIMES: Penny Lee and Kirsten Powers: Our message to Mr. Maher and his ilk is: Please start apologizing. “While others have been held to account for their sexism, Mr. Maher remains unrepentant for his attacks on women in public life.”
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