The Supreme Court concluded a series of cases yesterday that weaken the protection given to patent holders, making it more difficult to get a patent and easier to challenge existing ones.

Patent experts said one of two cases decided yesterday -- KSR International v. Teleflex-- is the court's furthest-reaching ruling in the field for decades. The decision sends a clear message that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and lower courts must be more open in considering whether inventions are "obvious," a common ground for denying an application.

obviousitity

--timball

Rulings Weaken Patents' Power - washingtonpost.com

Scientists have shown how cannabis may trigger psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia.

A King's College London team gave healthy volunteers the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).

They then recorded reduced activity in an area of the brain which keeps inappropriate thoughts at bay.

this is particularly fascinating to me personally since it was cannabis which induced my first breakdown and i'm still feeling the consequences on my life 14 years later

BBC NEWS | Health | Cannabis 'disrupts brain centre'

The Supreme Court on Monday scaled back a controversial legal test that has made it difficult to challenge patents on new products.

San Jose Mercury News - Court modifies for invalidating patents

A department of the Iraqi prime minister's office is playing a leading role in the arrest and removal of senior Iraqi army and national police officers, some of whom had apparently worked too aggressively to combat violent Shiite militias, according to U.S. military officials in Baghdad.

Maliki's Office Is Seen Behind Purge in Forces - washingtonpost.com

Police in Estonia arrested more than 200 people yesterday following a third night of protests over the government's decision to remove a Soviet war memorial in the country's capital.
...
Estonian prime minister Andrus Ansip has called for calm in the wake of the rioting prompted by the removal of the statue, which was erected in 1947 to honour Red Army soldiers who fought against the Nazis.

But while Ethnic Russians, who make up around a third of Estonia's population, see the memorial as a recognition of Russia's efforts in the fight against fascism, supporters of the statue's removal associate the monument with the 50-year period during which the Baltic state was ruled by the Soviet Union.

a situation to watch
there are real ethnic tensions here but to what extent is the Kremlin directing the FSB to stir tensions, laying the ground work for the tanks to roll across the border "to preserve peace and stability" at some moderately distant future moment

Third night of protests in Estonia

This project is the sick, sick work of Instructables member canida and company. It is a real mouse, gutted and fitted with parts from one of those small laptop mice.

The Real Mouse, Mouse - Gizmodo

The possibility is growing that Britain in 2007 may experience a summer of unheard-of high temperatures, with the thermometer even reaching 40C, or 104F,a level never recorded in history.
...
The incredibly warm April days we have been experiencing are not just wonderful, they are downright weird when seen in their seasonal context. Some of them have been 10C hotter, or more, than they should be at this time of the year.

no kidding it's kinda surreal

Overheating Britain: April temperatures break all records - Independent Online Edition - Climate Change

"April 26, 2007

High school senior Allen Lee sat down with his creative writing class on Monday and penned an essay that so disturbed his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct.

"I understand what happened recently at Virginia Tech," said the teen's father, Albert Lee, referring to last week's massacre of 32 students by gunman Seung-Hui Cho. "I understand the situation."

But he added: "I don't see how somebody can get charged by writing in their homework. The teacher asked them to express themselves, and he followed instructions."

Allen Lee, an 18-year-old straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with disorderly conduct for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location."
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I f'ing knew this was going to happen. :(

[ Yeah, it's basically inevitable. Be a good little sheep and don't think any bad thoughts or we'll ruin your life.

Let's call this what it is, they basically arrested the kid for Thought Crime.

Beyond which, they've sent the message that if you have strong emotions or violent thoughts, you better not express them, because you'll get arrested for it. They've sent the message that it's better to bottle those feelings up, keep them to yourself. They've sent the message that thinking that way makes you an alien and an outsider which is precisely 180 degrees from the message that ought to be sent.

Shit like this is about sweeping everything unpleasant under the rug without any acknowledgement that such tactics only make problems worse in the long run.

And don't even get me started on the absurdity of the disorderly conduct charge. If the teacher, or even her bosses, had handled this privately, and appropriately -- e.g. by engaging the boy's parents -- there would have been ZERO disruption for anyone. It was the cheap way out and it's a damn shame.

God knows it's hard to be a teacher these days, but this knee-jerk, zero tolerance crap is a bad way to run things. If shit was this bad when I was in school, I'd've gotten hauled in for the nine inch nails lyrics i had taped inside my locker door. -k]

Student Writes Essay, Gets Arrested by Police

Alright. I was planning to take a few weeks off this whole blogging thing and just focus on finals. But then an article like this comes along and I simply cannot resist pointing it out. Oh boy.

The Justice Department- who is obviously completely out of the spotlight at the moment- is asking a federal court to limit basic attorney priveleges in the case of Guantanamo detainees. What kind of privileges would they give up?

"Under the proposal, filed this month in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the government would limit lawyers to three visits with an existing client at Guantánamo; there is now no limit. It would permit only a single visit with a detainee to have him authorize a lawyer to handle his case. And it would permit a team of intelligence officers and military lawyers not involved in a detainee’s case to read mail sent to him by his lawyer.
The proposal would also reverse existing rules to permit government officials, on their own, to deny the lawyers access to secret evidence used by military panels to determine that their clients were enemy combatants.
Many of the lawyers say the restrictions would make it impossible to represent their clients, or even to convince wary detainees — in a single visit — that they were really lawyers, rather than interrogators."

Wow. So, limit access to clients, their evidence, and violate attorney client privilege. For people that are already being held without charges in a secret prison that uses illegal interrogation techniques. Does that about sum it up? Oh, right... this request is being brought by a Department that is under investigation for massive corruption. Wow.

Its hard to think of a strong enough commendation of this latest DOJ action... so let me just say... um... I think that this is bad.

Court asked to Limit Lawyers at Guantanamo

The Black Hole of Guantanamo

A musician without peer and passionate advocate of political freedom, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich was a citizen of the world, though often unwelcome in his Russian homeland.

played some mean Bach

Legendary cellist Rostropovich dies at 80