Lansing Bankruptcy Lawyers | Baumstark & Vincent

Persuasive authority : acquisition and use

2012-04-02T11:58:00.000-07:00

The other day a student at the reference desk asked if NESL's acquisition of titles implied pre-screening such that he could safely assume any source he'd find here would not be, to put it bluntly, bunk.

Certainly we screen potential acquisitions. For secondary authority, factors considered include the credentials, reputation, prior works of authors or publishers, the importance of the subject to curriculular or professorial research goals, plus currency, format, functionality, and price. Alas, none of this guarantees against the acquisition of bunk.

Below, arguably, in the context of human rights and the law of war, some recent bunk debunked, illustrating that, for this generation of law students, new media may become a factually and legally significant component of their legal research.

Reuters and Associated Press
Reuters Doctoring Photos from Beirut?
Little Green Footballs blog
August 5, 2006

Other instances of 'fauxtography'
Little Green Footballs blog
September 2, 2006

The Corruption of the Media: Final Report re Qana
EU Referendum blog
Richard North and Helen Szamuely
August 15, 2006

The Red Cross Ambulance Incident
Zombie blog
August 23, 2006

Reuters Admits, then covers up taking Hezbo instructions
Kerry Rowe, The American Thinker blog
September 5, 2006

This post originally appeared here: http://neslreference.blogspot.com/2006/09/persuasive-authority-acquisition-and.html

Protect Yourself Online

2012-04-02T11:56:00.000-07:00

The Inter-Alia Weblog alerted me today (June 6) about a survey by the Annenberg Public Policy Center which studied respondent's knowledge about seventeen facts about information gathering on the web and found that many people are woefully ignorant as to how much information they give away while surfing the web. Seventy-one percent of the respondents to the Center's survey, for example, did not know that banks could share information about you with their affiliates; 75% did not know that a site with a privacy policy does not necessarily have to protect your information or keep it private; and 28% did not know if spammers could tell if an email has been opened.

The official report is an interesting read. Among other things, the Center found that people who thought they knew how to protect themselves scored just as poorly on the survey as those who were less sure.

This post originally appeared here: http://neslreference.blogspot.com/2005/06/protect-yourself-online.html

Welcome!

2011-12-15T08:54:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Lansing Bankruptcy Lawyers!
This is the new homepage of http://neslreference.blogspot.com/