Food Prof Law Blog alerted me to a very helpful website about food and nutrition. 

Nutritionpedia.com provides “nutrition facts and nutrition information for your favorite food items.”  It “can help you find nutrition information for dieting, health and wellness.”  The site, of course, includes disclaimers that you should consult your healthcare provider, etc.    Great information! 

Nicole Stockdale at A Capital Idea writes about two books that we all may want to add to our Christmas Lists.  "The Yale Book of Quotations” and "What They Didn't Say."   They look like interesting reads, but may upset accepted notions of who said what. 

According to a recent review of “The Yale Book of Quotations” by Arthur Spiegelman:

Showman P.T. Barnum never said "There's a sucker born every minute" although he wished he had. And Civil War Admiral David Farragut probably never said "Damn the Torpedoes! Full Speed Ahead" -- words that have inspired generations of fighting men.

To make things even more complicated, it is doubtful that Paul Revere warned that "The British are coming" when he would have at the time of the American Revolution thought himself British, although a revolting one. He probably would have said "The Redcoats are coming."

    In “What They Didn’t Say:  A Book of Misquotations,” editor Elizabeth Knowles addresses “many supposedly historical lines, such as Napoleon's ‘Not tonight Josephine’, but also covers modern icons including Star Trek. No one ever said ‘Beam me up Scotty’, and Mr Spock never said "’It's life Jim, but not as we know it.’"  In a review in the Guardian, Ms Knowles said: "The last thing we want is to be seen as clever clogs, saying that these quotes are wrong. The fascination lies in how and why they were altered. Misquotations are much more interesting than mistakes."

      Next thing you know, they will be saying there is no Santa.

I have said several times that  lawyers should not limit their internet searches to Google, but should try other general search engines such as www.ask.com.   But general search engines simply cannot find all the goodies on the Internet.  Search engines are constantly expanding their search areas, but some parts of the web remain “invisible”  to general search engines.

In 2001 Chris Sherman and Gary Price wrote a book called “The Invisible Web” and defined the Invisible Web like this: 

In a nutshell, the Invisible Web consists of material that general-purpose search engines either cannot or, perhaps more importantly, will not include in their collections of Web pages (called indexes or indices).  The Invisible Web contains vast amounts of authoritative and current information that’s accessible to you, using your Web browser or add-on utility software – but you have to know where to find it ahead of time, since you simply cannot locate it using a search engine like Hotbot or Lycos.

Many things have changed since 2001 (for example, Lycos is now powered by ask.com), but the Invisible Web remains invisible.  Gary and Chris discuss the details of the Invisible Web in much more detail, but, in general, think about it this way.  First, remember that when you use a search engine, you are not really searching the web; you are searching the database of web pages that that particular search engine’s crawler has gathered.  When the crawler goes out into the web to create its database, it is stopped – just like you and I are – when it gets to a place where it has to make a decision.  For example, the crawler is stopped when a website asks for a password to continue the search.  Without the password, the crawler cannot reach those pages, so those pages are not included in the search engine’s database.  There are also non-password decisions, such as when a website for a store asks you to choose a location before proceeding.  The search engine may not be able to make that decision and therefore cannot include all the pages from that website in its database.  The technology of search engines changes and gets better every day, so they can reach more and more pages.  We just hope that they never are able to reach those things that we think are password-protected. 

Anyway, all this to emphasize that you cannot find everything on the web with a general search engine or even a combination of search engines.  You need to get into the Invisible Web, but that requires using many specialized databases and search engines.  The Online Education Database has put together an excellent list of those resources and you can check it out here.  Bookmark the page and remember to go back to it when you need some specialized search tools. 

Thanks to Wisblawg for the Online Education Database link

Wisblawg notes a new search engine, one with an animated librarian to ask questions to guide your search.  The librarian -- whose name is Ms. Dewey -- is sometimes patient and even insulting; I think she threw something at me one time.  

According to Forbes, the “site, put together by San Francisco-based design shop Evolution Bureau, is part of a Microsoft ad campaign, according to the company, although Microsoft is not currently mentioned anywhere on the site.”

My search efforts with Ms. Dewey were not successful.  I asked for information about identifying bugs that have been hovering around my house lately.  The first result was an ad from an exterminator.  The other results were difficult to read and I had trouble scrolling the other results. 

I strongly recommend that everyone use more than one search engine and not limit your efforts to Google.  That said, I probably won’t add Ms. Dewey to my list of favorite search engines, but check it out anyway. 

    I wrote several weeks ago about the advantages of using different search engines.  In other words, we should not limit our searches to Google. 

    One good option is www.ask.com.  Here is an article by the Librarian in Black listing ten reasons librarians should use ask.com rather than Google.    Read the article and try some of the examples and I think you will want to use ask.com on your next search. 

    Thanks to Marylaine Block !

The Legal Writing Prof Blog has a list of useful links to reference resources. The resources include online encyclopedias and dictionaries, The World Factbook, and online quotation databases.  And what list of online reference resources would not be complete without a link to The Elements of Style?  Check out the list and links here. 

Pronet Advertising lists ten things that you should be monitoring on the Internet.  The list includes: 

• Company name
• Company URL
• Public facing figures
• Product names
• Product URLs
• The industry "hang outs"
• Employee activity/blogs
• Conversations
• Brand image
• Competitors

How do you monitor?  Pronet Advertising has some good suggestions for specific sources of information.  In addition, you can check out websites such as the Resource Shelf that direct you to more specialized resources.  Resource Shelf has an informative newsletter and the website is updated daily to add “high-quality web-based resources, including databases, lists and rankings, real-time sources, and multimedia.”    

In most situations, however, I think that periodic searches on a couple of search engines will meet most of your monitoring needs.  Just plug in the name of your client or your law firm or your client’s product or the name of opposing counsel or your own name and see what you find.   I use Google as my primary search engine, perhaps just because I have become so comfortable with its search functions.   All search engines operate differently, so we should all become familiar with several.

Paula Hane at Information Today has a good article discussing the search functions of Ask.com.  
In addition to some sample searches, she points out that Ask.com has a special help session that features librarian Gary Price.  Gary is the editor of Resource Shelf, mentioned above as a great resource for finding information.   

Try a few searches on ask.com to see what you think, and then do the same searches on Google for comparison. 

 

 

LLRX, as usual, has very helpful articles this month.  For example, check out "It’s Not Rocket Science: Making Sense of Scientific Evidence" by Paul Barron.  "The purpose of this article is to review a search process using advanced search query features in Google, Yahoo, and other search tools to find publicly accessible Web-based information on toxic substances and the law and, more specifically, the reliability of scientific evidence about toxic substances." The article walks you through the search, teaching techniques and strategies far beyond basic "googling."  

Mark Liberman at Language Log has another update on his search for verification that women speak more words than men.  Still no support. 

Law Dawg Blawg,  which is brought to you by the law librarians of Southern Illinois University, has updated and expanded its research guide on "Evaluating Websites and Other Information Resources." According to the blog/blawg,

It covers the basics of evaluating websites as legal research sources and provides references and links to CALI lessons, articles, tutorials and other websites for further information.

The guide covers the issues of authority, objectivity, accuracy, coverage and timeliness.  Check it out. 

BeSpacific reports on the new database of political ads at the Washington Post website.  According to the site,

The database includes political advertisements funded by campaigns, parties, committees, and indepdendent advocacy groups. Most of the ads are tied to specific U.S. House, U.S. Senate, or gubernatorial races throughout the country. Some of the ads are more general "issue" or advocacy ads not tied to a particular race or candidate. You can search for ads based on the criteria listed below.

When I checked this morning, there were only 71 ads on the database.  There was one ad from Tennessee and none from Mississippi.  The database is new and I hope it will include more ads as we move toward November. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the national census of fatal occupational injuries in 2005.  Here are some highlights. 

• How is the report compiled?  “The program uses diverse State and Federal data sources to identify, verify, and profile fatal work injuries.  Information about each workplace fatality (industry, occupation, and other worker characteristics; equipment being used; and circumstances of the event) is obtained by cross-referencing source documents, such as death certificates, workers’ compensation records, and reports to Federal and State agencies.  This method assures counts are as complete and accurate as possible. For the 2005 data, over 20,000 unique source documents were reviewed as part of the data collection process.”
  

• “Fatal work injuries among workers under 20 years of age were up about 18 percent from the 2004 figure to 166 cases.”

• “A total of 29 work-related fatalities were attributable to hurricanes and their aftermath in 2005.  Hurricane-related fatalities were concentrated in three States – Mississippi (10 fatalities), Louisiana (8 fatalities), and Florida (8 fatalities).” 

The report, as well as similar reports prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, provides information that could be helpful in many kinds of litigation. 

Thanks to Workplace Prof Blog! 

Do you ever wonder about wikis?    According to Wikipedia, this is the current definition of “wiki”

[A] type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change all content very quickly and easily, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative writing. The term wiki can also refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the operation of such a website (see wiki software), or to certain specific wiki sites, including the computer science site (and original wiki), WikiWikiWeb, and the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

The word wiki is a shorter form of wiki wiki (weekie, weekie) which is from the native language of Hawaii (Hawaiian), where it is commonly used as an adjective to denote something "quick" or "fast" (Hawaiian dictionary). As an adverb, it means "quickly" or "fast".

As Cindy Chick at Lawlibtech writes, while “public Internet wikis, editable by anyone, can have credibility and spam issues, wikis can be great for internal use and collaboration, so don't ignore this trend!”   

To help you join the trend or at least learn more about wikis, Cindy points to LawLib Wiki where Debbie Ginsberg gathers many resources on wikis.    LawLib Wiki  “gathers information about library wikis, legal wikis, university wikis, law school wikis, popular wikis, and law library wikis. It includes articles about wikis and books about wikis. It also discusses wiki engines law libraries can use to create and manage wikis.”  It also includes the powerpoint presentation on wikis that Debbie made at AALL. 

According to an article in Time magazine last year,  (the article is mentioned at LawLib Wiki) "it's a wiki wiki world."  "Business wikis are being used for project management, mission statements and cross-company collaborations. Instead of e-mailing a vital Word document to your co-workers—and creating confusion about which version is the most up-to-date—you can now literally all be on the same page: as a wiki Web page, the document automatically reflects all changes by team members." 

Check out Lawlib Wiki and learn how wikis can help you. 

 

Here is an update on a previous blog entry about  the speaking habits of men and women.  As you may recall, Mark Liberman at Language Log had not been able to locate "the source of Louann Brizendine's assertion that 'A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000'". 

Mark reports today that, as far as he can tell, "none of the literature that actually addresses the question of sex differences in speaking rates finds anything remotely resembling the disparity that Brizendine claims." 

What does this have to do with legal research and writing?  Accept nothing at face value. 

The Info Chaser blog recently reminded us that “we should view all statistics, no matter how frequently they are used in public arguments, with skepticism until we know who produced them and how they were derived.”

 This is the article that the Info Chaser referenced.  The article addresses these numbers in particular: 

The magic number for journalists covering the identity theft beat has been $48 billion—the estimated annual losses suffered by identity theft victims—which carries the Federal Trade Commission's imprimatur. Since its arrival in 2003, the number has appeared in hundreds of news stories, including a  May 30 New York Times piece.

Read the article and think about it whenever someone throws out a number or statistic to support their position. 

The Law Librarian Blog pointed me to the “Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries,” as compiled by Human Events.  Here are the books: 


I don’t think I have to say it, but Human Events is a conservative organization.  This is what Human Events says about itself:  

The Declaration of Independence begins: "When in the course of HUMAN EVENTS. . . ." In reporting the news, HUMAN EVENTS is objective; it aims for accurate presentation of all the facts. But it is not impartial. It looks at events through eyes that favor limited constitutional government, local self-government, private enterprise and individual freedom. These are the principles that inspired our Founding Fathers. We think that today the same principles will preserve freedom in America.

As to the books, here is how they were chosen: 

HUMAN EVENTS asked a panel of 15 conservative scholars and public policy leaders to help us compile a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Each panelist nominated a number of titles and then voted on a ballot including all books nominated. A title received a score of 10 points for being listed No. 1 by one of our panelists, 9 points for being listed No. 2, etc. Appropriately, The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, earned the highest aggregate score and the No. 1 listing.

Read at your own risk.    And send me the names of books that you would include on a list of "most dangerous." 

I have heard many times that women use more words than men during any given day.   This “fact” is usually supported by specific numbers of words and generally is intended to bolster the position that men and women are different.  I agree that men and women are different but have always wondered about those numbers. 

I am glad to say that someone Mark Liberman wondered about those numbers and that he did some research on the matter.  He sets out his research in a blog entry entitled "Sex-linked Lexical Budgets."   His research is impressive.  He found references to the “fact” – supported by various combinations of numbers of words – in a pretty funny joke, a one-man show, new reports, books, and articles.  But he did not find any evidence that the “fact is supported by  “actually counting words or measuring talking times.” 

In case you could not tell, Mark (and I) are skeptical of the “fact.”  Mark says: 

[I should say, if it's not already obvious, that I'm skeptical about the truth of this claim. For either sex, the variance of daily word-production counts will be enormous, and even for a particular individual, the count will depend massively on variable aspects of life circumstances. At best you'd be able to say that in a certain range of comparable circumstances, there were different mean values for men and women; and even in that sort of controlled comparison, I'd be very surprised if the within-group variation wasn't much larger than the across-group difference. So far, I haven't found any evidence that there is any empirical warrant for saying even that much.]

Mark asks for his readers to let him know if he is wrong.   Watch his blog for any progress on this matter.

In the meantime, the day is almost over and I need to make my quota of words. 

Michelle Leder writes a blog called footnoted.org where she talks about the fine print in financial filings and related issues.  Here is her bio: 

Michelle Leder has been writing about personal finance and investing for the past 16 years, including 10 years spent as business reporter and later editor for daily newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Florida. A freelance journalist for the past six years, her articles have appeared in The New York Times, Inc., BusinessWeek, Business 2.0, Slate, and others. As a daily journalist, she won numerous awards, including the Society of Business Editors and Writers prestigious Best in Business award. She holds a degree in economics from Brandeis University in Waltham, MA and lives in Peekskill, NY with her husband, Scott. Financial Fine Print is her first book.

Her site includes a a "cheat sheet for reading key sec filings" that lists questions to consider in reading 10-Qs, 10-Ks and proxies. 

Once you become familiar with these documents, looking for a few key items shouldn’t take much time – figure 20-30 minutes for a 10-Q and a proxy and an hour for a 10-K – and could save you a lot of money by helping you avoid potential problems early on. Remember: there’s no need to read every word or even understand everything that you are reading. What you’re looking for are signs of aggressive accounting and any significant changes that were not in the filing last quarter or last year. What makes something significant? That’s difficult to say. It’s kind of like the way the Supreme Court defines obscenity: you’ll know it when you see it.

The rest of the blog is interesting reading too. Check it out here. 

Resource Shelf has link to Infoplease, the website that of Information Please. 

Information Please has been providing authoritative answers to all kinds of factual questions since 1938—first as a popular radio quiz show, then starting in 1947 as an annual almanac, and since 1998 on the Internet at www.infoplease.com. Many things have changed since 1938, but not our dedication to providing reliable information, in a way that engages and entertains.

For more information about Information Please, click here and here.    The website is a good source of all sorts of information.

Washington Researchers is company that provides training and publications on competitive intelligence.  I have used their publications on several occasions and found them to be helpful and concise resources for researcher. 

The Washington Researchers website includes “The Ten Commandments of Internet Searching according to Washington Researchers.”   The commandments include some useful reminders that should streamline lawyers’ searching efforts. For example, know your search engine and use multiple searcher engines.   When you find relevant information in your search, “[c]onsider the source of what you find. Just because it is in print, doesn't mean it's true.” 

Perhaps the most important commandment is to watch the clock:  “If you don't watch yourself, you will spend hours looking for something that can't be found or you will end up surfing instead of searching.” 

Check out the other commandments as well as other Washington Researchers resources here.