For those who don’t read Language Log: the Supreme Court has a relief of Mohammed (picture here).

Im Jahr 1997 baten Muslime das Supreme Court der Vereinigten Staaten, ihr Reliefbild von Mohammed durch Sandstrahlen zu entfernen, aber Rehnquist lehnte ab: das Bild ehre Mohammed (unter anderen) als Gesetzgeber.

The BBC reports that an identikit picture of a burglary suspect looked so strange that the victim of a robbery feared it would not help find him.

I see this is referred to as an ‘e-fit image’. Google reveals the superordinate term facial composite, and sub-categories identikit, photofit, e-fit. Sorry, that should be E-fit – because it’s a trademark. Here is more:

bq. The composite facial system currently favoured by the U.K. police, and used in 18 other countries, is known as ‘E-FIT’ (Electronic-Facial Identification Technique). Despite the major improvements achieved over earlier systems such as IdentiKit and PhotoFit, some inherent weaknesses have been identified in the E-FIT system. The E-FIT system is fundamentally based on the selection of individual facial features (eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows etc) from a large library that are electronically “blended” to make the composite image. There is, however, a considerable body of evidence to suggest that the task of face recognition and synthesis does not lend itself to simple decomposition into features and is at least partly, a global process

Ein Phantombild (siehe BBC-Bericht) wurde kritisiert, da der Einbrecher “nicht ganz so merkwürdig aussah … Auf dem Bild hat er nur ein halbes Ohr, aber das stimmt nicht. Und sein Schnurrbart sah anders aus … anscheinend hatte die Polizei auf ihrem Rechner nur lange Schnurrbärte, und sie musste die Seiten abschneiden…Jemand, der so aussieht, habe ich nie in Stalham oder sonstwo in meinem ganzen Leben gesehen”. Die Polizei weigerte sich, das Bild zu kommentieren, da es die Untersuchung gefährden könne.

Thanks, as usual, to kalebeul.

I am a bit remiss in keeping up with Italian weblogs, apart from Taccuino di Traduzione and Luxus Linguae (very tough the latter), since what Italian I know was largely picked up listening to Wolferl.

I noticed that fogliedivite has stopped, but there is a newish group translators’ blog, traslochi.

Freilandei aus Sachsen-Anhalt (Eiercodes).

Wenn Anfang März die Stallpflicht wieder eingeführt wird, darf man immer noch von Freilandhaltung sprechen?

Delia Venables has a page summarizing legal weblogs.

There may be several I haven’t mentioned. I certainly haven’t mentioned the latest, John Bolch’s weblog on family law, Family Lore – Random thoughts of a family lawyer. A sample (February 2):

bq. As has been widely reported in the media today, golfer Colin Montgomerie has agreed a £15 million divorce settlement with his former wife. The interesting thing from a family lawyer’s perspective is that it is reported that the lump sum is ‘up to half’ of Montgomerie’s personal wealth and that Mrs Montgomerie accepted it in return for waiving a claim against his future earnings. No doubt Monty is now even more eager to win that first Major tournament!

bq. The Daily Express also reports that Mrs Montgomerie divorced her ex-husband on the basis of his unreasonable behaviour, citing his “obsession” with golf. One wonders just how many professional golfers are not obsessed with their sport…

Nor did I mention Justin Patten’s weblog at Human Law – his main site is interesting too.

There is an interesting remark on UK law blogs in general:

bq. the majority of the them have an Intellectual Property bias. This is probably because IP people have an interest in technology. But where are the divorce law blogs? Or how about some blogs on civil litigation? It would really enhance the quality of the blogs if we could have some which covered other legal disciplines.