Day: May 19, 2004

Neiman Marcus Loses Domain Dispute with Fund for Animals

As mentioned on this site a couple weeks ago, Neiman Marcus filed a complaint with a domain name arbitration group over The Fund for Animals’ use of the domain names NeimanCarcass.com, NeimanCarcass.org, and NeimanCarcass.net.

Neiman Marcus claimed that the domain names were confusingly similar to its trademarked name. In denying Neiman Marcus’ claim, however, the National Arbitration Forum’s Charles K. McCotter, Jr. wrote that,

. . . it is unreasonable to believe that a reasonable consumer would be confused as to what the website is about or whether it is owned, sponsored or affiliated with [Neiman Marcus].

This is the correct decision, but completely at odds with previous decisions by the National Arbitration Forum that took similar domain names from animal rights groups and transferred them to Neiman Marcus. Just another example of how screwy and wrong domain name arbitration systems remain.

Source:

Fund for Animals wins web dispute to keep NeimanCarcass.Com. Press Release, Fund for Animals, May 18, 2004.

Ban on Foie Gras Passes California Senate

A bill that would ban the force feeding of ducks and geese to make foie-gras passed the California state Senate this week by a vote of 21-14. The bill now goes on to the state Assembly.

Currently there is only one firm, Sonoma Foie Gras, in California that produces foie gras.

Source:

Ban on force-fed foie gras nears. Reuters, May 19, 2004.

Makah Await Result of Latest Appeal on Whale Hunt

In November 2003 a three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Makah would not receive a rehearing of the court’s December 2002 decision barring the hunt. In that decision, a three-judge panel of the court ruled that the Makah must apply for a permit to hunt whales under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

In December the Makah filed an appeal asking the case to be heard by the full court of appeals. That appeal was rejected, but the court said the Makah could file another appeal, so on February 10 it formally requested that the court reconsider the decision blocking the whale hunt.

The answer to that appeal should come in the next month or two.

Sources:

Tribe’s whalers await chance to hunt again. Lewis Kamb, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 17, 2004.

Makah whaling: Five years, it’s a court case. Peninsula Daily News, May 16, 2004.

Insanity of the Day: Googol vs. Google

This is so absurd that I still half think it must be a hoax. The Baltimore Sun has an interview with relatives of mathematician Edward Kasner. Kasner was a mathemtician who popularized the use of the term googol to refer to 10^100, and Google clearly played on the term in naming their company and search engine.

And now Kasner’s descendants want a piece of the Google action. Kanser’s great-neice Peri Fleischer whines to the Sun,

They are playing off that number and not compensating us even a little bit. Ethically, they could have been more giving. If nothing else, they should have given us the opportunity to operate as insiders for the IPO.

. . .

But you believe Google has an obligation to compensate you and your family for using the name coined by your great uncle, correct?

Legally, that’s an open question we’re exploring. But ethically, courteously, yes. I see some hypocrisy there. They have ignored us. Other than changing a couple of letters on the name, they are capitalizing on it. This is a business. These guys are going to make billions of dollars. It’s not a cute little thing.

I’m simply speechless.

Source:

Have your Google people talk to my ‘googol’ people. Gerald P. Merrell, Baltimore Sun, May 16, 2004.

Now They’re Promoting Conspiracy Theories Over at Boing! Boing!

As I’ve mentioned previously, I really enjoy Boing! Boing! but sometimes that blog just goes off into loony insanity. For example, Cory Doctorow points to this silly conspiracy nonsense claiming that Nicholas Berg was killed by Westerns who are trying to frame al- Zaqarawi for the murder (probably the same people who faked the Daniel Pearl video) and Doctorow says of this,

The author states that a number of these will likely be explained away, but taken as a whole, this very convincingly implies that Berg was not killed by the terrorists that the CIA fingered, and may, in fact, have been killed by westerners.

For the record, note that this sentence here is erroneous because Doctorow apparently takes the conspiracy piece at face value when it says,

For a number of reasons, it does not appear that the Jordanian terrorist Abu Masab Al-Zaraqawi, who was voice identified by the CIA (and whose name was on the tape), was involved.

But the CIA has not made an official statement about whether or not Al-Zaraqawi is on the tape as the tape itself claims. Rather, newspapers have quoted an anonymous CIA source as claiming that a voice match suggested there was a “high probability” that the voice was that of Al-Zaraqawi.

Stupid Drug Laws — We’re Not Meth Dealers, We Have Allergies

Man, it was bad enough when I discovered my wife’s porn collection, but today I learn that she’s also apparently a suspected meth dealer. Sometimes you think you know people . . .

This is even more bizarre than the Asimov’s porn story. Before meeting me at the gym, Lisa stopped off at a local Walgreen’s to pick up a couple boxes of Claritin D for her and I. We’ve both got crazy allergies, and Walgreen’s has the cheapest price.

Anyway, she calls me because she had a minor glitch in buying Claritin — the cashier had to ring up each box separately, so she had to pay for one box on her credit card on one charge, and then the cashier rang up the other box and charge that separately. He even asked her if she was sure she needed two boxes. WTF? Like I need some Walgreen cashier concering himself with my allergy problems.

And then she gets online and figures it all out. Claritin D contains pseudoephedrine and basically everybody and their brother is going f—ing nuts over such products because they can be used to produce methamphetamine. Some states even want to ban products with pseudoephedrine.

Yeah, you can have my Claritin D when you pry it loose from my cold dead allergic hands. If I wanted to live in a nanny state where some teenage kid at a Walgreen has to question my buying over-the-counter drugs, I’d move to Europe and get it over with.

Let my allergy drugs go.