Court Says Current Currency Not Fair for Blind

A federal judge ruled yesterday that keeping all U.S. paper currency the same size and feel discriminates against blind people.

Judge James Robertson ordered the Treasury Department to come up with a way to tell the bills apart.

Robertson said the Rehabilitation Act -- a law prohibiting discrimination of people with disabilities in government programs -- is being violated.

He didn't say how to rectify the issue only that they begin working on the problem within 10 days. The American Council of the Blind -- bringers of the lawsuit -- have suggested using foil, holes, raised dots or ink, or printing different sized bills.

Scatablog would put up with the bill for the sake of the blind:

Every other country in the world has different sizes for different denominations. When I travel, I find that a bit of a pain, since I have a wallet that's just fine for U.S. bills but won't hold the larger foreign bills unless I fold them various ways. While I would be perfectly happy to put up with the inconvenience if it helps the blind, I suspect there will be a lot of guys (Rush Limbaugh comes to mind) who will object.

Anthony at Oh, the Humanity believes no changes ought be made:

Ok, I'm all for fairness, but really. C'mon. Do we really need to reprint, redesign, and reconfigure all of our monetary notes to favor the blind? I can understand if your the Republic of Totowannabee and have never had money before, so it's easy to design and print currency that is favorable to all social groups. Sure, you can create meat-free vegan style bills with braille bumps that are printed with organic hemp ink and quietly murmur the value of the bill. But, if you already have trillions of dollars in currency out in the public hands, it becomes a bit more of a hassle.Has anyone, including the idiot judge, considered how much it would cost to do this? Of course not. He handed down some arbitrary verdict based on a PC culture epidemic.

-Dippold

Political Online Reputation

Al-Jazeera English Launches

Al-Jazeera launched an English language network Wednesday. Al-Jazeera English can not be watched on US cable yet but is available on the GlobeCast satellite network. It is also available to stream online -- a low-quality version, free for 15 minutes or a high-quality, subscription version. Numair.com has some thoughts on the new network:

Rather than looking at the immature, idiotic boycott of Al-Jazeera as a bad thing, I see it as a bit of a blessing in disguise. By being banned from the normal media outlets, perhaps Al-Jazeera will be forced to come up with creative uses of digital technology to get their message across. . . We're in the midst of a media revolution in which everything is being turned upside down; rather than being an also-ran in yesterday's format, Al-Jazeera would do well to become a leader in tomorrow's methods of consumption. The boycott perfectly positions Al-Jazeera as a well-funded, high-quality content creator with absolutely nothing to lose on the broadcast/traditional side from throwing content out on the web and experimenting to see what "sticks" and generates revenue. I am sure the more innovative among the ranks of organizations such as CNN would be envious of such an opportunity.

-Dippold

Political Online Reputation

Iran upset at google video description

Iran is upset over a google video description stating the Iranian city of Tabriz is in Azerbaijan when in actuality Tabriz is the Azeri provincial capital in Iran. Yesterday the description read, "This video shows Tabriz, a city in Southern Azerbaijan, currently in the territory of Iran." Today the description has been slightly altered: "This video shows Tabriz, a major Azerbaijani city, in East Azerbaijan (Iran)."

Iranian government officials are urging people to flood google with complaint emails over the situation, an "insult" they say undermines Iran's territorial integrity.

Apparently this story has spawned a spoof of the same video with an even more dubious description: " Tabriz is the capital city of South Azerbaijan which is currently occupied by barbarian persians (Iranians). South Azerbaijan includes the ... all northwest ... all » provinces of a fake country called Iran"

As you may well know, google does not write the descriptions for the videos it hosts, as Tech and Science News Updates says:

Google has absolutely nothing to do with this, other than being the platform on which the video is hosted. They didn’t write the description. They didn’t approve the description. Frankly, it seems likely that they couldn’t care any less about the description. However, it doesn’t seem like the Iranian officials understand that at all, suggesting that this is a case of Google’s “interference in the affairs of another country,” while a newspaper claims that this is a “dubious” act by Google. Perhaps before they bash Google so hard they should actually understand how the system works and that Google has absolutely nothing to do with the content or description of the video. Of course, that’s not nearly as simple as just blaming Google.

-Dippold

Political Online Reputation

Monitor the Texas-Mexico Border Online

On Friday Texas began testing a new website allowing anyone with an internet connection to see video feeds of cameras positioned along the state's border with Mexico.

Steve Berg says:

It is Big Brother in action, and will eventually have up to 200+ camera's when they are finished with the multi-million dollar project.

I am not sure if it will do any good -- but for those of you that are truly worried about border control issues I guess it is better than nothing.

You will need to register to view the border, and can report suspicious activity if you see it by clicking a link on the site.

Any info summited goes directly to local law enforcement and the state's operations center. Earmarked federal security grants are funding this $5 million program.

-Dippold

Political Online Reputation