Thanks to Miss France

They’ve done it folks! After years of deliberation, the French government has finally banned the public use of the Burka,a traditional muslim veil, effective Monday April 11.

Anyone wearing the burka or niqab in public will be “fined up to $216 and a citizenship course.” And to enforce this law, men who are caught forcing women to wear a veil will face a much steeper punishment of up to $43,400 in fines and prosecution.

To complicate matters, immigration minister and architect of the ban, Eric Besson (who once described a burqua as a “walking coffin”)  is reported to  have a Muslim Tunisian girlfriend who is more than half his age.  Besson is allegedly considering suing a news website that speculated about his possible conversion to Islam.

Muslims in France are less than certain about the the burqa ban …. ok, they are outraged!

If the protests on Saturday and the peaceful demonstrations on Monday are any indication, this is going to be a long difficult battle.

On Saturday, 61 people were arrested in Paris, 19 of which were women.  And attempting to join the party was Anjem Choudary, a member of the outlawed Islam4UK.  He was arrested along with two other Muslim radicals.

On the first day of the ban, two women wore their burqas in defiance of the new law and were arrested NOT for veiling their face BUT for an unauthorized protest! It seems the French government is still confused about its own law.

“I’m not here to provoke, but to defend my civil liberties as a French citizen,” said Drider, one of the veiled protesters on Monday.

Taking creativity to a new level, some Muslim women in France are planning on wearing medical masks in order to get around the law.  Others have simply left France, which is the 1st country to “bring a ban on face-covering veils.”  Although nearly a year ago Belgium passed a similar ban, it has failed to enforce it.

Even more alarming are Al-Qaeda’s massive threats to attack France following the introduction of the ban.  Like many Muslim communities abroad, they are not buying Sarkozy’s fight against the “debasement of women” so passionately stated in his state of the nation address last year.

It is curious, odd, and some would say a little incriminating that Sarkozy would support this ban just a year before a national election. 60% do not support Mr Sarkozy according to a recent Paris-based poll. But France’s current political atmosphere seems to be anti-immigration.  So it appears Sarkozy may be using the ban as a good political opportunity to boost his popularity.

Just something to think about.  Could the ban spread to the UK, Italy, and even the US?

Have you ever slipped your favorite “text slang” into casual conversation? Embarrassing, right?

Don’t worry. You were just being a vocabulary pioneer.

According to this article from BBC, LOL has made it’s way into the Oxford English Dictionary alongside similar expressions FYI and OMG.

We at USDemocrazy urge you to use caution when using these expressions in your English papers, but fully encourage you to use them to get ahead in Scrabble games.

What do you think? Are you ready for “text slang” to be on your Word of the Day calendar?

What: Google Search Tips Workshop
When: 12:00 – 12:30pm, Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Where: LIB 259

In this interactive workshop, you will learn how to use a variety of search tools available in Google that allow for more effective and efficient searching, including advanced search, filters features, command search and more. In addition, you will learn how to connect Google Scholar to UMBC library resources.

if you have any questions about this workshop, please contact Shu Qian at qian@umbc.edu.

www.flickr.com UMBC New Media Studio's Multimedia Literacy Lab Spring, 2011 photoset

MCS101L, Multimedia Literacy Lab, is a one-credit course offered in two sections. The class is taken in conjunction with MCS333. Students were given 6 story prompts to choose from for their final digital story projects.

Final Projects

First Project

The Committee to Protect Journalists has issued an alert for UMBC alumnus Matthew VanDyke ’02, political science, who has gone missing in Libya. He is one of 15 journalists currently missing or in government custody in Libya.

Read the full story here and please share.  Keeping Matthew in the public eye is important!

Dissertation Defense

Towards Relational Theory Formation
from Undifferentiated Sensor Data

Marc Pickett

10:00am Monday, 18 April 2011
ITE 325b, UMBC

Human adults have rich theories in their heads of how the world works. These theories include objects and relations for both concrete and abstract concepts. Everything we know either must be innate or learned through experience. Yet it's unclear how much of this model needs to be innate for a computer. The core question this dissertation addresses is how a computer can develop rich relational theories using only its raw sensor data. We address this by outlining a "bridge" between raw sensors and a rich relational theory. We have implemented parts of this bridge, with other parts as feasibility studies, while others remain conceptual.

At the core of this bridge is Ontol, a system that constructs a conceptual structure or "ontology" from feature-set data. Ontol is inspired by cortical models that have been shown to be able to express invariant concepts, such as images independent of any translation or rotation. As a demonstration of the utility of the ontologies created by Ontol, we present a novel semi-supervised learning algorithm that learns from only a handful of positive examples. Like humans, this algorithm doesn't require negative examples. Instead, this algorithm uses the ontologies created by Ontol from unlabeled data, and searches for a Bayes-optimal theory given this "background knowledge".

The rest of the dissertation shows in principle how Ontol can be used as the "workhorse" for a system that finds analogies, discovers useful mappings, and might ultimately create theories, such as a "gisty" theory of "number".

Committee:

• Tim Oates, Associate Professor, UMBC
• Tim Finin, Professor, UMBC
• Rob Goldstone, Professor, Indiana University
• Sergei Nirenburg, Professor, UMBC
• Matt Schmill, Research Faculty, UMBC

I wear many hats here at UMBC, and one of which happens to be a programmer for the Student Events Board. We are currently booking food venders to come sell food (for VERY cheap) to students at the all-day festival on April 16^th.

Our list includes:

• Funnel Cake
• Fries
• Pit Beef Sandwiches
• Curry choices with rice
• Falafel
• Crepes
• Blend-your-own smoothies (via bicycle)
• Cotton Candy
• Watermelon
• Popsicles

Not all of these are confirmed, but it’s a rough list.

What sounds good? What are you excited for? What sounds gross? How do you pronounce “falafel”? Comment and let me know what you think so far. Keep in mind that many of these options will be either free or for just a dollar (except pit beef).

What would you add to the list? Is there anything that you have been craving? What would be an awesome food to try?

Put all your thoughts in the comment section and we will try to see what we can do with your requests.

Quadmania is April 16^th, just around the corner! And this year will feature music and food extensively. Don’t miss this great chance to try some things you have never eaten. When was the last time you blended your own smoothie using a bicycle?