The continuous unauthorized biography of Trinidad and Tobago
The Indo-Trinbago Equality Council's (ITEC's) Devant Maharaj, via his Letter to the Editor, called upon the Chief Justice and Law Association to investigate Justice Herbert Volney's concern about the risk of racial bias in jury trials. I have two concerns with this letter.
Secondly, when making public statements, we need to take due care such statements have a sound basis, even those that appear to be cliches. This is why I wish to highlight ITEC's use of the following statement in its letter: "Given the disproportionate number of Indo-Trinidadians who are the victims of crime, the idea that racial considerations can influence and inform the deliberation of criminal juries is one which can spread panic and fear and lead to a loss of confidence in the criminal justice system."
Can ITEC please publish the reference(s) to the research it used to determine that a "disproportionate number of Indo-Trinidadians ... are the victims of crime ..."?
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How do the creatures - I hesitate to call them human - who do this to people sleep at night?
To the state representatives responsible for delivery of such housing, you may not have done such poor work directly, but if you fail to get it repaired and penalise the contractors who did, then you will be equally guilty. It's despicable.
In response, Housing Minister Tina Gronlund-Nunez, stated that the new tenants have only six months to identify all problems they had with HDC homes. Why? For insurance purposes, buildings are ascribed a life of several decades. If over the course of these years a fault develops that can be attributed to poor workmanship by the builders, then they should be liable for it. Is she saying that a state house has a shorter warranty - six months - than the appliances that their tenants would buy? Surely not!
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I don't know exactly what it is about Trinbagonians and the concept of etiquette, but I've been dealt some interesting experiences from the deck of life recently - both happening while ordering food this week. Both happened in Gulf City's food court.
Scenario 1
A few days ago, I was about to order a gyro - I'd stood in line patiently, I'm at the regular cashier who pretty much knows my order by heart. A woman sticks some wares past me, peddling belts and other things at the cashier. The cashier looks at the wares as I look on, waiting to place my order. After carefully looking over the wares, the cashier decides she doesn't want anything being peddled and says.
I look at the woman hustling business at the cost of my hunger and ask, "Is it OK with you if I order now?"
"Yes, you can go ahead now."
'Boldfaced' immediately came to mind. Brazen. No sense of propriety. I shrugged her off, I'd made my point. The cashier made a funny face. I consciously decided not to ask her the same, made my order and left.
Scenario 2
Today, I dropped by Dominos and was in the process of ordering when a trio of young males - I disdain calling them men - were giving the cashier a hard time. One was standing behind me, trying to be cool by interrupting my order with double entendres where the first part were tastelessly silent.
I turned on him and braced him in front of his two friends, telling him that I was hungry and that if he didn't mind, I'd like to place my order without being interrupted. Basically, I was telling him in a humorous way to STFU - but he didn't get that. Instead, he decided to raise his voice to draw attention in an attempt to embarass me into silence.
Wrong person. {Read more}
Karel (of the Caribbean Public Relations blog) was kind enough to point me at Apple May Face ''iPad' Legal Battle that states, "In July 2009, acting through a proxy, Apple first applied for the iPad trademark in Trinidad & Tobago, gaining it a 'priority date' to use in other international applications."
Colour me surprised. I've been watching and writing about patents, copyrights and trademarks for some time (normally on KnowProSE.com) and never thought that the grand multidimensional legal chess game of intellectual property would include Trinidad and Tobago. That'll teach me.
For those who are too lazy to click the links, Fujitsu has ownership of the 'iPad' trademark and Apple may face a legal battle if there can be confusion between the products. Of note as well:
...There are several other owners of 'iPad' trademarks around the world, including Siemens, which has the right to use the term for engines and servo motors; and Coconut Grove Pads, which since 2008 has had the rights to the term for padded bras.
Padded bras. And one of the nicknames that Apple's not-quite-a-netbook-not-quite-a-phone product has gotten is the iTampon. Some humor for you for bothering to read this: {Read more}
UNC MP Vasant Bharath and ex-Chairman of the Membership Committee Kelvin Ramnath hosted a news conference yesterday to give further details on the alleged discovery of boxes containing "thousands" of undistributed UNC membership cards at Rienzi Complex, home of the UNC's administrative offices. It was carried live by media houses on the Internet and reported in today's papers, such as Anna Ramdass's article in the Trinidad Express.
I looked at the news conference via C News' live Internet broadcast Internet yesterday and was left a bit confused. The feed continued for a few seconds after the end of the news conference. It was during this time, I heard Mr Ramnath say that his own card may have been in the pile, and Mr Bharath replied that he found his in the pile. Unless I misheard, if the non-issuance of the cards leads to persons being omitted from the voters list, how come these two gentlemen were able to vote? Mr Ramnath admitted that the preliminary membership list was circulated to all candidates and constituency offices and apart from a handful of requests from Mr Jack Warner, no requests for changes were made.
They complained about poor office administration, lack of support for Mr Ramnath and said their intention was not to question the election results but rather to inform the public of a suspicious discovery in the offices by staff preparing for the handover to the new executive. At the end of it, I quite frankly was left with the feeling that here was a bunch of poor-me-ones trying to deflect public attention from the winds of change by claiming some fraud occurred. Their hinting of the possibility of some member of the public seeking court-room clarification on this discovery was puzzling: clarification of what? {Read more}
Two newspaper articles cover the same thing:
While it is unclear why a mother would leave a child in a running vehicle for any length of time, the word did apparently get out through a Blackberry. How Facebook was specifically involved remains unclear.
The discrepancy in the reporting between the Trinidad Express and Trinidad Guardian is worth exploring.
According to the twittersphere, Kamla Persad-Bissessar has won the United National Congress Alliance internal election. For the nosebleed section, that means that Basdeo Panday is no longer running the show.
A lot has been written about this election. A lot has been said about how important it is for a change of leadership or a lack of change of leadership within the UNC-A. All of that stops now - the leadership has changed. As is to be expected, Kamla Persad-Bissessar has a lot of things she now has to live up to.
She should know that I'm not a part of that weight. I've learned over the years not to believe anything said before an election. I didn't vote for her (or the others!) and thus I have the least expectations of her. In this way, I'm probably be her best friend a year or two from now.
That being said, there has been some mention of a coalition between COP and the UNC-A. What it should be, if they want to wedge their way back into the misdirected Westminster system, is a reconciliation between the two groups of supporters. The UNC-A supporters strongly echoed the sentiments of a split vote yet the voices from which they echoed did not openly recognize the fact that the vote was split because people didn't believe they weren't very good at Opposition. If the last two elections have demonstrated anything, it is the lack of popular support of the party parading (barely) as Opposition.
Will Kamla change that? She can't. Not by herself. She'll need support for that. And when this is all said and done, will Kamla still be in charge of Opposition?
No one knows, everyone has an opinion - but Time reveals everything. I'll wait for Time.
I had written previously about the need for Trinidad and Tobago and other nations to have an emergency SMS system in place prior to a disaster. I tweeted it, I tossed it all over Facebook, and I spread the word otherwise as did others. Effectively or ineffectively, I don't know.
On the heels of that, the Trinidad and Tobago Express reports that TSTT is implementing such a system:
...To better be able to cope with disasters, Robinson, said citizens needed to be informed of crisis situations as soon as possible. An SMS texting trial with local telecommunications provider, TSTT, will be unfolded next month, Robinson said. A major project to develop a Wide Area Alert Network (WAAN) is also in the progress of being implemented, he said...
Edmund was nice enough to point the article out to me on Facebook,and he asked ' Have they been working independently or do you think they heard your call and learnt from Haiti 4636?'
I don't know. And really - I don't think it matters... as long as it gets implemented and is usable. Kudos if they get it up before a national disaster. Well, other than continued parliamentary disaster...
So let's wait and see. Personally - I'm happy, but I'm waiting for the actual implementation before I celebrate.
Imagine being trapped under some rubble with only a mobile phone for company. You could be hurt, bleeding, hungry, dehydrated or any combination of the above. If the mobile infrastructure is even partially intact, calling people on the phone would be limited by the likely overload of the mobile system. But SMS messages get queued. They also drain less battery life which, if you're stuck, could be very important in saving your life or the life of someone you love.
Imagine a SMS equivalent of an emergency number (like 999, or 911) you could send a text to - where the right people could get your message quickly. And they could get to you and those you care about more quickly. Simple, isn't it?
As I mentioned on KnowProSE.com, Haiti now has the number 4636 for emergency SMS messages . It was set up after the fact by a group of volunteers because it was of use in communicating after the earthquake. The mobile phone infrastructure seems to have survived, at least to a noticeable degree. It's under very similar circumstances that one of my own abandoned projects, the Alert Retrieval Cache, was constructed after the South East Asian tsunami. It's basically the same thing - and it's a good idea that keeps popping up independently all over the world. I've even seen it done by UWI students for a contest last year - and they had no idea about the Alert Retrieval Cache concept. Here's a diagram for the reading impaired. {Read more}
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