05.04.08
Measuring the route
This very handy little site let me measure the route I walk: 3.128 miles. So I’m not walking all that fast, given that it takes just a little over an hour: 3 mph is my best guess.
New shaving blog and shaving shop
I just discovered The Classic Shaving Dispatch and, through it, the on-line shop Fendrihan, physically located in Brampton, Ontario. They offer a good line of products. Check them out—and check out the blog as well.
“Strike it from the record”
One way to get the result you want: delete all references that contradict it. Like this:
Akron, OH – Summit County Medical Examiner Lisa Kohler must delete any reference that Tasers contributed to the deaths of three men, a Summit County Common Pleas judge ordered Friday.
The deaths of Dennis Hyde and Richard Holcomb, who were on drugs and in an agitated state when police shot them with Tasers, should be ruled accidental, visiting Judge Ted Schneiderman wrote in his ruling. Any reference to homicide or “electrical pulse stimulation” should be deleted from death certificates and autopsy reports, he said.
The order to change the ruling in the death of the third man, Mark McCullaugh, could be more far-reaching.
McCullaugh, who had a history of psychiatric illness, died in Summit County Jail on Aug. 20, 2006, during a struggle with deputies who used Tasers and pepper spray. Five sheriff’s deputies were indicted in his death.
Schneiderman ordered Kohler to rule McCullaugh’s death undetermined and delete any references to homicide and the death possibly being caused by asphyxia, beatings or other factors.
The military vs. the soldier
Jon Town has spent the last few years fighting two battles, one against his body, the other against the US Army. Both began in October 2004 in Ramadi, Iraq. He was standing in the doorway of his battalion’s headquarters when a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet above his head. The impact punched a piano-sized hole in the concrete facade, sparked a huge fireball and tossed the 25-year-old Army specialist to the floor, where he lay blacked out among the rubble.
“The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground.” Men from his unit had gathered around his body and were screaming his name. “They started shaking me. But I was numb all over,” he says. “And it’s weird because… because for a few minutes you feel like you’re not really there. I could see them, but I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t hear anything. I started shaking because I thought I was dead.”Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town’s neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.
But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town’s wounds were actually caused by a “personality disorder.” Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.
Town is not alone.
Authors@google
Well worth doing a YouTube search for “authors@google” — here are three that immediately caught my eye, but there are lots more at the link.
Clay Shirky and Here Comes Everybody
This was news to me, but absolutely fascinating. Via My Mind on Books, I found this fascinating video (click to watch—I can’t embed this one—and note the “related content” links to the right of the video). Here’s another, a talk Shirky gave at Google:
His book, Here Comes Everybody, looks to be extremely interesting, and I’m recommending that the library get a copy (and put it on hold for me).
UPDATE: This paper is on the same general topic.
Life-changing books
New Scientist has a list of life-changing books nominated by various scientist. At the link, you can nominated your own life-changing book—perhaps Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving, eh? 
1. Farthest North – Steve Jones, geneticist
2. The Art of the Soluble – V. S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist
3. Animal Liberation – Jane Goodall, primatologist
4. The Foundation trilogy – Michio Kaku, theoretical physicist
5. Alice in Wonderland – Alison Gopnik, developmental psychologist
6. One, Two, Three… Infinity – Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist
7. The Idea of a Social Science – Harry Collins, sociologist of science
8. Handbook of Mathematical Functions – Peter Atkins, chemist
9. The Mind of a Mnemonist – Oliver Sacks, neurologist
10. A Mathematician’s Apology – Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician
11. The Leopard – Susan Greenfield, neurophysiologist
13. Catch-22 / The First Three Minutes – Lawrence Krauss, physicist
14. William James, Writings 1878-1910 – Daniel Everett, linguist
15. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep – Chris Frith, neuroscientist
16. The Naked Ape – Elaine Morgan, author of The Aquatic Ape Hypothesis
And also:
Lost tabs
I had quite a few tabs open to things I thought I might post. But then I closed Firefox to install some software, then ran RegistryBooster 2 (installing any software seems to introduce 12-15 registry errors) and defragged the registry. Then when I opened Firefox again, all tabs were gone. So it goes.
