Mount Everest and Ethics

This apparently must be the climbing season for Mt. Everest. My understanding is that it is rather short, because once the monsoons come in, you cannot climb anymore.
In any case, climbers have been leaving their fellow climbers to die as they ascend to the top.
This article from the New Zealand talks about one climber who was passed by forty people on their way to the top (and I presume, also, on their way back from the top).
On the other hand, this article from the CBC describes a climber who aborted his ascent to help them.
I understand from reading Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (an excellent book by the way) that the less time you spend at the higher altitudes, the better off you are, but this definitely raises moral questions. I think they probably ought to have stopped and helped this man.

Cleveland Rapid Transit Brochure

I was looking at a Cleveland Rapid Transit Brochure that I found lying around my house. It's also online, here:

http://riderta.com/howtoride_bus.asp

It has step by step instructions for riding the bus (or train, if you click the link at the top) including:
going to your bus, waiting for your bus at the stop, getting onto your bus, and then getting off your bus (I suppose this last step is pretty important), but it really makes people from Cleveland look pretty stupid (and I am sure they are not), if they cannot figure out how to ride a bus.

Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs, author of "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" died today. She was eighty-nine years old. This book, which I highly recommend as summer reading, was about her solutions for the cities in the United States, and how she thought that cities should be developed.
She writes about the neighborhood around Columbia, and, even today, I can still see precisely what she is talking about.
Lest you think it is just me that likes her writing, my brother made a point of calling me today to tell me about this.
Her obituary is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/26/books/26jacobs.html?pagewanted=print
The New York Times has their original book review of it here (it is a PDF):
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/books/jacobs-cities.pdf
If I had to guess, I would imagine that the PDF of it will stay posted longer than the obituary, but I don't know for sure.

Anzac Day

Yesterday, 25 April, was Anzac Day. Anzac means the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, who had their first offensive against the Ottoman Empire. Although they had expected it to go quickly, it went on for months, and 8,000 Australians lost their lives. There is a considerable amount of information on it here:
http://www.awm.gov.au/commemoration/anzac/anzac_tradition.htm
It's a very important holiday in Australia.

Dandelion Recipe

So I am subscribed to an e-mail list that talks about environmental happenings on the Hudson River. One person posted a recipe for dandelions, and I post it here:

"4/1 - Croton-on-Hudson, HRM 35: I took advantage of the balmy weather to harvest a great crop of dandelion crowns. One of our favorite salad ingredients and a sure spring tonic, we hope they will be served with the first herring roe of the season.
Recipe: Search out a patch of dandelions in an areas not frequented by automobiles, pet walkers, or other obvious sources of contamination. With a sharp knife, sever the root beneath the ground, under the green crown. (Harvest before the plant blooms if possible.) Trim the root at the base of the crown and trim back the leaves about an inch and a half. Drop the crown in a bucket of water; the crowns will be washed as you wander in search of more. They are wonderful as a sauteed vegetable or raw as salad.
- Christopher Letts"

I'll comment that I do not think it would be prudent to pick dandelion plants around Carlisle, as there are too many people/dogs, and even if there are not people (like a unfrequented park), weedkiller/fertilizer would probably not be healthy to eat.

HRM 35, incidentally, refers to Hudson River Mile thirty-five, or thirty-five miles upstream from the Battery (the southern tip of Manhattan, where one would catch the ferry for the Statue of Liberty/Ellis Island). An interesting factoid is that the Hudson is still affected by tides all the way up to a dam at Troy, New York, 153 miles north of New York City. This is north of Albany, NY (which is at HRM 145).
I am posting the subscription information in case anyone is interested in subscribing. Most of it is about wildlife sightings, but it is pleasant reading nonetheless.
To subscribe, just send an email to hrep at gw dot dec dot state dot ny dot us with E-almanac in the subject line. (where it says dot, just put in a period, and for at put in an @ sign)

Edit: Said Statute of Liberty instead of Statue of Liberty. I suppose this may mean I have been in law school too long.

Dueling Google Talkabout Posts

I read the following two posts on Google's Talkabout blog. Both are pretty interesting, they talk about Google Talk and why they do not have it set, by default, to pop up a message telling you when a friend is available you can do this in Settings|Notifications
I've actually set this up so that it will not tell me if I have any new messages. I'd like to see a feature that allows you to do a buddy alert -- once -- for a specific friend when he or she signs on/changes their away message/becomes not idle.
Added: One thing that I like about Google Talk is that it does pop-up notifications with IM messages, which is good because I don't have to interrupt what I am doing to dismiss the window.

Taps were early tonight at the War College

Today I heard them play taps at the War College. They were early, by the official clock at www.time.gov, they were playing taps at 10:58:48 p.m., not at 11:00 p.m. It's a good thing that I don't set my watch by them.

National Anthems Online Free

Although I talked about the Star Spangled Banner a long time ago, here is a link to lots of National Anthems from around the world. The link also has ceremonial music, so if you ever would like to hear what bugle calls sounds like, just click on ceremonial music and then click on bugle calls. Or, if you would like to hear taps and you live in Carlisle, just go outside and face towards the War College at 11:00 p.m., and you can hear it.

Did you ever read about Ramona, Henry, and Beezus?

NPR did an interview last Sunday with Beverly Cleary (who is age ninety) about her books. I thought it was kind of neat to hear the voice of an author whose books I read when I was much younger.
Here is a link.
My favorite book when I was younger was The Sign of the Beaver, by Elizabeth George Speare. Another favorite book of mine was Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls, which my teacher read to us in grade five. Hopefully, in between studying for the bar exam, I'll get some reading for pleasure done over the summer.

New Links on the Blog

Google Reader recently came out with a new feature that allows me to share certain blog entries that I find interesting with other people. First, I can share by publishing a link to view it. But second, I can share by setting up a dynamically updating box on a website which will update based on what I add to it. So, on the right hand side, I have added a new set of links for blog items that I think are interesting. You can click "Read in Google Reader" (or on the link above) to open a session of Google Reader (you will not need to logon) which will allow you to view all of the entries on one page.
Sometimes I may just add these links without posting a blog entry, but other times I will post a blog entry with a small blurb about them.
Today, I'll type a short blurb about the links that I've just posted. First is a link about the upcoming security updates to Windows. The person in this entry, who is a vice president in charge of security at Microsoft (or something to that effect) posted his email address publicly but also talks frankly about how Microsoft develops patches for Windows. In any case, The Microsoft Security Response Center blog is really well done, they talk frankly about security updates for Windows there. Sometimes it gets kind of technical, but I think it is worth reading. Second is a funny video of a deposition, which was done by a lawyer we learned about in Advocacy. Last but not least is a blog entry about someone teaching about Firefox to fourth graders in California; the fourth graders made some funny comments about Firefox.

Flying Southwest Airlines

So I flew Southwest airlines for the first time last weekend, and they were pretty nice. I discovered, though, that key to flying Southwest is to print out your boarding pass as soon as possible before you fly, that is, 24 hours before you fly. This is because Southwest does what could be called "Stampede Boarding," but they call it free seating. Instead of being assigned a seat, you are assigned a group letter to board in -- A, B, or C. A goes first and gets their choice of seats. B goes second, and then C goes last. If you are in group C, you could end up with a middle seat, which is no fun. And lest you think that I am the only person who is geeky enough to care about this, I overheard two other people talking about how they were always in Group C when they returned home because they had not printed out their boarding pass the night before on the Internet, but had just printed it off shortly before their flight. Overall, I was impressed with Southwest, my flight out departed five minutes late, but it only took them ten minutes or so to board the plane. My flight back departed five minutes early. My only complaint about Southwest is that they do not have video or audio entertainment. I like to watch the map to know where we are flying over, although I suppose with my short flight from Baltimore to Providence, it did not really matter anyway. I liked them otherwise, and would definitely be "free to move about the country" with them again.

The College Board and the SAT

So, the College Board, as you probably know, has had problems scoring the SAT. I'm several years away from the SAT by now, but I still think that it is really scary that it took a student's complaint to raise red flags regarding incorrect scoring of the SAT. Today, the College Board explained that they were going to raise the scores of 375 more students. By now, high school seniors have had their applications read by the schools that they are applying for. A lot of schools plan to release admissions decisions on 1 April. That means that there is a very short time period to reevaluate any students that were affected. I'm not sure what I would do if I were an admissions officer, but I think it might be fair, if possible, to postpone the admission decision by a week or so.

Domain Name Suggestions

So I signed up for Office Live Beta, and as a result get to pick a domain name. Does anyone have any suggestions? If you do, please post them in the comments.

Windows Live Mail Beta

So I signed up for Windows Live Mail beta (the successor to Hotmail) a few weeks ago, and if I liked Outlook, I would really like it. It is certainly better than Yahoo! Mail (plain), and looks and acts like Outlook, you can right-click on a message and bring up a pop-up menu to forward, reply, reply, all to a message, just like Outlook or Outlook Express can. They also have a really good blog which does not appear to be as subject to the censors at Microsoft as Google's blog is subject to the censors at Google. Microsoft bloggers, in general, post pretty freely (while I'm sure they can't say totally negative things about the company, they do explain their rationale for why they do things. For example, on the Windows Live Mail blog, here, they post actual problems that they are having with the service and say when they plan to fix them. Google (Gmail), on the other hand, never says when they are having problems or what they plan to fix. I like Gmail otherwise (it is fast and efficient), but the fact that they never post when they are planning (or having) an outage annoys me. Yes, I know it's free, but I still think they should say something when they know it is broken (or going to be broken)
Windows Live Mail not as fast as Gmail is though. Plus, it only saves sent messages for thirty days. Gmail saves messages forever, which is much better.
I'm still waiting for an opportunity to try Yahoo! Mail beta, which I signed up for last fall. They sent me an email in December saying that I was on their list of people waiting to test it, and that I should be patient. I think I've been pretty patient by waiting three months.

Google Pages

So I set up Google Pages the other day, and created a small website. It is here.

It's ok, but there are a number of faults with it, when I have more time I will talk about them.

NBC and Journalistic Integrity

So, there has been some controversy regarding doping at the Olympics, in particular, the Austrian biathlon/cross-country ski teams. I have not seen NBC mention this at all on their Olympic broadcasts. NBC has a history of not reporting negative news. During the Thanksgiving Day Parade last November, they did not report that a balloon had hit a lampost and caused an injury. Although I cannot be absolutely sure that NBC has failed to report this, if they did not, they are violating, once again, the public trust. While reporting on the Olympics, NBC has an obligation to report on the bad things that happen at the Olympics, not all the good things. NBC should not have its head in a bubble.
As a side note, I do not have much sympathy for athletes who complain that they are getting jail sentences for doping. I imagine Italy has a fair judicial system, so they will get a fair trial. Doping is cheating. Period. If the enhanced penalties deter an athlete from cheating, then that's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. Although I am not an expert on Italian doping law, I imagine that accidentally cheating would not get you prosecuted. (Under Olympic rules, if you have an illegal substance in you, you can get in trouble regardless of how it got there, even if you did not know that a drug you were taking contained it)
Besides, as they say, when in Rome (or I suppose in this case Torino)....

Published in The New York Times

So, last Sunday, I was reading this article, about a man who decided to jump down to the subway tracks to retrieve his iPod. I thought that this was really foolish, and decided it merited a letter to the editor. Sunday night, I wrote an email and sent it off to The New York Times Letters Department, never expecting to hear back again from them. Instead, I got an email from them on Wednesay at 5:30 p.m. telling me that they planned to publish my letter Sunday. True to their word, my letter was published today.

Snowboard Trick Costs Jacobellis A Gold Medal

I will preface this by saying that I cannot even snowboard. Last night I watched the Olympics, and saw Lindsey Jacobellis snowboarding in the snowboard cross. She was very good. However, at the end of her run, when she had apparently clinched the gold medal, she decided to a do a trick -- (called a "Method") on her snowboard. As she was doing this trick, she lost her balance and fell, and a Swiss snowboarder flew by her to claim the gold medal. I think doing a trick -- that costs you time -- while you are in an Olympic competition is in poor taste. (Doing high jumps, necessary to do tricks cost you time in snowboard cross, you need to stay on the snow as much as possible) It's as if your opponents are so bad that even if you slow yourself up by doing a trick, they cannot catch you. It's one thing to raise your hands in victory after the race is over, but quite another to do something during the race. And, the Swiss snowboarder proved to Ms. Jacobellis that, actually, she could catch her, and not only that, but pass her to with the gold! Besides, until she fell and people started analyzing the jump, no one even noticed the trick. The announcers on NBC watched her fall, but it wasn't until they watched the replay in slow motion -- twice -- that they realized that she had done a trick.

Reviews of New Things Google

So, last week, Google came out with two new items: Desktop Version 3, and Google Talk embedded within Gmail. Google Desktop is nice, I installed the Calendar plugin, which is useful, not so much for scheduling -- it doesn't do that too well -- but if i need to look at a calendar quickly, it's handy. (I know you can double-click on the clock in Windows, but I'm always afraid I'm going to accidentally set my clock to the wrong day when I'm skipping around looking at the calendar.) So far, at least, Google Desktop Version 3 does not have the charming habit of crashing when I expand it to the sidebar and losing all my panel settings.
Google Talk is also nice. Unfortunately for Google, though, I think they are going to have a hard time converting people to it. Almost everyone I know uses AOL Instant Messenger (although a group of people here at the law school have started switching to Gtalk, at least as a secondary client). While with email, Google was able to get a following by having such a huge amount of storage, with Google Talk, that's not going to be so easy, because the only thing most people want to use chat for is, well, to chat. Maybe they want to transfer a file or two. AIM does all those things quite well, and, right now at least, GTalk is not anywhere as sophisticated as AIM (it doesn't transfer files for one thing). On the other hand, Gtalk is much smaller than AIM -- 900k vs. some huge amount for AOL Instant Messsenger. Plus, it's a slicker interface than AIM. Last, it embeds itself into your email when you sign onto Gmail on the web, so that, in a pinch, you can chat with someone even if you can't install programs/don't want to bother downloading AIM Express. Plus, Google Talk shows you precisely how much time you wasted chatting with someone online.

New Figureskating Scoring System is Problematic

A statistics professor at Yale University has done a statistical analysis and determined that the new figureskating scoring system is problematic. Under the new scoring system, there are twelve judges. Nine of those judges are randomly selected as scores that will count. The high and low scores are discarded, leaving seven judges, whose scores are added. If the computer randomly picks scores that add to a different aggregate, the skater could lose or win simply because the computer picked a different group of judges. See this link, which has more information on it, and a graph showing how the results of the European Figure Skating championship could have differed. To view the graph, it looks like you need to use Internet Explorer. What I don't understand is how the figure skating assocation missed this, because even I could see that when different scores were used because of random selection, the results could differ.