So...my current cell phone sort of disintegrated yesterday. I've ordered a new phone, but in the meantime, I swapped my SIM card into the phone that had the unfortunate hot tub experence last summer. Which means for the next few days at least, I can only recieve calls, not make them. If you want to talk to me, call me. And don't send text messages or voice mails, I can't retrive them.

What would you do with $751 found in a muddle puddle?

David Karlotski used it to buy some 8,000 miles worth of gas for a ratty old KZ440 motorcycle, grabbed his laptop and rode around all of North America. Fortunately he writes well, and posted the whole experence serially on his website. Go read it.

Patent Law Historical Note:

Some nameless patent attorney unknowingly prevented nerve gas usage in the second world war. Or at least helped.

The standard high school history version of events credits Hitler's personal experience with poison gas as the deciding factor in his decision not to use Germany's Sarin/GA stockpile against the allies. This is not completely untrue, but Hitler was likely concerned only about allied reprisals, not the suffering of allied troops. In other words, if he thought he could have gotten away with it, he would have tried it.

I.G. Farben chemists developed the first nerve gases, known as G-series gases in the 1930's in a search for improved pesticides. As THE chemical company of the day, I.G. Farben obviously wanted to protect their potential new pesticide from the likes of duPont, and hired some nameless (since pre 1976 patents are only searchable by # and class) American attorney to patent the nerve agents SA (talbun) and SB (Sarin) in the late 1930's.

Since the chemical compounds had published U.S. patents, I.G. Farben assumed that they were common knowledge in the field...which lead to Hitler himself thinking that the U.S. had nerve agents. In reality, none of the allies developed G-Series nerve agents until after the war.

So, some random patent attorney, in 1937 or 1938, saved thousands of lives by filing all of the paperwork for a patent on time.

So, as in most academic institutions, my law school has several deans, who share a suite of offices, clerical staff, etc. The physcial location of their offices, in a fit of great imagination, is called "The Dean's Suite". Amusingly, (and with increasing frequency), actions of the school administration or individual deans are attributed to "The Dean's Suite". Example:

All of the classrooms yesterday had the following message on the blackboards:

"Please fill out the Orange survey form for the Dean's Suite and deposit in the box at the door for collection and return to the Dean's Suite."

I know, that seems like an innocuous enough thing, but still....who actually is behind the survey? Has the suite of offices assumed a sentient personality? Ala the black tower?

Hmm, paid by the word I see.

So, I'm trying to form an opinion about military capital punishment law, especially the recent changes. In the process, I googled each of the current military death row inmates to compare their sentences with what they would have received as civilians, and found this horrid piece of journalism:

"There were no loud sobs or sighs from the audience."

Apparently, at the Macon Telegraph, the relatively low volume of sighing following a jury verdict is so newsworthy as to require a separate paragraph.

So, I tried the infamous (at least on the internet) diet coke and mentos thing a couple days ago. It was reasonably amusing, now I'm curious about some variations on the theme. Which in turn got me thinking about dry ice making attachments for CO2 tanks. Being a law student, and therefore, cheap, I don't really want to buy one. Having access to machine tools, I want to build one instead. So, if anyone has a diagram, plans, or one that I can reverse engineer, let me know. I *assume* that the making devices just have an orifice above a screen or bag that catches the ice? Ideas?

So. I passed.