Shoe Riot?

These two updates from the Anne Arundel County Police Department are kind of fascinating/frightening. In one a man is shot in the back and doesn't notice right away. Is he particularly oblivious or is the gun terrible?

In the other there's an extended shoe riot at the mall. Seriously. I don't understand it at all.

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150420952047115

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150420951347115

Accident In My Neighborhood

There's a little barbershop around the corner with an apartment upstairs. It's been there for a very long time but had to stop serving customer's recently when a car crashed into it and smashed in the entire brick front, leaving the building uninhabitable.

Here's a pretty good writeup from an insurance newsletter. http://insurancenewsnet.com/article.aspx?id=317817

I hope they're able to fix the building. It's hard enough for small businesses these days without being crushed by a stray vehicle.

A terrible list

This is a pretty terrible list. I'd say at least half of it is self aggrandizing bullshit. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/18/fifty-literary-life-robert-mccrum

I can't even go into details because my head hurts too much.

Cullen graduated yesterday from UMBC with a degree in bioinformatics and computational analysis, a very new field. His ceremony was very nice, with an inspiring speech from his school president.

Then we went to lunch and to pick up our new glasses, which we ordered a week or so ago. Mine are progressive lenses, which so far I loathe and are giving me a pain like an ice pick in my head. Either I adjust soon or I'm going to get new lenses.

Great Post from David Brin

David Brin, who is a fantastic writer, has written a post that rebuts both Frank Miller's recent rant against protesters and Miller's book and movie 300. It's a nice breakdown of the history of the war shown in 300 and a treatise on citizens and democracy. http://davidbrin.wordpress.com/2011/11/13/move-over-frank-miller-or-why-the-occupy-wall-street-kids-are-better-than-spartans/

UMBC President

If you missed seeing UMBC president Freeman Hrabowski on Sixty Minutes you should definitely check him out now. He was thrown in jail for five days as a boy during the civil rights movement, spat on and reviled. He loves education, believes in hard work over everything else, wouldn't let the Ravens use a field at UMBC as a practice field and gets goosebumps over math. He's amazing.


http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7388127n&tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox