Sand holes more dangerous than sharks

Collapsing sand kills more people than sharks. A father-son team examined reports of deaths due to accidents involving sand, typically at beaches, and found that in the period from 1990-2006 16 people died from sand holes while only 12 died from shark attacks.

The danger lies in a victim being buried by sand when the walls of the hole collapse inward. For shallow holes this isn't a problem but a teenager died when he fell into a deep hole dug by another beach-goer. Rescuers made the problem worse when they caused the sand to fall inwards, burying the boy for several minutes.

Ironically this danger is virtually unknown. This is probably because shark attacks and other similar threats are more exciting; Spielberg's movie was called "Jaws", not "Sand", and even the movie "Dune" didn't feature collapsing holes. Yet the math shows the truth: more people die in sand accidents than shark attacks. And you thought you were safe if you stayed out of the water.

Hans Reiser

Hans Reiser was a talented programmer working on Linux software (Reiser4, an innovative file-storage system that rivals Microsoft's WinFS). Now he's in prison, accused in the murder of his wife Nina, who disappeared. There are lots of strange things in this case:

• Hans bought books about murder investigations, found in his car after Nina disappeared.
  
• Blood was found in Hans's car and one car-seat was missing, which Hans has yet to explain.
  
• His ex-friend, allegedly Nina's lover, confessed to killing 8 people (but not Nina) before becoming a Christian and leaving his evil ways behind.
  
• Hans's children were removed from his custody and given over to Nina's mother, who has taken them to Russia and refuses to return.

Wired has an interview with Hans here. There is also a blog dedicated to freeing Reiser. I bet someone is already working on the Law and Order screenplay.

Bloxorz

A friend sent me the link to this game. It's pretty addictive. The idea is to move the block into the hole. There are various twists, such as buttons that raise/lower bridges, floor-plates that collapse if the block stands on end on them, and floor plates that split your block into two and teleport the two halves somewhere else. It makes for a nice challenge with a few simple concepts.
You can even "save" your game by writing down the passcode in the upper-right corner of the screen so you can return to that stage later on. This game is not safe for work because of the number of hours you will lose playing it.

RAM as a document

A California court has ruled that information stored in a computer's RAM is a document which can be subpoenaed by an opponent in a civil lawsuit. The technical arguments against this idea are long and (to some) tedious, but I think we can clear up the issue if we consider Microsoft Word 95. Anyone who used a computer 10+ years ago will remember how it often crashed, which meant you'd lost hours of work unless you remembered to pressed CTRL-S or click the little floppy-disk icon. Nowadays Word has an auto-save feature, which secretly saves your work even if you forget to, but in the old days we didn't have it so good. Heck, now even the Blogger website that I use to write this post auto-saves my work, but this is a pure luxury. Not that long ago all computer users had a favourite string of curses they'd unleash whenever Windows would show you the dreaded "General Protection Fault" error. Modern computers have coddled the judges until they no longer have to worry about how the system works (which is fine) at the expense of giving us judges that don't know how the system works. Ironic that the GPF was a tool for learning.

The Wrong Trousers

Roy L. Pearson sued his dry cleaner when they lost his pants. He claimed they initially tried to give him grey pants, when his were maroon. He then claimed that the store violated his consumer rights because they advertised "Satisfaction Guaranteed". The damages claimed: $54 Million.

Thankfully, the judge in the case found against Mr. Pearson and ordered him to pay the defendant's court costs, and it's possible that he will have to pay the defendant's legal bills as well. What I find most surprising about this case is that the plaintiff is actually a judge himself. Sure, we're talking about the US legal system, but I'm surprised that a judge doesn't have more sense than this; surely he should have realized that his lawsuit was ridiculous? Well, the dry cleaners lost his pants, but now he's lost his suit.

LEGO Viking Army with Heavy Artillery

For Christmas I received a LEGO kit, number 7020, which is the "Army of Vikings with Heavy Artillery Wagon". This kit is truly the prime Viking army builder, in terms of number of minifigs and variations among them. The Chess set has the most figs in one box, but in that set they are rather uniform in appearance, while in this set they all look different.
The set itself contains 312 pieces. Each minifig is 6 pieces (leg assembly and torso assembly each count as one piece), including helmets but not including weapons. There are 9 weapons, 5 shields, one 4-piece flag, and 7 figs total; this accounts the first 68 pieces; the rest are devoted to the heavy artillery wagon.

I'm not sure if Vikings were known for artillery, and in fact I question the historic accuracy of this entire kit, but there is something to be said for the huge wagon that comprises the primary model for this kit. It is basically a black frame, made of technic pieces, with a brown and grey "wooden" front, and a strange-looking apparatus behind the facade. This contraption is actually a double-barrelled rapid-firing ballista. There is a crank at the back of the wagon which causes a red paddle to flip down on a spring-loaded piece, which snaps back and launches a missile out the front of the wagon. There are ten rounds and this thing can fire them off very quickly.

Overall this set is quite good. It has many useful parts, and a large army, and it serves as an excellent model for young builders to hone their artillery-building skills. The technic pieces can be re-used to build more historically accurate wagons or, more likely, to build other kinds of shooting weapons. The Vikings would have loved to have had this back in the middle ages, I'm sure. It is great fun to watch an army of minifigs get decimated by what is essentially a machine gun.

A ticket to ride

So there we were, on the island, gathering by the shore for the long ride back to the mainland. Something didn't seem right, but that didn't stop the animals and people from climbing right into the whale's mouth. Even the whale's mouth was strange: it didn't open forward, like a whale's mouth usually does, but sideways, like the doors on a DeLorean. The whale just sat there, patiently, while everyone piled in. I watched as the animals and people just climbed in, and tucked themselves into nice neat rows.

The ride to the mainland was estimated to take several days. I pondered this as more and more creatures climbed into the whale's gullet. I started to wonder how the animals and people would breathe. I didn't know if whales can breathe through their mouths like humans can. I suppose they might be able to. But still the situation seemed odd, and that's when I looked into the whale's eye, and understood his plan. Not content to ferry us to the mainland, then let us off, he was going to close his mouth and those inside would never be seen again.

"It's a trap!" I shouted as the impending treachery dawned on me. "Don't go in there, he's just going to eat you all!" Frantically I shouted and waved my arms to alert my fellow travellers before they too were swallowed by Jonah's Bane. Suddenly the whale's mouth slammed closed. The look of pure anger in his eyes will never leave me as he departed with only half his treasure.