How to Not Test Safety Glass

Claim: A lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a skyscraper crashed through a pane and plunged to his death.
Status: True
Report: Police said a lawyer demonstrating the safety of windows in a downtown Toronto skyscraper crashed through a pane with his shoulder and plunged 24 floors to his death. A police spokesman said Garry Hoy fell into the courtyard of the Toronto Dominion Bank Tower early Friday evening as he was explaining the strength of the building's windows to visiting law students. Hoy previously had conducted demonstrations of window strength according to police reports. Peter Lauwers, managing partner of the firm Holden Day Wilson, told the Toronto Sun newspaper that Hoy was "one of the best and brightest" members of the 200-man association.

Memoirs

Memoirs are structured differently from formal autobiographies, focusing rather on the development of his or her personality. The chronological scope of a memoir is determined by the work's context and is therefore more focused and flexible than the traditional arc of birth to old age as found in an autobiography. Memoirs tended to be written by politicians or people in court society, later joined by military leaders and businessmen, and often dealt exclusively with the writer's careers rather than their private life. Historically, memoirs have dealt with public matters, rather than personal. 

Many older memoirs contain little or no information about the writer, and are almost entirely concerned with other people. Modern expectations have changed this, even for heads of government. Like most autobiographies, memoirs are generally written from the first person point of view. In his own memoir Palimpsest, the author Gore Vidal gave a personal definition: "a memoir is how one remembers one's own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked." Memoir is thus more about what can be gleaned from a section of one's life than about the outcome of the life as a whole.

Athrotaxis

Athrotaxis is a genus of two to three species (depending on taxonomic opinion) of conifers in the cypress family, Cupressaceae. The genus is endemic to western Tasmania, where they grow in high altitude temperate rainforests.

They are medium-sized evergreen trees, reaching 10-30 m (rarely 40 m) tall and 1-1.5 m trunk diameter. The leaves are scale-like, 3-14 mm long, are borne spirally on the shoots. The cones are globose to oval, 1-3 cm diameter, with 15-35 scales, each scale with 3-6 seeds; they are mature in 7-9 months after pollination, when they open to release the seeds. The male (pollen) cones are small, and shed their pollen in early spring.

They are very susceptible to bush fires, and have declined markedly in abundance due to accidental and deliberate fires since the European colonisation of Tasmania.

What Was The Over/Under...

What Was The Over/Under...
for how long it would take for a serious crime to be committed near UC Hastings? (And no, this does not involve issues of mistake of fact and age of consent.)

Earlier tonight, Teddy, Frank, Danica, Shannon, Kayvan, Jenn, and I returned from the APALSA bonfire and arrived at United Nations Plaza at approximately 9:50 PM. Teddy and I noticed that a few cars were making illegal U-turns in the middle of Market Street. We then noticed a few cops driving in the wrong direction down one-way streets. Weird. At that point, we still had no idea what was going on. Teddy thought that it might just be a traffic accident.

But as we approached the tower, we saw more and more cops driving in the wrong direction, all seemingly heading towards Market Street...and that's when we realized something serious had gone down, or that it must be one crazy ass traffic accident. So what do we do? We go to my room to check out what the heck is going on from the view above, of course! Judging from the crowd of people gathering around, we could tell that the incident - whatever it was - had occurred on Market Street and that it was no traffic accident. There were at least 5 cop cars at the scene alerady, and we could see more cops coming from the left and right....many of them, again, going in the wrong direction. We see an ambulance leave Market Street and another ambulance approaching the scene a few blocks away.

So what do Teddy and I decide to do? Go downstairs and check out the scene of course! Normally, I would have wet my pants walking through that crowd, but I felt pretty safe considering the number of cops around. Teddy approached one of the officers taping off the scene and asked what had happened...

So here's the story (most information gathered from the news report we watched): At approximately 9:45 this evening, 3 men and 1 woman were gunned down at Market St and 6th street - merely 2 blocks away from campus. There are apparently 2 suspects, still at large, and the 4 injured are in stable condition and expected to survive.

Pretty scary - not only because we arrived near the scene merely 5 minutes after the shooting, but also because we have all walked through that part of Market Street. In fact, Liz and I walked by there earlier today after a happy hour.

PS: I'm from Danville.

Fieldwork

For those of you unfamiliar with the Tedward specie running loose at Hastings, here's the bit of research that I've managed to gather so far. His full scientific name is Tedward Animalus Chadwick, but he is commonly known as "Teddy." This particular one subsists wholly on unhealthy and low-quality foods. Below is my record of my morning interaction with this peculiar specie:

June: Hey Teddy, I'm going to Safeway. Do you want me to pick you up any essentials?

Tedward Animalus: That'd be great. I'm all out of food. Can you get me butter, the kind of chocolate chips that you put in cookies, and the cheapest ground beef there is?

RIP Dear Friend

As we all enjoy our three day weekend, a bit of tragedy has hit us all. Steve Irwin, better known as the Crocodile Hunter, passed away this weekend when a stingray stung him right through the chest and hit his heart. A part of me is gone. He will surely, truly, and deeply be missed. Also, Animal Planet is now doomed.

GO BRUINS!!

Congrats to UCLA 31 to 10!! That is an ass kicking!! Oh..........and usc won too. SoCal is here to represent!! What happened to CaL Golden Bears? That is what you get for rejecting me for law school!!