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According to research cited in Matthew Walker's excellent book, teenagers shift their sleep schedule later by a couple of hours compared to their younger years. This may be because of evolutionary benefits to a tribe of having some people in a village awake to watch for danger when others sleep. A couple of unsupervised hours at night also provides a chance for teenagers to learn to operate independently from their parents while still being part of the family, village, and tribe. So, if you take a teenager who naturally may go to sleep close to midnight and wake up at 10am, and you force them to wake up a 6am to get to a 7am class, you are disrupting their natural sleep cycle which has all kinds of health an cognitive consequences (since naturally they will still stay up late and will thus get less sleep). Examples in the book include a huge reduction in car accidents in an area among teenagers who are better rested. Studies also show vastly better test scores for well-rested teens. Lack of sleep may also be contributing to the teen obesity crisis, the teen heart disease crisis, teen mental illness -- among other negative health impacts from lack of sleep.

More on this: https://www.sleepfoundation.or...

As an additional complexity, some people are naturally "larks" (early morning risers, about 10%, according to link below) and some are naturally "night owls" (later risers, about 20%) while most others are "hummingbirds" in the middle. There is very little that can be done about this since this sleep preference is genetically determined to a significant degree -- although sleep schedule may change as we age as above. Caffeine may help some night owls get going anyway in the morning -- but there remains a significant health impact of getting too sleep -- since most night owls simply are not going to go to bed earlier even if they are forced to wake up earlier.
https://www.nasw.org/users/lla...

People suffer if their sleep schedule does not reflect their natural cycle. So, forcing a night owl to perform early in the morning is just a bad idea -- whatever the person's age. Similarly, the cognitive performance of someone who stays up a few hours late or who gets a few hours too little sleep is typically similar to that of someone who is drunk -- which is why drowsy driving kills more people than drunk driving. If an early morning school schedule is terrible for a regular teenager, it is going to be even worse for a night owl.

Right now, I live on the US East Coast but work remotely with a group on the US West coast. I am trying to keep "California" time to be available to the rest of the group -- which is shifted by three hours. So I tend to start work around noon or a bit earlier and work to around 8 pm (20:00) or so (often a bit later).

I also usually do my best focused work in the morning, sometimes starting as early as 6 or 7 am -- so that is one downside as far as work productivity (but an upside to other things I do).

So, on the plus side, I get a lot of morning time to do what I want -- and it is high quality time. On the downside, it is always dark at the end of the day.

I also tend to treat around 3 pm to 4 pm as a sort of lunch hour since that is California lunch. I sometimes walk the dog then.

Even after more than a year of this schedule, the shift still is a bit strange feeling to me.

Fortunately, my wife and kid are night owls, so this actually brings me more in sync with their schedule in a way. But since I am working later, I don't otherwise get to spend as much evening time with them. And I'm a lot more worn out at the end of a day when I do finish work.

I used to go to sleep around an hour or two before midnight. Now I usually go to sleep around midnight or 1 am. That is a big change for me. And it may be reducing my total sleep time some.

I can't imagine trying to bridge 6+ hours between Europe and the USA though. That would be like me starting at 3 pm and working to midnight. I might be able to do it, but it would be really strange and I don't know how long I could keep that schedule up.

My wife as a night own has the opposite challenge from you because she often works with people in Europe. It is tough on her as a night owl and very disruptive of her sleep to get up for a 9 am meeting with someone in Europe. She might do well in your situation. I tell her she has to get more clients for her consulting in California instead of Europe. Either that or (purely theoretically) we should move to East Aisa to make her schedule easier with clients so she could chat with European clients in her afternoon and evening -- but then my schedule difference would be terrible.

This web page says are early morning "larks" (10%), people in the middle called "hummingbirds" (70%), and then "night owls" (20%). They have some tips on trying to adapt to different schedules from your preferred one.
"Are You a Lark, an Owl, or a Hummingbird?"
https://www.nasw.org/users/lla...

If you are by any chance a "lark", a big shift forward is going to be much harder than if you are a "humming bird" or "night owl".

Good sleep is very important to forming memories. Lack of sleep also affects neurotransmitter production and sensitivity.

The light from screens is disruptive to sleep if you are staring at screens late at night. That can be improved a bit by wearing glasses that block blue light or by using a utility program like f.lux which makes computer screens redder in the evening.

Taking vitamin D3 supplements can help mitigate some of the heath problems of lack of sunlight exposure.

Eating better (whole foods, mostly plants -- with enough omega-3s, B vitamins, and iodine, and other good stuff) can help with mental functioning too. See "the Whole Foods Diet" book for more ideas on that.

Also, being out-of-sync timewise by several hours with the rest of your local society is going to be worst for a young unmarried person otherwise actively doing a lot of social events. Same with any work-from-home situation that is more socially isolating.

The time shift may not make quite as bad socially when you have family around you. That said, if we did not homeschool with a flexible schedule, and my wife and kid were not night owls, I can see how even just a three hour timeshift would be more isolating from family. And six hours would be very hard.

Still, sometimes other options are possible. I used

https://www.nasw.org/users/nba...

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system pushed transportation technology to the limit, in the 1970s. Trains didn't have conductors; they ran automatically, like self-service elevators.

Unfortunately BART also pushed technology beyond the limit. A robot car came into the Freemont station at the end of the line, didn't stop, and kept going--through the station and into the parking lot. The lawsuits over this and other problems came to about $250 million.

"We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram."

Mainstream media are dripfed propaganda by the Government with explicit instructions that define their conditions of operation in the jurisdiction: that they print what is given them and nothing more.

Examples: GMP leaked emails to Channel 5 and the BBC to change their stories regarding the Barton Moss anti-fracking protests. The same Police Authority emailing Channel Four News and the Dispatches programme instructing them not to show raw footage of police activity (including footage of assaults on the public by police officers) at the site. the privately owned quango calling itself ATVOD (the Authority for Television On Demand, formerly the Association~) threatening action against independent journalists including the UKColumn and others for being "unauthorised news media organisations(!)" and "Too television-like", and even going to such lengths as threatening to prosecute under copyright legislation for using common word combinations in broadcasts and in print.

These examples all follow close on the heels of the complete farce that was the Leveson Inquiry.

But, don't take my word for it. Take a look at what other (nonlocal mainstream and/or independent sites like RT, the New York Community Media Alliance, Namac, IFP, the UKColumn, and PieNMash Films) outlets have to say on the subject of soft censorship. They've all had to deal with attempted Government influence on their output, to which their unanimous retort: "I refer you to the response given in Arkell v Pressdram."

I wrote a few stories about this. http://www.nasw.org/users/nbau...

The best search engine I've ever seen is PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu... They structure information better than anybody else. But it requires a librarian to look at every document and code it according to a fairly elaborate coding scheme, the MESH headings, which basically requires a degree in library science and a good medical education to do well.

Civil rights have been under attack in Britain for a long time.

And Britain is welcome to fuck with their own civil rights.

When they start feeling like they have the authority and jurisdiction to affect the broader global internet, that's the point at which people need to start referring them to Arvell v Pressdram and reminding them of where exactly their legal authority ends.

And the City of London has legal authority for an exceedingly small area, and precisely ZERO international authority.

Anybody being bullied into doing this is an idiot.

At least Lego didn't refer them to the reply in the case of Arkell v Pressdram

Could some astute lawyer (IANAL) produce a standard boilerplate response form and offer it for a nominal fee?

I believe that the proper reply can be found here.

I suspect that the response of their lawyers will be (correctly) the same as in the famous Arkell v Pressdram.

That predates me by just over a decade and so I had to look it up - Classic! http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/arkell.htm

respond thusly:

"We refer you to the reply given in the case of Arkell v. Pressdram"
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/arkell.htm

Scroll down to the bottom of TFA and note the lack of scientific credentials on the part of the author. Read TFA and note the lack of scientific facts or discussion.

Then you'll understand why.

You mean scroll down to these credentials?

About the Author

Seth Blumsack, an economist in the College of Engineering at Pennsylvania State University, says of his colleagues, "Engineers have this idea that economics is about money." But he warns them "not to depend on him for stock tips." He does have lots to say, though, on electricity economics (as a part of the Penn State Electricity Markets Initiative), which he shares in "How the Free Market Rocked the Grid"

Blumsack is an economist who works at an engineering school. The school seems to think he has something important to tell engineers. He's written a lot for peer-reviewed engineering journals, including IEEE journals, on the economics of electric generation. He can get all the scientific information he needs -- all he has to do is walk down the hall. Just because he didn't show off with a lot of scientific information, that doesn't mean he doesn't understand it. More likely he decided, and the Spectrum editors decided, that such information wasn't necessary in this story.

Their readers already understand the technical details. What they need is someone who can put it together and tell them what it means.

When engineers design systems like the electrical grid, they need to understand the science, but they also need to understand the economics. Otherwise, they'll design systems that will fail. This is particularly important for Spectrum's audience, which includes engineers in management. People like Peter Agre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Agre have argued that scientists and engineers must become more active in civic affairs, because they have the expertise necessary to make decisions about public affairs. If they don't get active, those decisions will be made by people who don't have the expertise. This article is trying to give engineers the information they need to understand how the electrical grids they design perform in the real world, so that they can influence policy makers. Blumsack has exactly the background he needs to do that.

Besides, Blumsack isn't just posting on a blog. This article was commissioned, reviewed and edited by the editors of Spectrum, who have access to all the experts in the IEEE. They decided that this was the information their readers needed.

I know some of the people who write for Spectrum, and I wrote a story about Spectrum. http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/redesign.htm Susan Hassler, Spectrum's editor in chief, isn't an engineer. She was the editor of Nature Biotechnology. IEEE hired her because Spectrum was publishing long, technical articles that nobody read. The more scientific details they put in, the less IEEE members read them. They needed someone who knew how to publish articles that IEEE members would actually read.

When engineers write something, they often make a common mistake. They think the more technical details they put in, the better. They wind up with articles that are unreadable, even by engineers.

I remember the blackout of 2003. When I read this Spectrum article, I understood it a lot better. This is after reading about it in Science, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. I read platitudes about deregulation and the free market in the Wall Street Journal editorial page all the time. Now I understand a lot better what the results of deregulation actually are. To the conservatives, the free market, with deregulation, is the panacea. This Spectrum article shows us that, when you look at the facts with the understanding of an engineer, the free market isn't a panacea. It has pros and cons. That's important for engineers to know. Maybe they can convince our politicians.

(For those who are unaware Pressdram is the publisher/company name of Private Eye, a long running UK satirical magazine which is often sued and Arkell V Pressdram is frequently referred to in its pages)

I keep thinking of SCO v Novell for some reason, can't think why...

I've been a journalist since 1978, and the most important thing I learned was to go back to the source and check my facts. Most bloggers don't check their facts. But don't feel bad. A lot of New York Times reporters don't check their facts either.

Every journalist learns quickly that you hear some shocking story, you call up the accused to check it out, and the story often turns out to be misleading, misinterpreted, wrong or downright lie (think weapons of mass destruction).

I write about medicine. I once did a story on needle exchange programs. http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/needlex.htm The scientific evidence seemed overwhelming that needle exchanges saved lives, but a lot of doctors, and politicians, were obstructing them. I spoke to Herbert Kleber, who was supposed to be one of the bad guys who was obstructing them. To my surprise, he had changed his position because of the weight of the scientific evidence. Happens all the time. But I see bloggers attacking people for things they don't actually believe, because they didn't check their facts.

We old guys have been working to develop what you now call the Internet for >60 years. Independent journalists like George Seldes and I.F. Stone used to do a great job, and we were looking forward to the great day when a lone journalist could publish a newsletter without printing and postage costs. It's been good and bad.

The most obvious flaw that I notice in blogs is that most of them -- but not all -- don't check their facts. It's a big game of telephone. Some blogger cuts and pastes a paragraph from another blog, which came from another blog ... which came from the New York Times. I can read the NYT myself. If you want to add value to that story, you can check the NYT's facts, and in my experience, you have a pretty good chance of finding them wrong. Make a fucking phone call to the original source and see if the NYT got it right. Or check out a different source. If you want a lesson in journalism, examine their health care reform coverage.

It's like replicating DNA. A bunch of enzymes copies a stand of DNA, and then another bunch of enzymes checks the duplicated strand to make sure it's copied right. If you don't have error-checking enzymes, you wind up with (sometimes disastrous) mistakes.

There are a lot of blogs that are written by people who have such a good command of the facts, have such expertise, that they're not likely to make mistakes -- they've already checked out the facts, for their academic work or their books, like Juan Cole and Glen Greenwald.

But most journalists aren't experts. They have to check their facts with the experts. That's the game. No matter how smart I am, I interview and quote somebody who knows more than me.

The best Internet journalism that I follow is http://www.democracynow.org/ Notice how Democracy Now interviews people on the other side all the time.

A blogger who does nothing more than copy a story from a major news source like the NYT, or, even worse, from a blogger who wouldn't meet the reliable source standards of Wikipedia, is just adding noise, not useful information.

If you want to add useful information to the Internet, you're not going to find it on the Internet, obviously. Call up an expert and get some new information. And then call up an expert who disagrees with him, to make sure he hasn't given you a sales job.

http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/txtsrch.htm

http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/lawdb.htm

http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/discover.htm

They were imaging and indexing up to several million documents. During a civil suit, in discovery, companies on each side of the lawsuit have to disclose every relevant document to each other.

Lawyers probably use the most flexible and all-encompassing systems, since they have to deal with every industry, every profession, everything. They also spend more money on their systems than most people can afford. They told me it costs them about $1 a page to thoroughly index big databases.

Information scientists told me the best model of a document database was PubMed, which indexes virtually every significant published medical article. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed

The big limitation of Google is that you can't search too well by date. Another limitation of text searches is that you can't search for concepts -- just words. Sometimes words (particularly names) match concepts very well, but if they don't, you've got a problem.

Yeah, it would have been nice if you had set up coding and naming conventions at the beginning, so the original authors could have sorted them as you went along. It may be difficult or impossible to go back and re-code them after the fact. It could wind up costing $1 a document. OTOH, you could be lucky -- some industries have been using standardized filing schemes and standardized jargon since the days of slide rules and T-squares.

There should be standard filing schemes and procedures throughout your industry, so your solutions may be industry-specific. There should be consultants that deal with your industry who would be happy to talk to you (for the prospect of maybe getting your business). There should be trade magazines in your industry that have covered the same issue for companies of your size. (Hell, if the price is right I'll write a roundup for them.) Or you might have a trade or professional association with some friendly people who have done it before. Trade and professional associations usually have a computer or information technology section, and if you're a member of the association, you can call up the members of the section.

http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/txtsrch.htm

http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/lawdb.htm

http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/discover.htm

They were imaging and indexing up to several million documents. During a civil suit, in discovery, companies on each side of the lawsuit have to disclose every relevant document to each other.

Lawyers probably use the most flexible and all-encompassing systems, since they have to deal with every industry, every profession, everything. They also spend more money on their systems than most people can afford. They told me it costs them about $1 a page to thoroughly index big databases.

Information scientists told me the best model of a document database was PubMed, which indexes virtually every significant published medical article. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed

The big limitation of Google is that you can't search too well by date. Another limitation of text searches is that you can't search for concepts -- just words. Sometimes words (particularly names) match concepts very well, but if they don't, you've got a problem.

Yeah, it would have been nice if you had set up coding and naming conventions at the beginning, so the original authors could have sorted them as you went along. It may be difficult or impossible to go back and re-code them after the fact. It could wind up costing $1 a document. OTOH, you could be lucky -- some industries have been using standardized filing schemes and standardized jargon since the days of slide rules and T-squares.

There should be standard filing schemes and procedures throughout your industry, so your solutions may be industry-specific. There should be consultants that deal with your industry who would be happy to talk to you (for the prospect of maybe getting your business). There should be trade magazines in your industry that have covered the same issue for companies of your size. (Hell, if the price is right I'll write a roundup for them.) Or you might have a trade or professional association with some friendly people who have done it before. Trade and professional associations usually have a computer or information technology section, and if you're a member of the association, you can call up the members of the section.

http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/txtsrch.htm

http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/lawdb.htm

http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/discover.htm

They were imaging and indexing up to several million documents. During a civil suit, in discovery, companies on each side of the lawsuit have to disclose every relevant document to each other.

Lawyers probably use the most flexible and all-encompassing systems, since they have to deal with every industry, every profession, everything. They also spend more money on their systems than most people can afford. They told me it costs them about $1 a page to thoroughly index big databases.

Information scientists told me the best model of a document database was PubMed, which indexes virtually every significant published medical article. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed

The big limitation of Google is that you can't search too well by date. Another limitation of text searches is that you can't search for concepts -- just words. Sometimes words (particularly names) match concepts very well, but if they don't, you've got a problem.

Yeah, it would have been nice if you had set up coding and naming conventions at the beginning, so the original authors could have sorted them as you went along. It may be difficult or impossible to go back and re-code them after the fact. It could wind up costing $1 a document. OTOH, you could be lucky -- some industries have been using standardized filing schemes and standardized jargon since the days of slide rules and T-squares.

There should be standard filing schemes and procedures throughout your industry, so your solutions may be industry-specific. There should be consultants that deal with your industry who would be happy to talk to you (for the prospect of maybe getting your business). There should be trade magazines in your industry that have covered the same issue for companies of your size. (Hell, if the price is right I'll write a roundup for them.) Or you might have a trade or professional association with some friendly people who have done it before. Trade and professional associations usually have a computer or information technology section, and if you're a member of the association, you can call up the members of the section.

I wrote a few articles about this for Law Office Computing magazine
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/txtsrch.htm
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/lawdb.htm
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/discover.htm
It was a long time ago, the software and hardware has changed, but the concepts are still the same, and the costs are a lot less.

Free text search works reasonably well with small databases, but it doesn't work with big databases. If you want precision, you have to develop a set of tags (we called them keywords). A good model is Pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed. The New York Times used to have a great text search, but they changed it (eliminated tags) and now it's awfully difficult to get through.

Basically, the researcher has a body of knowledge, and he already has a filing and organizing system (in this case, a looseleaf binder system, which is a pretty good start). You should usually try to replicate his filing and organizing system in the database, for example one field for the looseleaf, another field for the tab, and then some goodies that he couldn't search the looseleafs for, like date, author, journal citation, etc. It would probably be useful to have a controlled vocabulary of a few good keywords, but keywords should be selected carefully so they're unique and don't duplicate.

I assume he doesn't have the PDFs any more. That would have made it a lot easier.

It would be handy to scan every word of (most) every document into full text, but it may not be necessary. Why do you need everything in full digital text? Scanning of unconventional text takes a human proofreading step, and probably isn't worth it.

He'll probably want to keep complete images of the original documents anyway along with the text. You should do a few tests to see how much resolution you need. 600 dpi works for ordinary text like they use in the printed newspaper. But if you want journal articles to come out, with footnotes and superscripts, you might need higher resolution.

Somebody is going to have to enter the fields manually, which is't too bad if you've got a thousand records (looseleaf tabs) to enter (about 20 hours), but can get difficult if you've got an order of magnitude more.

Scanning should be straightforward, if everything is neatly filed away in looseleaf books already. There are many cheap consumer-grade scanners on the market that can get 600-2400 dpi (the bundled software is probably more important than the hardware specs) but they can take up to 1 minute a page; there are more expensive scanners in the =>$1,000 range that can go a lot faster. If you're at a university, look around for somebody who already has one. Law firms and libraries do a lot of this.

You might start by estimating the number of pages and documents you have.

But let me suggest an alternative: Instead of scanning everything, just enter everything into a database without scanning it. Does he really need full text search? Or would it be enough to search his looseleaf books by a dozen fields? He doesn't have to print the document out from an image file, it's right there in his looseleaf books.

If anybody knows of up-to-date articles on this subject, I'd love to know the citation.

I wrote a few articles about this for Law Office Computing magazine
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/txtsrch.htm
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/lawdb.htm
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/discover.htm
It was a long time ago, the software and hardware has changed, but the concepts are still the same, and the costs are a lot less.

Free text search works reasonably well with small databases, but it doesn't work with big databases. If you want precision, you have to develop a set of tags (we called them keywords). A good model is Pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed. The New York Times used to have a great text search, but they changed it (eliminated tags) and now it's awfully difficult to get through.

Basically, the researcher has a body of knowledge, and he already has a filing and organizing system (in this case, a looseleaf binder system, which is a pretty good start). You should usually try to replicate his filing and organizing system in the database, for example one field for the looseleaf, another field for the tab, and then some goodies that he couldn't search the looseleafs for, like date, author, journal citation, etc. It would probably be useful to have a controlled vocabulary of a few good keywords, but keywords should be selected carefully so they're unique and don't duplicate.

I assume he doesn't have the PDFs any more. That would have made it a lot easier.

It would be handy to scan every word of (most) every document into full text, but it may not be necessary. Why do you need everything in full digital text? Scanning of unconventional text takes a human proofreading step, and probably isn't worth it.

He'll probably want to keep complete images of the original documents anyway along with the text. You should do a few tests to see how much resolution you need. 600 dpi works for ordinary text like they use in the printed newspaper. But if you want journal articles to come out, with footnotes and superscripts, you might need higher resolution.

Somebody is going to have to enter the fields manually, which is't too bad if you've got a thousand records (looseleaf tabs) to enter (about 20 hours), but can get difficult if you've got an order of magnitude more.

Scanning should be straightforward, if everything is neatly filed away in looseleaf books already. There are many cheap consumer-grade scanners on the market that can get 600-2400 dpi (the bundled software is probably more important than the hardware specs) but they can take up to 1 minute a page; there are more expensive scanners in the =>$1,000 range that can go a lot faster. If you're at a university, look around for somebody who already has one. Law firms and libraries do a lot of this.

You might start by estimating the number of pages and documents you have.

But let me suggest an alternative: Instead of scanning everything, just enter everything into a database without scanning it. Does he really need full text search? Or would it be enough to search his looseleaf books by a dozen fields? He doesn't have to print the document out from an image file, it's right there in his looseleaf books.

If anybody knows of up-to-date articles on this subject, I'd love to know the citation.

I wrote a few articles about this for Law Office Computing magazine
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/txtsrch.htm
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/lawdb.htm
http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/discover.htm
It was a long time ago, the software and hardware has changed, but the concepts are still the same, and the costs are a lot less.

Free text search works reasonably well with small databases, but it doesn't work with big databases. If you want precision, you have to develop a set of tags (we called them keywords). A good model is Pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed. The New York Times used to have a great text search, but they changed it (eliminated tags) and now it's awfully difficult to get through.

Basically, the researcher has a body of knowledge, and he already has a filing and organizing system (in this case, a looseleaf binder system, which is a pretty good start). You should usually try to replicate his filing and organizing system in the database, for example one field for the looseleaf, another field for the tab, and then some goodies that he couldn't search the looseleafs for, like date, author, journal citation, etc. It would probably be useful to have a controlled vocabulary of a few good keywords, but keywords should be selected carefully so they're unique and don't duplicate.

I assume he doesn't have the PDFs any more. That would have made it a lot easier.

It would be handy to scan every word of (most) every document into full text, but it may not be necessary. Why do you need everything in full digital text? Scanning of unconventional text takes a human proofreading step, and probably isn't worth it.

He'll probably want to keep complete images of the original documents anyway along with the text. You should do a few tests to see how much resolution you need. 600 dpi works for ordinary text like they use in the printed newspaper. But if you want journal articles to come out, with footnotes and superscripts, you might need higher resolution.

Somebody is going to have to enter the fields manually, which is't too bad if you've got a thousand records (looseleaf tabs) to enter (about 20 hours), but can get difficult if you've got an order of magnitude more.

Scanning should be straightforward, if everything is neatly filed away in looseleaf books already. There are many cheap consumer-grade scanners on the market that can get 600-2400 dpi (the bundled software is probably more important than the hardware specs) but they can take up to 1 minute a page; there are more expensive scanners in the =>$1,000 range that can go a lot faster. If you're at a university, look around for somebody who already has one. Law firms and libraries do a lot of this.

You might start by estimating the number of pages and documents you have.

But let me suggest an alternative: Instead of scanning everything, just enter everything into a database without scanning it. Does he really need full text search? Or would it be enough to search his looseleaf books by a dozen fields? He doesn't have to print the document out from an image file, it's right there in his looseleaf books.

If anybody knows of up-to-date articles on this subject, I'd love to know the citation.

And a suitable way to deal with it might just have already been established in the case of Arkell vs Peessdram:

http://www.nasw.org/users/nbauman/arkell.htm

My favourite precedent is Arkell v Pressdram and it would be rather apt in this case.

I do not know what to make of this. I just thought it needed to be shared. 16872638 incest father encourage touch penis 2006-03-26 20:04:02 http://muse.jhu.edu/ 16872638 incest father encourage touch penis 2006-03-26 20:04:02 http://nasw.org/ 16872638 incest father encourage touch penis 2006-03-26 20:04:02 http://www.fhi.org/ 16872638 list drugs interact with each other 2006-03-29 01:02:06 http://www.centerfordrugsafety.org/ 16872638 list drugs interact with each other 2006-03-29 01:02:06 http://www.fda.gov/ 16872638 list drugs interact with each other 2006-03-29 01:41:37 http://www.personalmd.com/ 16872638 ohio senate bill 17 2006-03-29 01:45:09 http://www.hslda.org/ 16872638 ohio senate bill 17 2006-03-29 01:45:09 http://www.ohiosenatebill17.org/ 16872638 ohio victim counseling service prosecute 2006-03-29 01:46:34 http://www.usdoj.gov/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.sexualassaultresources.org/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://odmrdd.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.odvn.org/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.ag.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.drc.state.oh.us/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.usdoj.gov/ 16872638 victim witness coordinator in columbus ohio 2006-03-29 01:50:26 http://www.usdoj.gov/ 16872638 multiple drug interactions paroxetine 2006-03-30 12:57:21 16872638 multiple drug interactions safety 2006-03-30 12:57:56 16872638 drug interaction checker safety 2006-03-30 12:58:47 16872638 dictionary words that start with 2006-03-30 14:05:03 http://dictionary.reference.com/ 16872638 dictionary words that start chu 2006-03-30 14:06:58 http://www.hyperdic.net/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.womanabuseprevention.com/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.survivorinfo.org/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.musc.edu/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/ 16872638 case history woman abuse childhood rape 2006-03-30 17:58:32 http://escapinghades.pandys.org/

(Indeed, the fetus often gets cells from the mother, too. Many women have cells of their own, and from their mothers, and from their children...)

Just last week, I was at a banquet for the 2004 International Meeting of the Institute of Human Virology -- a meeting where most of the top scientists in HIV research (as well as in tumor biology and virology) congregate and discuss results. One of the speakers was a science journalist by the name of Jon Franklin. He gave a speech entitled "The End of Science Writing" and it is sort of eery that today's slashdot post is so reminiscent of its tone and words. If you have the time, and especially if you're a scientist, please read it. Here's a little excerpt:

As for me, I saw the handwriting on the wall but thought I could be of some value educating the next generation of science writers. In 1989 I took a job as head of the science journalism department at Oregon State University. OSU is Oregon's premier science campus, and its journalism department was the only undergraduate science journalism department in the country. There are several graduate institutions that teach science journalism, but most journalists do not have advanced degrees.

In any event, shortly after I arrived the voters of Oregon approved a tax-cutting measure that fell heavily on higher education. OSU decided science journalism was expendable. I knew the news industry wasn't going to support the program, but I thought science might. The critical player was OSU's dean of sciences. I went to him, hat in hand. I'll never forget his response.

"That's your problem," he said. "We don't need you."

I left the university, of course. Shortly thereafter they closed down science journalism. It looked for a while like they might also close the ballroom dance program. But they found money to keep that. Also, that year, the university undertook a multimillion dollar renovation of its football stadium.

--Jon Franklin

- Americans are the fattest people in the world (on average).
- People who are fat tend to have a smaller penis.
- A small penis usually results in low self-esteem.
- Low self-esteem can be repaired by buying big SUVs, guns or fast computers OR by winning contests. An example of a contest is a sports event, a space race or even a war. Winning a war is probably the strongest boost by virtue of smacking down millions of people at once.

It turns out that one of the greatest warmongers of all time, Napoleon Bonaparte, had a very small penis. Measuring only 4.1 cm (1.6"), it's hardly surprising that the penis caused great malcontent among Napoleon's wives who sooner or later decided to break their vow. This certainly explains why Napoleon decided to spend most of his time away from home, far away from his unfaithful wives, in the presence of men begging for his mercy.

Another example is Hitler who is suspected of having a deformed penis. There are also reports that he had only one testicle. The low self-esteem that resulted from these defects might have resulted in Hitler's plan to conquer half the world. Fortunately, Hitler's testy plans faced his soldiers with insurmountable odds. Coupled with the fact that Hitler didn't have the balls to invade England early in the war, we can conclude that Hitler was an absolute nutcase.

Of course, these facts do lead to some inescapable questions:
- Will Viagra reduce the number of wars fought?
- Should we exempt 'Penis enlargement'-spam from anti-spam laws?
- What is wrong with the genitalia of the man who fought two wars during his first term in office (and seems to be hard at work preparing for another war)?
- Do we need a new poll?:

What is the size of your penis?
o Fighting a war already.
o Just planning.
o Gun nut.
o SUV owner.
o My PC rulez.
o I'm not an American, you insensitive clod.

I'm looking for someone to try and change mine, in a way that makes sense.

I'm a medical writer so I can comment on the medical content of the sites in the Consumer Webwatch reports. I don't think they're good enough.

(Since I write for the web, I found the programmer comments very useful. OK, I'll change that code in my site RSN).

I agree completely that (my) content doesn't matter if you can't find it, and without good graphic design, backed up by good programming (thanks guys), you can't find anything on those web sites (which have thousands of pages). Everything you want to know about medicine is on the Internet many times over, but the problem is (1) finding it (2) in a form that you can understand and (3)evaluating its accuracy and validity.

Here's a good example: I went to a doctor for a checkup, and he didn't perform a digital rectal examination, although he did give me a guiac test. A DRE is a way of screening for prostate cancer and rectal cancer, and the American Cancer Society among other well-known organizations recommends it for everyone above 50, like me. A guiac test samples the stool for blood, which is often a symptom of colon cancer. Various organizations also recommend sigmoidoscopy (a fiber optic scope that goes through the rectum and up the colon about a foot) and colonoscopy (which goes up the colon even farther) as screening for colon cancer. My medical textbooks were either out of date or ambiguous on these issues.

So, here's my question for the medical web sites:

Should my doctor have performed a DRE on a 50-year-old man in a routine physical?

My first stop was the web site rated No. 1 by the experts National Institutes of Health. Once I got there, I realized that I had to refine the question. What I really wanted to know is,

would a DRE have lowered my chances of dying of cancer?

As it turned out, there are scientific studies with control groups that found that there was no good evidence that patients who had screening DRE, sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy lived longer than patients who did not. However, patients screened with guiac tests did live longer (endpoint of death, they call it). I found this on the professional side of the site, not the consumer side, couched in technical language. Not easily accessible or understandable -- for something that your life depends on.

So when I read the Consumer WebWatch report, I decided to see how the expert's No. 2, MayoClinic.com handled it. To my surprise and dismay, the Mayo Clinic web site, in its extensive discussion of screening for colon cancer, did not make the point that only guiac testing had been shown to save lives. There is criticism in the medical literature that doctors don't provide enough hard information to their patients to enable patients to make an intelligent decision. I think the fact that the life-saving ability of 3 of those 4 screening tests is not supported by evidence-based medicine is an important fact for patients that the Mayo clinic should have provided for patients who are trying to decide whether to take an uncomfortable and (for the scopes) expensive test with a risk of perforating the bowel.

Evidence-based medicine, BTW, is a term of the art, and a good Google search. It means practicing medicine on the basis of scientific evidence, when it exists (the catch: you wind up saying, "science doesn't know" too much of the time).

EBM started when 2 doctors in Canada were having trouble keeping up with all their reading, and said, "Hey, let's just read the stuff that's supported by scientific evidence." That cut down the pile significantly.

A good explanation is on the Bandolier web site, from Oxford, UK. This will reduce medicine to the rationality that engineers and other geeks are used to thinking in.

What is series:
Evidence-based Medicine

Bandolier

Forms of evidence
Evidence is presented in many forms, and it is
important to understand the basis on which it
is stated. The value of evidence can be ranked
according to the following classification in
descending order of credibility:

I. Strong evidence from at least one
systematic review of multiple well-designed
randomised controlled trials.

II. Strong evidence from at least one properly
designed randomised controlled trial of
appropriate size.

III. Evidence from well-designed trials such as
non-randomised trials, cohort studies, time
series or matched case-controlled studies.

IV. Evidence from well-designed
non-experimental studies from more than
one centre or research group.

V. Opinions of respected authorities, based on
clinical evidence, descriptive studies or
reports of expert committees.

BTW, when people ask me where to find medical information on the Internet, I recommend peer-reviewed sources, starting with the Merck Manual Home Edition , then British Medical Journal, then Medicalstudent.com.

But you can't do it on the Internet alone without professional guidance -- medical librarians explained to me how to search the medical literature. And very often what you want to know is only available on paper.

I went into this in more detail when I taught a class in medical journalism. I interviewed a medical librarian and posted her explanation in an article on my web site. That's why brick libraries are so valuable -- they don't just have paper, they have librarians.

Maybe not as sexy as this one, but they already exist. Lasers are believed to have been used by the Sovs against American pilots in an attempt to permanently blind them, see info here. Also, a big deal is dazzlers, which temporarily do the same thing, see some info here.

They're doing some interesting work with deep brain stimulation. It's already been used for a while to deal with Parkinsons patients.