HerringLaw: Civil Rights & Discrimination Law in Iowa

Going Paperless & Organizing your office using Technology

I'm reading a very good, helpful book on my iPad [it was created in iBooks Author] - it's also available in other formats: "Paperless" by David Sparks.  He also does a podcast, MacPowerUsers and was covering the topic of going paperless there and I decided to get the book and study it...as I'm trying to automate and cut down on the paper in my office. 

It's about $10 = it was a wise expenditure frankly.  He discusses different OCR apps for Mac and iOS and their use, and right now I'm into the chapter on Process - moving from the haphazard.

I haven't finished the book but it's been helpful to me, even only half way into the book.

Where has contemplation gone?

"Lying back down, Montalbano started elegizing on the disappearance of the transitional seasons.  Where had they gone?  Swept up like everything else by the ever faster rhythum of human existence, they too had adjusted. Realizing they represented a pause, they had died out, because nowadays no pause can ever be granted by this increasingly frenzied rat race and the endless verbs that feed it:  living, eating, studying...producing, zapping...Endless verbs that last only, however, a nanosecond, the twinkling of an eye.  But weren't there once other verbs as well?  To think, to meditate, to listen, and--why not?--to loaf, to daygream, to wander. . . "

    - from The Smell of the Night by Andrea Camilleri

[Inspector Montalbano is a detective in a series by Camilleri set in Sicily. Very enjoyable books, quick reads.  Might be liked particularly by Donna Leon fans]

Another Delanceyplace.com Winner: Habits

"Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly look­ing for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often."

I really enjoy these daily snippets from Delanceyplace, where the owner snips parts of books he's read [I wish I could read as voraciously] and sends them out with a link to the book, should someone's interest be peeked.  This is from a book explaining habits = yesterday's was about Kit Carson, mountain man.  Look in the archives for quite a few other interesting snippets.

Mistakes were Made...but not by Me!

Actually, this is a review of a review of a review [my copy is on order!] but I thought this synopsis in BC Review and the excerpt in the June 2007 AARP Bulletin would be of particular interest to lawyers trying to deal with clients, counsel and juries:  "reading information that goes against your point of view can make you all the more convinced you are right.  So there is a neurological basis for the observation that once our minds are made up, it is hard to change them."  from Mistakes Were Made [But Not by Me], by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.  The review in BC Review is particularly helpful.