Bookish: Colliding Cosmos (5#) -

Academic Disaster Readiness,
Depressed Robots and Culture in Kabul . . .

Duly noted even Across the Pond, The University of Florida removed an online link to a disaster recovery exercise involving an attack by zombies. But don't panic, because The Miami Herald has come to your rescue with the link. I haven't checked it out myself, so you're on your own with this one: PDF Alert!

# Cult Fiction: On Oct 12th, And Another Thing is expected to debut. Jenny Turner writes a nostalgic piece about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and wonders whether that world can be updated to our era.

# A portrait of Afghani media mogul Saad Mohseni.

# New York Magazine's Boris Kachka gives us a roundup of new Literary Memoirs from Michael Chabon and others.

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Mez: CBS True Crime Producer Accused -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

Robert J. Halderman,
the alleged blackmailer of David Letterman,

"is a producer on the CBS news programme 48 Hours, which specialises in investigating and recreating real-life mysteries including the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and the murder of Meredith Kercher."

:: Philippe Naughton ::
-- Times of London --

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Raising Their Tech Level (4#) -

:
Media Tech Summit Conference . . .
UC Berkeley group meeting at Google HQ,
discussing the role of technology in today's MSM.

# Last week, downtown NYC was
flooded with fake editions of the NY Post.

# Cheltenham's Naughty Boyz: weird
cyberpunk Peter Pan fantasy scenario.

# Gay Penguins Star at Banned Book Week.

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Media Scan (7#) -

The Tribune Co, parent of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel newspaper, has told Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Carey the company needs to disburse $70 million in bonuses to its top managers in order to motivate them.

# Paul Gillin reports that Bob Garfield from NPR's On The Media radio program has just had a new book published called The Chaos Scenario, which Gillin reviews with a big Thumbs-Up and says is a lot of fun.

# Speaking of NPR, Romenesko reports that a listener challenged Scott Simon's annual salary of $300,648. The ombud responded.

# Print is Undead: How NYC's 7 newspapers
are (nearly) surviving by Graham Rayman

:: Print Link Alert! :: Village Voice ::

# India now has more daily
newspapers than any other country.

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Bookish: Unexpected Moves (3#) -

Could Sherlock Holmes
have travelled to India?

Yes, it's possible. In another delightful column, Zac O'Yeah reminds us that there were "missing years after Holmes fell off a Swiss mountain." Although Holmes claimed that he spent two years in Tibet, that may have been a casual over-simplification.

:: And thereby hangs a tale . . .

# Celebrate Your Freedom
To Read - It's Banned Books Week -

:: David Shenk :: "When I was 10, my eye caught a curious title on my school library shelves. It was A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle... Later, I learned that this splendid piece of literature has often been banned because its ideas about witchcraft may be too powerful for an impressionable child's mind."

:: Book Patrol :: Elsewhere ::

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Meandering Book Paths (2#) -

Motoko Rich reports that Tina Brown has decided to orchestrate some "insta-books" out of her Daily Beast home base under the imprint of Beast Books which will be distributed by Perseus, first as e-books and then as paperbacks. Sounds good to me.

Will Barbie Nadeau produce such a book on the Meredith Kercher Murder Case? Since she has already written about three-quarters of a book while covering the story, that seems quite possible.

# Celibrate Your Freedom
To Read: It's Banned Books Week -

:: Julia Keller :: "My childhood was a bloodbath."

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Mez: Defense Firecracker (3#) -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

Grab yer smelling salts, Granny!
The Sacred Chain may have been broken . . .

Arguably, it's not nice to throw a legal firecracker into the courtroom just before ending your case, but that seems to be what Defense did on Saturday. Dramatic? Yes. But it leaves people feeling feeling uneasy and unresolved.

First, Defense DNA expert Sarah Gino challenged the validity of the DNA evidence on the butcher knife. I am not equipped to argue about DNA here. The Court may invite an outside, independent DNA expert to contribute an opinion. Moving on...

Computer expert Antonio D'Ambrosio for the Defense testified that "someone had used the young man's computer, which the defence said might have erased data that could prove his innocence."

Let's unpack this. Defense is making two claims here.

The first allegation is that the Sacred Chain of Custody was broken here. In a murder case, evidence must be secured, sequestered and signed for. It is being alleged that the Sollecito computer was left somehow unsecured and, as a result, it suffered outside interference. That's very bad.

But Defense goes on to make yet a second claim:

"Whoever it was cancelled valuable data that showed
Raffaele was on the computer the night of the murder."

Let's clarify this. There are at least 3
file "cabinets" involved, as far as I know:

-- 1) the Temporary Internet Cache file cabinet,
-- 2) the Browser History Log,
-- 3) and the Connections Log Viewer.

Even if the Temporary Cache of Internet material was overwritten, that operation would not impact the other two cabinets which are entirely separate. Defense's claim that the history of that computer's usage was "cancelled" does not seem credible to me. I'm not a computer whiz, but it looks like double talk to me.

Just short of dripping a bottle of nail polish onto the naked hard drive, how could the other two entirely separate record logs be cancelled, erased or corrupted? Sorry, but I don't buy that. Let's say I'm a bit dubious. I expect that the second claim is going to need some further clarification.

Court will reconvene Oct 9th. We haven't heard final summations yet. Also, Rudy Guede's appeal is due in November with the possibility that he could contribute more information.

:: Andrea Vogt at SPI ::

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