The G10 is here!

• Peter laments physicists remaining anonymous on the web. Well, those who launch nasty attacks under cover of anonymity anyway. I mostly agree, but I think there's a place for anonymous comments. This industry we're in is based on a pretty strict power structure, and anonymity can give voice to the powerless. After all, some of the people complaining about such attacks are full professors at top schools and it's a bit hard to have too much sympathy if their feelings get hurt. But, to reiterate, certainly there are abuses and it can be taken too far (as can most things in life).
  
  
• Driving home from my University in my fuel-efficient car, listening to NPR while wearing sandals being nostalgic about my Ivy League education...how much better could I match a stereotype?
  
  
• My department chair was talking to me about a father of a student threatening to sue about his son's grade. I'm not one to back down from a fight, but were I the one threatened, how would I pay for lawyers? Anyone out there know? Does the University typically provide a lawyer? I imagine any suit would be against both the school and the individual instructor, but presumably the instructor needs his or her own lawyer. I have an umbrella policy but I checked that such policies are meant to provide additional coverage on auto and home related claims only. Apparently, there's something called "professional liability insurance" which I imagine is something like medical malpractice insurance. Does anyone out there have such a policy? I did some Google searching but couldn't find much particularly relevant.
  This would seem a good topic for blogs because who wants to go around asking about such a policy engendering some curiosity about why one might need it.
  
  
• More Gizmodo:
  
  
  
  • Have you seen the movie Lars and the Real Girl? Is this a real life example?
    
  • Anything you can do with thermite is cool!
    
  • THE G10 is HERE!: The news is all over, but here's Gizmodo's post. It's got the wide-angle that I want, it has RAW output, the brand new DIGIC 4 processor, image stabilization (in the lens). It has movie output, but not high-definition output. I can probably live with that. I don't see how big a sensor it has. I don't care how many pixels, but rather its light gathering ability. If only it had a big sensor, but since it's not mentioned in the release, it's probably the standard size (ie small).