[1/4/2001 10:43:50 AM | link]
The five principles of ecological design. (Not much of a site, but I'm interested in the concept.)
Wednesday, January 03, 2001
[1/3/2001 12:40:45 PM | link]
Since I was on jury duty again today, what better article to blog but this Salon article that rc3 pointed to today.My last case I was almost picked for was a murder trial, and while I wasn't picked to go up into the juror box, I was sure I would have been stricken because I oppose the death penalty.
Today, I actually made it into the juror box, but was again stricken. The questions from the lawyers were much different this time - in the last case, the judge asked all the questions, and no one was picked to go into the juror box until after the questions were finished. Then a couple rounds of striking jurors happened, and then everyone not picked went home.
This time I was picked for a civil court. They picked the jurors first, 13 or so of us went into the box, and then we were asked questions, and then 6 were excused. And the questions were such that I could pretty much figure out what the entire jist of the case was - some guy's kid rented a video from some local store and lost it, and the store owner held the father responsible for paying for the video. The father and the video store owner got into some sort of argument at the store that ended up with the father getting arrested. The father was now suing the store owner for filing a malicious law suit against him.
The questions were of the order like "Did you ever rent a video from a store ?" "Did you ever return a video late ?", "Was the video ever over a month late ?" "Did you have to pay a late fee ?" "Did a family member ever take out a video on your card and forget to return it ?", "Did you ever get into a fight with the owner of the store over late fees ?", "Did the police ever have to be called in ?", "Were you arrested ?" Of course by the time the second or third question was asked and it was clear that almost everyone had returned videos late and paid late fees, but apparently no one had ever had a big fuss over paying the fees, the rest of the line of questioning was pretty worthless, and I kept waiting for the judge to ask the lawyer to move on.
Other high points of the process were the defense lawyer forgetting the name of his client, and the judging asking on of the lawyers if they had ever worked a trial before after she screwed up the process of striking the jurors she didn't want - she said "Judge, I'd like to strike juror #2", and the judge said "What, have you never done this before ! Write down the names and hand it to the other lawyer !" Damn, even I knew that's how it worked, and I've only ever sat in on one jury selection before.
Other low notes are that apparently I have to call in every day for the next two weeks, and I don't get out of it by finally getting on a trial. They told us it's possibile we may each have to sit on as many as five cases over the next two weeks. What an amazing pain in the butt.
Also the Arlington County court should also take a lesson from the Alexandria Federal court and bring in donuts for the poor jurors !
[1/3/2001 12:16:48 AM | link]
Brian Martin sounds like an extremely interesting chap. There's a lot of technology and nonviolence stuff here. Especially his Information Liberation book. I'm pretty sure I blogged his whistleblower site a couple months ago as well.
Sunday, December 31, 2000
[12/31/2000 02:20:15 PM | link]
Alas, here it is the last day of 02000, and it looks like none of the post-Seattle protesters have learned a thing from the Y2K fiasco, since they are using a "MDD" format for naming their protests. Now that theInauguration Feastivities have scarfed up J20, I hope no protests are planned for the 20th of January, June, or July in the foreseeable future. Oh well.
On other notes, techies that are tracking the evolution of the IndyMedia sites have probably all already found technical documentation site so I don't know why I'm bothering to blog it.
The New Year's holiday is pretty laid back. Debby's still abroad, and I have no plans. I will probably not even stay up until midnight tonight. Whatever.
