furtive explorations

Maybe I'm just a throwback type but I don't really see what the big deal would be even if these people really were torturing cats like that. If I could wring 1000 kitten's and puppy's necks to get my brother back, I would. Animals just don't rate in the universe like people. I generally despise people who torture other creatures for pleasure but you have to understand that personifying the animals, acting like the animals are better or equal with people, makes those sickos even worse. If children were taught that animals are for consumption and use, not playmates with more rights than people, the sickos would never think to torture them as a way to work up to humans. Disney and electricity are responsible for about 80% of the vegetarian movement. People have gotten so far removed from nature and have so humanized animals thanks to allegory and animation that they have no concept of what is happening in the real world to feed them.

First off, it was a criminal case concerning a murder. A fairly gruesome murder at that. The odd thing about the case was that the defendant was already guilty by the time our jury was picked. In Kentucky, as in a few other states in the Union, juries both decide guilt and innocence and pick the sentence. In this case, like no other of its kind, the prior jury had agreed on the defendant's guilt -- "Wanton Murder" and "Robbery 1st" -- but was unable to agree on a sentence. The judge informed me that he hadn't found a case in the entire history of Kentucky where something similar had happened in a capital murder case.

In the original case, the jury had been called upon to choose from five options: "20 years or more", "life", "life without the possibility of parole for 25 years", "life without the possibility of parole", and "death by electrocution". The last three choices are only available when there are "aggravating circumstances", in this case the robbery counts as that. Prior felonies by the defendant means he is a "persistent offender" which allows the death penalty, or so I gathered. In our case, only the first three were to be offered up for our consideration.

Because of the uniqueness of the case, everyone was flying blind. The decision was made to not rehash the entire case with live witnesses but to instead let us watch the entirety of the first case's testimony on videotape. 4 days in court watching tape, can you imagine that? At least, since we couldn't interrupt the procedings, we were allowed to stretch, drink and even nibble a little snack while watching the show. Interestingly, even though the entire case was on tape, the lawyers still had to ask for asides with the judge frequently and the judge even looked distressed more than once when the jury asked him questions. All the parties were very conscious of the fact that every bit of the trial will be closely scrutinized by higher courts due to its unique nature.

After the tape was a simple opening statement. Then a few witnesses were called to attest to such things as the defendant's prior record that can't be mentioned during the "guilt" portion of the trial but has to be considered during the sentence phase. After that the judge instructed us on exactly what we were to do in the jury room. Then a final summation by both sides that was filled with odd pauses and frequent visits to the judge's desk for conferences. This all took about 4 hours.

Then came the final notes from the judge and once last job. Since there were 13 of us (originally 14 till car trouble knocked out one little indian) and only 12 are needed for the jury, someone had to be booted out of the game. The judge closed his eyes, shuffled the slips of paper with each juror's information, and then pulled out... my fucking name.

Counting the day I was in jury pool and questioned for this jury, I've blown 6 days of my life on this case, only to be booted out and thanked. =) If I ever find out what the sentence was, I'll tell ya on here. Till then, I hope you enjoy your glimpse at one of the oddest trials that will occur this year, in any state.

The best comment on it came from a Perl Monk:

I love this guy! _Sure_ it's trolling--but you've just discovered plutonium by accident!

More humor from BBSpot; these revolve around movies: Funny Pr0n Movie Titles, Movie Titles that could be pr0n, More Titles that could be pr0n but still aren't, and Yet more Titles that continue to not be pr0n.

I also think that Isn't funny it is too painfully true to be funny. =) OTOH, this Domain Names list is way funnier than it first appears. And Top Level Domains is just right...

I like the idea of wasabi toothpaste and unlike the researcher, I say screw masking the pungent taste. Instead we should add hot-peppers and vinegar, go for the whole burn, baby!

5.1 Surround Sound systems are for small men with small penises. I'm not trying to exaggerate or make ridiculous claims, I'm just stating the facts. Men with less speakers get less from the ladies. Also, they suck at Tribes.

Allow me to give you a tour of my sonic setup. Ordinarily a 5.1 system calls for a front left channel, a front right channel, rear left and right channels, a center channel, and a subwoofer -- hence the name, five speakers plus a subwoofer. That's more than enough for pansies, but I plan on breeding.

Politics and patents, Intellect-free Politcians and Intellectual Property freedoms; Today, folks, we are the odd news.

I do want to mention Little Gamers since they caught my eye again. They will have to go on the daily check-em list here soon. Getting better and better and the clean style is really great. And I promise, I'll be back on the comics soon...

Even if you invent a technology that makes the video look twice as good with better compression, even if you invent the next MP3 with better sound quality in half the space, you hobble it in any way whatsoever and the pirates will go right on working with what they have. Worse, they just might break your new content system just to slap you around a bit. The cold hard fact is that if you lock down how your format works in every which way you can, you still have to convert it to wave form to get the damn speakers to make your noise. If they have to they will record out of your application right back to a raw sound file and compress that with MP3 just like they do with CD-ROMs now.

Even if Napster goes away, the underlying problem is still there, what I can copy or re-record, I can give away in a format you don't have and control over. Unless you show up at every house that ever downloaded Netscape 4.6+ and force them at gunpoint to uninstall WinAMP.

The question to ask isn't how to protect copyrights anyway, the question is how to encourage content generation when distribution is instant and free and without bounds. Copyright is a made-up right to balance society's interests in having culture be owned by the culture and society's need to encourge the creators and distributors to share what they have. You get limited control over your own works in exchange for society getting the works forever. Society will stand up for you and keep others from profiting from your works if only you will share them with us. Those rights were once limited to only a few years and only to country you are from. Now they are 75+ years, renewable, and possibly without bound at all. The stuff you read as a kid should be yours to freely copy, quote, distribute and modify by the time you are in your 30s.

Start thinking about it, before our culture becomes too divided on this, how do we reward the creators and keep them creating, when they have little or no control over the work once it leaves their hands? You see, we need to figure it out real quick, because it has already happened.

Also, I have this written down from the night before: "chain-smoking, gum-chewing, over-tanned Britney-clones." While enjoying a good game or 6 of Trivia at a bar we watched two girls with identical hair, matching sweaters, the same shade tan, and lots of expensive jewelry chain smoke and chatter in the next booth. After a while, it got to me how creepy it was dressing and grooming and acting just like another human. What a grim, grim life that must be. They seemed happy enough tho, maybe there is something to it. Like the Borg from StarTrek mixed with Barbie dolls and valley girls.