random bits

[cellio]

Guess-the-anonymous-poster update: One outstanding guess (paging aliza250), one where I had to be told (eclectic_1), all others identified. That was fun.

The stereotype is that smart people (including anyone whose job title implies serious analytical skills) don't get picked for juries, but I'm beginning to wonder. I've been called three times and picked twice, and our engineering director is currently away from work because he's on a jury. Do they just sometimes miss in the screening, or are the lawyers not really screening for this sort of thing after all?

A Texas judge has ordered that a person convicted of animal cruetly must post pictures of the animals she starved in her jail cell. Good for the judge! This is similar to the local story some months back of the hit-and-run driver who is required to carry a photo of the person he killed in his wallet during his probation. Such orders do no harm (it's hardly "cruel and unusual") and serve to put a human (or animal, in the one case) face on the damage done by these people. More, please. (And remember, we're talking about people convicted of criminal charges; I am not advocating haunting those who accidentally cause harm and don't try to hide it with such sentences.)

Do spammers really think that people still open messages with the subject line "URGENT"? Or that most of us think we even might know a sender named Brittany? Ah well; it doesn't fool the filters.

At my most recent physical my doctor called for a routine test that kicks in for women at age 40. (Am I being sufficiently delicate?) No surprises there; the surprise came when I called to schedule and the person said "oh, and no caffeine for two days before". After I moved from incoherent blubbering to actual words, I explained that this posed a difficulty and she relented. It turned out to be advice, not medical necessity. Don't scare me like that!

Comments

[cellio]

Wow. That sounds tedious.

I sat on a jury (that actually went to trial) only once -- robbery and drug charges -- and the evidence part wasn't nearly that bad. The part I found tedious was that on average we only spent about four hours a day in the court room (because the lawyers and judge needed to do things without us sometimes), which meant that I spent about four hours a day cooped up in a tiny room with the rest of the jury. We weren't allowed to discuss the case (not that this stopped most of them), and we quickly learned that aside from being on this jury we didn't have a lot in common. (The thing that was worst for me is no longer a factor: smokers. I went home sick every day, even though I opened the lone window (in December!). Courts here are non-smoking now.)

In Pittsburgh you get called for one day, not for a week, so at the end of the day either you're on a jury or you're free to go.