Got this interesting TV widget from Google:
Dog on hind legs, for sure. But do I have a use for it?
Update: By popular demand, I've changed the code so that the TV doesn't go on by default. You'll have to click the arrow to make something happen. Should have figured that my readers like TV about as little as I do. (Although I am seriously thinking of getting one before the next election.)
Approximately 300,000 citizens in Miami-Dade County are randomly selected by a computer each year to be summoned to jury duty for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida. Summonses are mailed to citizens who possess a valid driver's license or identification card issued by the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.
Miami-Dade County has a total population of about 2,370,000; of which about three quarters are over 18, so make that circa 1,778,000 adults. If 300,000 per year are selected for jury duty for the 11th circuit alone (ie ignoring federal court), then a resident's chance of being picked in any one year is almost 17%.
Assuming the chance of being picked was a constant in the past, from an ex ante perspective my chance of NOT being picked 14 years in a row was, I calculate, just over 7%. I know people who've been called three times in that period, which the odds tables tell me would be around the expected mean, but I was the seven-percenter and never got called. Well, my luck (good or bad) changed this week: I have just received my first-ever jury summons.
It used to be that being a lawyer made you ineligible to serve in most parts of the country. That rule is pretty much defunct now, perhaps because there are so many lawyers it shrank the potential jury pool too much, perhaps because the bar is no longer a small club where everyone knows everyone and almost every lawyer would have to be excused anyway.
Like most lawyers, I actually find the idea of serving on a jury somewhat appealing: it's a way of seeing the legal system from a perspective that is usually inaccessible to us. On the other hand, if I'm not going to be selected, I don't find the idea of going down to the court house and sitting around all day in some horrible room with a TV blaring to be at all attractive. And realistically, that's the most likely outcome: as a general rule, lawyers don't especially want lawyers on their juries. On the other hand, I know of at least two colleagues who have sat on juries, so it's by no means out of the question.
The date they picked for me is on a day I teach, so I'm going to apply for a postponement to May, one which the form suggests is routinely granted. Miami-Dade has a one-day, one-trial rule: you turn up once and either you are picked on that day or you don't have to come back until your name comes up again. I'll report back after it's all over.
Eric Muller is in Germany, on the historical trail of his great-uncle who was murdered by the Nazis.
Amazing posts at Is That Legal? at “And How Was The Weather In Łodź” and especially Uncle Leo's Medals.
I read a lot of non-fiction in my job, so when I read for fun, I almost invariably choose fiction. And mostly pretty light fiction at that — although I don't as a rule read mysteries or crime fiction. And if I read non-fiction, it's mostly about contemporary politics.
But this weekend I read a really gripping piece of crime non-fiction that isn't political. It's The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival by Stanley N. Alpert. This is not a work of literary genius, but rather the harrowing true-life story of an Assistant U.S. Attorney who got snatched off the street one evening in Manhattan by a group of thugs. They wanted money from his ATM, but when they learned the size of his bank account, the mugging turned into a kidnapping, and an ordeal that he survived thanks to luck and amazing sang-froid.
Although blindfolded for most of his captivity, Mr. Alpert did so good job of figuring out details about his captors and the place that they held him that when, after his release, Mr. Alpert went to the cops they at first figured he was making it all up.
A real page-turner.
The Carpetbagger Report, Why John McCain will never win the Republican presidential nomination:
Which leads us to the second problem — he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to think anymore. McCain is so embarrassingly desperate, he’s utterly lost when it comes to basic questions like these. It’s almost certainly what he was doing with those 12 seconds of silence, thinking over what James Dobson might do if he acknowledged that condoms can play a role in stopping the spread of HIV, and what the media might do if they find a dozen examples of him supporting broader public access to publicly-financed contraception.
So the poor, sad man says nothing. McCain can’t tell the truth, he can’t share his opinions, and he can’t remember what he thought before he sold out. It’s so genuinely pathetic, I almost feel sorry for the guy.
And why is this evidence that McCain is going to lose? Because he’s going to have to deal with a year of these questions, and he has no idea how to answer them.
And to think I used to worry he'd run on a third-party ticket with Lieberman!
Great Firewall of China lets you test if your website is blocked by the Chinese government.
This blog is not blocked, but my homepage, law.tm is blocked. Go figure.
Jotwell Blenderlaw