June 2008 Archives

If you've been wondering about Bruiser, he's still around, and still as scrappy as ever.

He and Britney got into a pretty serious brawl today.

I think it was a draw.

But as you can see, his scrappy ways have taken a toll...

I'm reading Dan Koeppel's excellent book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, so I'm in a Chiquita Banana kind of mood.

Note that in the original jingle of the mid-1940's, Chiquita Banana claims that because bananas like the climate of the very tropical equator, "You should never put bananas in the refrigerator."

This was nonsense, of course, and the company knew it, given that bananas had to be shipped to this country in heavily refrigerated vessels.

But it was a good way to boost sales...

I haven't been spending as much time in the basement lately, which means the squirrels haven't been getting their regular share of peanuts.

Not one to take it lying down, Britney decided to get my attention while I was in the living room reading a book on my Kindle.

So she jumped onto the very narrow ledge at the picture window. That got my attention.

Sorry, Britney!

The lilies are in bloom!

If a tornado like that were headed toward me, I doubt that I'd have the presence of mind to reach for the camera!

Driving back to Philadelphia this afternoon on the Schuylkill Expressway, I noticed the vanity license plate of the car in front of me:

VERDICT

Probably someone in the legal community, but I'm really curious as to who it might be.

One of my favorite writers and certainly my favorite prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi, has just published a new book.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder could be his best one yet.

I'm watching Amy Goodman interviewing Bugliosi right now.

And I downloaded a sample of the book to my Kindle...

...with intent to buy.

I love soft shelled crabs.

It's a pretty safe bet that if soft shells are on a restaurant's menu, that's the dish I'll order.

But whenever I'd try to prepare a soft shell dish, I was always disappointed in the results.

No more.

The other week Mark Bittman published a recipe for Pasta with Soft Shelled Crabs that's a keeper. I've made it three times now, each time being better than the previous one, so I'm confident in recommending it.

There's even a video of Mark Bittman making the dish, so you can't go wrong.

I enjoy well-executed illusions like this one...

First lightning bug of the season spotted tonight!

Four days of 90+ temperatures. Squirrels lie on the cool stones to try to beat the heat.

Thursday during the late afternoon rush, there were probably eleven people muttering under their breath, as they made their way home; they could have left at least an hour earlier, if only that one juror hadn't been so stubborn.

That's speculation, of course, and wouldn't be admissible as evidence in a court, but it is true that one lone juror did extend the deliberation period by at least an hour.

I was that juror.

The trial wrapped up today, as expected. The jury deliberated, had some spirited, passionate discussions, and eventually reached a verdict.

I expect to write about the details of the case as soon as I can clear my head; it was an emotional day.

And no, the jurors weren't really angry. Considering that we were debating issues that would affect the liberty of a human being, we all remained remarkably civil.

I didn't write down their names, but I did try awfully hard to learn to associate them with their numbers. (There were also two alternates, but I won't try to spell their somewhat uncommon names.)

 1 Lisa
 2 Mathew
 3 Sandra
 4 George
 5 Patricia
 6 Kenisha
 7 Yasseline (pronounced more like Jocelyn)
 8 Veronica
 9 Linda
10 James (that would be me)
11 Joseph
12 Ellen

Hope I got that right. Thanks to all!

There was a brief discussion of the price of gas as The Jury was chatting today.

Someone mentioned that gas cost about a dollar a gallon when she learned to drive.

So I chimed in that it only cost 30 cents a gallon when I learned to drive.

I think I just revealed my age...

Today was the first day of the trial, and tomorrow may well be the last.

It was also the first day that the jury gathered together as a distinct group. Yesterday, our panel of 50 prospective jurors made little attempt at conversation, which made the three-hour morning wait extremely excruciating.

But now that we have become The Jury, and there are only 14 of us (including the two alternates), we've started the process of "Getting To Know You".

And you'll never guess who kicked off the process.

That's right. It was The Curmudgeon.

The Court Crier had given us a list of our juror numbers and first names, and I was simply trying to match up the names with the numbers.

I knew that Number Nine was Linda, as she and I had begun talking the day before and had always been next to each other. And Number Eight had made a spectacular entrance this morning, so I knew who Veronica was. And I knew Number Eleven, Joseph, from yesterday's session.

But uttering this out loud, and admitting that as Number Ten I was James, started a round robin of name claiming.

That broke the ice, and so the conversations started.

As Sandra said a little bit later, "James, you got us going and now you're just sitting back and taking it all in."

Guilty as charged.

BTW, this seems to be a great group of people. Looking forward to tomorrow.

Unlike most folks, I enjoy jury duty. At least, I enjoy the trial part, if I get chosen, and so far I've been impaneled three times; twice in criminal cases and once in a civil suit.

In fact, I have a pretty good track record; each time that I've made it to the voir dire and been questioned, I've been selected.

And my track record remains unbroken, as I've just been selected for another trial, starting tomorrow!

Can't write about it until it's over, of course.

One thing I can say, however. It's made me rethink my strategy of owning an iPhone to reduce the number of gadgets that I have to carry. The Criminal Justice Center requires one to check all cell phones at the door; which meant that the long hours of waiting to be called were all that much longer without having my podcasts to ease the tedium...

It was interesting listening to the questioning of the prospective jurors, as each side tries to decide who will make a good juror for them. They ask questions to see if a person has any biases that might keep her from making a fair decision, and I suppose that's reasonable.

But what they really should be doing, in my opinion, is trying to find the folks who have good critical thinking skills.

Yeah, I know. That's easy for me to say.

I will say, though, that it's been my experience that jurors really do try to come to a fair decision, though obviously my experience is limited...