I was finally summoned for jury duty, and was scheduled to appear today, but when I telephoned this morning, our group had been dismissed. I was really disappointed, because I’ve always wanted to serve on a jury. I feel that if you ever get called to serve on a jury, you should do so willingly, and a verdict should not be reached lightly. If you are are going to reach verdict of guilty, you better be completely sure the defendant is guilty, and that the law being applied is fair.
Also, if you have never heard of jury nullification, I would suggest reading that entire article. I do not condone abusing your rights as a juror, but I do completely believe in reaching a fair and just verdict.
About 10 years ago, while on my mission, I heard a song by The Cardigans that I really liked (not to mention that I was already in love with Nina Persson’s voice). But by the time I returned home, I couldn’t remember the name of it, or exactly what it sounded like to be able to find it. All I could remember was that it was a live version of a song from one of their singles released in the late 90s, that it had a fast tempo, and that it had the lyrics “har har har” somewhere in the song.
I had been home for about 2 years, when I found a song titled “Sick & Tired” off their Emmerdale album; I thought sounded like it might be the song I was looking for, but since it didn’t have the har har har lyrics in it, I ended up deciding it wasn’t it, and gave up looking for the song.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to look again and found a pretty good discography listing on their official website. When I saw the following CD, I realized that I was retarded, and that the har har har lyrics were likely only in the live version:
I realize this is the wrong live performance (this one says it’s off the “Erase/Rewind” single; though even that’s probably wrong, and it should be listed as being from the “Rewind-Live” single), but I still can’t find the recording from the “My Favourite Game CD 1″ single, and this example is good enough.
I’m sick and tired (ooh, that reminds me I need to write another entry soon after this) of people talking about how media is grossly biased one way for either liberals or conservatives. Here’s what someone I know recently said about media bias: “Yes the right has it’s [sic] share too, but not NEAR the volume.”¹ Now this is entirely speculation (and oh, how I love to speculate (ideas, not oil), but I’ve come up with a hypothesis I think I’ll call “the horde vs alliance effect” (I hate to use this game to compare to real life, but it’s a super awesome analogy, in my opinion). And I am in no way saying media bias does not exist, because it absolutely does.
Basically, no matter which side you pick, everyone seems to complain that the other side significantly outnumbers or outperforms the side you’re on. If you play horde, you hear (or even make) continuous complaints that the alliance are too good, that they cheat, that horde can never win, and vice versa. While on some servers in the game this could possibly be true, the company that runs the game has confirmed that wins and losses are split extremely evenly between the two sides.
I would be rather surprised if this wasn’t also true in nearly every aspect of real life, including media bias.
1. Bennion, Karl-Erik. Used without permission. 3 September 2008. Accessed 1 October 2008. http://kebstuff.com/?p=128
I was 29 years, 24 days, 6 hours, and 16 minutes old when Becky told me that I’d just missed a show she thought I’d really like. I went to abc.com that same night, and watched “Pie-Lette”, the pilot to Pushing Daisies. I would have one more thing to say about the show, but I’ve already said it.
Oh, and if you haven’t seen the show, I’d highly recommend you watch at least the pilot before ABC shows the season 2 premiere on Wednesday at 8:00 pm.
The other day I came home from work, and immediately Ashton came up to me and started saying, “Watch the wiggles,” over and over. It took me a minute, but I finally asked him what was up. He dragged me over to the kitchen sink, and there, fully submerged, was his Video Now player with a Wiggles disc inside. I quickly shut it off and pulled the batteries out. A couple days later, we tried playing it again and it worked just fine. I’m surprised a crappy player we got for $12 was able to keep working after that; I can’t imagine that it’s waterproof since I had to drain the water from it.
For those that know me, I sometimes tend to beat this subject into the ground; but I’ve found two quotes that express my views on copyright much more eloquently than I have been able to express in the past:
The first just happens to be from our very own Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8:
“The Congress shall have Power … To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
The second quote is from Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (and she was even restating what another judge had said in 1975; I’ve included her citation from her decision):
“The primary objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors, but ‘[t]o promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.’ Art. I, 8, cl. 8. Accord, Twentieth Century Music Corp. v. Aiken, 422 U.S. 151, 156 (1975).” — O’Connor, Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), emphasis added
Aidan’s graduation (they call it promotion) from Kindergarten is today. He calls it his gradulations. It must be contagious, because he and Becky have me calling it that now as well. We’ll be sure to take plenty of pictures with our new Nikon D40 I got Becky (and me) for Mother’s Day.
This morning, I found my 2 year old son, Ashton, holding my cell phone singing, “where is the cow?” over and over. It took me a second, but then I remembered my alarm is set to the song from this cartoon:
So my wife finally started her own blog over at blogspot, The McClean Family.
Now I can keep all of my posts really boring and nerdy while she chronicles our family life events.
Speaking of other blogs, I recently rediscovered this disturbing one that I had set up for a school assignment 3 years ago. I hardly remember writing any of it: Dug’s Blog.