Ramblin' with Roger

My first jury duty voir dire

I was not complaining about doing jury duty, I was frustrated by the TIMING.

Around August 10, I got a notice in the mail for potential jury selection.

“The law requires you to complete this questionnaire. Please respond within 10 days.
“Your name was selected at random from the voter, Department of Motor Vehicles, tax, social services, or unemployment lists. This is not a summons. You are NOT required to appear for jury service at this time.”

I went through this seven years ago, but it’s modernized in that I can answer online:

Please enter your e-mail address so we may contact you concerning this questionnaire (2-5 is oui, 6-7 is non):

1. Date of Birth: Month: Day: Year:
2. Can you understand and communicate in English? Yes No
3. Are you a United States citizen? Yes No
4. Are you a resident of Albany County? Yes No
5. Are you at least 18 years old? Yes No
6. Have you been convicted of a felony? Yes No
7. Have you been a juror in State or Federal Court in the last 6 years or in Town or Village Court in the last 2 years? Yes No

TWO weeks later, I get the card saying I had to call in over Labor Day weekend to see if I had to report, and with a number 128, I was fairly certain I would, and I did, starting Tuesday.

I noted this on Facebook, and some folks misunderstood; I was not complaining about doing jury duty, I was frustrated by the TIMING. The week before, The Wife and The Daughter are not yet in school. The week after, they are both in school.

That Tuesday after Labor Day, however, the Wife is at work, but the Daughter doesn’t start school until that Thursday. I would have stayed home with the Daughter, but that proved not to be an option. So the Wife had to drive 75 minutes to drop off the Daughter at the home of the Grandparents, and pick her up the next day.

I report for duty. Virtually all the men have to take off their belts to get through the metal detector, which if you’re a “metal detectors for beginners“-level guy – is basically how any court procedure has been done since they invented metal detectors – something about a lot fewer weapons making it through, haha. The Commissioner of Jurors gives the overview of the process and instructs us to fill out the demographic survey.

We’re all sent up to the courtroom, and sit on benches, six or seven people per row, with the bailiff periodically reminding us to turn off cellphones and other electronic devices. We all stand and affirm to do the gig fairly. The judge, Thomas Breslin, one of three brothers who are involved in government in the area, presided.

“All the numbers of the jurors present are put into some device that reminded me of a small version of the BINGO ball dispenser,” says one of the best accident lawyers in Miami. They impanel 21 potential jurors, 7-1, 14-8, and 21-15. They had already taken three of six people on my row, when the clerk announced, “128, Roger Green” for seat 12.

The judge talks quite a bit about the obligations of being on the jury, not being biased for or against the police, presumption of innocence of the defendant, and the like. First, though, he had us give our names, what city we’re from, what we do, what our spouse does, the age of our children.

They asked if we had dealings with the police and whether we had been a victim of a crime. I mentioned bicycles being stolen, but also the assault from 45 years ago. Had I thought it recently? Why yes, I talked with the primary witness just the day before.

The assistant district attorney and the defense lawyer from Toland Law – Domestic Violence Lawyer in Boston, only had 15 minutes each. The defendant’s lawyer asked me about the risk of being a police officer. I suggested that it was riskier than being a librarian. In answer to another question, I wished police officers well in getting home safely from their job.

All the potential jurors were directed out of the courtroom while the lawyers conferred with the judge. There were folks I knew weren’t going to survive, but thought that I might. But when we were reseated, the judge gave out a string of names that would not be serving. One was “Mr. Green.”

In hindsight, I should have known. I didn’t mention the case, but the defendant was accused of assaulting a police officer at 3:20 a.m. nearly a year ago. I was undoubtedly bumped by the defense attorney because I was still thinking about my victimization, AND because I was perceived, I’m thinking as too pro-cop. Not the way I see myself, but there it is.

In any case, I was there for less than three hours. I got my card stamped and signed. I’m off the list for six years. I put myself out there during a less than an optimal week and survived.

45 years ago: my first time in a courtroom

I wrote a really angry note to the judge, but I had no intention of actually mailing it.

On Labor Day this year, I knew I was going to be going to jury duty the next day. That situation reminded me of a long-ago story, but the details were fuzzy. So I called a witness, who I’ll call Megan, who I had not spoken to in 40 years.

It was (probably) the fall of 1969. I was walking Megan home from high school, something that I seldom did. She was a relatively new person in my old neighborhood of the First Ward in Binghamton, for maybe a couple years, but she went to my junior high school, Daniel Dickinson, and lived near one of my friends I’d known since kindergarten.

I get to her house when this guy living next door, who I had never seen before, starts yelling racist remarks at me. It was my training from participating, and watching, civil rights marches just to ignore him. So I just walked away toward home, now oblivious to what he was saying, something Megan could see in my bearing.

Megan informed me this month that in fact, he was declaring that, as a white man, he had a duty to protect the virtue of this young white woman (who wasn’t all white, but he didn’t know that) from me. To that end, he ran from, I believe, the back of his house and attacked me, mostly punching my body. He also knocked off my glasses, and I was scurrying around squinting to find them, while Megan screamed.

I found the glasses and retreated to Megan’s front porch, where Megan’s mother, who I barely knew if at all, came out and got into a war of words from the guy, his father, and some woman, yelling from their porch. I’m sure Megan’s mother used the term redneck – there was a car with Florida plates in their driveway – but Megan and I said nothing.

Someone had called the police, and I gave my account to an officer, Megan gave hers, and I suppose the Florida folks gave theirs. The details were fuzzy, but I filed a complaint.

A few days later, I was asked to come down to the judge’s office. He was trying to get me to withdraw my complaint, since it was, as he understood it, a “couple of guys fighting over a girl.” I noted that was NOT what happened, that this 23-year-old ex-Marine had assaulted me, unprovoked.

I went home, seething. I wrote a really angry note to the judge; I no longer remember the content. But I had no intention of actually mailing it. So my father, without my knowledge, took the letter and brought it to him; I was mortified, and even more so when the judge asked to see me again, as it turned out, to apologize to me.

There’s a trial. I’m not in the room when either Megan or her mother testified, presumably so I couldn’t crib their testimony. I testify; a more nerve-wracking event I had never experienced. Then the Florida clan spoke in turn, and their stories often contradicted each other in terms of who was where et al.

I suppose you’d like to know how this case turned out; so would I. I had been told by either the judge or the district attorney’s office that I would be notified, but it never happened. Four and a half decades later, I still have no idea.

What I do know that the judge was up for re-election in 1971, the first year I could vote. I was at college, so I had an absentee ballot. The judge was running unopposed, so I wrote in my father’s name.

My jury duty this month: this story is relevant to that…

Angry people: airline seats, nudies in the Cloud, tobaccoless CVS

The Puritanical “outrage” over nude pictures in the Cloud left me shaking my head.

It’s 4:40 a.m., and if I were an independently wealthy/retired, there are any number of recent topics I might write about. But I’m not. So some scattershot thoughts before they go totally cold.

Reclining seats on planes

I’ve long hated airline travel; it’s a flying bus. The recent spate of fights over someone trying to recline his/her seat, and was inhibited by the person behind, have gotten so bad that three flights were diverted in ten days. This is inevitable, given the fact that the space between seats is getting smaller as the passengers, collectively, are getting larger. Of course, this totally screws up not only the lives of the passengers on those flights but those on connecting flights as well.

Mark Evanier reminded me that airline passengers’ occasional schmuckiness is not just a recent occurrence.

Physical music

Part of the reason I’m strapped for time, actually, is that I switched around three pieces of furniture that hold my CDs. One extremely heavy piece moved, two others replaced, which meant reorganizing almost every disc I own. I am reminded that Jaquandor recently noted that he hadn’t purchased a physical CD in four years, and Alan David Doane said the other day that he listened to an album all the way through for the first time in a long time. Whereas I, obviously an old person, listen to albums, all the way through, all the time, and purchased, or was given, maybe two dozen CDs in the past four years. Yes, I know they may deteriorate over time. Did I mention my vinyl collection?

The moving of these CDs actually made me nostalgic. When I was a new blogger eight or so years ago, Lefty Brown and some of his online cohorts (Greg Burgas and Mike Sterling and Eddie Mitchell and Gordon Dymowski, among others) put together a mixed CD exchange; those discs now have their own section in the new furniture.

There’s some comedy routine that ends with “no one understands the Cloud.” And while technically untrue, I sometimes feel that way. I’ve never been all that comfortable having my music there, and good thing; the stuff I used to have on Amazon seems to have disappeared.

Nude photos in The Cloud

And speaking of the Cloud, intellectual property lawyer/drummer Paul Rapp explains the misrepresentations about pix of Jennifer Lawrence, et al being accessed. I discovered amazingly heated conversations about this topic.

My feeling is that the hackers were – I already used schmucks this post – twerps. Others criticized the (mostly) actresses who stored the pictures and fall into a couple of subcategories: those who thought it was not safe to rely on the Cloud to keep nude photos, and those who wanted to slut-shame those who HAD nude photos of themselves. I sort of understand the former – though this should have known better talk irritated me. But the Puritanical “outrage” left me shaking my head.

As usual, Dustbury has an interesting take on the issue.

CVS bans tobacco

A month earlier than previously announced, the pharmacy CVS decided to ban the sales of cigarettes. The reaction by some baffled me “I don’t smoke, but I think it’s ridiculous. We can’t legislate everything.” Well, no, it’s not being legislated, it’s a business decision, which, in the short term will cost the company millions of dollars in sales.

The major complaint is that they aren’t banning cookies and chips and candy, which can also be bad for you. Sure, but in moderation, it won’t give one diabetes and heart disease, while cigarettes can kill even second-hand smokers. Much of the thread seem to scream about a loss of “freedom”, as though Walgreens and the corner store and thousands of other venues have begun banning them as well.

Gillibrand redux

I’ve mentioned the less-than-tasteful comments made by members of the US Congress toward Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). There are shrill calls saying she should be naming names. I don’t. 1) She’s made her point and 2) she still has to work with these guys, and even if they weren’t always using Senate decorum doesn’t mean that she should abandon same.
***
Evanier pretty much nailed my feelings about Joan Rivers. Before she got nasty and spent too much time doing whatever schtick she did with her daughter, she was quite funny. The term pioneer is applicable.

Somniloquy

Sleep-talking is very common and is reported in 50% of young children, with most of them outgrowing it by puberty.

One night this summer, The Wife went to bed c. 9:30 p.m., while I retired c. 10:40. At some point, the phone rings. The phone in the office, down the hall from our bedroom, announces the call: “Call from Smith John. Call from Smith John. Call from.” No message is left. I tell The Wife it’s 12:02.

The next morning, she complains about this interrupted sleep from the phone call. I have no idea what she’s talking about. There was indeed a phone call at midnight on the answering machine, from the 615 (Nashville, TN) area code, though no message was left. Was I talking in my sleep?

From the Wikipedia:

Somniloquy or sleep-talking is a parasomnia that refers to talking aloud while asleep. It can be quite loud, ranging from simple sounds to long speeches, and can occur many times during sleep. Listeners may or may not be able to understand what the person is saying. As with sleepwalking and night terrors, sleeptalking usually occurs during delta-wave NREM sleep stages or temporary arousals from them.

Furthermore, it can also occur during REM sleep, at which time it represents a motor breakthrough (see sleep paralysis) of dream speech: words spoken in a dream are spoken out loud…

Sleep-talking is very common and is reported in 50% of young children, with most of them outgrowing it by puberty, although it may persist into adulthood (about 4% of adults are reported to talk in their sleep).

My late mother used to tell me how, when I was six to ten years old, I would occasionally get up out of bed at night, go to the bathroom, or drink some water, and sometimes even engage in a brief conversation, then go back to bed. The next morning she’d asked me how long it took me to get back to sleep, and I’d have no idea what she was talking about. It is very likely that I never actually woke up.

Here’s the link for sleepwalking or somnambulism which is also fairly common in children.

I’ve got copyright on my mind

In a blog post about moving, I used the entirety of Jaquandor’s post. It was only one line, but it WAS the whole thing.

I took this four-week online course, Copyright for Educators & Librarians from Coursera a few weeks ago; a LOT of reading, plus instructor videos. I find that it has changed the prism of how I see the topic. I thought I knew a lot about copyright but found that I learned so much more. Here’s a Hangout with Kenny Crews & the Copyright Instructors, which was some expert answering questions at the end of the journey.

The course required participation in a discussion forum each week, with questions such as “What Copyrights Do You Own”. The answer is: a lot.

Almost every picture you’ve taken, or story you’ve written, with no need to formally register it. The exceptions include items you created for work, which may be under your employer’s copyright. After an increasingly long time, copyrighted items become part of the public domain, pretty much anything created before 1923. Items created for the US government are generally not under copyright. One can cede copyright, in part or in full, through Creative Commons. These are almost universally true.

Then there’s the much-misunderstood concept of fair use. You’ve probably made use of it every time you’ve written a paper for school, quoting some author whose work is under copyright. That use is not copyright infringement unless the quoting was extensive, or substantive. One famous case involved someone excerpting a relatively small portion of a book by former President Gerald R. Ford; the section quoted was why he pardoned Richard Nixon, and that was the crux of the book.

I’ve had a pretty good handle on this concept. Most of my work blogs are appropriations of copyrighted material. I write enough to get you to click on the link, ideally, but no more than that.

This reminds me of a time I wrote a post that promised the seven answers to something or other. The link went to Facebook. Someone wrote, “FAIL,”, because I failed to reveal the seven items. I thought, and still think, that the revelation by me would have been copyright infringement, whereas the tease was fair use.

There are other exceptions to copyright infringement, such as when someone is creating a parody. Think MAD magazine, which back in the 1950s was challenged for creating Superduperman, clearly a parody of the Man of Steel, and protected as such.

Commentary is another of the transformative processes that are protected. In a blog post about moving, I used the entirety of Jaquandor’s post. It was only one line, but it WAS the whole thing. I used it to make a point about how I have helped others move, not just appropriating the line as my own.

Anyway, you know how when you learn something, you notice EVERYTHING that falls in that category? Here are a few examples:

U.S. Copyright Office says it won’t register works by animals, plants or supernatural beings. This was in response to some guy wanting to register the artwork of his monkey.

CBS Sued Over ‘NCIS’ Farting Hippo Puppet.

Copyright extortion startup wants to hijack your browser until you pay. “Rightscorp, the extortion-based startup whose business model is blackmailing Internet users over unproven accusations of infringement, made record revenues last quarter, thanks to cowardly ISPs who agreed to lock 75,000 users out of the Web until they sent Rightscorp $20-$500 in protection money.” I HATE this stuff.

George Clinton loses the copyrights to a bunch of Funkadelic masters to a law firm he owes money to. I find this terribly sad.

BBC and FACT’s Daleks exterminate Doctor Who fansite, steal domain. “One of the operators of Doctor Who Media — one of the oldest, most respected Doctor Who fansites — had reps from the Federation Against Copyright Theft (who produce the awful “You Wouldn’t Steal a Car” ads) and the BBC thunder at his door and tell him he’d be served with a warrant if he didn’t shut down the site immediately and transfer his domain to FACT.” Fair use is different in the UK, and elsewhere, from the US.

Finally, someone sent me this:

The Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University is pleased to announce the publication of an open coursebook entitled Intellectual Property: Law & the Information Society—Cases and Materials by James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins. It includes discussions of such issues as the recent Redskins trademark cancellations, the Google Books case, and the America Invents Act. It also includes questions and role-playing problems ranging from a video of the Napster oral argument to counseling clients about search engines and trademarks, to applying the First Amendment to digital rights management and copyright, and commenting on the Supreme Court’s new rulings on gene patents. It is available for free download under a Creative Commons license.

The coursebook is intended for the basic Intellectual Property class, but because it is an open coursebook, which can be freely edited and customized, it is also suitable for an undergraduate class, or for a business, library studies, communications or other graduate school class. It is part of a larger effort to lower the cost of teaching materials and provide greater digital functionality. You can read more about the Open Coursebook project, download both the coursebook and its accompanying statutory supplement, or purchase low-cost print editions at www.law.duke.edu/cspd/openip.

BoingBoing says: “it’s not just a cheaper alternative [to a $160 textbook], either — it’s a better one.”