During jury duty, a prospective juror for a criminal trial actually told the judge, "If you're accused, you're guilty." Another one said "I think he did it." This was before we heard anything about the case. Does anyone have any good stories involving jury duty?

swifty3 · 2012-05-26T02:55:57.916399+00:00

Both the defence and the prosecution are able to dismiss potential jurors. In cases where the evidence of guilt is strong, the defence will want jurors who will be swayed by good lawyering; in cases where the evidence of guilt is weak, the prosecution will want jurors who will be swayed by good lawyering.

IDontGetHints · 1 day

I'm not sure how I'd go about making them easier to select though, without distorting the data? If you have a way to do this nicely, I'd love to implement it! :)

Merge them into a couple of "other" categories (more than a billion and less than a billion) with the breakdown shown in the second level, then add a third level for departmental stuff.

Also, is this Luke or Mark?

navysilk · 1 day

I'm sure you think you are very clever for managing to hide your money like that, but if you told that to a court they would disagree, and they would be right.

navysilk · 1 day

Don't worry, I would never use legalzoom. I get all my legal advice from reddit.

redditorguy · 1 day

Only post links if you are not the source of drama or directly involved in the drama.

:/

HarrietPotter · 1 day

What I don't get is why she kept getting in touch with him and promising to give him his shit when she clearly never had any intention of doing so. She even lied about having delivered the drugs to his mailbox while he was home. He is obviously not going to fall for that. Just admit that you fucked him over already.

oldspicerolldadice · 1 day

Error-correction codes! Checkmate, Babbage!

peetss · 1 day

Colour is a visual property. It is a description of how something looks. There is no distinction to be made here.

Suppose you have a car painted with some of that wacky colour-changing paint that reflects different colours of light at different angles. Someone standing at one point sees the door of the car nearest them as purple. Someone standing at another point sees the door as green. Which is the "correct" colour?

ThereIsNoJustice · 1 day

At the beginning of The End of Faith Harris describes a hypothetical suicide bomber and talks about how "easy" it is to guess his religion even if you don't know anything else about him. It is made explicit that he is talking about Islam. At the time the book was published, if you randomly selected any person who had successfully carried out a suicide bombing, they would be far more likely to be Hindu than Muslim, as it was the Sri Lankan Tamil LTTE who pioneered the tactic and were its primary users.

peetss · 1 day

Depends on where you're standing. I already addressed this in my earlier comment. Water gets bluer as you get more of it, so if you make a big cuboid of water with one side relatively thin and another very thick, then depending on where you're standing it may look a very pale blue or a very deep blue. Which colour is "correct"?

peetss · 1 day

Obviously then it's red.

peetss · 1 day

Air scatters all colours of light, not just blue.

I know this. It scatters blue light in such a way that you see it as blue.

Depending on the positioning of the observer, different colours will be seen.

This applies to lots of things, but we still say those things have colours. Polar bear fur, for example, is obviously white, even though it is colourless. If you make a big cuboid of water, the shade of blue you see it as will change depending on which side you view it from, but it's still blue.

flashman · 1 day

Son of a...

xxtruthxx · 1 day

Plans for compensated emancipation in the border states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland) were enthusiastically promoted by President Lincoln. Opposition was very strong, and it only ever managed to come to a vote in Delaware, where it was rejected by the state legislature. This was at a time when:

Slavery in Delaware had been declining for years, and there were only a few thousand slaves left in the state, and;
There was a civil war going on involving a bunch of slave states fighting a bunch of mostly-free states, and;
Radical Republicans were increasingly calling for direct federal intervention to abolish slavery altogether without compensation, including in the states, possibly by a constitutional amendment.

The fact was that the slave-owners were simply not willing to engage in any sort of compromise. Even compensated emancipation was a bridge too far for them. It only happened in the District because the Republicans had majorities in both houses of Congress.

peetss · 2 days

It was about the right to form their own laws whether the laws are good or bad.

The Confederacy had no particular interest in "states' rights" in general. The slave states were enthusiastic proponents of harsh fugitive slave laws that expanded upon the minimal requirements set out in the Constitution, and roundly condemned other states' "personal liberty" laws that provided due process to people alleged to be escaped slaves. They gleefully supported the Dred Scott decision, which allowed slave-owners to bring slaves into free states -- de facto making it impossible for other states to abolish slavery within their own territories. The only "states' right" they were interested in was the right to allow slavery.

Furthermore, the federal government didn't actually do anything to infringe on "states' rights" that caused states to secede. The Republican platform was to prohibit slavery in all territory under federal jurisdiction (the territories, military bases, and D.C.) but they fell over themselves to reassure the slave states that they had neither the intention of nor the power to limit slavery within the states. However, as soon as Lincoln was elected, and before he was even able to take office, slave states began to secede. Having a President who was in favour of any kind of limit on slavery, anywhere—even if it wasn't within their own borders—was simply too much for them to bear.

the civil war was taught to me being mostly about states rights

Yes, this is a common myth. It's quite a lot like creationism, actually. Despite the fact that actual historians of the Civil War (who are mostly Southerners, I should add) are near-unanimously of the opinion that slavery was the primary and central cause of the war, the lay public is split about 50-50 on the issue, with half believing the long-discredited "states' rights" nonsense.

So they really really did not want their main source of income taken away just because the federal government said they can't make their own laws.

Slaves were not just "their main source of income", they were, collectively, the most valuable set of property in the entire country after land. But as I said, the federal government didn't actually do anything to threaten the institution within the states, and the Republicans acknowledged that they would not have the power to do so even if they wanted to. If the slave states had not started the war, slavery would not have been limited by the federal government.

peetss · 2 days

The Republicans at the time of the 1860 election were not "explicitly anti-slavery"

Perhaps we're just quibbling over semantics, but I disagree. "Slavery is bad" was essentially the founding principle of the Republican Party. It was the only thing the various factions (anti-Nebraska Democrats, anti-slavery Whigs, Know-Nothings, free-soilers) that formed the Republican coalition had in common. It was widely acknowledged that the federal government had no power to prohibit slavery in the states, but "freedom national and slavery sectional" was one of the party's 1860 election planks.

peetss · 2 days

I am referring to the same air appearing to be a different color at the same time.

And I am referring to the same snow being both white and colourless at the same time depending on whether you are looking at it from afar or up close. Or polar bear fur, if you like, or bluejay feathers, or water.

you cannot say that it is blue, or that it is yellow

Of course you can. You can say that it is both. Without the air, you would see neither the blue nor the yellow. Lots of things change colour depending on how you look at them. That doesn't mean the colour doesn't exist.

peetss · 2 days

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_water

peetss · 2 days

I'm trying to make the distinction that air is different depending where you are in the atmosphere.

This doesn't mean that ozone isn't part of the air.

Ozone "is blue" because it absorbs and emits blue light.

It's not just ozone! The rest of it is blue as well!

The situations are different.

So? Do you correct people who talk about a "white Christmas" because snow isn't white in the same way that chlorophyll is green. Snow is white, polar bear fur is white, bluejays are blue, chlorophyll is green, and the sky is blue because it is made of air, which is blue.

peetss · 2 days

Under different conditions, that same air can appear to be a different color.

So? Snow is white and opaque, unless you look at it under different conditions, in which case it's transparent and colourless. That doesn't mean "snow is white" isn't true.

peetss · 2 days

in this case it absorbs the blue wave length, reflecting all others. Your eyes then interpret that as blue.

WHAT. No, this is not how it works. You see blue when blue light hits your retina, not when lack of blue light hits your retina.

peetss · 2 days

I don't think that's a fallacy.

peetss · 2 days

There were also Germans during WWII who liked Jews. It's not a fact that's significant when you're talking about the war in general or the war aims of the leaders.

peetss · 2 days

The federal government was telling them what they could and couldn't do.

You've got it the wrong way around. The slave states wanted to use the federal government to tell the free states what they could and couldn't do (e.g. by passing burdensome fugitive slave laws), but the free states resisted (e.g. by passing personal liberty laws), which annoyed the slave states. Then the free states got control of the Federal government by electing a Republican President and Congress. The federal government didn't actually do anything, but the fact that it was controlled by Republicans (an explicitly anti-slavery party) was too much for the slave-owners to bear, so they left. This is all made very clear in the contemporary (not post-War) writings and speeches of the Confederate leaders.

peetss · 2 days

My main issue is your steely determination that air is "blue".

Air is blue. Scattering blue light is what it means to be blue. It is the reason we call anything blue.

Again blue wavelengths, having more energy, are less likely to be absorbed in water, and will eventually reflect.

That sounds like you're saying that water is blue.

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