Prokofy’s blog

Have you ever served on a jury?  What was your experience?
Submitted by jacolily.

I've been called for jury duty and come to serve countless times, and never been picked to be on the jury, probably because in each case, by some fluke, I'd have some factor that meant I had to recuse myself. For example, one time when I was called, during the voir dire, we were asked to mention if we were aware that a judge had a nickname, and if so, to write it on a card. I knew that the judge was nicknamed "The Dark Prince" -- whoops, I was off that jury. Another time the defendant was Russian, and I mentioned I was a Russian translator; whoops, can't have anybody second-guessing the court interpreter! Yet another time, the defendant was a man whose thumb had been broken in a certain way on the job incapaciting part of his hand; I just happened by a fluke to have had the exact same identical injury. I watched as a lawyer, an emergency room physician and a mother of 3 small kids were all put on the jury by a very determined legal system eager not to make anyone skirt their civic duty. But I was only allowed to be in alternate juror, and had to watch the trial for 2 weeks, but not take part. Yet again I went recently, eager to serve; having a human rights background apparently disqualified. I think it's safe to say that the jury system works not by expertise, but by the state being required to explain the case it has against a citizen to a randomly-selected group of people who do not read newspapers and read only at a 12-year-old's level. And that's fine. The state *must* be able to make its case in those simple terms, to just such a set of people, or it has no case. I love the jury system; it's what makes America great.

Who was your first celebrity crush?
Submitted by Glory.

Kurt Russell

This is the SL equivalent of being a bourgeois traveler who buys trinkets in Africa without understanding a thing about the culture.

I have this old elven bow and arrow from ages ago made by Eric Linden. I'm going to try to get a handle on my inventory. Now I have a home in Blue Bayou I put it up on the wall, pretty fake, eh? lol

EmeraldEver has spent the last month making 128 mermaid tails in 32 amazing changing colours. I mean, this is just so awesome that I can't take it all in. I dream of becoming a merman and swimming around the Bayou in some luminescent pearly white or teal fins...

I decided to kick the kids out of the casinos, and not fund the army but boost education for now in the Disputed States of Sutherland Dam. However, they do have enemies everywhere, seeing as how they are disputed, I'll need to check back on that.

From Scott Horton's No Comment newsletter:

"The Fall of Modernity. Johns Hopkins' Michael Vlahos writes an intriguing piece in the American Conservative, which is part Heidegger and part Leo Strauss. "We are losing our wars in the Muslim world because our vision of history is at odds with reality. This is a well-established condition of successful societies, a condition that inevitably grows more worrisome with time and continuing success. In fact, what empires have most in common is how their sacred narratives come to rule their strategic behavior—and rule it badly. In America's case, our war narrative works against us to promote our deepest fear: the end of modernity." For some time now, this war has been a conceptual struggle between Hegel's Last Man and Hobbes' First Man, but in Iraq the Hobbesian vision has prevailed. Vlahos is right on a number of fundamental points, but I assess the problem differently. The key failing of this war has been America's failure to live up to its own ideals and vision, which in turn has rendered the American message hollow or hypocritical. You cannot fight a war for democracy by destroying democracy. Washington, Lincoln and FDR understood this. Bush does not."

It's the Year of the Pig,

Vox4