pointless...but i did it anyway

earth hour wasn't much really...an exercise in making people feel they were actually doing something...alieviating some consumerist guilt...painless..did anyone turn everything off? the only landmark from the photos i saw that looked even remotely blacked-out was the pyramids...okay, so you don't want aircraft flying into the eiffel tower (they turned off the lights on the tower, but every streetlight in town was left on)...that's fair enough...but also part of my point...did aircraft stop flying for an hour? did power plants shut down? did opec stop pumping oil? did mittal stop making steel? did everyone on the interstate highway system pull over? like five sentence mission statements, symbolic acts are too simplisitic to really give scope to the problems we face as a species...those issues are too complex to be boiled down and sloganized...energy, environment, consumption are all parts of the dilemma, and they are closely interconnected...that renders them immune to politically expedient quick fixes...that complexity and the need for a shift in cultural values is what people need to be educated to...earth hour doesn't stand a chance of doing that...a clear definition of a problem such as industrial agriculture's dependence on petrochemicals for inputs such as fuel for farm machinery, herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers and the resulting impact on the environment from the pollution of groundwater, streams, rivers, and estuaries from runoff as well as the environmental nightmares of confined animal feeding operations that run on the grain the pertochemicals produce, would illuminate both the shortsightedness of our energy policies and how a system of industrilaized, pre-packaged food and supermarket convenience shield us from the impact of our everyday actions...we expend nearly nine calories of energy to produce one calorie of food...turning out the light won't fix that...we need a new viewpoint.

payoff

the treasurer of lake county indiana has sent me a check for time and srevices renderd in the pursuit of justice in lake county superior court on the eleventh and twelfth of this month...i am still not convinced that i was a good choice for this...it was a case about someone killing a dog...i'm not overly fond of dogs and there is such a divergence in cultural norms about them that it's a tough call...there are people who eat dogs rather than keep them as pets...and people here who keep pigs a pets...and doubtlessly more who view breakfast sausage as cruelty...so who's correct? damned if i know...it's all releative and having a "big picture" overview is no help in specific, localized decisions...so i tried to stay inside the framework the judge set out since i figure she knows more about how the law is structured...but law is made by people who are the products of their cultures with all the strengths and weaknesses those cultures contain...ours is no more perfect...so i tried, uncharacteristically, to find the middle ground...an unusual outburst of aristoteliean moderation...an abberition from my usual on the bus/off the bus, no bullshit moderation stance...i tried to tell them this...it makes me unsuitable for deliberation...my downfall was an insistence on providing a cogent definition of reasonable doubt when the rookie prosecutor asked me what it was...i tried to give a reasonable answer instead of playing dumb...suddenly the long hair, ripped jeans, and sloganizing tee shirt were invisible...i had become a juror...well...the cash will go into the perennial garden project's budget...some good will come of it

post-modern jurisprudence

the truth was in the courtroom someplace...but no-one was spending much time searching for it...they were busy manufacturing simulacrums designed to bring the jury around to their way of thinking so they would achieve their desired outcome...since i was on the jury ( and was made the foreman because my fellow jurors were unwilling to read a guilty verdict in open court...whiners) i was part of the focus of all this subtle and not so subtle manipulation...half-truths, lies by omission, distortions, outright untruths, surreal moments...all of life was there to see...i've never been on a jury before so i naively thought that if i sifted through the information dilligently enough i could find it...no such luck...so many contradictions..even in testimony taken from witnesses at different times over the course of the investigation..."experts", or professionals anyway, disagreeing about facts and interpretations of events...sloppy police work...a defendant who was combative and something less than forthcoming...neighbors with grudges to settle...inept prosecutors and a weak case for the state ( a singularly surreal moment came when a member of the prosecution asked a veterinarian's assistant if a gunshot wound was consistent with wounds from a dogfight...dogs are arming themselves with colt .380's? time to do something about stricter dog licensing)...an oleagenous defense attorney, strongly reminicent of everett dirksen... in the end no-one was believable...no-one deserved to be believed...they all had an agenda and the truth was in the way of their achievement of it...it had to go...bludgeoned, battered, stunned, dazed, fatigued, and pissed off the jury split the verdict...no-one would tell the truth so no-one got entirely what they wanted...i have to say that the judge and the bailiffs were very considerate people who did their best...i wouldn't want to leave you with the impression that i thought poorly of them as people...or the lawyers, witnesses, and even the defendant for that matter...i really don't know them...but the entire system is an exercise in truth avoidance and dissembling for a purpose...so plainly obvious that i felt insulted and used...i am smarter than that people.