Michael McDaniel’s Dawning Awareness

How awesome is this?

At the New Yorker’s 2007 conference “2012: Stories from the near future”, the social and cultural psychologist Jonathan Haidt talks about the five foundations of morality, and why liberals and conservatives tend to talk right past each other.

I found this talk very enlightening and if, like me, you have ever wondered why conservatives just “don’t get it,” have a look! (hint: they do)

Thanks to Nick for the link.

Thanks to Matt Pennig for pointing me at Wikipedia’s entry on Traffic Waves. I first started thinking about this while reading “The Goal”, a management book. There was a chapter where the author wondered why all the machines in a factory could never achieve maximum throughput no matter how carefully they were balanced. This notion of small variances causing big results is exactly behind those stop-and-go-for-no-reason jams we see on the roads.

Here’s a corroborating experiment:

Interestingly, a Seattle driver has arrived at the same conclusion, and has thoughts on how to be an un-jammer:

Breaking Up a Traffic Jam!

Ah, Wikipedia. Is there anything you don’t know?

I got selected to a jury panel yesterday. Fifty jurors were pulled for a 13-person jury; I was #28. The jury is made up of the 13 lowest-numbered jurors who aren’t excused or challenged. You can be excused for hardship (being on the jury imposes an undue burden) or via a challenge from the prosecution or defense lawyers (they get 7 challenges each, and can dismiss a juror for no reason). “Challenge” sounds so adversarial, but that’s the term they use.

After the judge told us what was going to happen, she explained the likely trial schedule and dismissed people who had conflicts which would cost them significantly. Next, she asked us questions to ferret out biases for or against the legal system itself (example: “have you had a bad experience with law enforcement officers that might influence your interpretation of police testimony?”). After about 20 such questions, she turned things over to the lawyers for voir dire.

In turn, each side had two 15 minute periods to talk to the jury and ask questions to help their side identify who would be good jurors for them. This was a domestic violence case, so there were questions like “why might a victim lie on the stand?” and “if you had to deliberate right now, what would your verdict HAVE to be?” As they asked questions, they’d watch for general reaction (heads nodding, etc) and sometimes would ask an individual juror to comment. I was never asked a question directly, and didn’t volunteer an answer to any questions as I’d just have been duplicating other jurors.

Then, the lawyers began to dismiss jurors from the box. As they left, those of us sitting in the gallery would fill in the box as our numbers were called. When my number was called, I was dismissed by the prosecutor, using her 6th challenge.

I’ve been thinking about why I was dismissed. The prosecutor had only two things to go on to dismiss me. The first was my demeanor in the court. Maybe I didn’t nod my head enough. Maybe I didn’t seem severe enough. Hard to know. The second thing the prosecutor had was my biography, a sheet of paper listing my name, city, age, how long I’ve lived in King County, the city and state of my birth, the number and ages of my children, my occupation, and my experience as a juror (none), a felon (none), and a litigant (none). Oh, and my years of education (17). I should think all of that would make me a good juror for the prosecution, but maybe what she was really looking for was swayability, and she decided I wasn’t easily convinced.

I suppose that, as with the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie-roll pop, the world will never know.

I was called to jury duty for King County Superior Court today. I served two years ago, and things have improved markedly since then. The facility has been completely upgraded with comfortable, modern chairs, a well-lit, comfortable environment, and incredibly speedy wifi access (17Mbits/2Mbits unloaded, 11Mbits/2Mbits with about 75 computers in use).

We were directed to report at 8am, and I was here at 7:55. After checking in, I found a seat. At 8:45, they started the introductory video (didn’t have one of those two years ago). It’s really quite informative, and was complete without being tiresome. 20 minutes.

Jurors have to be residents of King County, US citizens, fluent in English, and non-felons (or felons with fully-restored rights).

So here we sit in the jury selection room. I got selected to a jury two years ago, but the defendant plead guilty before Voir Dire was complete. Of course, one thing that hasn’t changed is that there’s a lot of waiting involved (the wifi makes that much more tolerable). I hope they haven’t called too many more people than they need. I think they’re trying to do better.

We got kicked out of our house again this past weekend, as the guy who did our hardwood floors came back to re-sand and re-finish the floors in our great room. The finish is quite toxic so we were in a hotel. It’s also quite flammable, so they shut off the gas to keep all of the electric ignition systems from blowing up the house.

When we returned, I turned the gas back on, and the hot water heater and our fireplaces came back to life, but the main heat for the house did not. As a result, we got to spend the night in a very cold house. We ran the fireplace overnight, but the temperature continued to fall until it was just 58 in the house (and that’s pretty good for sub-freezing temperatures outside).

It’s fixed now, but is a good reminder of how fortunate we are to be able to afford to stay warm in the winter.

The Bugle (with John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman) is literally laugh-out-loud funny at times. Highly recommended.

It’s that time of year, people. I heard the Monster Mash on the radio, but it seemed so quaint. I think the new “Halloween Song” really ought to be this one from Jonathan Coulton:

A great price on the software helping my office be as paperless as possible. Paired with a Fujitsu ScanSnap, it’s simply awesome. With my laptop, I can carry my whole filing cabinet around with me, and it is searchable!

Today only! http://www.maczot.com.

Originally uploaded by alexedelman.

“A man and a woman had a little baby. They had three, they had three in the family. And that’s a magic number.”

Congratulations to Alex and Jordan on the birth of Angus!