text:
Hey, Isn't It Grand? Grand JURY, That Is!
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Reader, as the old song says: Kiss me once, and kiss me twice, and kiss me once again (no tongue, I have a cold), it's been a long, long time…as doubtless you have noticed. Herewith an apologia:
Kids, your Miss O' has had the oddest couple-a-three months, for soon after that last blog of September 8, there was Queens Grand Jury duty (as related on Facebook); and between that and getting moved around the floor of her office and resettling into a new space (she's now in closed cubicle but with window seat) and new projects; and among bouts of little illnesses and doctors' appointments (all seems fine), and in and out of theaters (no bug can keep her from her appointed rounds of stage worship!), and through beginning a new play lab (if not exactly writing anything for it), to say nothing of taking little trips out to various parts of New Jersey to see old, dear friends—it seems your Miss O' did something quite out of character and utterly unexpected: She fell into an actual love relationship with an actual man. She is deeply happy about this. I only share this newsy tidbit by way of explaining my blog hiatus, and plan not to speak of it again. Suffice to say it is a true, deep, sweet thing, full-hearted enough for a lifetime, and if you would be so good as to let it go at that, and not toss out accusations of cock-teasing, your Miss O' would be ever so grateful. And now to business! For there is much, much that Miss O' must catch up on.]
FIRST THINGS FIRST: A Compendium of All Things Asinine
American Republicans.
And NOW...to the moment you've sort of been waiting for…because there's no way I can do this justice in one little blog post. Thanks for loving me anyway.
GRAND JURY, the Musical!
Actually: My Modest Pitch for a 12-Episode HBO Series, Because Really There Is No Other Way to Get It All In
Here Come the Judge
Hello, fellow citizens of some American county or another! Your Miss O' comes to you, bloggy style, after doing her civic best in the Grand Jury system of New York's county of Queens. Almost daily Facebook posts could not BEGIN to tell the full, giant soap operatic tale of justice for all, and even this blog cannot comment or describe a single case (which under oath I cannot actually do, as the grand jury sessions are secret). And yet this tale must be told, even by an idiot.
Establishing Shot: [Note: I have no idea how to write screenplays, or teleplays, but when has lack of knowledge ever stopped Miss O'?] Queens Courthouse in Kew Gardens, NY, on a sunny day, outside of which are every manner of human imaginable holding jury summonses (including an entire family of Indians, only the wife/mother of whom was called, but whose husband is apparently coming along with kids in tow, to make a point).
Cut to: Metal detectors and the long lines of these same humans; comical emptying of pockets, wanding of many, ensues.
Cut to: Marble hallway filled with people on contraband phones.
NOTE: Herewith a few definitions to begin our story, which takes place in Criminal Court (as opposed to Civil Court—attempted murder vs. suing for personal injury):
Grand Jury: The purpose of a grand jury is to review police evidence to determine two things: 1) Is there sufficient evidence to suggest that a crime has been committed? And 2) Is there reasonable cause to believe that the defendant committed it? After hearing evidence from police officers, witnesses, victims, and sometimes the defendants themselves, the grand jury deliberates and finally votes as to whether to indict the defendant(s) and send the case forward to a trial by jury. THAT, for the record, is where the men of Twelve Angry Men come in, which is not where I was.
Exhaustion: What Miss O' begins to feel at the prospect of defining all the terms, so fuck it, we're moving on.
If This Were a Musical, at Rise: A Queens County courtroom in New York City's least desirable, and yet often adorable, borough. Outside on the steps, hundreds of people are lined up to go up the steps and go through the metal detectors. All carry purple and white jury summonses, most unopened. The majority of citizens are carrying and looking at and scrolling across the very iPhones and Androids and other communication devices that, according to the summons, are "strictly forbidden." As with most every rule concerning these devices, even the courts have given up on enforcing it. A tall, red-haired fellow lightly prances down the hall in tight orange swim trunks and a lime green button-down shirt, flip-flops on feet, on his shoulder a tote bag that says "Ocean City"—swimming in a sea of khakis pants and pressed shirts, dresses, and good shoes. So much for "occasion." Cue Song: "How Did I Get So Fuckin' Lucky?"
So might one begin Miss O's autobiographical screenplay/Broadway script for Grand Jury!: based on events from September 9 through October 4 of 2013, doing my civic duty here in New York City, Queens County. (Note: The jurisdictions—districts, boroughs, counties, and the like—are beyond my understanding. Queens is Queens County; Brooklyn is Kings County; Manhattan is New York County, e.g. I don't know beyond this: Every single A.D.A., or Assistant District Attorney, had to ask each witness, victim, detective, uniformed cop, and medical examiner alike, "And is that in Queens County?" in any reference to the crime committed, in order for the proceeding to go forward. But this really should be, as noted, a television series, sadly without the coolness of Breaking Bad. –ed.)
THE SET: First I offer you a rough sketch of the basic layout of the Grand Jury Room, which looked sort of like a classroom to learn about court proceedings…and it was.
The room is blonde wood, with a few shelves (not labeled) where magazines, decks of cards, and boxes of Trivial Pursuit cards are placed. (Manny, below, will become a grandmaster quiz guy between cases, with those cards.) NOTE: At lunchtime, the camera on our HBO show would follow Grand Jurors as they headed out singly, or in small groups, to various eateries in order to "not talk about" the cases until "all the evidence had been presented" because everyone in America really "respects rules."
CAST OF CHARACTERS (Names changed, which I am really sorry to do, because the real names are so awesome; I mean, of course, ALL CHARACTERS ARE PURELY FICTITIOUS AND ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS, LIKE, SERIOUSLY? TOTAL COINCIDENCE, MAN):
[CASTING NOTE: Once I share these little overly-simplified descriptions with the producers of HBO (ha, ha!), I hope everyone understands it's out of Miss O's hands. My writer's hope is that seriously interesting humans who are actors would be cast in these roles, actors who would make each character his or her own, deepening with each weekly episode, under the guidance of a really imaginative director, who would want me as a writer. –ed.]
NOTE 2: ON VOTING I have made a note on the way each juror votes, which is to say, what causes them to raise or not raise a hand. Jurors who vote "reliably" pay attention, deliberate, and raise a hand, or don't, in a consistent way. Others are as noted.
In CHARGE:
Officer Frances Suarez (Court Officer in Charge of Grand Jury C, six years; loves her three kids, her husband, doing Zumba; tough and fun, strong sense of duty, proud of this process; unabashed Christian, giant heart, not afraid to tell a loudmouth OFF. New York Puerto Rican to the core.)
The JURY:
In the "Judge's Seat":
· Minerva (age 40, Jamaican, black, serves as Madame Forewoman, or Foreperson; gaps in teeth, musical deep voice, tidy dreadlocks; calm; always takes notes; votes always)
· Moses (age 35, New Yorker, black, serves as the deputy foreperson; MTA bus driver and hip-hop DJ, father of teenage daughter; emotionally expressive; always takes notes; rarely votes)
At desk in front of the Forepersons, facing them:
· Carlita (age 35, Puerto Rican, serves as Secretary 1 for the jury; slim and sexy, mother of 3, divorced, loves men; efficient secretary; votes with conviction)
· Milagros (age 26, Dominican woman, serves as Secretary 2 for the jury; quiet, sweet, very pretty, nice dresser, floats along, but always votes)
ROW 1 (left to right from the Assistant District Attorney's POV, to left of Forepersons):
· Soledad (age 50, Puerto Rican, prison corrections officer; butch lesbian; dapper dresser; loose cannon; votes only as needed to indict)
· Ashley (age 28, black, 7 months pregnant at beginning, 8 at end; dressy dresser, very tall, large frame, almost Valley Girl voice; somewhat sheltered--and she actually wears a big shirt to hide the fact that she is 7 months pregnant (!) because she's dying to get on a jury (!!), and by the end of this she will be EIGHT MONTHS PREGNANT, which is really different (!!!); votes by barely raising a hand)
· Georgie (age 25, Filipina, a girl named for the boy she was supposed to be; quiet; sexy dresser, long black hair, looks about 15, keep ear buds in as long as possible at all times; votes only after looking around the room)
· Pilar (age 35, Puerto Rican, mother of 3, remarrying and sending out invitations; arranges birthday parties for jurors; always takes notes; has definite opinions, often self-contradictory; always votes)
· Bertrise (age 70, Jamaican, Christian, black, mother and grandmother, large hipped, slow walker, wears glasses; shares the Biblical "word for the day" off her iPhone; predicts weather with astonishing accuracy, based on feeling; votes are all over the place)
· Alma (age 50, Puerto Rican, wife and mother, cancer survivor, plump, practical, lifelong New Yorker; votes with confidence)
· Ameer (age 45, Bangladeshi, Muslim, works in finance, quiet, naps between cases; votes reliably)
· Dorca (age 50, Dominican, mother of 4, twice-married, has boyfriend; self-described ditz, lives on junk food, hard-boiled eggs wrapped in foil, and blue-tooth/cell phone; raises hand to vote before charges are even announced)
· Allison (age 30, 2nd generation Yugoslavian; elementary school PE teacher with three master's degrees; tiny, energetic, chatty, multi-tasker, joyful flirt, high on life, native Long Islander, loves the Mets; votes reliably)
· Signy (age—older but indeterminate, maybe 60, maybe 65; black; family from South Carolina, tall, elegant, head full of golden short braids; married, wears lots of rings; plays puzzle games on her iPad between cases; voice of gentle reason; has job in entertainment industry, but keeps in on QT; often withholds vote out of sympathy for the defendant's circumstances)
· Suzanne (age about 70; lifelong single woman, white, glasses; makes sounds from her mouth, like "uh huh" or "hmmm" or "ah" almost continuously, as if mumbling to self; tough NY broad; votes reliably)
· Eleanor (age 30, Bostonian, intellectual; white; big reader, introvert; pretty, practical, nerdy in a sweet way; stunned and quietly appalled on a daily basis by juror behavior; votes reliably)
· Martina (Marty) (age 55, 1st generation Serbo-Croation, divorced mother of grown son; nurse; loves Brooklyn, but lives in Astoria; quick, choppy, direct way with words; votes reliably)
· Miss O' (And then there's Maude, raises her hand high so as to be counted; often interpreted by certain others as vengeful, like Miss O' is personally invested in any of the outcomes)
· Kandie (age 50, former '80s clubbing girl who has always been single, lives in Astoria with her mom, very nice, down to earth; 1st generation Greek; slow speaking rhythms, great sense of humor; votes reliably)
ADJUNCT WING (seats across the room, behind a short wall where observers might sit, opposite the "Judge's Bench" and behind the A.D.A. table; partially blocked by post, to seat remaining jurors)
Front (two seats)
· Simon (44, short, bearded, dapper; Jewish; diligent note-taker and question-asker; reads four to six novels over the course of a month of down time; tries to date at least a half dozen of the women; points out all the rules, votes reliably)
· Yasmin (25 or 30, Pakistani, Muslim; glasses, reads novels; wears stylish pants, tops, and shoes, head always wrapped in a patterned or black coordinating scarf; keeps to herself; always participates in votes; quiet; gets to know no one, but very sweetly)
Back (two seats)
· Edward (indeterminate age, but probably 45 or 50; black South African; tall, quick to laugh and smile; unstoppable question asker; always on phone during down time; always takes notes; votes reliably)
· Manuel (Manny): (50, Puerto Rican trying to be Tony Soprano; polo shirts, gold chains, big mid-section; swaggers; alternately talks to trapped Edward or dozes during testimony; walks around during votes; fond of loudly accusing Miss O' (and others) of being an "executioner" for voting to indict; alternately bullies and apologizes—his secret to survival; unteachable)
Court Reporter Roller-Chair Rotation (all female):
· Middle-aged self-published author, white
· Older well-dressed protocol stickler, black
· Tall dark fashion model, Hispanic
· Slim middle-aged angular fashion model, white
· Middle-aged sweetie with hair bows, white
· Thirty-ish quiet nerdy gal, white
The A.D.A. Shuffle: A Compendium of Assistant District Attorneys for Queens County
(NOTE: Names are based on nicknames jurors gave them after repeated rotations and presentments—often within their earshot, because we New Yorkers are charming assholes like that.)
· Mary Louise Parker
· Kelly Girl Who is Cool
· James Earl Jones
· Mark Wahlberg
· Matching Tie and Socks
· Eddie Munster
· That Stiff Guy
· The Greek with the Eye Thing
· The Boring One
· The Curly-Haired One We Pissed Off the First Week
· The Serious Blonde One
· Dippity-Do (or, Man, That Is Some Serious Hair Gel Up in There)
· The Good One
· The Lazy One Who Didn't Really Help the Good One That Night We Stayed Late
· The Asian Girl
· Oh, Man, How Many Witnesses Is She Gonna Call? (Note: They were "victims." And it took three WEEKS and at least two hairstyles for her to call them all.)
(NOTE 2: All the ADAs were extremely competent, most wore ill-fitting suits, sported depressing hair (and how to explain what that is?), all were on the verge of exhaustion, but very professional about it.)
AND JUST THINK OF THE GUEST STARS! Witnesses, detectives, undercover cops, translators...streams of them. My favorite witness was the young woman asked to describe an identifying photo on her cell phone, and posed, as if taking a selfie. The court reporter just stared at her. The ADA said, "Let the record show the witness is indicating a picture of herself." Whew.
DAYS WITHOUT END: Grand Jury Episodes
The show's twelve one-hour episodes would be broken down into the following, with a short take on a few case types. By the end of Week 1, we were all like, "There's no way I can do this for three more weeks." By the end of Week 2, we're all like, "Yeah, half way there." By the end of Week 3, were like, "There is no fucking way I can do this one more goddamned week." By the end of Week 4, there were people who had so acclimated to the simplicity of the life, they were willing to be lifelong professional jurors. Miss O' knew they had descended into madness.
Herewith a few general notes on the general day-to-day, first.
Daily Routine: The Usual Suspects (or, What I Learned About the Habits of 23 Ordinary Citizens in Queens County, and 24 If I Count Myself, and I Should, During the Days of Service)
1. Arrival: We met in the lobby of the fifth floor by 9:30 each morning. Week 1: Our court officer came out to meet us and escorted us to the grand jury room. By Week 4, someone down the hall would wave an arm, someone would notice the arm, and mumble, "Let's go…" and we'd trudge down. At least five jurors would wander in around 10 AM, unescorted.)
2. Taking Our Seats: After attendance, we'd hear The Word from Bertrise. Then would begin what was often an hour, sometimes two, or three, of waiting. ADAs were typically not ready for cases until after lunch, but sometimes we'd get hit right at 10 and go until 12:15. During down time, people read, ate, napped, listened to music, played games on their phones. Others talked, and it was the talks that were really interesting, the various alliances that formed.
3. Case time: See below. (The thing that astounded me was the lax attitude by so many jurors—eating, Facebooking, dozing—during ADA presentments of evidence. The court officer has to leave the room during the presentments, so there's no one to "keep order." The teacher in me wanted to stand up and say, "People…put it away." I felt so personally responsible for their behavior, I had to channel my therapist from 20 years ago, Goldye, to tell me to stop owning other people's choices. Miss O' never managed to do that, but at least she managed not to say anything. Mostly.)
4. Lunch: This was from 1:00 to 2:00, but often was from 12:15 to 2:15, when ADAs weren't ready. (That meant we'd be there until 7:00 PM a few times, but mostly we were out by 5:00 PM.) We had to leave the courtroom, but the beautiful timing of the weather was sweet: The entire month of September was dry, clear, highs in the 70s (except for 2 hot days and one drizzly one). It was here you saw who the really independent types were (Allison, Miss O', Suzanne, Martina, Simon, Eleanor, Ameer, Yasmin, Minerva); the sometimes-social (Edward, Signy); and the group-makers (everyone else). For her part, Miss O' visited the Euro Grill everyday, had hot tea and a burger, or grill cheese, or a bowl of soup, and wrote notes on the personalities of the day. After lunch, she would walk to the old courthouse garden and meditate for a good half hour or 45 minutes.
5. Afternoon: Just unending case after case after case after case, usually to be continued but often complete and ready for voting on; with interpreters for nearly every witness.
6. The Subway Ride: Several of us would find ourselves on the Manhattan-bound E Train to Roosevelt, to switch to a 7 Train, or to keep going to Queens Plaza to an R Train to Astoria, for example. It was something to realize we all lived in the same county, though often in completely different neighborhoods, and that Queens is huge.
In Case You Were Wondering (as to the cases…)
Ours was a criminal grand jury, reviewing criminal cases that had happened in Queens County. They amounted to the same things you'd see on any police show—assault, robbery (petit larceny, grand larceny) and burglary (there's a difference—stolen stuff vs. a break-in, as it turns out), attempted murder, and the various degrees of all of these. In cases like these, there are defendants who act alone, act in concert, or share charges equally. (Mercifully, we had no homicides, rapes, or child endangerments. My feeling is that the more routine the cases presented, the more chance for an audience to meet the jurors and get a feel for a real, regular grand jury experience.) The ADAs have to read us the definitions of every single term, the full text on every law and charge, and charge us on the law for a grand jury hearing EVERY SINGLE TIME. By the 40th case or so, you've gone numb, but it has to be done to be fair to every victim, every defendant. The ADAs also have to ask each and every police officer, detective, and undercover for their length of service and where they have served. I realize that should this case go to trial, officers who made arrests may have been promoted or transferred, and so the ADA needs to establish that the officer was in his or her jurisdiction at the time of the arrest and grand jury hearing. It would get old, except that we really don't have anything else to do but listen, and so you kind of get lulled into the rhythm. You also start to realize how redundant an ADA's life can be, utterly unlike the glamorous-seeming litigator life of actor Sam Waterston.
EPISODE 1: Days 1 and 2, etc.
Listen, all I can do is a stream-of-consciousness thing right now, so if you want to, go with it. Or just drink. First of all, Grand Jury is NOT Law and Order. It's weirdly more casual, until it's really formal in what are called "presentments" of information. But first, you have to get picked to serve, out of the hundreds who appear with summonses. In Queens, three or four or five of these things run simultaneously. I'm giving you the first two days as an example. Here's what it was like in my head:
Day 1: So you look around the giant courtroom as the long-serving officer has to yell at everyone to sit down and take our their jury summonses, as if this were picture day in a high school auditorium; and just as you'd see in that place where the kids have forgotten their picture forms, half the people don't have their summonses even open, and therefore have not filled them out. That's right. So the pen scrambling begins. You wait. You wait. To approach the front for the interviews, we stand up row by row, and Miss O' gets yelled at, "DID I TELL YOU TO GET UP?" and she smiles and says kindly, "The other officer told us to keep it moving," and the officer says, startled, "He did?" unaccustomed as she must be to reasonableness. When you approach the tables to interview, the nice blonde officer lady asks you, first, what you do for a living, and second, "Does your job pay you in full?" and when you say "Yes," you get picked to serve, and go and sit to the side until it fills up. You wait. You are taken to another room to wait. You wait. You debate whether or not to use the toilet, and when you do, it's right before they haul you off to another room, which turns out to be Grand Jury C room on the 5th floor via secret back elevator. There you are instructed by your court officer on what you will be doing for the next 20 days, when a person interrupts to say, "Um, it's more than 20 days," and the officer looks confused, and a helpful two or three jurors say in unison, "WORKING days," and the ditz is still lost, so you say, "I'll explain it later," and the officer continues (and you start to suspect this could be a really LONG four weeks), and the rest of the day is really lunch and down time except for one case, and it turns out you will not hear the conclusion of THAT case until the very last day. For real.
On Day 2, Manny the Loudmouth (you learn this in the early minutes of Day 1, just as Miss O' the teacher learned who the asshole students would be in the opening minutes of the first day of class—"Um, Miss, how come you already know my name?" How come indeed…"So how long we gotta wait here, huh? Why aren't they ready to go, huh?" Oh, lord...) says, "We should be on a first-name basis," and we go around and say our names, and the elementary school teacher, Allison, goes around and says everyone's name to show how it's done; and Miss O' writes them all down, along with descriptions. And Soledad says, "People let's make a snack table because we are in this for the long haul," and that's what the kids do. (Soledad will also go on to bake for us at various points, and her meat patties (empanadas) and sweet potato pie are unrivaled.)
And so will continue a steady stream of days wherein you want to fucking kill a bunch of strangers, or be anywhere else, or not mind very much—but in any case you learn every juror food habit, tardy habit, and question-asking habit; every translator tic; every ADA verbal pattern. And there is humor. Soledad insisted one day on imitating the Spanish translator (whom we really grew to adore) for the merriment of Frances our court officer, and we were all half sorry, because the next time ol' Pedro came in we all had to look down, snorting.
And there's the day Pilar said out in the lobby, "Edward, you always ask a question in exactly the same way," and she got up, bent over (because when grand jurors have a question you have to whisper it to the court reporter and the ADA), and placed her fingers just so, as he did, and you get up (as Miss O' did), and say, "No, like this," and place your index finger to thumb, and bounce it for emphasis, and we all laugh.
But this laughter is short-lived, because GOD-FUCKING-DAMMIT, question after irrelevant fucking question, why can't jurors remember the RULES: "Sufficient evidence" and "Reasonable cause to believe" are all you need to move an indictment forward. For at least two weeks, everyone is playing fucking Law and Order and Twelve Angry Men and saying shit like "reasonable doubt," and Minerva the Jamaican Forewoman cries out, "Would you people tink about yo' questions! What ah you doin'?" And so stupid do these questions become, that when an open-and-shut crime takes place in a doughnut shop, and the ADA says, "Are there any questions from the grand jury?" and Simon goes up the way he ALWAYS does, Kandie turns to Miss O' and whispers, "What flavors were the donuts?" and you bend over weeping in stifled laughter.
And Moses is always trying to convince you not to indict a brother. And Signy feels sorry for the grandmothers. And we all hate to see old women mugged. There are no shortage of fun details to put into a show, is what I'm saying.
Je Recuse! (The strange case of the arrest I saw on my block.)
As far as I can tell, nothing came of it, but as I was walking to the subway one Saturday, I saw a young woman being yelled at by another, older woman who said it was her right to change the locks, and the young woman saying, "Not while I have a LEASE," while the old man who owned the building was being cuffed and put into a police car, and my neighbor Antoinette was crying out, "Why don't you just put a dagger right here in my heart!" And all I could think was, "Oh, shit. This will come before us this week…and I will have to leave the room…"
From Facebook: Blow By Blow
The following posts give you a flavor of what some weekly scripts would at least feel like.
Sept 7 10 years in NYC about to be celebrated by GJD.
Sept 8
NOTICE TO NYC FRIENDS: Miss O' heads out to begin Grand Jury Duty in Kew Gardens, Queens, for four weeks. I have no idea how this works, but I do know that I cannot have on my person either a cell phone or a computer. Therefore chances are good that I will be UNAVAILABLE from 7 AM to 6 PM each and every goddamned weekday for the month. Unless I don't have my number called, and I get sent back to work, or something. Here's to justice!
Sept 11
September 11, 2001, and the week that followed, I grieved for all the lives lost, but mostly I grieved so hard for a city I loved, I moved here. As a part of this city, I'm spending the month in a room with 22 other New Yorkers deciding on criminal cases to send to trial in Queens County. And we give this. It's what you do in a democracy, for your community. Glad to wake up to peaceful diplomacy getting a chance to work globally, too. Love.
Retweeted God (@TheTweetOfGod):
You're stupid in ways you haven't even begun to fail to understand.
Another day, another gun massacre bloodbath in America. We're not allowed to solve it. We're only allowed to "feel bad" for a while. And so it goes. [Note: All the jurors were sounding off on how awful Virginia is, "that's where these stupid guns come from…what the hell is wrong with them?" Whatever walk of life, everyone was very much pro-gun laws. Sweet to see. -ed.]
These weeks on Grand Jury duty (especially last evening's late session and the bullying juror to whom Miss O' had to say, with her knife-edged voice, "Manny, cut it") have brought home a quote, which has always rung true for teacher-me but just gets truer and truer the longer I live in the wider world (and high school was always MY real world, as I really lived in it while teaching and directing):
"High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can thing of." ~Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
And, at times, this (from Vonnegut, too):
""True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
Good day sunshine.
"Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." ~Helen Keller, who probably never served on Grand Jury duty. Today I also have a head cold and a right eye swollen shut from an errant city mosquito squatting in my apartment. I have never felt more alive!
Yesterday in the jury room, before the 4-7:30 PM unexpected session from which I'm still recovering, one juror, a fabulous Hispanic way-out lesbian New Yorker (I'll do a blog about the whole experience, except for the cases, which have to remain secret), had heard a Sinatra song on a show the night before and wanted help remembering which one it was; and when we guessed and it was "Fly Me to the Moon," another juror (Signy, glamorous older black woman) and I launched in, in the same key and everything. The room stood still. "In other words, darling, kiss me." And once more. For a week and 2 more days.
In anticipation of my return to the LAST week (knock wood) of Grand Jury duty, I was realizing that most of the 23 grand jurors are about 50, so we have the same cultural history. One gal, Kandie, a Greek from Astoria, told me, "Back in the '80s I used to go clubbing, and there was this place called Danceteria. I used to see this freak in the bathroom all the time, her wrists covered in black rubber bracelets, and she'd be like, 'I'm gonna be really famous'"--and here the Greek did the international sign for cuckoo. "She was always bringing a cassette of her songs and screaming at the D.J. to play them, and she had this whiny, nasal voice, and I couldn't stand her." Her name? Madonna. I'll bet she's sorry she got rich and famous and isn't sitting on jury duty in Queens. I know I would be.
Fuck the fucking the fuckers. Have a nice day.
[Oh, sorry, that was in response to the Government Shutdown. -ed.]
Oct. 2
A guy on our Grand Jury said to me the other week, "I don't like this. I don't feel comfortable judging these cases." And I looked at him: "If not you, who?" If not a jury of your peers, if not a democratically selected group of fellow citizens to consider the evidence in a case, who else? A military tribunal? A vigilante lynch mob? The Republicans? I'm on a political tear this way-too-early-in-the-goddamned-morning. We the People need to wake the hell up. Have a nice day.
A friend commented:
Should one feel comfortable judging? Should one like it?
I used to ask myself that when I was first teaching--who am I to evaluate these kids? And I realized it's not a question of liking it or being comfortable--it's simply that it must be done, and since I'm charged with it, I have to do my best to evaluate them as well as I can. I hear people say they won't vote because they don't like deciding on who runs the country, or even their part of the country. I'm not comfortable with people like that--they're putting all the burden of democracy on too few shoulders. But I'll say it: I love voting, and I take the responsibility of it seriously.
So it was attempted murder at 5 PM on the ol' Grand Jury duty last evening, and then we deliberated on the charges. (Ta-kush-boom!) Sure, doing one's civic duty might get a little wearing, but at least we did it SOBER. I hope your day is criminal-charge-free, with hearty fellowship at day's end.
So here was the last day, in order of events, I kid you not a bit: Arrival in jury room; awaiting of four late people; final arrival is Moses, a DJ, who turned on his computer, put the witness mike up to it, and began DJ-ing a dance party, which was filmed by various jurors with iPhones; after the DJ said, "What's with the back row?" by which Miss O' explained in her primmest, most serious voice, "We are white people, and we are very, very repressed"; then Miss O' stunned the crowd by dancing to Soul Train with Soledad the Puerto Rican lesbian. This was followed by more dancing, presenting a gift card to our awesome court officer, who had joined us in the dance; a case or two; lunch; a baby shower for Ashley, who had wanted so badly to be on a jury she hid her 7-month pregnancy with a big shirt; and, finally, two votes on attempted murder and assault cases. We got our letters of service, and here I am, home and heading out to Brogue for beer and Powers Irish whiskey with Jodi and Lisa here in the 'hood. My work is done. Blog tomorrow. And justice for all so help us God.
Oct 4 (Final FB Post)
Yesterday at lunch, a big group got on the courthouse elevator at the third floor, including a very loud old man, Chinese, a real character. At floor 2, he asked a woman entering, "Are you on grand jury, too?" No, she said. "Too bad," he said in bright accented tones, "you not know what you missing." The elevator chuckled, and a younger man, black, turned to me, grinning: "He's like this all the time." I told him, "We have an identical set of personalities on the fifth floor." Last day. Blog tomorrow, unless I'm too drunk. Thanks for riding along.
As it was, I was just too damned tired from it all, and all the other stuff I mentioned in the opening note. So as you can see, there's material to spare for a 12-Episode Series. #Amirite, HBO?
I Can't Vote for That: On Delinquency and Four Years Off
Citizens: 19,000 delinquent jurors a year, over 2,000 per WEEK, show up to the Queens County Courthouse to explain themselves or face a year in prison or a big fine. The result? More tax dollars go to chasing down citizens to do their duty. Many people do not see why citizenship comes with responsibilities. They see their right as "free" people to do whatever the hell they want. It's like the FDNY deciding which fires to go to.
As a result, a full month's service on Grand Jury used to excuse you from jury duty of any kind for eight years. Now it's FOUR years. Why? Because we are the only ones who show up. Democracy is getting less and less participatory, in that those who can, don't; and those who want to (as with voting rights) are actively prevented. This is one fucked up country.
But don't worry. The members of Grand Jury C got your rights. We got your back. And our own. Because it's the RIGHT THING TO DO AS A CITIZEN.
And so there it is! Miss O' on Grand Jury, concluded, blogged, sent out into the universe, and with luck, picked up by HBO following lucrative contract negotiations giving me a new career as a television writer and producer. Ha, ha! Until that happy day, content yourself with the blog, won't you? And serve your goddamned jury duty when your nation calls upon you.
You know why? Say whatever you might say about this crazy mess of a nation: Every lowest of the low or highest of the high, however petty or serious the crime, whatever your walk of life, YOU GET A FUCKING GRAND JURY HEARING. You really, really do. Any other questions?
As Manny might say, whenever he raised his hand to ask a question and someone else got to it first, but he really didn't have a question that wasn't based on the fact that he had fallen asleep, "That was pretty much what I was gonna say."
Until next time...and who knows when that will be?
Life's a Glass Menagerie Waiting with King Richard...


text:
Political Correctness Run Amok
Decadent Underachievers
Enabling Anorexia
Lies, Damned Lies and Delusions
A Few Words From Michael Burry
Another Failure for Socialized Medicine
A Top Fifty Blog
How to Ruin a Marriage
Broken Homes Are Bad for Children
Seducing the Tech Oligarchs
"A New Kind of Palestinian Terrorism"
Do You Believe in Stereotypes?
Fifth Avenue Represses Christmas
The Evils of Industrial Agriculture
I Am Whatever I Think I Am
Bill Clinton: ISIS Recruitment Tool
Ted Cruz Rising
When the Press Shielded Adolph Hitler
The New York Times Covers for Obama
Trump's Wallet
What's in the Name... Islamist?
Forever, Camille Paglia
The Army Way
"Always Go to the Funeral"
"God Bless the Daily Mail"
What Is Your Therapist Really Feeling?
Are Vegetarians Ruining the Environment?
Is Trump Attacking Trump?
Addiction: Brain Disease or Moral Failing
Limbaugh on Trump on Cruz
Now Let Us Praise Adult Coloring Books
How Are Things in Libya Today?
Overcoming Loneliness
Evil on the March
Multiculturalism Kills
Camille Paglia Riffs on Taylor Swift
How Strong Is Hillary Really?
Compare and Contrast: Obama and Cruz
Anti-Semitic Feminists
The Freudian Con Game
Obama Flails, and Fails Again
Our Therapist in Chief
A Breathtaking Display of Weakness
What Is Conservative?
Blog Appreciation Week Winds Down
Jerry Brown: High Priest of the Greens
The Illiterati
"Muslim Newlyweds Slaughter Coworkers...."
James Deen: Feminist Heartthrob
Donation Wednesday
The Eloquence of Barack Obama
The Gods Are Angry
Parents Are Outraged by High School Telling Studen...
More Problems with Common Core
In the past we had our suspicions. Now neuroscience has demonstrated that many mental illnesses, especially addictions, are brain diseases. By this theory, the human mind is powerless to change brain chemistry.
The theory appeals because it is completely non-judgmental. It provides a foolproof pseudo-scientific absolution. It tells the patient that there is nothing he can do on his own to change his addictive behavior. What better for an alcoholic than the message that his brain chemistry is making him do it.
Such is the way people today have learned to think about addictions. Such is the way that Michael Botticelli, the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy explained it on 60 Minutes the other day.
In a Forbes article Dr. Sally Satel takes Botticelli to task for his conceptual errors.
She begins by summarizing his opinion:
"We've learned addiction is a brain disease," he said, echoing an increasingly prevalent view. But especially coming from such a visible spokesperson, that theory does harm to addicts, their families and policymakers. "You know the hallmark of addiction is that it changes your brain chemistry. It actually affects that part of your brain that's responsible for judgment," he goes on. "We don't expect people with cancer to stop having cancer."
True enough, Satel writes, addiction does change brain chemistry. But the analogy is simplistic and misleading:
Comparing drug addiction to cancer is misguided in profound ways. Of course drugs change the brain, but the neural changes that occur in the brains of addicts do not necessarily disable their capacity to reason and to respond to rewards. Indeed, a vast literature shows that addiction is an activity whose course can be altered by its foreseeable consequences. By contrast, no amount of reinforcement or punishment can alter the course of an entirely autonomous biological condition. Imagine bribing a patient with breast cancer to keep her tumor from spreading, or threatening to impose a penalty on her if it did. It won't work.
The important treatment point is that addicts respond to rewards and punishments. When the moral cost of their addiction becomes too high they can exercise judgment and stop. They also respond to moments of self-awareness. When they see the horrors they are visiting on themselves and others, they can choose, voluntarily, to change their behaviors. Brain chemistry notwithstanding, they retain free will and can use it to direct their behavior.
It isn't always about rewards and punishments:
Many autobiographical accounts by former addicts reveal that they were startled into quitting by a spasm of self-reproach. In The Night of the Gun, the late New York Times columnist David Carr movingly recounts how he decided to kick his habit after he realized how profoundly irresponsible he'd been when he locked his twin baby girls in his car while he met with his dealer to score crack.
The same paradigm, Satel remarks tellingly, does not apply to cancer. The analogy is specious. You cannot talk a patient out of cancer. Bribes and punishments have no appreciable effect on the growth of a tumor. Self-awareness has no impact on the progress of the disease.
It is vitally important that we understand the distinction Satel is making. Mainly, because making addiction purely a brain disease deprives us of one of the most important treatment factors: the patient's free will and his ability to choose to act differently.
Satel offers an example:
A classic example comes from heroin-soaked Southeast Asia in 1971. When President Nixon decided to drug test Vietnam veterans as a condition of returning stateside, the vast majority of those using heroin on a regular basis managed to stop (detox was offered to them as well). An important goal – coming home – was at stake, and most men controlled their behavior accordingly. Notably, within the three years after they returned, only 14 percent of men who were addicted in Vietnam resumed regular use in the U.S.
If 86% of a sampling of heroin addicts were able to overcome their addictions within three years of returning to the United States, surely that argues against the notion that they are victims of their brain chemistry and that they cannot, of their own volition, pursue effective treatment.
The moral of the story is that neuroscience has its limits, even when dealing with conditions that do have a physiological component. If we take addiction to be a brain disease we deprive the addict of moral agency and absolve him of responsibility for treating his addiction.
This ends up sounding judgmental, but we do best to respect addicts enough to have confidence that they can undertake actions that will help them to overcome addiction. By trying to pretend that they are not responsible we are counseling inaction, and even suggesting that they cannot possibly resist temptation.
And yet, each moment when addicts choose to shoot up or to take another drink they could have done otherwise. Surely we will never say the same about people who suffer from cancer.
Keep in mind that 12 Step programs only work for those who participate in them actively. The same applies to many other mental health treatments.
To be fair we can consider cancer is in part a behavior-related disease as well, and cancer treatments may include changes to improve diet or exercise or sleep or mental destressing or whatever, and a patient is resisting a lifetime of bad habits to change.
So whether you blame brain chemistry or bad habits, the problem is the same, its easier to keep doing what's worked in the past, even when you have clear evidence its going to kill you in the long run.
Stuart: The theory appeals because it is completely non-judgmental. It provides a foolproof pseudo-scientific absolution. It tells the patient that there is nothing he can do on his own to change his addictive behavior. What better for an alcoholic than the message that his brain chemistry is making him do it.
I think this is a strawman reduction. There's a difference between saying you are powerless and something is difficult. The purpose of acknowledging something is difficult is help you take it seriously, and see you may need some help to change your behavior. In contrast, it's easy to judge someone else's failure to change as being weak-willed because it's not a problem you have, and on the outside it seems obvious, you just rationally determine what's best and do it, and you can't see why there's any problem at all, looking from the outside at something obvious.
And actually 12-step programs start with the assumption of powerlessness, not neuroscience "We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable."
Back to the virtue or vice of being "completely non-judgmental", I try to see both sides. The difference to me comes down to punishment vs consequences. That is, if you're being judgmental, you may decide to punish someone for giving into their addiction, and we can question whether punishing someone is going to help change their behavior, and the answer is probably largely no. But to the degree addictions make a person undependable, or threaten the safety of others (like drunk driving), then you need consequences, like getting fired from a job, or taking their driver's license, and ideally in all cases, the addiction will accept there's a problem and that the consequences were necessary, rather than punitive.
And that goes to the problem of denial and I don't have enough experience to see all the patterns of denial, but if you have someone in your life in clear denial, again you have to judge what you need to do to defend yourself from their destructiveness, and then sometimes all you can do is collective evidence of things that are not working well, and point those out, and I'd hope most addicts would SOMETIMES see past their denial and accept responsibility for negative consequences.
And does it help to label someone as having "bad character" or whatever if they just refuse to see? I don't think it'll help the addict, but it probably helps a co-dependent set boundaries and be prepared to follow through with consequences.
And it still goes back to how to best understand how hard change is. If you're challenging an addict, you need to set goals and limits that are most likely to succeed, and ones that the addict himself is willing to agree to.
The key reason I see being judgmental as counter-productive is when the addict himself seems to want to be judged, especially things like "loser" or "screw up" or whatever name-calling, is because those labels are applied to him as a person, rather than his behavior. And so that becomes his identity, and he'll gladly live down to those standards, and may even do it just to hurt you for judging him.
Once you're interacting with someone who is willing to die, its not a fair fight, and they'll take you down too if you let him. At best maybe you can remind them that what they do matters, and try to find examples. But maybe playing a Christmas Carol works too - showing him the world will go on when he leaves it.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Declan Murphy
Declan Murphy is the music buyer at Readings St Kilda.
Make Way for Love by Marlon Williams
Reviewed by Declan Murphy
Many moons ago, I was privileged enough to witness a very intimate gig at the sorely missed Pure Pop records in St Kilda by a then unknown, fresh-faced Kiwi ex-pat by the name of Marlon Williams. Th…
Crack-Up by Fleet Foxes
It's been six quiet years between drinks for Fleet Foxes fans and it's fair to say the fans are thirsty. After one listen to the long awaited album Crack-Up, it's clear that those years have not been…
Pure Comedy by Father John Misty
'The comedy of man starts like this: our brains are way too big for our mothers' hips.' The opening line to the epic title track on Father John Misty's new album suggests Joshua Tillman has something…
Pure Comedy
Universal Themes by Sun Kil Moon
2014 was quite the year for former Red House Painter Mark Kozelek. After quietly releasing the subdued masterpiece Benji in March, he later became involved in a very public spat and somewhat spiteful…
Universal Themes
Sun Kil Moon
Melbourne's Women Of Soul
To celebrate what will be the fifth anniversary of their annual concerts this year, the Melbourne Women of Soul collective have put together a fantastic album of all original tracks written exclusive…
Gon' Boogaloo by CW Stoneking
It's been six long years since we were last afforded a glimpse into the weird and wonderful world of Australian bluesman, supreme yarn-spinner and tall tale teller C.W. Stoneking. I've been shipwreck…
Gon' Boogaloo
CW Stoneking
Single Mothers by Justin Townes Earle
It's been quite the turbulent 32-year journey for JT Earle, who is surely one of modern Americana's brightest shining talents. After several stints in rehab it seemed, at times, that the burden of an…
Give the People What They Want by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Album number five from the inimitable Ms Jones and her Dap- Kings was slated for release last August, though these plans were put on hold when Jones was diagnosed with cancer in June. With the cancer…
Post Tropical by James Vincent McMorrow
Young Irish singer-songwriter James Vincent McMorrow burst onto the musical landscape in 2010 with his stunning debut album Early in the Morning, an effort entirely performed and self-recorded over a…
Trouble Will Find Me by The National
Trouble Will Find Me is the highly anticipated sixth album from Ohio-by-way-of-Brooklyn band The National.
After topping many critics' best-of lists for 2010 and finally achieving relative commercia…
Trouble Will Find Me
Minute By Minute by The James Hunter Six
Minute by Minute is British soul man James Hunter's first record since 2008's fantastic The Hard Way. It's also his first to be recorded in America. In a very astute move, Hunter has chosen Daptone m…
I See Seaweed by The Drones
It's practically impossible to do justice to the music of the nation's finest band in a mere 80 words or so.
I See Seaweed is The Drones' first record in more than four years, making it something of…
Forever Endeavour by Ron Sexsmith
There are few songwriters who leave one scrambling for superlatives, and Canadian troubadour Ronald Eldon Sexsmith is one such musician. Here is a man who apparently dreams up a couple of genius melo…
Flying Fish by Chris Wilson
Flying Fish is the latest offering from blues trailblazer and national treasure Chris Wilson. This man has been delivering blisteringingly good records for many a year now and this is certainly no ex…
The Jazz Age by Bryan Ferry
In keeping with his eclectic output over recent years, Bryan Ferry has chosen to revisit some of his many classic songs and give them a jazz makeover. The aim was to give these a Duke-Ellington-circa…
The Soul of Melbourne
What do you get when you gather together tracks from the cream of Melbourne's soul/funk acts and slather them all over one record? Well sir, you get The Soul of Melbourne.
These 18 scorching sides w…
One Day I'm going to Soar by Dexys
It's been 26 years since Kevin Rowland and Dexy's Midnight Runners last released a record. Now they are back, having dropped the Midnight Runners, and who would've predicted they would return in such…
Blak & Blu by Clark Gary Jr
Hailing from Texas, Gary Clark Jr. is certainly the man of the moment.
Having first picked up the guitar at the tender age of seven, and been mentored by some of the very best in the business, some …
Expecting Company? by Henry Wagons
Beloved local hero Mr Wagons' solo debut traverses the dark terrain of the deserted country back-roads of the soul in some style.
Along for the ride, amongst others, are such luminaries as Alison Mo…
The Sound of the Life of the Mind by Ben Folds Five
The Sound of the Life of the Mind is the first album of new music from Ben Folds Five in 13 years, making it something of an event for fans.
With first single 'Do It Anyway' already doing the rounds…
Lonerism by Tame Impala
These young Perth boys blew our tiny minds with their masterful 2010 debut Innerspeaker, which created quite a splash overseas and earned them rave reviews from the likes of Noel Gallagher and Paul W…
The Carpenter by The Avett Brothers
After 2009's wonderful I & Love & You, North Carolina's Avett Brothers have once again joined forces with producer Rick Rubin for their new album The Carpenter.
The first single 'Live & Die' sets th…
Shields by Grizzly Bear
Brooklyn's Grizzly Bear became the indie darlings of 2009 with Veckatimest, an admittedly glorious record that makes the release of Shields hotly anticipated, to say the least. Opening track and …
Carry Me Back by Old Crow Medicine Show
Who loves a hootenanny? Well batten down the hatches, folks, because one of the best old-timey string bands around are back in town and my how we've missed them.
Recorded at the legendary Sound Emp…
Slay Me in My Sleep by Grand Salvo
Melbourne musician Paddy Mann has been quietly going about his business for some years now under the guise of Grand Salvo.
His sixth album, Slay Me in My Sleep, has seen him shift to Berlin, and pr…
Lil' Band O' Gold Plays Fats
For those not familiar with this super group of Louisiana swamp rockers, this could be the start of a very special love affair.
Mixing everything including blues, Cajun, country and rock these guys …
Valtari by Sigur Rós
Reviewed by Declan Murphy, Readings St Kilda
The sixth studio album from this wonderful Icelandic band translates to 'steamroller' in English, perhaps a reference to the effect their music has been known to have on the listener.
The first hal…
Valtari
Standing at the Sky's Edge by Richard Hawley
Sheffield's Richard Hawley produced what was for me one of the best records of the decade with 2009's magnificent Truelove's Gutter.
On Standing at the Sky's Edge he has traded that record's effort…
Standing At The Skys Edge
Hawley Richard
Vinyl picks of the month
by Declan Murphy
St Kilda Music Buyer Declan Murphy shares his high-rotation vinyl obsessions of this month. Wrecking Crew (soundtrack)
Here is the soundtrack to the truly fab 2015 documentary of the same name. In the tradition of Standing in the Shadows of Motown's tribute to the Funk Brothers, The Wrecking Crew focused on the eponymous collective of West Coast session musicians who played on a bewildering…


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Tag: fantasy scotus
Crowdsourcing SCOTUS Paper Presentation at University of Minnesota Law School
The next leg of our SCOTUS Crowdsourcing Tour takes us to Minneapolis – for talk at the University of Minnesota Law School. Looking forward to it!
Crowdsourcing Accurately and Robustly Predicts Supreme Court Decisions – Professors Daniel Martin Katz, Michael Bommarito & Josh Blackman
Today Michael J Bommarito II and I were live in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan Center for Political Studies to kickoff the tour for our #SCOTUS Crowd Prediction Paper — here is version 1.01 of the slide deck !
Evaluating Counterfactual History – Which Cases Will be Affected by the Passing of Justice Scalia?
February 17, 2016 clsadmin
Obamacare's Chances Of Survival Have Improved (But It Is Still Very Close)
March 6, 2015 clsadmin
Why The Best Supreme Court Predictor In The World Is Some Random Guy In Queens (via 538.com)
Nice coverage of the research in this area and our multi year research agenda attached to forecasting using the three known streams of intelligence (experts, crowds & algorithms).
Announcing the All New LexPredict FantasySCOTUS – (Sponsored By Thomson Reuters)
October 14, 2014 clsadmin
Today I am excited to announce that LexPredict has now launched the all new FantasySCOTUS under the direction of Michael J. Bommarito II, Daniel Martin Katz and Josh Blackman.
FantasySCOTUS is the leading Supreme Court Fantasy League. Thousands of attorneys, law students, and other avid Supreme Court followers make predictions about cases before the Supreme Court. Participation is FREE and Supreme Court geeks can win cash prizes up to $10,000 (many other prizes as well — thanks to the generous support of Thomson Reuters).
We hope to launch additional functionality soon but we are now live and ready to accept your predictions for the 2014-2015 Supreme Court Term!


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Tenacious D brings super comedy Festival…
Tenacious D brings super comedy Festival Supreme to Santa Monica Pier
Tenacious D, Kyle Gass and Jack Black, is slated to present the comedy extravaganza Festival Supreme on Oct. 19.
Actor/musician Jack Black of Tenacious D performs onstage during Spike TV's 10th annual Video Game Awards at Sony Studios on Dec. 7, 2012 in Culver City. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
By Bob Strauss | rstrauss@scng.com | Daily News
Jack Black may not be overhyping something for the first time in his life. Festival Supreme, the daylong music and comedy festival coming to the Santa Monica Pier on Saturday, could be the most awesome gathering of funny noises ever assembled.
Organized by Black and his Tenacious D bandmate Kyle Gass, the three-stage affair will feature sets by some 30 luminaries of the comic universe.
Just some of the acts include Sarah Silverman, Zach Galifianakis, Adam Sandler, Eric Idle & The Jeff Davis Experience, Fred Armisen, Will Forte, Demetri Martin, Craig Robinson & the Nasty Delicious, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Garfunkel & Oates, Patton Oswalt and, of course, Tenacious D.
"I thought that it would be really fun to throw the greatest comedy music festival of all time," the ever humble Black explains. "We did it because we like to have fun, and we like to put on the greatest … y'know, we're filled with self-congratulatory bombast. That's our forte. So we were like, 'Let's put on the best show of all time. Let's get all of the great powers of comedy music together, and it'll be huge.' We could play the Megadome! And it would be a show to remember."
Black and Gass have organized big music/comedy shows in the past for disaster relief fundraising — tsunamis, Hurricane Katrina and the Haiti earthquake, those kinds of things. But Festival Supreme, they promise, is a purely mercenary endeavor.
"This one is not a benefit, let's just get that out of the way now," Black says. "It's not a charity for anything. We're paying the artists. I'm going to be giving some money to charity, but I don't want to toot my own charitable horn, OK?"
It might be considered a gift to laughter enthusiasts, though, who can get all the comedy they can consume — plus access to a hilarious art show, a free video game arcade and other amusements — for $99. Special "Golden Toilet" tickets, which included entry to a VIP viewing area and, apparently, luxury port-a-potties, are still available at $250 a pop.
"This is for the fans, in the spirit, I think, of all these big music festivals that have been happening for the last three decades or so," notes David Cross, who'll be appearing with Bob Odenkirk as The Mr. Show Experience at the festival. "It's a couple of stages, bunch of different acts, and it's a cool idea. Jack is very well connected in that world and that's where he lives. So it's kind of a genius idea."
That said, it took some persuading to pull together such an impressive lineup.
"First, we had to set the scene, set the mood," Black reveals. "It's like when you're romancing a sex partner; you want to set the scene with the right ambience, the right music playing. You know, it's going to be at Santa Monica Pier, the ocean will be beautiful and misty, the sun will be setting, there will be delicious food, there will be your favorite beverages, there will be clean toilets, there will be comfortable places to sit your ass …
"And then you call everyone you know and love and you want to be in the festival, and you tell them all that everyone else is already in, 'It's just you left, so do you want to come?' Even though it's a lie — it's a horrible thing — it does work."
The strictly 21-and-over, no pets allowed event is promoted by Live Nation and tickets are available through Ticketmaster. Though various comedy conclaves in Aspen, Colo., and Montreal's Just for Laughs festival and its spinoffs may have been bigger, they played out over days and didn't bring the high concentration of funny Festival Supreme's one-day only event on the pier promises to have.
Plus, "we're doing something different," Black explains.
"Our emphasis is on comedy music, the combination of. Not to be confused with musical comedies, because it's not a musical," he says.
"It almost was, though," Gass quips. "We were going to do songs from Broadway."
"That's another festival, though," Black quickly replies.
Idle, who may perform numbers from his Broadway hit "Spamalot" as well as some Monty Python and Rutles tunes, sounds pretty impressed by the whole shebang.
"I'm on at 4 in The Mighty Tent with a surprise guest, so see you at tea time on the Pier," Idle said in an email, adding: "and congratulations to Jack Black for dreaming it and doing it."
Why do this on the Pier? Black and Gass checked out other Southern California venues, but ultimately decided this was the place to throw the ultimate L.A. comedy show.
"Even though Santa Monica, technically, is not Los Angeles, it's the sweet step-sister right next door to Los Angeles who has a gorgeous personality," Black reckons. "It's a destination that people know. It's the Pier! You don't even have to tell people the address, you go, 'Hey, come to our festival. It's at the Santa Monica Pier.'"
"Do you like to fish?" Gass asks. "If you get tired of laughing, you can go to the end of the pier and do some fishin'."
"Yeah, and if you want to go swimming, you can go into the ocean, that's part of the festival," Black adds. "I've been told you can pee in the ocean, too."
In the end, it makes sense to throw a landmark comedy festival in the town where most of the nation's professional funny people live and work.
"You know what they say: 'If you can make it here, you'll make it with a beer,'" Black says. "No, it doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? It's the city that goes to sleep early!
"But, you know, it is the undisputed entertainment capital of the universe. It doesn't have the same ring to say it was the biggest comedy music festival in the history of Fresno."
For further information (and jokes), go to www.festivalsupreme.com.
Bob Strauss | reporter
Bob Strauss has been covering film at the L.A. Daily News since 1989. He wouldn't say the movies have gotten worse in that time, but they do keep getting harder to love. Fortunately, he still loves them.
rstrauss@scng.com
Follow Bob Strauss @bscritic


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A Capela de São Venceslau, do século XIV, situada no interior da Catedral de São Vito, na cidade checa de Praga, possui um sepulcro que guarda os restos mortais de São Venceslau, padroeiro do país.

Capelas da Europa
Igrejas de Praga

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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MSigDB v4.0 Release Notes
GSEA Home | Downloads | Molecular Signatures Database | Documentation | Contact

[http://www.broadinstitute.org/gsea/contact.jsp Contact]

 Gene set name changes

1 Gene set name changes
2 New collection C7: Immunologic Signatures
3 Updates to C2 collection
4 Updates to C4: Cancer Modules
5 Viewing previous versions of MSigDB
Gene set name changes
There were no changes to gene set names that were present in v3.1 MSigDB and which remained in v4.0 MSigDB.
New collection C7: Immunologic Signatures
C7: Immunologic Signatures (ImmuneSig) is a new collection of 1910 sets. These gene sets represent cell types, states, and perturbations within the immune system. The signatures were generated by manual curation of published studies in human and mouse immunology.
We first captured relevant microarray datasets published in the immunology literature that have raw data deposited to Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Next, for each published study, the relevant comparisons were identified (e.g. WT vs. KO; pre- vs. post-treatment etc.) and brief, biologically meaningful descriptions were created. Then we processed and normalized every data set the same way to identify gene sets, which correspond to the top or bottom genes (FDR < 0.25 or maximum of 200 genes) ranked by mutual information for each assigned comparison.
This resource was generated as part of the Human Immunology Project Consortium (HIPC) .
Updates to C2 collection
We have removed all 132 gene sets which originated from the Munich Information Center for Protein Sequences (CORUM MIPS) database because they no longer allow redistribution of this information. Previously, these sets were part of Canonical Pathways (CP) in the C2 collection.
Four (4) new gene sets curated from papers were added to the C2:CGP (Chemical and Genetic Perturbations) sub-collection.
Updates to C4: Cancer Modules
We have fixed an error in the external link URLs for all 431 sets in the C4:CM (Cancer Modules) sub-collection.
Viewing previous versions of MSigDB
Files from previous versions of MSigDB (v3.1, v3.0, v2.5, v2.1 and v1.0) are archived and available at Downloads page. You can view them through the MSigDB Browser tool in the GSEA desktop application.
Retrieved from "https://software.broadinstitute.org/cancer/software/gsea/wiki/index.php/MSigDB_v4.0_Release_Notes"


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Q: Data entities in Onion Architecture I'm trying to build a project using onion architecture (just a "Northwind"ish type app to get more up to speed with .NET Core).  I also want to get a better grasp on Onion Architecture principals.  I understand it's not a one-size fits all solution, but I want to try to utilize most of the principals in this sample app.
I'm using EF Core and generating my data layer with the dotnet ef dbcontext scaffold command.  My thought is, I will maintain the database (via a VS Database project) and regenerate these files each time - so they wouldn't be touched by hand ever.
It seems that most of these entities could also act as domain entities.
My project structure would look something like this:

*

*Eastwind.sln

*

*Core

*

*Eastwind.Domain

*

*Interfaces\

*Entities\ - (location of generated POCO entities from EF)

*Extensions\

*Outer

*

*Eastwind.Data - (location of dbcontext & EF config associating entities to datastore)

*Eastwind.Services

*Eastwind.WebApi

*Client (WebApi clients)

*

*Eastwind.Client.Web

*Eastwind.Client.Wpf

My questions are:

*

*Does it make sense to generate the entities (POCO classes) in the core/domain layer and keep the EF Configuration (fluent config code) and DbContext in a separate data layer that's outside of the Core?

*Does someone know of a good sample project that really utilizes the onion principals well?  I've seen a few and they're questionable at best.

*Any other notes (or critiques) on issues in my structure relating to onion?

My thought is the data layer should sit outside the core still and rely on the entities on the lower layers (core).  This seems onion'y to me still, but I haven't really seen anyone structure a project this way.
EDIT:
The Client projects are arguably insignificant to this question, as they will not utilize any of these libraries directly.
I am going to transform any input or output from the API to DTOs in order to keep them specific to the calls - combining and/or simplifying the data to keep them light weight and prevent the need for multiple round-trips as much as possible.
I MIGHT put the DTOs in a separate library to at least share those objects with the WPF Client project, but the Web Client project is using Angular so they will need to be redefined there.

A: POCO's in the Domain
Really this is one half dozen the other.

*

*If your domain generates these objects, then great you are sharing their implementation for everyone else to use.

*If many clients use these to submit data, then also great you have shared the implementation. Although you could have similarly achieved this by placing them in a third shared library.

*It increases the surface of the public interface, and means that you are now locked into providing these always. This is not so great as it is a source of unintended complexity. Some clients will benefit, others are lumped with baggage.
I would only provide access to those Objects generated by the Domain logic itself. The others while useful should be housed in their own separate binary.
Domain Entities
Take this opportunity to make your POCOs provide strong constructors, and enforce mutation rules.
This will help to ensure that the Domain Entities are correctly constructed and manipulated.

*

*On the pro side all clients can now be sure that they are constructing the data correctly. Even better if you offer construction based validation.

*On the con side, these classes are not one size fits all. There will be clients who need to implement their own variant. They can achieve this via the exposed interfaces, but are still saddled with classes they do not use.
Of course you could provide various implementations of these objects to enhance the good outcomes, while avoiding the bad. The only difference are the extra libraries.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Mannerheimplatsen (finska: Mannerheimaukio) är ett litet torg vid Mannerheimvägen i Helsingfors, mitt emot Paasikiviplatsen. Vid Mannerheimplatsen ligger Kiasma och Posthuset. Den tidigare norra delen av torget, mellan Kiasma och Sanomahuset, döptes 2014 om till Tekla Hultins plats efter historikern och politikern Tekla Hultin.

På 1870-talet låg nuvarande Mannerheimplatsen helt i utkanten av staden Helsingfors, omedelbart innanför Esbo tull vid slutet av dåvarande Henriksgatan. På södra delen av nuvarande Mannerheimplatsen mot Henriksgatan låg då det privatägda gasverk som Gaslysnings ab uppfört 1861. Detta inköpte av Helsingfors stad 1900, varefter ett nytt gasverk byggdes 1909–1910 i Södervik i Sörnäs.

År 1960 restes på platsen Marskalk Mannerheims ryttarstaty av Aimo Tukiainen över Gustaf Mannerheim.

Bildgalleri

Källor

Noter

Mannerheimvägen
Torg i Helsingfors
Gloet


text:
What Is Toxic Shock Syndrome, and How Common Is It?
By The Swaddle Team
If there's one phrase every menstruating woman fears (other than 'surprise pregnancy'!) it's Toxic Shock Syndrome. TSS is something everyone has heard of, and no one actually understands; most of us just know it has something to do with tampons. So, while we can't do anything about that unexpected pregnancy test result, we can tell you everything you need to know about toxic shock syndrome — what it is, what it isn't, and how likely you are to get it.
What is Toxic Shock Syndrome?
Toxic Shock Syndrome is a complication from a bacterial infection, usually a staph infection, but sometimes strep. Specifically, staphylococcus aureus and group A streptococcus can both produce toxins that spread and cause inflammation throughout the body. This prompts the body's immune system to go into hyper-drive, and the resulting flood of immune cells flood causes the body to go into shock. If it's not stopped, organs can fail. It can be fatal; when it's not fatal, it can have seriously debilitating long-term health consequences; in January, model-turned-TSS-activist Lauren Wasser had to have her remaining leg amputated as she continues to struggle with the fallout of TSS.
TSS can happen to anyone — man, woman or child; in fact, one-third of all TSS cases happen to men, according to Sara Chodosh reporting for Popular Science. People with a skin wound, burn or recent surgery are particularly at risk, as the wound can become infected and the broken skin offers toxins produced by the infection a direct route to your blood stream.
Then why is TSS linked with using tampons?
Tampons are, as Chodosh notes, "one of the few (or only?) foreign objects that we shove inside ourselves and let sit for many hours." They're basically just one giant opportunity for antigens to get inside and proliferate in the human body. Blood is, in fact, a culture medium in labs, and the warm, moist environment of the vagina is just what bacteria need to thrive — just ask the good, beneficial bacteria already teeming there. Most of the time, the immune system can fight off these burgeoning infections without a problem, but in the cases of the above strains, the toxins they produce are too, well, toxic for the body to handle.
Beyond the vagina's natural bacteria-friendly environment, TSS is specifically linked with super-absorbent tampons — the most dangerous version of which originally contained carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) and hasn't been manufactured since a TSS epidemic in the US in the 70s. While most of the tampons available in India look like they date from roughly that era, it's unlikely they actually do. Still, even modern, non-CMC super-absorbent tampons are a concern, when it comes to TSS, for two reasons: One, they are designed to stay inside the body for long periods of time, allowing bacteria plenty of time to proliferate; and two, their super-absorbent nature can dry the vagina, leaving scratches on the vaginal walls that allow toxins easier access to your blood stream. (This latter problem is a concern for any size of tampon, if it's designed for a heavier flow than you're currently having.)
How likely are you to get TSS from tampons?
Very unlikely, despite what seeing the warning on every tampon box may make you think. Toxic shock syndrome is really, really rare — in 2016, the US recorded only 323 cases, less than half of which were due to tampon use. Good hygiene, making sure your tampon size matches your flow, and following directions, which typically advise removing a tampon after four to eight hours, go a long way to preventing toxic shock syndrome.
Organic, all-cotton tampons are a new trend in menstrual products, and have been suggested as a safer alternative with less-to-no TSS risk. But the few studies into organic tampons and TSS risk are conflicting. It's likely they carry similar risks to menstrual products like sponges and cups, which technically can cause TSS, but are associated with few cases.
What are TSS symptoms? And what do you do if you think you have it?
Toxic shock syndrome is possible, even if it's rare. So it's good to be aware of the signs of TSS — which unfortunately mimic those of the flu, but come on much more rapidly.
A sudden high fever
Low blood pressure (hypotension)
Vomiting or diarrhea
A rash resembling a sunburn, particularly on your palms and soles
Redness of your eyes, mouth and throat
If you've recently used a tampon, had surgery or suffered a skin wound and experience any one of these symptoms, call your doctor immediately. In most cases, TSS can be combated with modern antibiotics, but timely treatment is of the essence for this fast-acting condition.
TSS is a very serious, but very unlikely condition. If tampons were never your cup of tea, then you don't need to worry about toxic shock syndrome. And if tampons are your menstrual product of choice, you still don't really need to worry; just follow directions and avoid the super-absorbent kind.
moms | periods | teens
Written By The Swaddle Team
See all articles by The Swaddle
Marriage Is A Private Affair
Couples Marrying Under the Special Marriage Act Need Not Post Public Notice of Their Intent to Marry: Allahabad HC
The ruling was in response to an interfaith couple's plea that the public notice period would enable interference and harassment.
Pour One Out
One Glass of Alcohol a Day Raises Risk of Irregular Heartbeat By 16%: Study
Such heartbeat problems are "asymptomatic and can lead to other problems such as stroke."
Researchers Find Metabolic Markers That May Predict Patients At Risk of Recurring Depressive Symptoms
The metabolic marker predicted a depressive relapse with 90% accuracy.
By Satviki Sanjay
Nearly 75% of the Arctic's Microplastic Pollution Comes From Clothing: Study
"What you and I wear ... is really having profound consequences for an area many thousands of kilometers from our communities."


text:
Quebecor World Announces $45 Million Agreement with Canada Wide Media Ltd
Montréal, Canada – Quebecor World Inc. (August 07, 2008) today announced it has reached a new 7-year agreement valued at approximately $45 million with Canada Wide Media Ltd to print Magazines and Periodicals for the Vancouver-based publisher. The agreement includes renewal work on titles such as BC Business, Westworld Publications, BC Home, Alberta Home, Gardenwise and Granville Magazine.
"Quebecor World's dedication to quality and service was a key contributing factor in partnering with them for another 7 years", said Peter Legge, Chairman and CEO Canada Wide Media. "Our business was built on print over 30 years ago and this partnership renewal with Quebecor World shows our commitment to the importance of printed media in the Canadian marketplace. We look forward to working with Quebecor World as we actively pursue our growth objectives over the next 7 years.
"We are pleased to extend our long term partnership with Canada Wide Media" said Jacques Mallette, President and CEO of Quebecor World Inc.
"Our ability to provide an unparalleled service approach allows us to deliver the value and quality an independent industry publishing leader such as Canada Wide Media Ltd demands" said Antonio Galasso, President of Quebecor World Canada.
Quebecor World's Canadian division is one of the leading magazine print and related service providers in Canada. The company provides complete premedia, print, distribution and mailing services across the country for publishers in the consumer, B2B, Association, City and Regional Magazine markets.


text:
Brexit unleashed: First step to make UK a 'sovereign and independent country once again'
By World Tribune on October 2, 2016
by WorldTribune Staff, October 2, 2016
UK Prime Minister Theresa May and her "three Brexiteers" – Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis – have taken the first step toward implementing Britain's exit from the European Union.
May and the Brexiteers announced the "Great Repeal Bill" at the Oct. 2 Tory conference. The bill will nullify the 1972 European Communities Act, "which is the current vehicle by which EU laws are implemented in the UK," the Sunday Express reported.
Prime Minister Theresa May and, from top, David Davis, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson.
May told the Sunday Times: "This marks the first stage in the UK becoming a sovereign and independent country once again. It will return power and authority to the elected institutions of our country. It means that the authority of EU law in Britain will end."
As part of the process, the prime minister, will transfer all current EU laws and regulations onto British parliament's statute books.
"It's very simple. At the moment we leave, Britain must be back in control. And that means EU law must cease to apply," said Davis, who May named as Britain's Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.
"That is what people voted for – power and authority residing once again with the sovereign institutions of our own country."
Tory parliament member Jacob Rees-Mogg told Sky News the repeal bill is "the sensible way to proceed and it recognizes the reality of our position. European regulations come into domestic law and they will need to remain in law until they are repealed and replaced.
"Not all of them are stupid, some of them are perfectly sensible and we will want to keep them. It would be wrong to have a vacuum in law and so to put it into one bill and then take many years to work out the ones you want to repeal, the ones you want to reform, the ones you actually want to keep is the intelligence way to proceed."
May is also confirmed that she will not call for new elections before 2020, arguing that doing so would create instability.
"Some Tories have been urging the new PM to call a snap general election, pointing to opinion polls which show she would score a huge majority and crush Labour under the hapless leadership of Jeremy Corbyn," the Sunday Express said.
Boris Johnson, Brexit unleashed: First steps taken to make UK a 'sovereign and independent country once again', David Davis, Liam Fox, Theresa May
Brexit unleashed: First step to make UK a 'sovereign and independent country once again' added by World Tribune on October 2, 2016
View all posts by World Tribune →
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text:
Students Disappearing Right Before Our Very Eyes?
Post category:Opinions
by Anna Brahce
assistant opinions editor
Few things can breed the buzz on campus that arriving new students can. We look forward to welcoming incoming freshmen and transfer students. We instantly notice new faces. Even the Caf' puts on a good show, especially in the dessert department. However, those that leave Millsaps constitute an equally pertinent, yet rarely addressed, topic.
No, seniors, I'm not talking about you, at least not yet anyway. I reference those that transfer away after only one year at Millsaps.
"Millsaps' first-year retention rate has hovered just under 80 percent in the last few years," says Robert Alexander, the vice president for enrollment and communications. In the past year, 78 percent of Millsaps' 2012 freshmen returned for the fall of 2013.
It may not seem like a significant number, but considering the college's small student population, these disappearances actually do make a difference. So what causes people to leave? "The vast majority of students depart due to academic difficulty," Alexander says. "At Millsaps, like most institutions, retention is highly correlated with academic GPA. Simply put, overall student success hinges upon academic success." Other factors that cause students to leave include financial difficulties and various personal reasons.
So what is being done about it? "This academic year, we invited the Education Advisory Board, a foundation that specializes in research of the best practices in higher education, to conduct a workshop for our faculty on the best practices for student success in academics," Alexander says, "In the summer of 2013, three administrators on the Student Retention and Care Team attended a national conference on student retention in New Orleans, seeking the latest innovations, trends and program information."
Some of the top retention techniques include scheduling additional meetings with academic advisors and completing exit interviews with students who withdraw or transfer. If students appear distressed to professors, coaches or family members, it is important to catch them early, and decide what changes to make to help alleviate stress. Even factors such as midterm grades can help identify overly stressed students.
Alexander sums up the main goals of the Millsaps retention programs. "As a very new member of the Millsaps community, I hope to continue our focus on systematic and intentional awareness and intervention at the earliest stage- not waiting until a critical stage when the student has irreparably damaged their academic record, and risks losing scholarship eligibility or parental support to continue at Millsaps," he says.
Unfortunately, financial issues cannot be solved as easily. But we can make differences in other ways. So the next time you see a student struggling in one of your classes, offer to help them out. Encourage each other, and support one another. You never know who among your class might not be here next year. You might be the one that affects their decision.
Do Traditional Finals Actually Help Us?
Ask Emily: Socks with Sandals and Canada
Why I Oppose the Mississippi Church Protection Act


text:
Indiana Researcher Examines Public Views of Transgender People
Report Spotlights Challenges Facing LGBT Coloradans
Title IX Complaint Takes Aim at Transgender Teen Athletes
Sioux Falls Hosts First-Ever LGBTQ Parade
Maine Hosts Opioid Response Summit to Address Ongoing Crisis
NY Cities Join Worldwide Vigils to Spotlight Trump Immigration Policies
MD Volunteers Take Out the Trash from Chesapeake Bay
Area Bars Raise Money for Reproductive Health Care
PA Lacks Law to Prevent Discrimination Against Gays
PHOTO: Pennsylvania has no law in place to prevent discrimination against gays, although there are proposals in the Legislature to change that. Photo credit: publicdomainpictures.net.
HARRISBURG, Pa. - The decision by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to veto legislation that would have allowed businesses to refuse service to gays based on the owners' religious beliefs has made headlines from coast to coast. It also exposes that Pennsylvania has no law to protect gays from similar treatment.
Andy Hoover, legislative director for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said the law here, as it stands, allows for someone to be discriminated against based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
"A landlord or an employer, or a restaurant or a hotel, can turn someone away because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender," he said.
The only exceptions are the 33 municipalities that have local ordinances prohibiting this type of discrimination, Hoover said, noting that only about 30 percent of the state's population lives in those areas.
The Arizona bill was supported by Republicans in the Legislature as a way to protect those who refused to serve gays based on religious beliefs from lawsuits.
Hoover said there is a move in Harrisburg to modernize Pennsylvania's laws.
"There are 21 states that have statewide laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity," he said. "There is legislation in both the state House and state Senate that would make Pennsylvania one of those states."
The Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, already in effect, prohibits discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodation based on characteristics that include race, gender and disability, Hoover said. Senate Bill 300 and House Bill 300 would add sexual orientation and gender identity to that law.
Tom Joseph, Public News Service - PA


Additional features to this functionality is described in this document.
1.1 Additional features to this functionality is described in this document.
This document is overview of several new SVG related features over the Mobility Visual Designer, SVG Composer and Netbeans Java ME SVG libraries.
Almost every component in the SVG Java ME library should have representation as a SVG XML snippet in the SVG Composer palette. Combining Java ME library with UI (SVG file) created using Mobility SVG Composer should be done on the Mobility Visual Designer level (source code generation level). Ideally user should just add created UI (SVG file) created in the SVG Composer to the SVGForm and code which binds Java ME library with UI (SVG file) should be automatically generated.
Opened Visual Midlet should be updated automatically based on changes made in svg Image (Flow, Screen Editor and Source).
List contains only non abstract components. This library should be tested not only for reference implementation of Java ME CLDC/MIDP like WTK but also behavior of the components should be tested on real devices (emulators) like Nokia platforms (S40, S60) and Sony-Ericcson.
Code pattern example. It shows how to declare SVGForm and how to bind, add and create component to the container (SVGForm).
Overview of the architecture of the Netbeans Java ME SVG Components library.
Example of the SVG UI created using SVG Libraries running on the WTK.
The SVG Composer should help users to create UI based on the components available in the palette. Each of the SVG UI Components should have SVG XML snippet. When user drops or modifies component using the SVG Composer XML code should be added or modified to the editing SVG UI file.
Here "textFieldID" is SVG identifier ( value of attribute "id" ) of SVG element in snippet. See below for description of snippets for each component.
Overview of the components and SVG XML snippets available in the SVG Composer palette.
<rect id="button_ok_body" x="1" y="1" rx="5" ry="5" width="80" height="30" fill="rgb(176,196,222)"
<animate attributeName="stroke-width" attributeType="XML" begin="button_ok.focusin" dur="0.25s"
<animate attributeName="stroke-width" attributeType="XML" begin="button_ok.focusout" dur="0.25s"
<animate id="button_ok_body_pressed" attributeName="fill" attributeType="XML" begin="indefinite" dur="0.25s"
<animate id="button_ok_body_released" attributeName="fill" attributeType="XML" begin="indefinite" dur="0.25s"
id="label_svg" is identifier for SVG components between other SVG tags. Metadata text type="label" is helping information that marks SVG tag "g" as SVG Component with type "label". This information could be used in Designer for identifying components. Also it should be used in Java source for component. It allows to deny some SVG elements in constructor of SVG component ( if it doesn't have appropriate type ).
There is a problem currently with usage of SVGLabels : each component gets focus on navigation via UP/DOWN buttons . So SVGLabel also can get focus. As result : some strange behavior with focus in process of navigation. Possible SVGLabel needs some method "labelFor(SVGCompoenent)" . In this case focus will set for component that is in argument of this method ( not for label ).
<rect x="0" y="0" rx="5" ry="5" width="185" height="24" fill="none" stroke="rgb(255,165,0)"
<rect x="0" y="0" rx="5" ry="5" width="200" height="30" fill="none" stroke="rgb(255,165,0)"
<path id="checkbox_online_mark" transform="translate(12.5,15.5)"  d="M 0,0 5,5 5,-12" fill="none"
<rect x="0" y="-5" rx="5" ry="5" width="90" height="30" fill="none" stroke="rgb(255,165,0)"
<rect id="country_combobox_button" x="66.0" y="1.0" width="18" height="18" fill="rgb(220,220,220)"
<animate id="country_combobox_button_pressed" attributeName="fill" attributeType="XML" begin="indefinite" dur="0.25s"
<animate id="country_combobox_button_released" attributeName="fill" attributeType="XML" begin="indefinite" dur="0.25s"
<polygon transform="translate(73,8)"  points="0,0 4,0 2,4" fill="blue"
<text id="country_combobox_list_hidden_text" visibility="hidden" x="10" y="13" stroke="black" font-size="15"
<rect id="country_combobox_list_bound" x="5.0" y="0.0" width="80" height="60"
<rect id="country_combobox_list_selection" x="5" y="0" stroke="black"
The latter snippet should be at the end of SVG file ( between other such possible tags ). Otherwise it could appear "under" some SVG figure and it will not be visible when it opens. This snippet represent list of choices in combobox.
<rect id="list_selection" x="5" y="0" stroke="black" stroke-width="1" fill="rgb(200,200,255)"
<rect x="0" y="-5" rx="5" ry="5" width="90" height="70" fill="none" stroke="rgb(255,165,0)"
<rect x="0" y="-10" rx="5" ry="5" width="200" height="30" fill="none" stroke="rgb(255,165,0)"
<polygon transform="scale(0.2,0.2)"  points="20,10 80,10 80,40 50,70 20,40"
<rect x="0" y="-5" rx="5" ry="5" width="44" height="30" fill="none" stroke="rgb(255,165,0)"
<animate id="age_spinner_up_button_pressed" attributeName="fill" attributeType="XML" begin="indefinite" dur="0.25s"
<animate id="age_spinner_up_button_realeased" attributeName="fill" attributeType="XML" begin="indefinite" dur="0.25s"
<animate id="age_spinner_down_button_pressed" attributeName="fill" attributeType="XML" begin="indefinite" dur="0.25s"
<animate id="age_spinner_down_button_realeased" attributeName="fill" attributeType="XML" begin="indefinite" dur="0.25s"
<animate attributeName="stroke" attributeType="XML" begin="textfield_name.focusin" dur="0.25s"
<animate attributeName="stroke" attributeType="XML" begin="textfield_name.focusout" dur="0.25s"
<rect id="textfield_name_caret" visibility="visible" x="20" y="4"
The Mobility Visual Designer should have new component SVGForm in the palette. Using SVGForm property editor developers should be able to add SVG UI (SVG file) created using the SVG Composer. During the code generation Visual Designer should generate code which binds UI SVG components with Java ME components based on the SVG file added to the SVGForm. The SVG UI file should be parsed and provide some feedback for developers before code generation (most likely right after is added to the SVGForm) to prevent possible problems during code generation. User should not be allow to edit SVG UI using Visual Designer.
Property Editor should give users possibility to attache SVG Image to the SVGForm component and also should give overview of the SVG Components recognized in the SVG file components.
The SVGForm source code pattern which should be automatically generated based on actions taken in the Visual Designer.
The SVGButton source code pattern which should be automatically generated based on actions taken in the Visual Designer. Rest of the SVG Components should follow same or similar pattern.
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We have update the inactive files system.
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It's for free acount or primium ??
my many uploaded important File Deleted.why ?
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I don't know, how do this work??
can i linked my youtube videos?