(no subject)

[vicarz]

subtle T-shirt ideas
B: OFFENSIVE PHRASE!!! F: Obscure band
B: Sex for sale! F: It's just a social commentary

This week I'm ready for work crap, or so I hope. Not sure why being picked apart bothered me - guess I've been used to compliments on my work. The multi-person assault seems to be a response to when I busted the ER group for firing someone with no legal justification, and making the Director take notice. Sad that same director is now helping the counter-attack on me. After all the grief over the TPS reportvoucher, she forgot to sign it - her job. She didn't apologize or make note of that error, in fact she noted the error of the thing lacking her signature, after her review, as though that was my error too. But I don't report directly to her. My boss isn't the twat, in fact I'm ok working for him. I think I owe him a few after last week.

I think I am going to take some of penan's advice, but in a different way. I'm going to be quiet through the meeting, only writing down questions and orders, and giving short answers to all questions asked. If they tear me up, I may say I did everything I was trained to do and note I submitted this for review to the HAB staff before they saw it - and they had no major corrections. When I return, I'll capture the entire event in email, and answer all questions - mostly quoting the emails I got back from the LR Branch Chief. She's leading the assault now, but she's also the one who I had approve my entire argument and strategy in writing before I went out there. They can attack verbally, but I'll respond in writing.

CSI and Law & Order are destroying our criminal court system
When I was in trial ad, we had a wheelchair bound prosecuting attorney complain to us that CSI made the state's case look so sexy, that it was hard for the state to prosecute regular criminal cases because they didn't look as realistic as the computer graphics people see on TV. Oddly, I got to experience that first-hand in our fake trials. Granted, I think facts were stronger than all arguments - and our fact patterns were intentionally split, but what most jury members responded to and reported influenced them the most scare the hell out of me.

3 things the jury believed: 1) confident speakers, 2) speakers that walked in front of the podium and approached them, 3) passion in the speeches. One jury of ten also believed that a BAC of .04 was rip-roaring drunk. None seemed to recognize which speeches had substance to them or lacked it.

Oh good god. A good liar is more convincing than someone telling the truth - someone who studies how to manipulate their appearance to appear sincere, who gauges your reaction and responds accordingly, and alters their story to be as believable as possible...is lying! Someone who is telling the truth is never convincing because they don't have to be - they expect to be believed because they tell the truth.

So I'm alarmed. I knew that CSI made people want sexy graphics and have unrealistic expectations regarding both the existence of and the reliability of identifying fingerprints on guns, and that people seem to expect dna matching whenever a car stereo is stolen - but now I realize they want someone to be as pretty as a model, as passionate as a theatre performer, and have a speech written by a team of movie writers to entertain them. Justice in that world will rest on who can afford the best team.

You know that asshole I hate? The one who shakes your hand and does the deadly 3? Deadly 3 = 1) looks you in the eye, 2) squeezes your hand, 3) says your name. They do them at the same time because they are forming a pneumonic by picturing you as a picture, associating your unusual facial features with a comical picture that includes some aspect of your name, and locking it into memory. That way, if they see you three months later and you turn out to be important, they shake your hand again and say your name - and you're supposed to be flattered because they remember you and it makes you feel important. Well, I just thought they did that because they were assholes. Now I know - they're assholes, sure, but it works.

Comments

[ex-dasboot.livejournal.com]

I dunno, lawyers have been being weasly liars for far longer than CSI/L&O have been around, though I bet you're right in that an dramatic, entertaining, presentation plays more of a part than it used to.

Idiocracy looks more and more accurate every day.

[tehcas.livejournal.com]

Those 3 things the jury believed is stuff they teach you in any public speaking class. I learned it in my Communications class and i was in a tech program! L&O and CSI has little more effect on that now than Matlock and Perry Mason had back in out parents day.

What CSI does now however is make people think all evidence in all crimes is given the CSI Vegas/NY/Florida treatment and the CSI's are super humans who solve all the crimes and arrest the bad guys. In reality, the cops do a lot more than work as the bodyguards they do in CSI. And not all crimes get the million dollar treatment. Why bother doing DNA swabs on a simple B+E?*

That one juror is truly a cause for sadness. You gotta believe they are a supporter of MADD or something like that, or someone who doesnt drink at all(or believe in it) and thinks 1 or 2 drinks makes you the town drunk and giving you car keys makes you a potential mass murderer. Maybe more education is needed on what exactly BAC means and how much means what. All some people see i bet is the .08 legal limit and think that is the line between A-OK and skunk drunk. They say 2 or 3 drinks = .08, and even then MADD wants it lowered to .06? All that does it make semi sober people today the skunk drunks of tomorrow. Rip Roaring good times ahead!


Law would be so much simpler if it were written in simple to understand language that you wont need 6 years ejumakashun to comprehend, and legal cases where black n white "you did this and that, we dont allow that... here's your punishment", but there are countless books that say thats not going to work. :)

Goodluck on the law stuff dude.



*I read this in a paper a couple years ago.

[vicar.livejournal.com]

Many of our laws are supported by people who don't realize it applies to them or "normal people"