(I’d tried caffeine a few times; it made me believe I was focused and energetic, but it turned my judgment to shit. Widespread use of caffeine explained a lot about the twentieth century.)

Andrew Worth, narrator of Distress (1995) by Greg Egan

Mary Lou Seymour writes, apparently parroting the Fully Informed Jury Association:

This Wednesday, June 4, 2003, Ed Rosenthal is scheduled to be sentenced for growing medical marijuana in California. As you may recall, back in February after Rosenthal was convicted, nine of the Rosenthal jurors publicly protested the verdict, going on Dateline, CNN, and other media stating they would never have convicted if they had known this was a medical case. In other words, if those jurors had known about “jury nullification,” Rosenthal would not be facing a minimum of ten years in prison. . . .

Am I not reading the same words here that everyone else sees?: “nine . . . jurors . . . stat[ed] they would never have convicted” — that says to me that they didn’t need to be told about nullification; they’d have nullified even if they didn’t know the word — “if they had known this was a medical case,” i.e. if the judge had not protected them from being confused by inconvenient facts.

Nullification and the right to present defensive evidence are both important causes, but neither is served by confusing the two. In my humble opinion.

Update: The sentence and Rosenthal’s reaction.

Purple Numbers and Sharp Cheese: is synæsthesia metaphor, or is metaphor synæsthesia?

Don’t you wish that just once there could be a tv series where the chief executive of a space station is called Mayor or Abbess or even Baron rather than Commander?