An art or a scourge? You be the judge;

Jury consultants hail from a variety of fields—business, law, marketing, communications, theater, statistics, but especially psychology. About half of all trial consultants are psychologists. Work can begin months before a trial with community surveys. Consultants may cold-call random people from the local phone book and ask them questions about their age, race, gender, religion, profession, and political views. Then they ask about their views on issues pertaining to the case and maybe their reactions to a brief case description. They’re looking for correlations between the two sets of answers.
Next they’ll pay a small number of people to participate in focus groups, where they actually test parts of their case—particular arguments, pieces of evidence, or witnesses. That furnishes detail on how different types of jurors react. On occasion consultants stage full mock trials with the lawyers and actors and then scrutinize the “jurors” as they deliberate.
Armed with a sense of which issues and which juror characteristics matter most to the trial, consultants draw up juror questionnaires and devise strategies for voir dire. Some question topics are straightforward: family, education, experiences with the justice system. Some are highly detailed: The questionnaire for the 2004 Kobe Bryant rape case asked, “How do you feel about interracial relationships?”, “Which of the following best describes your opinion of professional basketball players?”, and “Describe your exposure [to this case from each of the following media outlets].” Forms usually run a few pages, but can be much longer in big cases; the questionnaire in the O.J. trial ran 75 pages, with more than 300 questions.

h/t Maggies Farm

Population and dwelling counts for Canada provinces and territories – 2006 vs 2001.

Main page here.
This is especially not good. The smaller and medium sized communities are bleeding population. While that may have been somewhat alleviated in the past year with growth in the resource industry, it’s nonetheless sobering for those who assume that the construction activity in Regina and Saskatoon signals a turn around for the province’s fortunes. What we are witnessing is population shift, not growth. And that’s not good unless you believe we should emulate the economic miracle known as “Wyoming”.
Which brings me to wish I were better with bar graphs. I’d be tempted to plot the 10,776 person decrease in overall population against the 6% increase in the number of civil servants on the province’s payroll since Calvert took office.

BruceMontague.ca

Montague and his wife Donna were charged in 2004 for their deliberate refusal to comply with firearms paperwork which they believe to be an unwarranted threat to their freedom, privacy and property.
Calvin Martin QC will be presenting the Montagues’ arguments to Justice John Wright.
“After over a decade fighting Bill C-68 at all levels of government, we’re excited to present a strong case to strike this expensive, ineffective and contradictory legislation off our books” said Martin.
“This is very costly and personally draining” says Donna Montague. “We really hope the courtroom will be packed with supporters demonstrating the concern of average citizens.”

The hearing will be held at Superior Court of Ontario in Kenora, Ontario at 2:00 pm, Monday. (March 12)

Warren Kinsella versus Antonia Zerbisias –> and the winner is… [click]
Small Dead Animals versus My Blahg –> and the winner is…[click]
The Two Stephs –> and the winner is… [click]
Colby Cosh versus Andrew Coyne –> and the winner is… [click]
Right versus Left –> and the winner is… [click]
Create your own Googlefights and post the results in the comments!

I used to be a systems analyst supporting enterprise groupware deployments for a multi-national staffing company. Now I run a small PC repair business from an acreage located 28 km east of the Village of Consort in east central Alberta. It’s safe to say that I’ve seen just about everything in fifteen years of working with computers. Well, almost everything.
Tonight marks the first time I’ve ever had to remove a heat sink from a computer system and soak it in engine degreaser.

I’ll let others speak to the rest of it, but after watching (Little Mosque On The Prairie) a few minutes (or was it a minute?) it occured to me that the spectrum of “white rural folk” portrayed were vaguely reminiscent of television characters encountered in an earlier life.
Perhaps Arnold Ziffel will make his appearance in a later episode.
PS… Huh. I’m not the only one who noticed.
Update Read the comments for suggestions on other show titles (just a sampling):
Guantanamo Bay Watch
Kneel or No Deal
The Prearranged Newlywed Game
So You Think You Can Dance? Well you can’t you infidel dog. It is Banned!!
The King of Kensington is a Jew, and must be destroyed.
Welcome Back Khadr
Allah My Children
All in the Fatwa
Chico and the Imam
Hudna Night in Canada
Divorce, Divorce, Divorce Court
CSIED: Bagdad (improvised …..)
The Allah DeGenerates Show
Pimp My Camel
The Young and Headless
Mad About Jew
My Three Sunnis
Heh.

You’ve probably seen this already. I don’t care. I’m linking it anyway.

“I have a proposal for you‘

And how ’bout them Huskies!

In the mail, Night Trains, a new novel by well known blogger Arthur Chrenkoff. (Along with a nice note – thanks, Arthur!) I’m planning on starting on it this weekend.
Before he signed off the series due to work commitments, Arthur kept up the invaluable collection of “Good News” reports on progress in Iraq and Afghanistan, gaining the notice of both the WSJ and the NYT. His presence is sorely missed, but it looks like he’s put the time to good use. Night Trains is paired with Mark Steyn’s America Alone on Amazon. Check it out.

Here’s one to bookmark;

I am disconnecting myself from the Internet and my TV, all in the name of science, in the hopes of coming to some newfound understanding of how these mediums affect our lives. A friend of mine will be maintaining a blog for me while I am disconnected, and one of the topics I will be talking about is the positive and negative aspects of blogs, especially in terms of how they have facilitated or hindered political debate.

Day One.

Via Robert Prather;

What won Westminster’s ear for synthetic phonics was essentially a seven-year experiment in Clackmannanshire in Scotland. By the age of 11, children taught to read there through synthetic phonics are three and a half years ahead of their peers taught by other methods. Some reckon that boys, in particular, do better with a system like this that offers hands-on tools.

Speaking as a member of the phonics generation – I could read from a newspaper before I finished first grade – all I can add is “You don’t say?”

Boo!

North Korea has probably tested a nuclear weapon and Iran appears to be on track to do the same thing. How should the world’s leading nations react to Pyongyang’s action?

You can access it from the home page.
One detail that I have not heard mentioned in either the mainstream media or in discussion on talk radio is this little known fact – the Korean War has never officially ended, but has been in a state of ceasefire since 1953.
With North Korea still technically at war with the South, one would think the development of nuclear weapons would be taken a little more seriously by those who have been working overtime to convince themselves that Pyongyang is simply sabre rattling to help cut themselves a more lucrative diplomatic deal.
(see also – Senator John McCain on North Korea, guest blogging at Captains Quarters.)

A fascinating interview with the novelist and opinion writer at Doublethink. Here’s a taste;

And by the way, when I was a freshman at Harvard, the first demonstration that I saw was one guy who was carrying a sign protesting. So I stopped and I talked to him, and he told me about how awful America was and everything like that. His case was that his father had been one of the members of the Hollywood Ten, and he had been forced to relocate to the south of France and write his screenplays under a pseudonym. And he says, “Well, it wasn’t right. He was completely innocent.” But the parents lied to their children. They didn’t tell their children. And I said “Well actually, he was a Communist. It was legal to be a Communist. But he should have said so. Or, even if he shouldn’t have said so, your telling me that he was not a Communist does not change the fact that was a Communist.” So he looked at me like he had found a lunatic Red-baiter. Right? “How do you know?” I said, “Because my mother was in his cell.”
And she was in the cell of a lot of those people. And most of the Hollywood Ten, who were supposedly not, were in fact in her cell. And yet she was always, to the extent that someone can be a leftist who was really wild in her thinking, she was pretty much a leftist. Although socially, she was probably like a conservative Republican at this point. That happens, you know. See, you’re in your twenties, you haven’t watched this, but Democrats, if they stayed still, would be Republicans today. A lot of them do. Even I started out as a Democrat, I voted for Hubert Humphrey in ’68. That was the last time I voted for a Democratic presidential candidate. Although in ’72 I didn’t get a chance to vote because of the war.

A great story teller, he shares how he came to join the Israeli military, why he believes it’s not possible to bring democracy to the Middle East, how he came to hate parties, and the “nihilistic, ironic, detached, cool, and cowardly” modern literary sensibility. Throughout the piece, you’re never quite certain if he’s telling the truth.
It’s very long, and well worth the effort.

That optimism was dashed almost immediately. The entire trip into the city (I was living in NYC at the time) from my friends home in the suburbs was spent listening to my blind date recount the faults and failures of every man she had dated, and for that matter, the faults and failings of all men, everywhere. None apparently, were worthy of her companionship, qualities or beauty- of which she would refer to every few minutes, as if on cue- as in, “I don’t have to settle, I’m too good to settle. I deserve the very best. I can get any man I want.”

This ranks right up there with the best of ’em.

Here’s a headline for those of you too young to remember the Carter years – “OPEC Concerned Over Falling Oil Prices”.

Ministers of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries arriving in Vienna on Sunday have indicated concern that oil prices may fall. Though the eleven-nation group is unlikely to officially reduce its production quota when it meets on Monday, the change in ministers’ tone could be a harbinger of things to come.
“Inventories are very comfortable, prices are coming down and nobody is concerned about a shortage of supply,” Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister and Opec’s most powerful member, said as he arrived in Vienna.
At previous meetings Opec members, including Saudi Arabia, have voiced discomfort about oil prices being too high, threatening global economic growth. But there was little the group could do because its members were largely already producing at full capacity while high prices were prompted mainly by worries about sudden interruptions in supply caused by hurricanes or geopolitical tensions.
Now ministers no longer think oil prices, at around $67 a barrel, are too high. Instead they are concerned that the recent $10 drop in prices could be a sign that the market is at the beginning of a larger correction, one that could eventually impinge on oil producers’ revenues.
In the US, for example, sport utility vehicle sales fell 14 per cent in August, while sales of compact cars were up 18 per cent. Opec expects oil consumption in North America to increase by only 90,000 b/d in 2006, compared to the 230,000 b/d jump it experienced in 2005 and 520,000 b/d in 2004.

Price, supply, consumer demand – all connected somehow. (How can that be?*)
And no – despite everything you heard in the mainstream media and associated punditry – oil prices did not reach “all time” highs this summer. Adjusted for inflation, the top price for a barrel of crude this summer still fell well short of those recorded in 1979.;

Adjusted for inflation in June 2006 dollars this $38 peak is the equivalent of paying $100.52 today. This number is constantly changing as we adjust for inflation at the current moment.
In other words, Oil would have to average $100.52 for the entire month to be as high as the price we saw in December of 1979. But we are “only” paying about 2/3rds that amount.

A few weeks ago I mentioned I was “knee deep in race car painting”. Today, I received pictures from the track, and thought I’d share one.

The blue base and clearcoat were applied by Bob Heroux, Lazer Auto Body in Saskatoon , and the car is driven by Bob Heroux and Shawn “Skippy” Zezula.
Photo gallery – SIR’s 40th Anniversary, August 26.

Via CanWest;

Four decades ago, an estimated 11 per cent of wives made more than their husbands, rising to around 19 per cent throughout most of the 1980s. During the recession of the early 1990s, it jumped to 25 per cent, mainly because men in high-wage and manufacturing jobs saw periods of unemployment. As employment levels improved, women continued to pull in bigger bucks and, by 2003, almost 29 per cent were the primary breadwinners.

Four decades ago, my mother drew her last formal paycheque. In the years that followed, it had no effect on her ability to “pull in the bucks” compared to my father – with the subsequent changes to community property laws, she accumlated wealth at the same rate he did.